Tour de Fleece – Day 5
Yay! Progress made on Day 5!!!! Now I need to get it off the bobbin so i can spin something else! Taking a break from the corriedale!
- Fiber: Corriedale from MDS&W
- Spin Date and Time: 7/6/11 9:40pm to 11:04pm
- Spin Amount: 5/8 oz
Tour de Fleece – Day 4
Day 4! I had grand plans on finishing the fiber, except our Little Lady was having trouble sleeping 
(No worries, she is now sound asleep, hugging her burp cloth and giraffe buddy).
- Fiber: Corridale from MDS&W
- Spin Date and Time: 7/5/11 9:54pm to 11:13pm
- Spin Amount: 5/8 oz
Happy 4th of July
So no spinning for me on 4th of July. We had a beach party instead! Plus we went to a pool party on the 3rd, and a birthday party on the 2nd! We need time to recoup! But I won’t leave you with no photos! Look! Cutie Patootie! (to distract you from noticing that I have no spinning photos!)
Tour de Fleece – Day 2
Day 2 progress… Definitely not as much as I would liked, but I guess that is what happens when you have to go to a party and prep for another one… Plus knitting 3 different things and sewing 2 project bags.
- Fiber: Corridale from MDS&W
- Spin Date and Time: 7/3/11 9:50pm to 11:09pm
- Spin Amount: 7/8 oz
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Tour de Fleece – Day 1
It is time to get back to blogging! Or I’m going to try anyways.
Today is the first day of Tour de France, and hence the first day of Tour de Fleece. I decided to joining in on the fun for this year. Of course, I joined like gazillion teams! The Rookies, The Penlotons, Team Footloose, Team 11lbs in 2011 and Team “Your Mom” Rides Again.
So really, without further ado, let me share with you what I accomplished today…
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- Fiber: Corridale from MDS&W
- Spin Date and Time: 7/2/11 9:40pm to 10:58pm
- Spin Amount: 5/8 oz
Will You Be My Friend? Part 2
Don’t have a lot of time to post lately, since I started grad school! I know! I’m crazy… But it’s gotta be done.
So until I have more time to properly show some of my knitting and the Little Lady, I will show you this:
I made cinnamon muffins with cinnamon chips using the Amish Friendship Bread starter. They smell amazing! I think I had the heat too high in the beginning so the dough rise too high too fast, now I have sink holes in the middle, but I’m sure that won’t affect taste!
Since I’m uploading, I might as well show you this:
CostumeChick, backstageknits, CostumeChick’s intern, WifeMomKnitter and I went to the CT Sheep and Wool festival this past Saturday. I’ve always liked this festival because it is the first one of the series near me and it always signifies that spring is coming!
While we were posing, the two kids with their baby goats ran toward us. The lady who was taking our photos decided that they need to be in the pictures too, so there they are. The goats are super cute!
I think that will have to be it for today. I’ll have to definitely do a post on a Saturday or something ti catch you all up!
2KCBW Day 4 – Where are they now?
Whatever happened to your __________?
Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.
This is Jezabel. I don’t know why I don’t have a FO photo of this because it is finished. I was totally into this sweater. I mean, just look at the pretty lady with this gorgeous sweater:
Well, my sweater turned out almost like it, except it didn’t. I followed the pattern, against my better judgement, and I think the underarm area were so big that i can put my head through it! I mean, seriously, I even ran out of yarn and cried for help on Ravelry! A nice Raveler sent me two balls for free so I can finish. And now it is in time out, indefinitely. I should really rip it out to modify it so I can actually wear it. Or maybe rip it all out and make something else? What do you think?
2KCBW Day 3 – Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches
How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.
I keep my yarn organized in the IKEA bookshelves. One grid has lace, two grids have sock yarn, three grids with Farmhouse yarn, one grid with farms and festival only yarn, and the rest were organized by my madness…
This bookcase has mostly what I called the “low rider”. It has antique shop/thrift store finds and mostly yarn from craft store. I also recently dedicated one grid to roving. I’m hoping that I can maintain it with just one grid! And as you can see, I have fabrics in the totes in the foreground and the bookcase next to this big one. Way too many, of course!
I think I have most of my yarn photographed and cataloged on Ravelry, but I’m sure there are a few stragglers in there. I do have some reorganization ideas on my craft room overall, but I’m pretty happy where the yarn is. I am, however, not too happy with where my notions are. They are all currently just in the plastic drawers right now, you can almost see it in the first photo (the one little one on top right corner). I feel that I should be able to do better, but I don’t really have any ideas. I also don’t have a lot of needles, so I guess that isn’t really a concern, but I’m not really good at keeping all the needle tips set into the bag, and I feel that even if I do, I don’t really have a good way to identify them at the moment, since they don’t really have a lable on them. So that would totally be something I need to work on. I would love to know how you organize your needles!
2KCBW Day 2 – Skill + 1Up
Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?
Looking back, I don’t think I knitted much this time last year. Babysquared was just turning 7 months old and certainly occupied a lot of my time. I work at Joann Fabrics as their education coordinator for fun, and I have a lot of knitting and crocheting classes. If anything, I think I’ve become a better knitting and crocheting teacher. The other thing I prefected is customer service, but that has nothing to do with knitting… Maybe some day, I will use it for a shop of my own? Someday…
So I guess not much on the improving skills part, and I’m not sure I have any goal in the near future either. I’m happy knitting away with what I got, but I’m sure something will come up down the road, when I have time to think about it. Or not. Only time will tell… I do, however, want to knit more for myself. So we’ll see how I do this upcoming year.
2KCBW Day 1 – A Tale of Two Yarns
Again, I am behind on this whole blogging thing. But I’m going to try to keep up, I promise. And this week, I even got topics to follow!!! So without further ado…
Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.
Man… There are so many yarn out there that are just amazing! What to choose!? By checking my Rav Stash, I’ve decided I have a serious love affair with JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18. I mean, I ONLY have 11 colors of this yarn, you know!? They have 50 colors! I need MORE! OK, maybe I DON’T need more, but just look at those colors!
I love working with this yarn. It is super soft when you knit it up, and very nice on your hand. And it blocks beautifully. Just look at my pretty shawl!
Another yarn that I love is Kona Bay Cotton. Sadly, I think it is discontinued. The only place I can find them is on Ravelry on other raveler’s stash. It is one of the softest yarn I’ve ever knitted with.
I have 2.5 skeins left of this red color, and some light blue and moss. I need to think of a project to knit them up with. Maybe a tank.
Of course, there are many others that I loved working with… like anything alpaca is always something I would pick up. And Schaefer’s Andrea or Audrey is always a rare treat.
On another hand, there are a few less desirables. I have a few incidents with Farmhouse Yarn. When they work, they are awesome to work with, but too many little things to put me off. Sadly, I have a lot of Farmhouse Yarn, so I guess I’ll figure out what to do with them. Another brand is Louisa Harding. I’ve used two yarn from this brand, but they both are really splitty. I guess it may be the yarn content and the fiber tendency, but I’ve knitted with other yarn with similar content with no issues. So they’ve made it on my boo boo list as well.
And there are definitely many other yarn that I would love to try, such as Madelinetosh, Bugga, Shelter, Quincy & Co, to name a few. I am about to knit with Malabrigo Silky for the first time, and I’m super excited about it, but first, I need to finish the splitty yarn project to enjoy the Malabrigo heaven!
