Yet Even More Birthday Stuff…

I’m gona drag out my birthday as long as possible, LOL! No, I’m only kidding!

On Friday I took mom down to the annual sale at Woolen Treasures to fortify her needle inventory. She knits *very* tight because that is how she feels like she has control of her knitting tension since she can’t see it. So we got her nearly every needle over the size of 8 in a 32″ length. Well, we stopped at 11 or 13 I think. But they had been low on needles when I had stopped in the first day of the sale. While there I vascillated on picking up one of the felted Calla Lily kits from Pick Up Sticks. Calla Lilies are my absolute favorite flower and I carried 6 with just a touch of ivy for my wedding bouquet. I decided against a kit though. I am sort of curious whether the large arrangement kits contain slightly different flower directions so you get a more natural looking arrangement or if you just get more of the supplies. If it is just more supplies I may cave at some point yet and get the single kit so I have the directions and can then make my own arrangement of them. But, we’ll see.

I did end up getting one (~875 yd) hank for Fino by Alpaca with a Twist (Color 1002, Twilight). It’s 70/30 Alpaca/Silk and has a very lovely hand. I *think* I’ve broke through my stumbling block on triangular shawls so I think this will grow up into something like that though I do not have a specific pattern in mind just yet. Then again, the color would be great for Susan‘s Mountain Stream scarf. Who knows what it will grow up to be! Choosing the color was a bit hard. The previous weekend Sansablog and Snow had tried to force upon me a lovely rose-like color, but since mom was buying for my birthday I decided to the describe the colors for her and let her choose. She decided the blue would look nice with my eyes.

On Saturday after a yummy breakfast and many phone calls from family back in the midwest we headed to Boulder a little early and I did some more birthday shopping at Shuttles. Mom got me the Inspired Cable Knits book as well as a couple more balls of Dale Baby Ull. I swear I drool everytime I open this book. The best part is that even though I’m a big girl I could make most of the patterns in here for myself without having to extrapolate the pattern. And I love the inspiration photos too. It is just gorgeous!

My sister sent cash with my mom for my birthday knowing that we’d be doing some shopping. She also sent directions that it has to be for something completely fun and frivolous and not practical. So, with her money and that sent out by Grandma Schueler (which I guess technically I am not supposed to get any longer because I’m married) I finally picked up a Weavette (4″ square) and the pattern book. I’ve been thinking for a long time it would be a nice way to use up little left overs of my handspun and then Spin-Off had that article this winter on the flowers made from the squares. I haven’t tried the loom yet. Reading the directions had my head spinning. But I’m sure it is just like knitting patterns used to be for me and if I just sit down and take it line by line it’ll make much more sense.

At the tea most of the crafty people in attendance not only bought themselves a somewhat expensive high tea, but also brought gifts! I was floored. Since I was asking people to drive an hour and spend $20 each on tea I was not expecting gifts. I of course mentioned what Sansablog and Snow got me yesterday. That was given to me on Monday evening so that they would both be there when I opened it since Snow needed to stay home and do the usual Easter weekend activities. But Ashley gave me Knitting Over the Edge. I haven’t looked too closely at it yet, but I’m quite excited by it. I have the first one and often find it a source for inspiration. Then Robin, a writing friend of DH, GF of a good friend and another binder of books gave me Envelopes. It is a book of postcards and envelopes that made their way through the Royal Mail even though they were addressed in a wide variety of puzzles. I can’t wait to curl up in my chair with that one! It sounds like a lot of fun!

I think this one floored me the most. It is 8 oz of Suri Alpaca Roving from Hannah. Firstly, I haven’t tried Suri Alpaca yet and I’ve heard it is quite nice to spin with. Secondly, Hannah is not a spinner (yet, I think she had this fall sometime expressed an interest in learning though). Thirdly, it is from one of the local Alpaca farms and I expect Hannah had to put forth a bit of effort to get it for me. I’m excited about this one, but I’ve got some of my hand dyed BFL on the wheel at the moment. Though it shouldn’t be too much longer…

I do have to give some kudos to DH who sometimes is lacking in the gift giving department. He got me this gorgeous necklace with two semi-oblog (not tear drop and not round, but ever so slightly oval) pearls on lariats (?). I had drooled over it in a local jeweler’s window in old town one evening a few weeks ago. Then about a week before my birthday we walked past again and I made a comment that it was still in the window. Well, it was awaiting my opening the morning of my birthday. I couldn’t get a nice picture of it, but you can see glimpses of it in the photos from the tea (probably best on this one, though only one pearl is showing). The pearls match the earrings I had made for our wedding so the necklace is even that much more special.

This year definitely goes down as one of the very best adult birthdays ever! The only way it could have been any better would have been if my sister and dad had been here. It was filled with fun, laughter, great food, and wonderful people. As Hannah put it when she RSVP’d, 30th birthdays should be celebrated in style and I think mine surely was!

Yarns to Dye For

As mentioned last week, Snow kindly gave me a copy of this book (along with many skeins of KnitPicks Color Your Own fingering weight yarn). I promptly finished reading the book and have since been ruminating on it and rereading sections and perusing the projects so I can give a thorough review of the book here for those who requested one.

To start with the basics, Yarns to Dye For by Kathleen Taylor (yes the same one who has designed many patterns for KnitPicks) is published by Interweave Knits. It is a relatively small volume of about 100 pages split into two main sections - an introductory how-to entitled principles and a projects section.

The “Principles” section coves the usual information such as tools and supplies needed as well as the various basic techniques that will need to be applied in the project section. It is roughly 1/3 of the book in length. Taylor shares her experiences in dyeing by recommending certain dyes and the pros and cons of those dyes, her recommended skein length, as well as her basic techniques for large graduated color bands, what she calls zig-zag yarn (non-striping varigation), faux fair isle, and self-striping yarns. She also has a small section on immersion dyeing in case you want to dye some solid color yarn to match your multi-color creations. The section on heat setting yarn includes both stove top steamer and microwave techniques. She does caution that one should probably use a microwave no longer used for food if going that route.

Once you have the basics down it is onto the project section which takes up about 2/3 of the book. There is a chapter on each type of hand painted yarn - graduated color bands, zig-zag, fair isle, and striping. Within each chapter are projects including the dye and painting recipes as well as the knitting pattern. Each chapter has between three and ten projects in it, many of those projects are geared and sized towards children, but there are also some adult-sized projects and a home decor project in there. In general, the projects are pretty basic and could be put together on your own if you are an experienced knitter, they include things such as hats, mittens, scarves, gloves, fingerless gloves, socks, tank tops, throw pillows etc. However, if you are shy about your color skills the recipes in there for painting the yarn could be really useful.

For me, the best part of the book was the first section (though I was already familiar with a lot of the information provided there) and the painting recipes in the project section to see what sort of lengths were being painted to achieve the different looks. I personally will probably not be dye and knit any of the projects in the book, but then I rarely knit a pattern as directed anyway (I knit how I cook - recipes and patterns are guides from which to start but then I add in my own flavors). Well, I might find myself knitting a pair of watermelon socks, but that is probably the only project in there that stands a chance of my knitting it. The finished projects do stimulate some ideas and remind me of other dyeing options.

While I thought for the most part the first section of the book was pretty thorough I felt Taylor was missing one huge puzzle piece. Here she was calling for a ginormous skein circumference and she instructs one to have pegs screwed into a wall at 1/2 that circumference. I don’t want to give away her information, but let’s just say we are not talking pegs that are just a few paces from each other, we’re talking many, many yards apart. Not only do I not really have any space long enough for stretching out such huge skeins, but I don’t have the stamina to walk a 440-yd or 880-yd skein around pegs that far apart.

Earlier this week in an itch to dye some April Project Spectrum sock yarn I decided my best bet was to wrap my yarn around the railing to our basement stairs. Well, it only took about ten trips up and down before I realized what a stupid idea that was. I decided I’d just take the ball with me whenever I went up or down the stairs. Only I discovered most of the time my hands are full with something - laundry, dog toys, glass of water, plate of food, etc.

No matter what you do, re-skeining to a large skein size is going to be a bit tedious. But it doesn’t have to be physically exhasting as well. I mentioned my railing tactic at SnB on Monday evening and a couple people mentioned warping boards. I knew of their existence, but didn’t know what they looked like or how they were used. So I sat down and had some nice quality time with Google yesterday…

For those of you unfamiliar with what a warping board is, it is traditionally a frame with some pegs on it and by wraping the pegs in a certain fashion you can achieve different lengths of yarn. Weavers use the warping board to prepare their warp. When wrapping the board they put a twist in the wraps so that the order of the yarn stays in order making it easier to transfer the warp to the loom. Now, a warping board can also be used to create a long skein length, you just need to wrap it such that you don’t have a twist in each pass.

There are many warping boards on the market. There is one made specifically for striping sock yarn by Forsyth. I could not find any information on what length of a skein it makes, though it does come will full instructions. I suspect it is a much smaller skein that what Taylor calls for in her book and the larger skein you can make the longer your repeat. When you get to a size that can handle 20+ yard lengths they start getting expensive. I’ve also been told that those sort of lengths can be tough on the arms and shoulders. In which case a warping mill or reel may be a better solution both physically and time-wise but they are even more expensive.

There are a couple places on-line that describe making your own warping board…
- In the Wood Shop
- What Housework?

I was not successful finding info on-line about building your own warping reel, though I suspect there must be something out there about building your own yarn blocker and there should only be a slight modification from that to a warping reel I would think. There are supposedly plans in Spinning and Weaving with Wool by Paula Simmons if you can get your hands on a copy.

I’d say Yarns to Dye For is a great place to start learning how to dye yarns that will stripe or specifically not stripe. This is especially so if you are not comfortable with color theory or designing your own knitting patterns. If you are comfortable with both of those you might be better off checking it out from your local library or through ILL. I do suspect I’ll still pull this one off the shelves regularly for some inspiration. I do think Taylor has done a bit of disservice to her readers by failing to mention another option for creating the large skeins called for in the projects. Obviously I’m not ready to go out and drop $100-$400 on a warping board/reel/mill right now so it is nice to know there are options that do not cost me additional money, but it would also be nice to know of tools that would make the process easier.

Wonderful Weekend!

On Saturday I went and got a wonderful new haircut in the morning. It’s not that huge of a change really, but it is such an improvement! I have troublesome hair and Kristen at Buzz & Bliss knew just what to do with it. I was a little worried because when she styled it, it was much too big for my tastes, but after an hour or two it had settled a little. I’ve now styled it a few times and I’m comfortable with it and it even looks passable in a wash and go style too!

After this great haircut I headed to Snow‘s where I was greeted with that gorgeous sparkly gold bag topped with lavender tissue. I was a bit perplexed as my birthday is a month from tomorrow. Well, the wonderful Snow got me some goodies as thank you for designing Blankie II (aka Nautical Blankie)!

The above was what I found inside - 6 skeins of Knit Picks Color Your Own fingering weight yarn and Kathleen Taylor’s Yarns to Dye For. It has me itching to pull out my dye pot again like you wouldn’t believe. But, first I’d like to order some citric acid so I don’t have to use vinegar and perhaps even order some *real* dyes rather than just using the food coloring. I haven’t read the book through yet, but a review will be forthcoming at some point in the future.

Well, I had headed to Snow’s because they invited me along on thier second trek to Boulder in as many weeks to pick up yarn for Nautical Blankie. I was well behaved and walked away from Shuttles, Spindles and Stabbity Sticks (sorry, family joke around here) with only two 16″ US 2 Turbos. It was a bit easier to be restrained when I had been there 10 days earlier and am planning a trip there on my birthday next month with my mom.

It was a rather blustery day on Saturday so we went to Pearl St. and just ate. We decided it was too cold to window shop. But, we did eat at this really great brew pub called BJ’s. We had salads and pizza and it was really good. I’m not the biggest thick crust fan, but that was wonderful thick crust and I shall have to drag the hubby there sometime as he is a thick crust connoisseur. Then we kind of meandered our way back home via Border’s and the Dairy Store. It was a great day and I’m so glad Snow and G so kindly invited me along!

Whew!

I should preface this post by saying that my “studio” (a 11 X 11 ft almost bedroom in the basement with a 1/2 bath attached) is a disaster area. You know how everyone has a junk drawer? Well, this room is the junk drawer of our house. If we have last minute cleaning to do for visitors this rooms catches it if it doesn’t have a home. I have no exposed desktop and hardly any exposed floor right now. It’s AWFUL, but I haven’t been well enough to attack it or at least to attack it on my own.

Well, one day this week I was looking for my stitch dictionaries and couldn’t find them. I made the studio that much worse trying to find them. While I was looking for them I decided to pull out all of my fiber arts books. As long as they were out I decided to finally catalog them. Yes, yes indeed, I am a geek of major proportions!

A few years ago we bought this great bundle of software from Collectorz.com. It was a bundle of the pro versions of Music Collector, Book Collector, and Movie Collector. We have our movies cataloged (well, most of them) but the music collection is huge so I told DH (the audiophile) I wouldn’t catalog them until we had a barcode scanner, but I may end up caving on that at some point. What is great about this software is that it allows you just enter the ISBNs (in the case of the books) or the UPC codes (in the case of the movies and music) and then it pulls the relevant info from sources such as Amazon, IMDB, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble etc. It even has options to pull info from Amazon UK, DE, etc. Then there are extra fields that you can populate or not such as store purchased from, purchase date, purchase price, MSRP etc. The pro editions also let you keep track of loans to other people! I *love* that feature!

One of the other features I really like is that you can export it to HTML and it auto inserts thumbnails of the covers. The only draw back is that the export isn’t dynamic so you can’t search for an author or an actor or a specific title. Though in most cases I find my browser’s search function does an okay job.

So, my fiber art library (knitting, spinning, tatting, sewing etc.) is cataloged and can be viewed at http://knitting.designedlykristi.com/library/ I know I find it interesting to see what others have chosen to put on their shelves. There are some pamphlet like things from the 60′s and 70′s that I got from Grandma Bakke about 1.5 years ago that I haven’t cataloged. But, I don’t see myself lending those out since most have loose covers and they have sentimental value. Also, since they don’t have ISBNs it isn’t so easy catalog them. I also made a fiber art book wishlist in this same format as well. What is great is should I get one of these books I just have to change the status and then it will be in the library rather than in the wishlist! How cool is that? If you have recommendations of titles you think I should add to the wishlist, I’m always open to suggestions :-)

These links now reside up top on the right in the “about” section should you care to scan them at some other point in the future.

I’ve also done a little housecleaning on the links section, adding some more blogs that I had been “test driving” and also adding a section for the PodCasts that I listen to that are fiber art related. I will be upgrading WordPress today or over the weekend and then I’m hoping to move the links onto their own page as the list is getting rather long.

As an aside, DH has been home ill since Monday. Yesterday I started showing signs of getting ill as well and had to go to the store to stock up on the meds and supplements that I can take (I have adverse reactions to most decongestants) and groceries before we got too much snow (yes, we’ve got a decent amount of snow on the ground now). But I’m a bit more on top of taking care of the bug now than he was so hopefully I won’t go down as hard or for as long as he did. Should I disappear you can assume my wishes weren’t granted and I have indeed fallen hard to the bug… But for now I mostly just have energy to do computer stuff alternating with knitting.

Monday, Monday!

Here is a pic to brighten up your Monday!

It was a Heath Ledger weekend for me, which meant not a ton of knitting. I’m only 3 inches in on Dimple 2, but it’s progress and it is a quick knit so I’m aiming for another FO Friday this week…

Okay, back to this brightly colored photo. I gathered some fun colored Cascade 220 to add to my stash before Christmas in order to make some fun and fanciful accessories to go with my new parka that arrived just before the holidays. It’s been rather mild since our cold snap in early December that prompted me to get off my duff and place the order for the coat, though I have been wearing it with my handspun earflap hat and some polar fleece rust colored mittens at night. I am somewhat fortunate I haven’t had to make day time appearances with such wrongly colored mitterns, LOL!

I procured some of this from Woolen Treasures and some from Bo Peep’s Wool Shop end of year sale. Actually, the bright blue/green and the brightest pink were from Bo Peep’s and ended up being much more bright than I was going for. Though such is the risk when ordering via on-line color cards. That means I have more of it than I think I’ll need. I think they’ll make great accents, but they likely won’t make up the majority of any of the accessories.

Also purchased when I bought the other colors at Woolen Treasures was 45 Fine and Fanciful Hats to Knit by Anna Zilboorg. I am thinking of doing a brightly colored tam. In fact, I was planning the same one as Theresa made in November, but decided I didn’t have quite enough value contrast to pull it off. Then, I designed my own, but it will need tweaking as I forgot that the last 5-6 rounds of the straight section actually appear on the top of the tam. I love the book. I’m not positive that I’ll necessarily knit any of the patterns directly, but it is full of inspiration and insight via the charts. I also enjoy how the charts use symbols rather than color coding - it makes it much easier to make the patterns your own via your color choices.

I think the heathered blue/green may become a Wavy. And, I keep waffling between thrummed mittens and colorwork mittens. Of course, I’m sure I have enough yarn to do both which will probably be what eventually happens. Then left overs will likely become some sort of felted bag/purse as well. There is nothing like adding some wonderfully bright colors to a cold and sometimes dreary season! I’m open to pattern suggestions though, so leave me links to your favorite scarf, mitten, and hat patterns that call for worsted weight yarn and would look good in these bright colors.

Don’t worry, I haven’t broke my resolution for this month and cast on for anything. This is all just planning and thinking! I have Dimple and my second Mitten from Halland to finish first!