Rediscovery

I've sat here staring at my blog for the last 30 minutes and realize that despite the action packed 2 weeks, I don't have a single train of thought that I can put together in to a decent blog post!  At least, not yet.  I think I'm still at a point where I'm trying to get back in to "real" life after entertaining my friend for a week, part of me is still grieving that she's not visiting anymore (you should have seen the meltdown yesterday when my husband declined breakfast and I declared "I have NO ONE to cook breakfast for" and ate a tortilla out of the fridge while wallowing in self-pity), and with too many exciting, diverging thoughts, this is all leading me to having a hard time putting words on here.  So, while I ease myself in to rediscovering how to write my own blog, I figured I could bombard you with my yarn haul over the last week instead.  No, I didn't think there would be any objections.  ;)

Koigu KPPPM - picked up at Imagiknit in San Francisco and will be SOCKS

The Uncommon Thread Heavenly Fingering - my friend gives the best gifts

Cascade Epiphany - this is no workhorse yarn. Total luxury in a skein.

Colinette Jitterbug - a big, bright skein of it!  I have an awesome LYS.

The impossible-to-get Twisted Limone self-striping.  My friend REALLY loves me.

Transformed

I once had this:

This

 

 

I sent it away to the lovely Ceylan at Plied Together, and then I had this:

THIS

I'm going to admire it for a while, until it tells me what it wants to be.

New Yarn! Planning the Next Big Thing...

I know, I just had a big "planning/next big thing" post, but with a new KAL coming up I had to get planning, and that's how the pretties above came to live with me.  You may remember that a while ago I had a failed color combo in a striped shawl (the color combo falling firmly between "raging Harry Potter fan" and "fast food nation").  But when our group planned the next KAL to knit the same pattern, I HAD to try again!  This time I picked up 2 skeins of Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light - in Tomato and Milk.  Not only are they pretty, they sound delicious!  Unfortunately for now I have to put them away - the KAL doesn't start until July 1, which gives me some time to play with other things for now.

Two of my Favorite Things

Tough Decision

Those of you that have known me for at least a year, probably also knew that I had set up an Etsy shop for my handdyed yarns.  It was an accident really - one day I was bored (it's how a lot of my adventures start), I threw some yarn in a pot with some color, and the resulting skein was so cool!  I thought "surely I must share this joy with the world, and I'll be a FAMOUS dyer and I'll be RICH and can sit around and play with yarn ALL DAY!"

Yeah.

After about a year of seeing the reality that dyeing, drying, reskeining, photographing, listing, shipping, tracking, and updating take a lot of time, and that there were not enough hours in the day for me to make money from it and enjoy it, I've pulled the plug on my Etsy shop and closed the accounts that were linked to it.  Immediately, I felt disappointed that I didn't succeed, but that quickly gave way to feeling a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders.  On the plus side, all those skeins that I didn't want to part with, but I needed inventory for the shop?  MINE.

Here's to dyeing being fun again.  raises glass

Day of Pigeonroof!

Pigeonroof Studios is one of my absolute favorite dyers right now.  She does amazing things with color, it's not too often that you can see a very multicolored skein and think that it's not overboard, but those are the skeins of hers that I drool over the most.

Remember how I said I still had one last sweater quantity coming?  Well, check THIS out!  1000 yards of Superwash DK in Saffron.  It's a gorgeous warm golden color and will make for a lovely cardigan.  I haven't made too many sweaters, but of the ones I have made I've decided that DK weight is my favorite.  DK is heavy enough that it knits up quickly (since so much of what I do is in fingering weight), but light enough that it's perfect even on a warmer day.  I can't wait to find the perfect pattern for this and wear this beautiful color, and this will be my last sweater quantity in a LONG while!  (I've shaken the bug out now, promise!)

Finally, I am so excited about THIS:

You might laugh, but I don't actually know how to spin yarn.  I once tried, and while I did ok, I got distracted by yarn that was already made and skipped off to knit.  But these colors are so bright, so vibrant, that I stalked her update for the sole purpose of acquiring this roving!  At the very least, there are shops on Etsy now that will spin your roving for you for a small fee (I know they do this at Plied Together, there may be others as well), so that's something I am considering looking in to.

Funny enough, I didn't even think I had managed to get this roving!  The checkout process that seemed to work at Paypal then failed at Etsy, and even now doesn't show as a purchase (though the Paypal did go through).  I about fell over when I took this out of the package today.  It's really beautiful and I can't even picture how amazing it will be first as yarn and then as a project!

I'm so happy with my Pigeonroof day!

When Stash Expires

We've all had it happen.  We buy the perfect skein of yarn, saying we'll get to it when we deal with some other yarn, then we deal with that yarn and by then we have more, and before we know it, we've had some skeins for months (or even YEARS!) and decide we just don't love it like we used to, that it's time for it to find a new home where it can be appreciated and turned in to its own project.

That's how I got these beautiful skeins!  My friend Kate (who has podcasts now!) was working on decreasing her stash, and organized a mini-swap amongst several friends.  We put up yarn that we no longer had to have, and another person needed to only say they wanted the yarn, and what project they would use it for (to prevent it from just becoming another project-less stash entry).  I leapt on these 2 skeins from Colharbour Mill that are incredibly difficult to photograph (they're actually a heathered purple, blue, and red, which barely comes through in my picture) and declared that they would be socks - as close to knee highs as I could make them!  I've also realized I've acquired this yarn a couple months ago now, so I should really cast on in the spirit of our swap - no creating more stash!  Time to wind my yarn and narrow down my pattern choices!

Pre-Sweaters

I've been getting new goodies in the mail this week!

It all started with an ill-advised cold-turkey yarn diet.  My friends and family have come to know that when I declare "I'm not buying any yarn right now!", I literally mean that right now, at this very moment, I am not in the middle of the purchasing process for buying yarn.  In my mind I mean that I'm not increasing my stash at all until I knit the whole thing, but history has shown us that this hasn't happened even once, and the stash acquisition continues, usually in spectacular form after a drought.

I was doing very well, having not purchased any yarn since my visit to Stitches West in February, but suddenly the beast needed to be fed, and here I am showing you

SWEATER QUANTITIES!

This is slightly out of the ordinary for me!  If you go back to my Stitches post, you see what is my normal - single skeins of sock yarn or lace, perhaps 2 for a larger project or colorwork.  In fact, looking at my bank account this week, that would have been cheaper.  XD  But I'm excited about doing something a little different!

It started with a post on another blog, written by my friend Darcy.  Funny enough, I had been pondering the exact same thing that day, and had considered writing a post about it here, but she had beaten me to it (without us discussing it or anything)!  While I've made sweaters in the past, lately I've been sticking to projects that don't necessarily need to "fit" - mitts, shawlettes, etc.  I'm not at a weight that I'm particularly happy with, and thought of all the excuses to not make a sweater - I would lose weight and all that work would go to waste, it would look so much cuter on someone smaller than me, what if it doesn't fit, on and on.  But reading Darcy's post helped open my eyes that we all have excuses not to make a sweater, even though we all deserve one (yes, DESERVE).  So after starting a KAL/CAL called "You deserve a..." in our awesome little group on Ravelry, I decided that I would finally take the plunge on the Spring Garden Tee by Alana Dakos.  My friend Kate gave me this pattern last year for my birthday, and as we go in to Spring I think it's finally time I jump in!  I purchased some DK weight 100% silk in the colorway "Copper Penny" from Argosy Luxury Yarns, which is a color I have coveted for years.  So this "I deserve" moment was particularly indulgent and for the first time in a while, I'm actually really excited about casting on for a new sweater!

My other yarn comes to me by way of my friend Amber, who sadly recently discovered that she is allergic to alpaca.  It was one of those "sudden onset" type of things, so the alpaca she had been stashing for quite some time was suddenly a problem!  After properly sympathizing - "What?  Allergic to ALPACA??!  Oh noooooo, that's hoooooooorrible!" I later came back with "soooooo, whatcha gonna do with all that alpaca?"  Fortunately she accepted my offer of assistance, and I scored a sweater quantity of Ultra Alpaca in 3 shades of blue!  I have my mind on a stripey raglan pullover, we'll see if I can get that to work with the 3 colors I snagged.  I've worked with this yarn once before, making a cabled scarf.  I can be very picky about what yarn goes near my neck (it needs to be SOFT), and Ultra Alpaca fits that bill!

I uh, I may have one other sweater quantity coming in the mail, too.  Future me, if you're reading this: remember what yarn diets do to you!

New Project!

I got bored of all my other projects (as I often do), so I cast on something new and pretty today!

The yarn is a Squoosh sock yarn in Sapphire held doubled, and the lighter color I plan on streaking throughout.  I'll share the pattern a little later, since right now it doesn't look like much of anything, being only 5 rows in!  But I will tell you that it plans to be a cowl!

Blarg

I've been collecting ideas for blog posts for you to enjoy, and then as of Sunday was stricken down by the flu.  Complete sentences aren't happening, but I was sad my blog wasn't updated, so I leave you with THIS.

Giant hat transform in to cute!  He still needs arms and a mouth.  Please note how much hat is left.  There's still enough for like 2 hats under there!

Rip and Repurpose

When Winter was closing in, I got some new heavier weight yarn, with which I was going to make myself a toasty hat.  I was eager to try Malabrigo Twist - all the softness of Malabrigo now in a plied yarn!  I received my yarn, shown here in colorway Sealing Wax, and went to work on a very cute hat pattern.  A hat was a welcome, mindless break from socks and cabled sweaters.


So I thought.

GIANT HAT.  I have a big head, and as you can see here, it fits entirely in my big hat.  I even followed the instructions as written, AND I got gauge (I really did!).  I invited all my friends on Ravelry to bear witness to my hat-fail meltdown, which included such statements as "I can't even make hats right!" and "I might as well just BUY hats" (oh, the horror).  Anyway, this hat is not salvageable, and NO, it won't fit you, I have the biggest head of everyone I know, so at this point it's being repurposed in to something that doesn't HAVE to fit.  Crazier yet, I'm crocheting it!  I will have photos for you soon.  ;D


It didn't fit her either.

STITCHES!!!

And not the lousy kind you get after you get a nasty cut, either.  The BEST kind of Stitches where they put you in a room full of yarn and other yarn fanatics, and you all battle it out to get the best haul!


Note: I am tall - and this wall-o'-yarn extends higher than my eye level.

My husband and I got in the car on a rainy morning and made the hour and a half trip to Santa Clara, though there were people there that had traveled from all over the country - actually, all over the world!  The very first thing I bought was a ball of Australian cashmere from Belisa Cashmere, and the gentleman running the booth had come all the way from Australia to be at the show.  He left his Summer behind to be in rainy California, and share his cashmere with us!



Pigeonroof Silk Lace - Orbit



Before we left I had printed out a map of the layout of all the boothes, and circled the ones I absolutely could not miss.  My goal was to buy things that I couldn't easily get somewhere else, so I focused on the vendors that often sell out within minutes of updating their online shop. 

Now, instead of blindly dumping things in my cart and hitting "CHECKOUT!!1!" as fast as I could, I was able to stare at a wall of different colors, pick them up, mix and match with other colors, fondle, consider, put things down and pick them up again.  This was especially wonderful at the Pigeonroof and Sunshine Yarns booths. 



Sunshine - the name matches the bright colors AND their personalities!



I have friends that are too far away to make the trek to Stitches West, and in their attempt to live vicariously through me, they suggested a couple boothes that I didn't have marked that I had to visit.  The bright colors of Liza Souza and the variation at Miss Babs made those 2 of my favorite booths, and I easily spent a good 30 minutes just at the Miss Babs booth comparing colors and finding 2 perfectly complimentary colors to make a larger project - perhaps another Daybreak or something similar.



Sanguine Gryphon's booth, complete with period costumes!

It was very cool seeing all these amazing vendors put up their wonderfully creative booths, and I was so thrilled to be amongst like-minded people who all had a passion for the craft.  I suddenly understood why people got on planes to come all the way out here, and why those that weren't able to go kept telling me how jealous they were of me ("it's just a yarn show, what's the big deal?").  I get it now.  It's hard to explain, but the show, along with the energy that comes with it, is so distinctive and can't be duplicated.  We're a year out from Stitches 2012, but you had better believe that I'm already itching to go again!