MS3 Clue #3

So here is clue #3 of the Mystery Shawl 3, finished just in time for Potter Mania.

Clue #4 has had a notice up for the last few days stating that we’re about 1/3 of the way done at the moment. Clue #4 is where you get to extend or shorten your stole if you’d like. According to the designer, her stole at this point unblocked or stretched was at about 25″. Which, for me, would mean that my stole would be 75″ and that would be a wonderful length.

I like my stoles to be longer and able to wrap around my shoulders. Luckily, just to make sure it’s long enough, my 1/3 of the stole is closer to 28″, so my stole will be a bit longer.

Here’s a close up of the main beaded section. I’m loving the way the beads stand out. I didn’t exactly match my yarn to my beads, I just grabbed whatever I had from the stash. Still, I’m one who likes my accents to stand out a bit. I don’t see the point of putting beads into a project when it’s not going to be seen easily.

That being said, I wouldn’t want them to clash horribly.

We’re now entering the 2 week break from clues. This is due to the new Harry Potter book being released and the designer allowing people to read the book.

I like the Harry Potter books and have read them all, I also have Alison’s book Charmed Knits and quite enjoy it. I am not however a person who obsesses about the books. They’re good, they’re fantasy, they’re fun, but they aren’t my favourite. Don’t get me started on how irritated I am with the movies.

Anyway.

Due to this break in the clues, we were given a slightly larger clue with 2 charts, so next Friday you will get the first chart and the Friday after that you’ll get the second. I think it works out well.

Here’s a picture with flash that shows the colour of my yarn better.

That’s it from me for now.

Till next time.

WIP’s and FO’s

Today I’m going to discuss some of my WIP’s and a couple of FO’s that I’ve been working on lately. You all know about the Mystery Stole 3, and you’ll get updates on that on Fridays as I complete each clue.

This is for other things I’m working on because I’m very much not a monogamous knitter in any sense of the word.

To start off let’s look at my FO’s. These are my charity FO’s that I’m working on to try and rid my stash of extra yarn that I don’t need.

To start off with, here is my pinwheel blanket

This blanket is made with 3 colours of Red Heart Acrylic. I started this about a year and a half ago, and it would have been finished quite quickly, but I kept getting distracted from it. It was nice mindless knitting for a while. I finished this with a plain stocking stitch edging.

It still needs to be blocked, but that won’t take long.

This next project you might need to put your sunglasses on for. Any retinal burning you may experience has been forwarned.

This is the picture without flash. This hat is the Center Square hat from knitty. It was my first successful attempt at colourwork with the yarn held in both hands. There is little to no puckering and all the colour switches worked very well. I altered this pattern by using a worsted weight yarn with only one strand, and extending the bottom ribbing. It’s longer than just a beanie, but it’s small enough for a toddler or small child.

My WIP’s at the moment are mostly socks.

This is the Grasshopper sock from the Socks that Rock sock club. Don’t expect this to be done any time soon, I’m making the knee high version. I’m really enjoying working with the silkie though it’s a beautiful yarn and the colours are gorgeous.

This is a completed Jaywalker, calmly waiting for its mate that is currently on the needles and just past the heel. I’m hoping to get this one done within the next week. They yarn is Paton’s Kroy Stripes and I love the colourway. Even better is that without meaning to, the colours on the second sock are very close to matching.

This is my Pomatomus sock. It’s an old picture as I have now worked my way around past the heel by now. This is worked in some extra Trekking XXL that I had laying around. I made some plain stocking stitch socks out of this yarn previously and I’m slightly worried I won’t have enough yarn.  Due to that I’ve only done two repeats on the leg instead of three, but it’s a long enough leg for me right now.

This is just scratching the surface of the projects I have on the needles, but some of those will get their own post in the future.

Till then!

A late MS3 Clue #2, and come join a contest

I was trying to keep my MS3 updates on Fridays, but I ran out of time on Friday and didn’t end up finishing my Clue #2 until today.

Link to big sized picture

This is a relatively bad picture because I wanted to have a dark background to show the lace pattern. I’ll probably take some more outside pics at a later time. If you click through to my flickr page, you can see where the beads are, they’re clear and don’t photograph very well.

About the contest, Heathen Housewife also known as Shelly Kang, is hosting a contest for Victorian Lace Today and some beautiful white laceweight merino, that she’s willing to dye to any colours you’d like. Go there and put a comment on her blog, and please please tell her I sent you because then you’ll help me get another entry (if you post this link to your blog and get people to enter through it you’ll get more entries too!)

I’ll try and post some pretty sock wip pictures tomorrow.

Till next time.

Spinning Sunday #2 - A sad sad day

So, I was planning on having some more beautifully spun wool out of that sampler pack I got.

I was going to have the blue and black all spun up and nice to show you. Here’s the fibre first of all:

Pretty, isn’t it? And in my favourite colour combination too. So I sat down and started spinning. The singles spun up beautifully, and quite quickly too. It was going along so nicely that I figured I’d get straight to the plying. I started to make a ball around my hand and elbow, then took both ends and prepared to ply.

Again, it started off well.

But then, the singles kept getting tangled… and tightening around my wrist, and being very difficult when I tried to spin and draft them.

In the end, the rest of my yarn looks like this (don’t look if you have a queasy stomach).

I’m really not sure if there’s any way to save it. I think I’ll have to cut off the offending part and hope I can save it. I think that once I get the area cut away I’ll be able to detangle it, but then I’m an optimist.

I just hope it will all work out. I’ve been advised to use my ball winder in the future for  centre pull balls that don’t tangle.

I’ll definitely try that with the black.

Until next time.

Spinning Sunday #1 - Learning the hard way.

Since I had my resurgence in knitting back in 2003, I’ve been looking at a lot blogs that had people who spun their own yarn as well as knit it.

I was fascinated. In 2004 I bought the book/magazine Spin It by Lee Raven. I devoured the book and read through it repeatedly, marveling at the fact that something as mystical as spun yarn could be done so simply. And not only simply, but with something that was relatively inexpensive.

The problem for me, was that I  had no way of getting fibre or the tools needed to spin it. I began looking online and putting things on holiday wish lists, but since I was still living at home with my mother, I wasn’t exactly allowed to purchase things online, and my family didn’t really understand the value of spinning. 

Due to this, it was 2 whole years before I was able to find my drop spindle at Lettuce Knit this past New Years. While there I was tempted by a number of different fibres and I bought a few (they’ll come up on future Spinning Sundays. For today, I’ll talk about the first half of my tester pack.

This was a group of 5 colours of a lovely wool, each colour had about 0.5 oz of fibre to it, and I figured it was the perfect stuff to try out.

When I got home from Lettuce Knit, I grabbed my copy of Spin It and began spinning. This was a challenge, I really had no idea how to hold anything or get it to work at all. My first tiny skein of gray yarn was uneven and slubby, but it was mine and I thought it was gorgeous.

I very much had to spin and park. I couldn’t get the hang of drafting while the drop spindle was going. I never once saw anything that resembled a drafting triangle. And yet, I managed to get this one little skein of yarn.

It was a moment of accomplishment for me, I kept showing my fiance to try to get him to ooo and ahh over it, but as most knitters and fibre workers know, those reactions are lacking from “muggles”.

The next day I hopped online for a bit and looked up some sites. I realized that I could use even fewer fibres and the yarn would still be strong enough to hold its own. I was amazed when I spun the next colour and it came out not only a finer thickness than the first skein, but more even. It helped that it was in one of my favourite colours too.

Figuring that if I could get this yarn to be so fine and pretty, the next colour had to be better, I tried spinning with even fewer fibres to see how thin I could get the yarn. It was here that I realized that I found out that there was a limit to how thin you could get the yarn and still have it bear the weight of the drop spindle.

After a few snaps of the yarn and clatters of the spindle, I decided that I didn’t need lace weight yarn, at least not yet.

I did find that plying my yarn was quite difficult. Following the explanation in Spin It regarding plying this yarn by winding it around your arm and then putting it on your wrist merely had me ending up with a pile of twisted spaghetti like yarn that would not untangle as I tried to ply it.

I still need to figure out a better way to do it, I might have to see about making or buying some bobbins to hold the singles. I only have 2 more of these small testers and then I’m on to some lovely tops that I bought. I’m hoping that I can handle the bigger amounts of yarn a bit better than these small ones. At least the bigger amounts can be sectioned without seeming like a waste.

Wish me luck!

Mystery Stole #3, Clue #1

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Originally uploaded by toothpick_girl

So, I have joined the Mystery Stole #3 knit along, I wasn’t going to originally because I have a tendency to cast on a LOT of projects and never get them done. Then I read the KAL page found on Ravelry and just thought it was too cool for words (not to mention the fact that if I didn’t do it and then wanted to knit the shawl later, it would no longer be free. Plus it was just plain fun!). So I dug in my stash (since I’m doing “Knit from your stash” and found a bunch of Value Village yarn.

I am the queen of the mystery Value Village yarn, but sometimes I score some really good stuff to. Like in this case, I got 6 balls of Andrew Stewart Fine Spun Shetland Tweed Matching Knitting Wool. It’s from Scotland, each ball is about an ounce each, and it’s in a nice, bronzy brown colour. These 6 balls cost me $4 CAD. That’s why I love Value Village.

Anyway, so I grabbed that yarn, and some beads that were in my costume closet (note to self, if making this again, find beads that match the yarn a bit better, these look nice, but I’m sure it could look nicer.)

I signed up the Thursday before the first Clue came out, and so I didn’t get a chance to make a swatch, not that I really would have anyway, I tend to fly by the seat of my pants a lot when it comes to mystery things like this.

So far I’m really enjoying this KAL. I stayed up all Thursday night to have clue 1 finished in time for clue 2 to come out. It helps that I work nights on weekends so I’m used to being up all night.

This will probably be gifted, because honestly, having a Christmas gift finished at the end of summer really just makes sense. Besides, I’m sure I can make another one for myself.

Till next time.

Well that was productive

So, two great things about having to get my body ready for night shift this weekend.

1. I get to catch up on my podcasts. My poor iPod is getting fat with all the podcasts on it that I have to listen to.

2. I get time where all my blogs are updated, no one’s on the chats, and my fiance has gone to sleep where I’m so bored that I actually take the time to upload all my pictures to flickr and start putting my projects up on Ravelry.com!

So yay! Speaking of ravelry, I quite enjoy this site. The forums are really fun to browse when I have time, I even found a lovely video chat that is Knitters only! It’s not very active yet, but I’m sure once more people have  found out about it we’ll have a bunch of chatters on there.

I love going through the ugh files and seeing that people make things as ugly as I do sometimes. At least I know I’m getting better.

Another fun thing is meeting people. I struck up a conversation with one girl based solely on her profile picture (she’s wearing a Sailor Jupiter costume in it) and found out that she’s moving near me in the fall which is really cool! Not only that, but tonight when I was in the Knittyboard chat, I asked one of the chatters who she was on ravelry, and found out that it was the girl I was PM’ing. It’s amazing how small the internet can be.

Probably the post fun of the whole thing is getting all my old pictures uploaded and going “wow.. lookit how blond I dyed my hair… lookit how long my hair was there… looking how goofy my room was then” and yet still feel ok showing these pictures to who knows how many knitters.

I think that’s what I love about the knitting community, at least online. I’m horribly shy with people in person, but I can talk to anyone online. I love how friendly and open the knitting community is, compared to any number of other communities I’ve been involved in.

I have a bunch of FO’s I’ve recently dealt with. I’ll probably post about some of them and the progress with them in the near future.

Till then.