Thursday, March 26, 2009

Surprising to no one.

With my recent obsessive reading up on Vikings, it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at naalbinding. (Vikings did not knit. They tied extremely complicated knots with the assistance of one large needle. Totally different.)

Luckily, I came across this handy website, which pretty much spells out how to do it in very easy terms. Once you get going, it goes pretty quickly, though I've not made anything more than something the size of a quarter. It is fun, though I'm not sure what I'll do with it.

Just one more way to play with string. :)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

In which there are links and rambles.

I learned last night/this morning that there is such a thing as too much knitting, as evidenced by the pain I had in the top of my left hand when pinching. I've been a good girl and laid off the knitting today. Which means, of course, that I spent an hour or two spinning the random bits of fluff I'd dyed as samples, and have returned to the kitchen for more Adventures in Dyeing(TM).

This has been a spectacularly underwhelming week, so I decided that coping was best achieved by knitting like a mad woman (ok, there was a lot of WoW, too), thus the hurty hand.

Due to some contractual issues last Friday, I got sent home from work, and didn't receive word to return until Thursday. This of course came when I've been having some nuclear powered PMS and am generally an unpleasant person to be around. Stress and unhappiness caused me to lash out/vent at someone who didn't deserve it, and though I hope I've smoothed over the ruffled feathers, it was quite the indicator that I was on the edge and lacking in control.

When I'm lacking in control, I take what I can get. In this case, I cast on this in this. (No beads, as I didn't have any on hand and wasn't willing to wait to get some.) The gauge is all wonky, since the handspun isn't very even, but I'm still enjoying the hell out of knitting something somewhat complicated with yarn I spun myself.

Since the last post (dear gods, it's been a while), I've knit a pair of 2x2 stripey socks for a friend of mine, another fish hat for Dave (stripey, because I'm a little obsessive with stripes just now), a single black/flamey stripey sock for myself, another sock and a half in some hand painted yarn that Darcy and I dyed a while back, re-finished the sock for Daven that I'd had a fit and torn out the foot on, knit a kerchief for my friend 'drea and spun a few batts of fluff that I'd made more reasonable on my drum carder a while back. (I have a plan for this yarn, assuming it turns out reasonably.)

I've got a backlog of stuff to make for people (that craft meme thing where I owe 4 more folks crafty things, in addition to agreeing to knitting a couple of hats for another friend and and and... gah!), it is of course totally reasonable to start working on a shawl. Honest.

And back to the dyeing. I've got plans involving playing with blending, we'll see how those go. Oh, and I've got the saga of taking my first raw fleece from bag 'o goat to something reasonable to look at, but that's a story for another post.