This is the weirdest Christmas season so far. And for you who don't understand a knitters Christmas Season, it usually spans from late August right up until December 24th and maybe a bit later if you end up falling short and having to hand out i.o.u.s. This year, I won't be home for Christmas and I won't be visiting my family either. I'll be on a cruise which doesn't sound very Christmassy to me but I still can't wait. I was able to see my dad and step-mom in November so I decided to make that our Christmas. So I knit like a mad woman for a few months and came with with a pair of So Square socks and a My Wish shawl, which I forgot to take pictures of.

I've already finished a pair of socks for my sister and have plans for a cowl for her. I have a bit of spinning to do and then knit that into a cowl for my mom and that's it. Two cowls and I'm already finished my Christmas knitting. It is the beginning of November and I absolutely do not know what to knit for myself. I have a Vivian sweater I could swatch for and cast on, but I swore not to until after Christmas knitting which, technically, isn't finished yet. I've got some socks on the needles from travelling but don't really feel like socks. And I'm working on a scarf for a friend, but that won't last long.

Not having any intensive Christmas knitting is making it feel like I'm finished my Christmas knitting yet I know I'm not and can't justify casting on my sweater. So it looks like I'll have a few unproductive weeks ahead of me until I get the fear of failure in me and start knitting like a mad woman again.


Happy Crafting,

I had been having issues with the old blog format. My pictures weren't posting properly, the fonts were off, the posts looked squished. While it looked cool and was my style, it wasn't totally functional. So ta-da! We have a new design!

I'm still working the kinks, the pictures aren't what I'm looking for, but its up and I can work on it as I go. I'm pretty happy with the design so far.

And now onto the real updates:
I HAVE A SPINNING WHEEL!!

I'm so unbelievable excited about this! My mom got it for me and shipped it here as a early Christmas present. She's a 1997 Wee Peggy. The Wee Peggy's were originally made by Rappard, an Australian company, that was then taken over by Ashford. I believe this is an Ashford Wee Peggy but it's really hard to tell.

The only catch with this gift: I have to spin some fiber and knit her a scarf out of it. I have no problem with that at all! And since I really want to do a good job with it I've been doing a lot of practicing. Learning how to spin was an ugly business. First it was putting in too much twist and not winding onto the bobbin fast enough so I tried switching the drive bands. Then one of the drive bands broke but after I fixed it, set it up to scotch tension and gave it a try, it went a lot smoother.



Here's my first handspun:























It's was some Knit Picks bare superwash merino that I hand dyed with Kool-aid. I then spun it up and navajo plied it. It's pretty thick and thin and I'm not quite sure what the yardage is yet as I'm waiting on my niddy noddy but I think I'm in love. I've called it "A song of Ice and Fire" after the book series. I'm quite happy with it and want to use it for something but I'm not sure what for yet.

I've also finished my Never-ending knee highs for my friend, Sierra. I started them in February and have knit on them a bit here and a bit there ever since. I finally decided to sit down and finish them when I realized that Christmas is coming and that meant that my queue was going to fill up soon.






















It's not the best picture but it's all I have. It's turns out that it's actually quite hard to photograph knee highs when you're also the model. These were the biggest pain in the arse! I had to re-do the red striped about three times on the first sock. Then for the second sock, I realized that it was longer than the first by about 2-3 inches and I liked it better (since it was closer to the knee). So I had to un do the bind off (again) on the first sock, rip out the ribbing, and add an extra two inches or so and then do the ribbing again. I'm pretty happy with them now, but more happy that I've finished them! They've been blocked and just need to be packaged and shipped off to their lovely recipient.

I still have my Clarus shawl on the needles, but haven't had time to work on it since Christmas is only three months away. Instead I cast on... a gift for my dad and have it about 65% finished already. I have a shawl, socks, frog amigurumi and scarf to finish before Christmas. And I swore to myself that I would not cast on Vivian (or even swatch) until I had finished all of my Christmas knitting. So far, it's working as great motivation because I really really want this sweater.

Vivian by Ysolda Teague

I'll leave you with one last pretty. I'm spinning this next!

2oz. BFL 100%

"The Foot Book" by Dr. Seuss was the first book I learned to read on my own as a child. Who would have though that could have translated into socks being one of my favourite things to knit. (or did it? who knows if the connection has merit.)

Anywhoo. I've been so busy this past week with school,(wrote three essays and had two exams to study for) with packing for the big move, and with life in general that I haven't had time for my knitting. I currently have two toe up pairs of socks on the go right now. One for my sister's birthday in August (I plan ahead) and one for my friend Sierra. Sadly, I think I messed up. These being my first toe up socks and just following the pattern instead of my gut may have ruined them. I'm knitting them at 60 sts instead of the 64 that I originally thought would work best for my feet. Also, on the knee high socks for Sierra, I think I might have started the gusset increases too soon and that they may be a bit too short in the foot area and a tad too tight. Since I'm half way finished her sock I'm going to grin and bear it and hope that it will loosen up a bit with blocking. If that doesn't work, there's going to be a lot of frogging and sobbing in the new house.

Sadly, these two pair of socks will be my 4th and 5th pairs and I still don't have a pair for my own feet! I know that I promised myself that I wouldn't start another project until I finished Sierra's socks and that I've been too busy to even think about knitting but I don't think these reasons are going to deter me. Just like that promise I made to myself that I would only ever have one pair of socks on the go since I would only ever knit them on circulars and I only had one circular... haha yeah right! I have 2 circulars and have knit a pair on dpns as well. And to top it all off, I just got Alice Yu's Socktopus in the mail and it has 17 pairs of gorgeous socks that I really do want to knit. No seriously, I would be ok knitting any of those 17 pairs. Cookie A's Knit. Sock. Love. is also calling my name. Those monkey socks sound like they are also calling my name.

Never mind that the stash is packed, I know once I'm finished this I'll go up stairs and try to select for myself the yarn that wants to be a pair of socks the most. And then I'll spend some time going through both books attempting to decide which pattern will compliment that yarn the best (Either Monkey or Farmer McGregor) and dig out the dpns and finally get to work on my new years resolution: Knit a pair of socks using only dpns.

Happy Crafting

An invasion of socks actually seems pretty appealing to me. There's just something about them that is almost like knitting crack to me. There are about a billion patterns, almost to many options for yarn with different patterns (self striping is nice) and lots of different techniques (top up, toe down, after thought heel, dpn, circular needles, ect.) The best part(s) you get great bang for your buck, which could be as many as 20+ hours of knitting fun for $10 or less AND it's portable. Who doesn't like a project they can tote anywhere! Oh, and an added bonus, those little bits of left overs can be used for hexipuffs to make your own Beekeepers Quilt.

I started knitting socks before Christmas last year and man did it take off. I knit my first pair of socks for Ji, then my grandpa got a pair for Christmas, as did Ji's dad. I've started a pair of self striping socks for my sister and now I'm working on my first pair of knee high socks for my friend Sierra. I also have plans of knitting my dad and mom a pair for Christmas. The only problem is, is that I don't yet have a pair of hand knitted snugglyness for myself! I'm spreading the hand knit comfy foot love, but have yet to experience it myself.

I think my problem with knitting myself a pair of socks is that there are just too many options! I think I've narrowed my first pair for myself down to a Cookie A. pattern, probably from Knit. Sock. Love (and probably Monkey) OR an Alice Yu pattern, probably Farmer McGregor from her book that I'm going to buy soon because I love all the patterns.And there's also the yarn. For Peter's sock, I splurged and got some wonderful Malabrigo sock and it was heavenly to knit with. I won some Malabrigo sock and some Malabrigo lace from the wonderful Flannelberry Fiber and am afraid to use it! I'm afraid to knit the wrong pattern with this yarn since it's so amazing.

There's also the shawls that will be coming. It almost seems criminal to knit up my precious fingering weight into something other than lovely warm socks. But, I have found a shawl that's just calling for me and I've got enough (I hope) yarn for it as well. The Haruni shawl is gorgeous and makes me excited to start. But, alas, I am moving and am afraid of losing it or the stitches falling out. I also have to finish those socks for Sierra so I swore I won't knit anything else (except hexipuffs) until I finish her socks.

So there was my little rant or my gushing about my love of sock yarn and what's going on with my stash of sock yarn. It turns out that after I emptied my big plastic bin of acrylic yarn, it was full again with all of my sock yarn and I still don't have enough.

Happy Crafting!

I haven't blogged in quite a while, but not have I crafted either, and that's a bit of a sad thing. But I really feel like the March Hare and you may even hear me scream "I'm late, I'm late!" And this is due to an overly large amount of stress. And usually I knit when I'm stressed, but I guess there is too much stress and not enough time to actually get anything done.

What's causing all of this stress, you may ask? Well I'll tell you! I'm getting married in June and have about a billion and 2 things that needs to be done, checked, double checked and confirmed finished. I've got invitations to finish up and a seating chart to go about and other wedding-y stuff. There's also the move. Ji and I are moving at the beginning of April and that means packing is involved BUT some things can't be finished until after the wedding stuff because we might need it. This makes the packing job extremely complicated and a pain in the arse. But there are some upsides to all this packing and moving.

Because we're moving into a slightly smaller place (which we don't mind since the layout is better and we don't and can't use all the space in this house) that we need to downgrade a bit on the stuff. It's kind of nice to throw out the crappy containers we got when we first moved in and barely stayed closed, or the papers we won't need as we've changed our majors and other random stuff like that. And I know you must be thinking, "but what does this have to do with crafting?" and you must have already thought "oh no, not the yarn!" Yes, yes the yarn.

At the beginning of the year, Ji said I wasn't allowed to buy anymore yarn until after the wedding (saving for rings and all that) At first I was mortified. How was I supposed to go almost six months without buying any more yarn!  I thought it was impossible, but then I remembered that our friend Gord had given me a KnitPicks gift card and that for Christmas, Ji has given me an IOU for any amount of yarn I needed to make a sweater. (This IOU is because he's such a sweetheart and felt bad that my first sweater was out of terrible Bernat Alpaca yarn, that I bought when I was still young and foolish about fiber and other knitting goodness, and that the yarn was almost too itchy for me to knit with never mind wear.) So I decided that I would accept his challenge.

About half way through January I decided I had to use my coveted gift card to buy some sock yarn for my friend Sierra who is making my bridal party jewellery in exchange for socks and a hooded scarf. So I bought 2 balls of a grey Stroll Tonal called Thunderhead, 1 ball of Gypsy (she only wanted about 3" worth of red in her socks so I figured, yay! a pair of red socks for me) and a ball of Nevermore for me because it was on sale and was being discontinued and always wanted to try it. Plus, I can never shop at KnitPicks without getting myself some sock yarn as well. When the yarn finally got here I wound it into center pull balls and put them all into ziplocks so they'd be safe and then started the first sock. I got about 4" finished of a toe up sock when it happened. I got so busy with school and wedding planning that I didn't have the tie or energy to knit so I couldn't.

By now you're probably confused as to how all this related to knitting or moving or even how this post relates at all to housekeeping. Well I decided that since my new craft room is going to be a lot smaller than this one, that I had to gift some of my yarn away. I went thorough my stash and decided I was more into knitting garments and snuggly things and acrylic just wouldn't do for that sort of thing. So I got a garbage bag (the only thing big enough to hold all that yarn) and filled it with almost all of my acrylic yarn. I kept a few colours for myself that I knew I might use for a kid's item but now my stash looks so bare and empty. But that's ok because my stash of sock yarn was getting too big to live in the living room any longer and needed to start moving upstairs eventually. And now I have room to rebuild my stash with yarn I actually want to have and will knit with. It was actually quite liberating.

Back to packing up my craft room for me. Hopefully it all fits into the new place!

I did it! I finished everything I planned to this Christmas. It ended up being down to the wire, and by this I mean sewing together a 3 foot dragon at 4am Christmas Eve day, whew! but I did it! The only issue with being finished so late and in such a scramble is that, well, I forgot to take pictures of everything.

So I can give you this list and then I'll post pictures at a later date when I can get them.
Pese - Twilight socks in knitpicks canopy colourway
Trudy - Cowl in Malabrigo, duplicate of mine.
Peter - So Square Socks in malabrigo sock
Elijah: JJ the Fire Dragon (aka crochet dragon of doom) in whatever was laying around

This is a huge YAY! but I guess I should start on next year's gifts..

Also, my latest project is The Beekeeker's Quilt by Tiny Owl Knits. You use left over sock yarn to make these things called hexipuffs that you stuff and sew into a blanket. The good thing is that they are extremely addicting. The bad thing is that 1. You need over 700 of them for a blanket and 2. I'm running out of left over socks yarn. This means I'll have to actually start knitting socks again so I can get more leftovers for my hexipuffs.

I'm also working on Mr. Fox as part of the 12 TOK patterns in 2012. I'll be making 1 Mr. (bulky weight) 2 Mrs. (worsted weight) and 1 mini (fingering weight) so that takes 4 patterns out of my 12. ^_^

I'm seriously in love with TOK patterns and the amazing community that's built around them on Ravelry. They're becoming my online knitting family. They are super generous and kind hearted and have always been there when I needed a pick me up over the holidays. I really hope to post pictures of everything soon!