So I'm knitting the ever-lovely Stephanie Japel's "Forecast" which she designed and is featured in an old "issue" of knitty.com.
It's a cute cardigan, knit from the top down raglan style but seamed on the sleeves (a woman after my own heart: "fuck DPNs!" (me saying that, not her, dunno whether she actually hates them or seems to design sweaters which don't require the use of them from what I've seen of her free online offerings)), and I'm knitting the collar as I'm re-watching season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, and after the cheater cast on method I use because my tension's always spot-on with it but it requires an actual row be knit after it for any fancy stitchwork such as, say, a KFB, I am merrily knitting away in what is a rib pattern, thinking "why didn't she just say "knit stitches as they lie" following the KFB?"
Sure enough, I get to the part of the collar where you're to count your stitches and make sure you've got 78, and I happen to have 79. And it dawns on me "Oh. I thought I saw it looking like seed stitch in the photo..."

All I have to say is, at least that's only six rows in!

Ripping, starting over, and getting the right stitch count this time!


FYI, if you have skeins of Classic Elite Skye Tweed and aren't sure what to do with them, you can use ANY pattern which happens to feature Cascade 220 and substitute your pretty Skye Tweed for it. Score! Hence why I'm now knitting this sweater instead of one from Tahki Yarn's F/W 2k6 booklet as planned. Also, not adventurous enough to try sizing down Adrian's Cycling Aran yet, that's a more complex project than my pain-addled brain can handle right now, directions I can follow and not have to think (beyond the stitch count at certain points...) are a plus! As is not having to wrestle with DPNs on sleeves which I discovered after counting stitches are too large for my arms, so The Somewhat Cowl is once again chilling in my bag until I decide to tackle it again by ripping, picking up stitches again, and re-knitting the sleeves. Probably will be *after* I get to the sleeves on this thing and see how the seaming is done, and then I'll seam the sleeves on TSC.






Yep.



EDIT: Also, I am totally making the sweater in all knit stitch garter. If I have to knit a sweater in all purls, I WILL shoot myself. I don't see it as being an issue whether I knit it or purl it, but we'll see in a few rows' time I guess, hmm?

too bad one cannot knit ice. i am 100% enchanted! I'd want to live there, but A) I'm sure that occurance with the ice is rare and B) if it isn't, I'd imagine it would wear thin after a while. p.s. versoix is in switzerland, and they have a chocolate factory there. indeed.

i really like this sweater, and am about to go track down if she knit it from her own design, or if it's a pattern i can purchase. it's great! i like the lines of it, and it will look good on me. not a whole lot of people can get away with diagonal lines on their torso. pants yeah, but not torso.

scary is that i think i know that girl, i think she went to high school with me, and she was really rude to me one night before a group of us went to go see "rocky horror picture show" for wendolyn's birthday. the show had a friend who'd graduated in it, sarah tode. she was so gorgeous. i wonder if she continued on in theatre arts or not. she was a good singer and a good dancer, and she loved to act. but it's possible it's just a lookalike with a familliar name. it probably is.

i think i'm going to knit this instead of one of the other sweaters i had in mind. it's small and fitted, which is something i was not looking forward to having to make alterations mid-knit for so it fit me. i adore stephanie japel. i think she designs nice knits for people with small frames, like both she and i have. plus who doesn't like less knitting time to get a finished product? i just have to make sure i can hit gauge and i'll be good to go.
alternatively, i might knit this only modify the cables to be cables not bobbles.
or this only altered to fit me. serious PITA. but i'm such a sucker for a complex cable.

dyeing and stuff's been on the shelf while i'm dealing with a month of severely limited mobility. sucks, but that's how it goes sometimes! and i haven't been knitting as much as i should, either, it's been more a "watch battlestar galactica until i pass out from my meds, then wake up, take my next dose get some food, get back in bed, watch battlestar galactica until i pass out again..." lather rinse repeat. and some healthy doses of world of warcraft. i know, time i could be knitting in, and i feel like an ass sometimes when i hit /played, but meh. only young and totally irresponsible once, this could be the last real chance i get to play world of warcraft as much as i want, so i'm doing so. knitting's something i can do for the rest of my life. WoW ain't and i know it. whatever.

anyway, gonna go grab some food, cruise knitting blogs more, and maybe go play WoW ;) haha!

adorable!

Buy them while they're still there! As always, free shipping within the US, no matter how many you purchase. $2 to Canada... and beyond!

I mean really...LOOK AT THESE:








so dang pretty! I want the top one for meeee, but. I know I can make it again, because I keep that close a handle on all my dyelots. SOOOO, I can sell it and make myself some later.

But go take a peek at my shop anyway. Cause you know you wanna see it with the banner my mom made for me, don't you? OUI.

And don't forget my cafe press shop with the pretty winter image

so, you say you can't get the hang of a drop spindle?
here's a fabulous solution!
these would be quite easy to make with household items. a contact i have on flickr made one with a spaghetti portioner and a knitting needle, and look at her results! i am in love with the idea, as i personally could not get the hang of drop spindling at all, and ended up going right to the wheel after just three times trying my drop spindle. i knew spinning was something i needed to do, just like humans need to eat and drink water, so a wheel i purchased. i wish i would have found this video back in the day, though, i bet i would have had a lot of fun with this!
it seems to me this will allow for much longer lengths of yarn to be spun, as well as having much greater control over the fiber to begin. miss stacy, i think you might reallllly dig this method! give it a whirl (har!) and let me know what you think? heck, i might throw one of these together myself! i'm peronally racking my brain thinking of what objects i have which could be used to create this. i'm wondering if a needle sizer could be used? hmmmm!!!

the same user has these beautiful fulled boxes that i'd really like to knit a set of for myself, as well as many other really pretty projects! do check her out :)

however, my "oh my GOD are you KIDDING!??!" freak out over the pretties and perfect and ingenuity flickr contact right now is Anna Kika. she has an unusual technique for dyeing yarn (she overdyes while it's still in a ball/skein, not like, skeined out into a hank, it's still in the fun crossed over itself ball oval things you get yarn in, like knitpics wool of the andes and lion brand wool ease.) which i'll surely be trying myself soon enough. her colour selection is GORGEOUS. and, she made me giggle with glee because it appears she has a thing for orange mohair just like my darling stacy does!

i mean really. look at this yarn which grew into this WIP which ended up as this sweater. and a detail shot. so pretty!


i've been poking around etsy a bit, and i found a lovely store, with prices a little more expensive then mine for non-superwash wools, but whatever. then i looked at the shipping. anything over a priority shipping price for a single item, and a buck more per item after that is highway robbery. what this person is charging is highway pre-meditated hit and run! i never charge shipping on anything within the US, only for outside the US do i ever charge. what you see with my goods when you're looking at them in a list format is exactly what you get. every time.

so...if you liked the burnout winter image, i took the suggestion of aisling and set it up at cafe press! expect to see more links to shops of mine there in the next week or so.

i am a genius!
so i steam set my dyed wools, wrapped in plastic wrap.
today, i finally figured out i can squeeze a lot of the water out while it's still in the plastic wrap "tube". DUH!
(for those who don't know...handling wet roving = fuzzy roving when it's dried, because it sticks to your hands like crazy. it doesn't stick to plastic or silicone, tho!)

i decided, at about 4am, that i was going to dye wool, after mixing up some of the dyes i was out of or nearly out if in their 1% solutions. dude, sun yellow is in like, EVERYTHING if it's a warm colour. seriously. it's insane how much of the sun yellow i go through. the WF magenta is a close second, and brilliant violet a third, royal blue a fourth. but sun yellow i go through like CRAZY. but yeah. i mixed dyes at like 11pm, watched up through episode 6 of 24 on peekvid, knit while watching, started in on "eureka" (did i read right that the show got cancelled? too bad, it was a really cute idea, and the pilot was exceedingly promising!), and decided i was going to go dye. i did two dye batches:



this one i'm really happy with! it was looking like i'd chosen too harsh of colours when i was painting on a coffee filter, they didn't seem to be going together at all. but no! they do! i need to remember that my sense of colour is ridiculously awesome. always has been, always will be. i am really freakish when it comes to colour. i can colourmatch perfectly if i'm trying to match a garment that's sitting in my closet at home. it's really insane what an eye i have, regardless of lighting conditions. so yeah. i love this roving. but i dunno what to name it. idears?



this one's more interesting IRL, my camera struggles with reds. usually turning off the "vibrant!" colour function on the cam helps, but this stuff is so intense it totally did not. can't win 'em all! I bet photos in real daylight, when it's dry, will improve upon it greatly. this was just after dawn on a snowy, overcast 7am morning.


huh....the yarn used here looks a lot like my meganori princess...except it's spun by adrian of hello yarn! weird! another shot. it's always really bizzare when you see a dyelot or a yarn you spun from another spinner. great minds really do think alike sometimes! 'cept hers has no marcasite angelina, and mine is a brighter version, not as much black, and longer sections of natural or coloured. what's really funny is i just commented to one of adrian's photos because a dyelot she used for a thrum demo looks a shitload like the vibrant red/magenta/yellow dyelot i JUST did this morning, and i hadn't been at flickr in a while, checking out my friend's photos, so it was a COMPLETE coincidence! granted, those three colours ARE a common pairing, who HASN'T dyed roving in those colours? the results sure are pretty though so that's a reason why everyone's done it ;)

this morning i was able to capture some really spiffy shots of the new snow and the snow day dawn sky. everything was the muted blue of winter. it was so pretty. i was glad i was awake, just having dyed the roving, and so i grabbed my camera and took a slew. i started out with a long exposure but i'm glad i switched over to an auto ISO instead of 50, because the shots came out more true to how it actually looked, and some even had a really nice burnout going on, in DIGITAL format, even! fab!


see? burnout! this ain't altered at all, i have NO photo-altering software on this computer. BURNOUT!


(all i need is a lampost, and i swear i'll be in narnia, ready to defeat the white witch!)

so...i hate DPNs. with a passion. i might like them better if they were flexible, the clover size 5's are just so stiff and sticking out where i need to kint, and it's just such a hassle. i hate DPNs.

imagine my jump-up-and-down glee when i discovered this spectacular solution to glove-knitting! i had been thinking about large-scale i-cord anyway, wondering what the result would be. imagine my surprise to see that someone did it, and it works, and it's a fast easy solution to the dillema i faced with gloves!

anyway, things have been a little slow here, fiber-wise. not doing anything in paticular to keep me away from it, just some personal struggles that knocked the creativity right out of me. i might at least make myself mix some dyes tonight, see if amber can't get her groove back ;)


while looking for images of ashford hand carders so i can list my carders at etsy with images attatched (i'm feelin kinda lazy. that, and it's past dark), i discovered a blog of a nice woman who took a photo of some really beautiful woven silk scarves. click the image to go to her blog. she has some really pretty stuff!

and, after further snooping through her site, she definitely has an awesome product line, and a beautiful life and work.


another blog i'm cruising as i write this entry is "what housework?"! she's got some really pretty deep colourways, which i prefer personally, even if it takes more dye to produce so i'll go through more dye than other spinners and dyers do, who seem to stick to the pale, pastel, almost washed-out look. to each their own, and i do love the pastels, too, but i think i like the vibrant, intens colours best. but i think that's just like me anyway, all or nothing, and deep colour dyeing is definitely "all"!


FOR SALE!

one pair of ashford hand carders, fine-toothed, standard (AKA full) sized. $45 including shipping, used just once. will be disassembled for shipping in their original box, complete with sand paper! woot! they were not glued when i assembled them, and they're unstained/finished completely. there is a chomp mark on the corner of one from where m-cat decided they were for killing, as well as one on the handle of the same carder. nothing serious, just pure feral instincts of a hyper kitten. i think the card bit him back, too, man! have you SEEN the teeth hand cards have?! yowza! hahaha XD



two ~4 oz. rovings, superwash merino in the cumulus humilis colourway, only two of my initial batch of rovings left! $12 for 4 oz., $24 for 8 oz. one of the three rovings i sold went to a girl who is learning to spin! how fabulous!



vixen, a DK weight, single plied with thread yarn from a corriedale cross batt i bought from grafton fibers. 324 yards, 4.4 oz, intense colours which will be flattering on ANYONE (really! browns, magentas, reds, and a little bit of tan. beautiful and flattering!). soft yarn, too, and it has a slight sheen to it so it's going to reflect light well. $24.00



meganori princess, a bulky (3-6 WPI) weight single plied with thread, gobs of silver angelina, with sections throughout of "beehives" or "supercoils", whichever you prefer to call them. 200 yards right on the nose! friggin incredible! superwash merino and domestic wools were used in this skein. 4.9 oz.$35.00



candyfloss, a bulky weight (6-7 WPI) single straight up, with hot pink angelina held along side as i spun. cotswold locks were used to spin this. 205 yards over two skeins, 10.7 ounces total $30

this post is extremely informative for a long-tail style cast-on method which is stretchy, identical in form to the twisted german, but the way you get there is completely different.

i've been stuck in "make a twisted loop over your pointer finger and stick it on the needle" land for months now, having extraordinary difficulties with casting on, while i've had a few be too loose (rare very very very very rare) i always end up with the more complex cast-on methods, which look a LOT better than the loop-over-the-finger method, being way way way too tight, and it messes up the drape of the FO as a result, so i frog and go back to ye olde twist a loop over the finger and stick it on the needle method.

anyway, go see, watch the movie the poster was kind enough to make, and cast on!