Just an Earthbound Misfit

Another project

2012-01-19T20:44:00.003-05:00

A feather and fan scarf pattern (I actually have never done one of these before; I figured it was about time) that I picked up from knitpicks.com. Knit with a single Zauberball, this turned out really fun, and I got a ton of comments on it from people when I knit it in public. Usually people just ignore the crazy lady, but man, did they love this. I did modify the pattern by making it one repeat narrower than they called for. I don't like exceedingly wide scarves, and I prefer longer ones, so that worked out nicely. I knit this over a couple of weeks in December. (Yes, I have a backlog of projects to take pictures of. I'm getting to 'em slowly.)

Look! Pictures!

2012-01-12T17:48:00.007-05:00

Admittedly, not very many pictures, but pictures nonetheless.

I chopped off all of my hair, making my neck cold, so I knit a cowl.

My first Cowl(TM)! I didn't like any of the patterns out there, so I made something up as I went along. Undyed handspun silk/alpaca blend. I might dye it eventually.

The front of the Fair Isle Sweater. I now have an ends-weaving-in strategy, which I'll poke away at when the mood strikes me. After all, I have the steek and neckline left to do!

The back of the FI sweater; you can see the upper pattern a little better here.

It is apparent that I am totally unable to finish projects. The colours on this are a little off; the purple isn't quite so blue blending into the pink. Baby surprise jacket made with a bunch of "sock bites" I picked up at a local yarn shop.

random post to be snarky

2012-01-08T22:00:00.003-05:00

Am I allowed to redact someone's yarn privileges? Because these people should not be allowed near it anymore. These people, on the other hand, get as much yarn as they can handle. It is all in the execution!

Eventually more photos will happen. The fair isle sweater hit a snag...the finishing portion. I don't like weaving in ends for a normal project, this thing has an inner mane. I'm trying other options, but it is almost all knit...just in two bits.

Lots of other knitting has happened. More will happen. Maybe you see it, maybe you don't! Depends on my sense of whimsy! WHIMSY!

...I'm in a strange mood. Fleeing the keyboard back to project 1239784 now.

Week 4

2011-09-24T16:42:00.003-04:00

Slowly but surely, we plod along.

Week 3

2011-09-18T16:05:00.003-04:00

Finished up the sleeves (I maintain that steeked sleeves look like crotchless leggings until you cut them apart), finished my travel knitting (the scarf) and cast on for the body. Also, because I love to torture myself, I did some simple math. See that teeny tiny little bit of ribbing that is the bottom band? Just the ribbing part is over 7000 stitches, on size 0 needles. Check me out *not* discouraging myself by doing the rest of the math, lest I fall upon my needles and knit no more.

So, yeah. This is a weekly status of the sweater, and if I finish anything else, it gets screen time, too.

Week 2

2011-09-10T22:31:00.003-04:00

Got a little distracted, and didn't get much done on the sweater this week. Without the impromptu "must do this now!" project, I should get more accomplished on the sweater.

(A little girl had a Curious George themed birthday party today, which is who the monkey was for; I came up with the idea of it on Tuesday, so it was a bit of a rush. I also included a card with $20 to "Cover a little bit of her therapy if the monkey is creepy instead of cute." Happily, she hugged it, so, it apparently is cute and not terrifying. It is a fine line between these two options in handmade toys.)

Week 1

2011-09-03T15:45:00.003-04:00

Making reasonable progress, considering I haven't worked it much the last couple of days. The biggest problem was with the pattern; the charting is done in tones similar to that of the yarn, which is damn near impossible to discern unless you are in daylight. I don't know about you, but most of my knitting (at least of this type) happens on the couch, where the lighting is not as strong at the sun. This led to a few errors and tear backs, but I've got the two naughty colours marked differently now, so here's hoping the rest will go more smoothly.

For my own information

2011-08-27T14:00:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I cast on this sweater. It is more complicated than any previous sweaters, and I'm somewhat unreasonably excited about it. So far, so good.

Caaaandygram

2011-08-05T18:32:00.002-04:00

Kai thinks he should be an inside-too yak. After all, he plays with Leika, and she gets to go inside. Why shouldn't he?

Leika is aiding and abetting by rouping at the back door constantly to be "let out", which is more of code for "Open the door so Kai can come in to play with me, Mama!"

We remain yak-free inside as of this posting. It is pretty adorable to see the two of them standing on the steps, looking hopeful about coming inside, though.

Cuddles!

2011-07-30T13:01:00.002-04:00

Don't worry. Daven is wearing shorts. They are just hidden by the Kai hugs.

Your terrible poetry of the day.

2011-07-28T17:29:00.002-04:00

Oh, give me a home
Where the yaks they do roam
and the chickens they cluck in their coop.
Where the doggie does dance
The cat sleeps on your pants
and they all produce far too much poop.
Home! Home on the range!
Where the mountains loom nearby all day!
Where oft it is heard
An ill-rhyming word
and the puns they flow thickly, Oy Vey.

This guy? This guy is awesome.

2011-07-24T09:59:00.004-04:00

Daven was up at stupid-o-clock, bribing yaks. They had settled in pretty well on our neighbour's land. ("Hey! A hill! We like hills!" "Please stop playing king of the hill and come home.") Because he is fantastic and patient (as evidenced by how he took Kai from a spaz-machine to a cuddle-monster), he had them home before 0700, and repaired all of our neighbour's fences.

I am a lucky girl. :)

Nrgh.

2011-07-23T23:52:00.003-04:00

Leika and Kai are now buddies.

The yaks. You remember the yaks? They have escaped.

They are currently next door, and are non-responsive to coming home.

We are not having a good night.

On the upside, we have the most understanding neighbours ever, who volunteered "Well, it is dark, just leave 'em be for the night and you can try again in the morning." Thank goodness for good neighbours.

Mr Kai is the only non-escaped yak. As an update (since I haven't posted about him in forever), he has weaned himself and is now eating Calf Manna instead of milk, and has discovered cookies. Cookies have made him decide we are not evil demons, and now he will scamper up to us for pets and skritches.

I hope the rest of the yaks are OK. Daven said they looked dehydrated (not surprising with all of the running they've done since they hopped both the 4 strand barbed wire fence and electric fence), and I'm hoping they'll follow the fence down to the big gate we left open for them to come home through. I left a very very bright light on in their paddock for them to follow, if they have the urge.

Arrrrgh!

Kidnapping (Yak-napping?)

2011-06-01T12:29:00.003-04:00

Last night, Daven and I (mostly Daven; I distracted Kate with tasty treats) yoinked Kai to start trying to bottle feed him. We should have done this at 3 days old, but were unsure of ourselves. Mea culpa. Now we know for next time.

Bottle feeding a baby who is used to mama and does not want to drink is a frustrating business. Patience is key, but we haven't had much success yet.

I do have a new definition of "too early". If you've been up and messing with livestock at least 2 hours before the feed store opens (needed a new halter), it is too early. ;)

So, he is now haltered (Twice; Daven got his ass roundly kicked by him both times and is now sporting a limp, several head wounds and a crushed hand. Yaks are feisty.) and tied up to get used to the idea of staying still. Water left nearby him, which he of course has already splashed out, mostly. That's OK, I'll keep refilling it. This is a process, and he will come around. Even before we haltered him the second time, I was able to pet his face and neck, but he just got too skittish to let me put the halter on him without being restrained, yet. It will come.

Re-posted to The Silly Yaks blog, for ease of sharing.

Baby yakling!

2011-05-23T11:33:00.007-04:00

For the "Awww!" factor, here are pictures of Kai Yak (this name is my father's fault), from birth on 5/12 to 10 days old on 5/22. For a more verbose version of all of these pictures, go here. Also, if you are on the LJ feed, if you come back to the blog, you can get bigger pictures.

30 minutes old, and on his feet!

3 hours old, and lookin' fuzzy.

3 days old, with mama Kate.

Soggy boy at 8 days old. (It would not stop raining for days, thus the lack of pictures between 3 days old and 8 days old. Also, sometimes you just have to pet the yak, and not take pictures of him.) At this point, he also has started growing in his horns, though you can't see them here.

10 days old, and being a bad influence on Mama. He showed her how to escape, and they had a little adventure in our side yard until I spotted them and Daven led them back into the paddock.

MD Sheep and Wool - 2011 - Long-ass-post

2011-05-15T16:48:00.005-04:00

Yeah, that's the brief summary. I didn't buy nearly as much as I did in previous years, but this is also the first year that I had to be concerned with fitting it all into my suitcase to get it home again. Not picture: 8 oz of Jacob roving, 10 oz of carded silk, and some spiffy hair-on leather samples that my sister in law hooked Daven up with. Above are 2 skeins of sock yarn from Creatively Dyed, 3 Bugga from The Sanguine Gryphon and one from the stall next to Tess Yarns after I got irritated with the stupid crowd and lack of pricing at the Tess booth and wandered off. Really. Prices are awesome. They apparently had little handouts, but they didn't post them anywhere. We didn't have prices on the corsets, but that was because they were bloody expensive and we also didn't have a hundred people trying to buy stuff from us all at the same time. Post your damn yarn price lists. I don't care if you take those handouts and frame them and put them around the booth, just have them out. Sheesh. /rant off (Also, apparently most of their yarn was soaking wet. Ew.)

Now for the long version of the trip. Daven and I were going to be flying out to DCA on Thursday, May 5th, and flying back Tuesday, May 10th. Due to Daven getting ill, I ended up going on this little journey without him. :( I missed his company, but illness + 4 hour flight = worlds of suck. I was very pleased with Frontier, as they gave him a credit for the flight, which he can use anytime in the next year. That, and the long leg room and free cookies on the flight really make them my favourite airline.

So, after determining that Daven could drive me to the airport, but go no further, I checked in and got to the gate, to find a delayed flight. Of course it was. At least that gave me plenty of time to call the airline and get the above credit. I'd not eaten much that morning since I knew that the terminal I was going to had a sandwich shop I really liked...and when I went to it, it seemed to be closed for renovations. 3 strikes against the day; I was pretty grumpy by this point. As if the world could tell that I was about ready to smack someone, this really awesome little old couple came and sat next to me, and I ended up chatting with the husband a bit. (This was a recurring theme: I've gotten a lot friendlier and better at random interactions than I was before I moved out here.) Later, when finally boarding the plane, the husband waved cheerfully and held out his hand for a hand bump, which amused me a great deal and perked me up. Also, I had acquired pretzels to eat 9 at a time on the advice of HappyGoth in the effort of generating better luck. I took it as a good sign when the plane had a bison as the mascot critter, and that he was named Thunder. Just smile and nod and accept that it made me happy. :)

Aside from the pretzels and the free cookie, I had some dried fruit and nuts...this became relevant when the flight finally landed and I eventually made it to my friend's end of the Metro system at 19:30...when I'd last had a meal at about 07:30 and was super loopy. Food was found, I discovered that I've become a beer snob, and after a lunch with D, I got to see H after she got home from an audition. Giggling and chatting went late into the night.

At this point, my body lost its damn mind and started waking me up at ridiculous o'clock every day of my visit. There wasn't a day that I was out there that I wasn't awake by 06:30 or earlier, even if I could convince my body to stay in bed until 08:30 a couple of times. This is relevant when you take into account the fact that I was suddenly 2 hours ahead of my normal schedule, and I do not have the habit of waking up at 04:30. So, that was exciting.

Friday, we went to Trousseau, my favourite bra shop, with a gaggle of girls. H and I met Jennie and HappyGoth there, who had driven up from Georgia for the weekend, as well as meeting up with Eva and Vail for bra shopping shenanigans. Jennie and HappyGoth ended up in one fitting room, and H & I ended up in another, with the other ladies in their own rooms. The store had prepared and ordered bras in the correct size for our group members, so there was a pretty good selection. I think I tried on every bra in the store in my (varied) size, and everyone came away with at least 1 bra, if not more. Since we are Good Customers (TM), we then got free truffles and toddled off to a tasty lunch at the dive Mexican joint just down the road, where they serve the best mango daquiris ever.

After The Adventure (TM) of going from one end of the beltway to the other in the beginnings of Friday rush hour traffic, we regrouped at H&D's place before heading out to see Jonathon Coulton, with the opening band Paul and Storm at the Birchmere. We ran into our friend Greyloch there, along with his herd of ladies, and I was thrilled to find my friends Alicia and Sean were also at the show. I drew them into our group, and we cheerfully drank too much and laughed too loud at the show. I must admit that Paul and Storm were a bit more fun than Mr Coulton, but it was still a damn find show. My favourite moment: Paul and Storm were performing "The Captain's Wife's Lament", which involves a lot of audience participation in the form of shouting ARRRR! when prompted (or when not prompted, as it turned out). Well, after one too many impromptu ARRRR, one of them (can't remember which one) looked pained and was trying to remember his place and said "Please...shut the fuck up." For whatever reason, having a musician telling a crowd to STFU cracked me up. After the show, we got back to H&D's without incident and all crashed hard.

Saturday, I woke up at my new "the sun is up, and so am I and I have no idea why this is happening to me" wake up time. The GA girls had brought a few bags of bagels, so rather than messing with going out for breakfast, those were consumed, and we were off to Sheep and Wool! Amazingly, we missed the worst of the traffic (aside from a bit where a bus managed to get really badly stuck, but we were nearly at the parking lot by then) and started collecting people. To recap, we came with H&D, myself, Jennie and HappyGoth. At the entrance we ran into my friend M, who I hadn't met in person before, but had chatted with online and via text a lot whilst she was deployed. Further additions over the course of the day were Dave and Britt, who I was the best man in their wedding last May, Greyloch, his wife and Sarah their NZ friend. Then there was Bald Scott, Kendra, and much later in the day, Alicia and Sean again. Also, HappyGoth met an online friend of her's at the show, so we were a jolly little amoeba. When approaching the main vendor hall, most of our raiding group got frightened off, and we went in with 6. Then somewhere along the way, we lost half of them, and I dragged Britt and Kendra down one side of the hall before we got overwhelmed by the TEEMING MASSES and fled to the outside world.

Whilst going off to meet up with the larger group under a tree (this is not the best description, btw), I had a very cheerful short woman bounce up to me and proclaim "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!" "Oh?" "You're Dragon*con Goddess from The Devil's Panties!" "That'd be me." Jennie had posted a comic the week before mentioning that we were going to be at the show, so this lovely young lady had printed said comic out and was running around looking for us. Since Jennie had forgotten her Flamey Boots of Doom (TM), and I was wearing those, along with a Utilikilt, I was acting as Jennie's stunt double. Her very large stunt double. I managed to attract at least 5 people who asked if I was Jennie, and were varying degrees of disappointed that I was not. Anyway! Beth, the fan, followed us to Jennie, despite the fact that I was confused by the directions I was given, so was being fearless leader going the wrong way. Enh. We found them eventually. Beth was very nice, and as we related a bit of the bra adventure, I referred her to Trousseau's, since she was busty and displeased with her normal bra shopping experience. I spread the good word of pretty bras for busty chicks. :)

Once more, we split up, and via text message it was relayed that the group as a whole was going to meet up down at the sheep dog show...except I had no idea where that was, got lost, hadn't eaten enough (again) and lost my damn temper by the time I found them. As a note, honesty is the best policy, but when you respond to "Are you OK?" with "Not really, no.", people get a little upset. Water was taken in, as was some more food, and by the time I no longer wanted to kill people, the herding dogs were done. Oops. More shopping happened, then the new tradition that we started last year of heading off to the Mongolian Grill for much food. A quick stop for some booze after that, then when we got back to H&D's with Dave and Britt in tow, Jennie and HappyGoth headed off to Baltimore to visit their respective families for the evening. The rest of us sat around and drank and chatted until there was a general face planting from exhaustion.

Sunday had been full of plans...but we scrapped 'em and just sat around the house chatting. This was a nice downtime after the "scheduled to the gills" of the prior days. Eventually, once both Jennie and HappyGoth had returned from their trip north, we headed off to our dinner reservation at Marrakesh in downtown DC, meeting Eva and her boy there. It was a fantastic dinner, with incredible food and fun company. Yay!

Monday involved the GA girls heading off back southward whilst H&D headed back to work. The girls ran a little late, so we were able to chat for quite a while before they drove me down to the other end of the beltway so I could have lunch with a few of my former SEC coworkers. That was an interesting lunch, and their stress levels were palpable. Oy vey. After lunch with the guys, I wandered the Metro system down to the National Mall, ended up at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial and continued my tradition of nearly bursting into tears and calling my dad to tell him how glad his name wasn't up there, even if some of his buddies' names were. I still remember the first time we came to DC, when I was 15...when he pointed out their names was the first time I ever saw him cry. Since then, he's told me a lot more of their stories, including a young man who was barely over 18, and who found out when he was deployed that he was a father...but never made it home to meet his daughter. See? Tears. Looking at the names, knowing that every one was a story; a life cut short...It is always an emotional thing for me to head to the monument. Just to lighten the mood, after I'd gotten off the phone with my dad, I was sitting and staring at a half-drained duck pond (the reflecting pool is also drained for work), and a family walked by. Their 3'ish looking daughter looked at me and her eyes lit up..."Look, Mommy! A cowgirl!" As I was wearing my crushable leather cowboy hat (now that I live in CO, I have grown to love hats), I tipped said hat to her and grinned. After that, I chatted on the phone with Daven for a bit, then I met H at the metro, and we did her commute home together. Dinner that night had Dave and Britt join us again for some awesome Indian food. Since I was lamenting that the previous year on my birthday I hadn't had any cake, H&D and I took a little side trip to a Harris Teeter, where we bought the most ridiculous cupcakes ever. The frosting was taller than the cakes, and they just were terribly disappointing. I'd also grabbed a giant truffle, because, wow, giant truffle! That, too, turned out to be not too great, as the chocolate genache inside of it was too rich, so we just ate the shell off of it and called it a night.

My phone, provided for scale. This was silly.

Tuesday, my flight didn't leave until after noon, but I got up at 06:00 and H and I headed to her office. I left my bags there, we hit a diner called "Lincoln's Waffle" that was right across the street from Ford's Theatre for breakfast, and I ended up wandering down to the Mall again to sit and people watch from 09:00-11:00. I was reminded that I was totally not used to cities when I noticed a helicopter that was circling right over my head...28 times. I was fully into the "WTF?" zone, then noticed that 5 minutes after it stopped circling, Marine 1 (the helicopter version of Air Force 1) took off from the White House and it all made sense. I was sitting in front of the Smithsonian Natural History museum, so it was reasonable that the damn copter was going over and over and over my head.

The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful, aside from the TSA agent wishing me a happy birthday, and I was very happy to see my (fully recovered) husband, drink some damn good local beer and go home to a very happy puppy and kitty who had apparently missed me. Then, two days later, my yak had a baby, BUT THAT WILL BE A DIFFERENT POST.

Ta da! Long version. If you got all of the way to the end of this, gold star for you!

We don't talk about that...

2011-03-20T22:14:00.002-04:00

This morning, I went in to check on my five 2 week old cheepies. Sometime in the night, they had tipped over their water and it was bone dry. I sighed, cleaned it out and filled it back up. For the next 5-10 minutes, all five crowded around the waterer, making no noise, and just drinking greedily. After a few minutes, I noticed that one of them (my favourite, of course, who has fluffy cheeks) was quietly vomiting the water right back up, with a bunch of bubbles. Basically, they had grown tall enough that the little platform (a candle box) that the waterer was on wasn't high enough, and they were starting to swallow some air along with the water. Since chickens don't burp, the next logical thing to do to get air out of their stomachs is to vomit.

There was exactly nothing I could do (aside from switch to a slightly higher platform for the water) than sit there helplessly, thinking that if that chick died, it would be my fault. It would be my fault for not checking their water before going to bed the night before, so who knows how long the container had been knocked over. It was my fault that they were so desperate for water that they stopped their normal tiny chicken behaviour of running around cheeping and jumping on each other to stand quietly and gorge themselves on said water. And it was my fault for not lifting the waterer up high enough for them not to get air bubbles along with their water.

It was a bad time. Even though they are "just farm animals" and not pets, they are helpless and they are in my care. And that little life would be on my conscience if she died from it.

After watching over them for another 15 minutes, they seemed to perk up a little bit, and resumed tearing around their little enclosure, though "Cheeks" wasn't as active. When we got home tonight from hiking, I sent my husband in to check on them, because I just couldn't bear the thought of finding that little fluff ball dead. I lost several chicks last year and they all were upsetting, but none of their deaths were directly related to anything I'd done.

Thankfully, they are all alive. They have all gone back to eating and drinking and playing "Chicken kamikaze"; a delightful game of climbing to the highest perch they can get to and jumping on their neighbour. Since there are so few of them, they are currently living in a very very large Rubbermaid container in my downstairs bathroom, right next to where I sit with my computer. I know when they are playing this game when the consistent cheep cheep cheeps are interrupted with a most indigent "CHRRP!" as one of the chicks gets landed on.

That which we nurture binds us to it. Neglect that attachment at your peril.

knit geek

2011-03-07T22:19:00.002-05:00

I was following the instructions provided by a well-known knitting resource, and when I looked at my knitting, it didn't look like theirs...but mine actually followed the directions, whereas their swatch was messed up. Nice catch, guys.

*is stupidly pleased by this*

Wherein I am self-referential.

2011-03-04T21:18:00.002-05:00

So, for those of you who may or may not still read my updates who aren't on other lists, I started yet another blog. This one is specifically for yakky updates; with Yak-A-Day photos and yak factiods on a daily basis. Or, at least the photos, if I can't think of anything clever. It is still new, so not very fleshed out, but more pictures will be forthcoming. Maybe I'll do another video, if we can get the yaks to do something interesting.

http://thesillyyaks.blogspot.com/

A tenuous relation to fluff, at best.

2011-02-28T21:38:00.002-05:00

Daven and I were discussing the flock, and how we are going to cull another 4 roosters. (We have an UNREASONABLE amount of roosters, still.) Sadly, somewhere in there will be Henry, who stopped being friendly and started being a bit of a bastard. I honestly can no longer identify him, but I still feel sad since he was so friendly before. This will finally allow the girls to outnumber the boys, and hopefully stop looking so beaten up, since the barred rock boys are the worst of the remaining flock in terms of jumpin' the girls. (They are no where near as bad as the first ones we culled, who had managed to kill our two best layers. Roosters are jerks.)

In the midst of this, we were talking about the roosters we are going to leave behind. 2 light brahmas (they of fluffy bellbottom feet, one of whom is named Raptor), the golden rooster who is at the very bottom of the pecking order (I have uncreatively been calling him "Goldie", which isn't a very masculine name), and the 4 fluffy silkies. It turned out that all four of the buggers are boys, much to my frustration. Not only are they roosters, but they are LOUD roosters...or at least one of the black ones is. So, since they will be sticking around, they needed names. Because, hey, this is us, we've gone with the following:

Loudest black silkie: Ozzy
Other black silkie: Sabbath
Two white silkies: Dio and Zakk.

Oh, yes.

We have heavy metal fluffy chickens.

\m/ >_< \m/ *headbangs*

Happiness is...

2011-02-16T21:09:00.002-05:00

Spinning something soft and sparkly in a sunbeam. Also, alliteration.

Photos of stuff I've made lately will come when I have a living room floor and thus an office and thus a damn desktop again.

Crafting continues!

Oh, yes. String!

2011-01-12T16:46:00.002-05:00

After posting on FaceBook about the pleasure I gleaned from seeing Daven wearing three knitted items at the same time (it was cold in the house), one of my cousins requested a hat. The one she chose is a fun knit, though the colours requested weren't in my stash in acceptable weights, so I got to do a little run to my LYS. When I came up to the counter with 7 100g balls of worsted weight yarn, the lovely lady behind the counter asked if I was knitting a lap blanket.

"Nope. Hat."

"...That will be a very large hat."

The problem being that I needed approximately 2 oz of the most prevalent colour in the hat, and the rest needed about an ounce each, but funnily, super wash worsted weight yarns don't come in "snippets", so I've got a whooole lotta yarn now. On the upside (as I said to the woman, later, when we were resolving a charging issue), I've now got lots of yarn for socks for my dad, since his feet are too big for sock yarn. Worsted weight is the way to go with size 12s.

Once said cousin got me her head measurement last night, I was off and running. The swatch I had done lied like a lying thing, so after tearing back the hat band, I switched to a size smaller, cast onto DPNs (which I apparently knit more tightly on than circular needles) and started over. I just finished it, and now all I have to hope is that she likes it and that it fits.

The coolest thing for me (and I may be really late to the game for this) is that some weird little switch in my head finally went and now I can cheerfully do stranded knitting with an active thread in each hand, so I'm knitting both Continental and English styles at the same time. Much quicker than my previous "Drop yarn, pick up other yarn, do a stitch. Repeat forever." strategy. Enh, I don't care if it took a long time to arrive, this is fun. Also, for straight knitting or purling, I find that I kind of prefer Continental, suddenly, after knitting English for my entire life. *shrug* I just do what my fingers tell me to do. :)

Photo of the hat will come either after she says she wants to see it before I mail it, or after she has received it.

Pictures! And a story!

2010-12-24T20:10:00.009-05:00

Because pictures will totally distract you from the lack of content for the last month, RIGHT?!

...Well, maybe not. At any rate. Look! Finished Objects! (That I totally already posted on Facebook, but not everyone is on my Facebook and really, you can probably deal with them a second time because I am proud of myself, alright?)

My first quilt!

The back of my first quilt! Hand quilted, baby.

My first real lace shawl, because I always would bugger them up, get frustrated and wander off before!

The local hippies will love this shawl.

Pointy edges!

Now I'm working on more quilts. Yes, plural, because this is me and you know I can't possibly only have one project of any type going on at a time. There's a long term scrap quilt that I'm literally only going to be working on when I finish other quilts, so they get represented in said scrap quilt, and my main lap quilt. I went into Joann's with A Plan (TM) but it was so not crowded that I ended up poking around and swapping out the planned fabric for another that I totally fell in love with. I still giggle about finding beautiful fabric, bringing it home and cutting it into little pieces. Quilting is weird, yo.

Whilst shopping, I had a really fun little encounter. Daven and I were standing at the fabric counter, waiting to get all of our stuff cut out, when an older gentleman and what looked to be his 10 year old grandson walked in. The grandfather had a scarf and some knitting needles clutched in one hand and asked the girls working if they could help his grandson, since he'd knit a scarf and now he wanted to knit a hat, but needed different needles. After the reply of "Oh...I don't knit..." was emitted (LAME, CRAFT STORE WORKERS. AT LEAST ONE OF YOU SHOULD KNIT.) I volunteered my services. I brought them back to the knitting aisle, talked about DPNs vs. circular needles and he decided that circulars sounded less scary. I grabbed him a set of size 10s, to match his straight needles and off they went. It really made me happy to help someone, and it reminded me how much I miss teaching. (I spent a year or so as an Event Coordinator for Michaels, which involved making a lot of displays and teaching some classes, including a weekly kid's craft class. It was fun, though hard on my knees, since when I wasn't in the classroom, I was working the floor.)

Also, because this is me, I'm second guessing everything I did. I told him to cast on and make sure that the stitches weren't twisted, but does he know what that looks like? I totally should have grabbed the scarf and made admiring noises at it, though I did say it was really awesome that he was learning how to knit. Ah, well. I hope he's knitting on 'em and isn't too frustrated. They were so thankful, it was really touching.

In other craft news, I gave my mother 4 pairs of socks that I'd hoarded over the last year and she still wants more. I think I'm going to be trying that sock-a-month thing again, just to keep Mrs. ColdFeet in socks. :) I'm still working on Daven's never-ending cabled sweater (just a few more inches on the first sleeve, then all of Monkey-Arm sleeve 2). Let me tell you, learning how to cable without a cable needle was like discovering fire. So. Awesome. And it save so much time! There's also the great big knit blanket that I'm doing the second tier of cabling on, a pair of fingerless gloves that I cast on in hopes they'll help me whilst at my computer and my purse sock, which gets worked on whenever I have to wait anywhere. Oh, and the weaving, which I have sorely neglected due to general malaise towards it. The same applies to spinning, which hasn't been worked on in a while. It'll happen. But first, I'm going to go quilt some more. A girl has to have some variety in life! *grin*

Because I don't have enough hobbies, right?

2010-12-01T11:17:00.003-05:00

In addition to the knitting and the weaving that were already on-going, I dragged my cross stitch back out, and over the weekend, started quilting.

Since Saturday, I washed and ironed and cut and sewed and ironed and sewed and ironed and sewed and cussed and ironed and sewed until I have a baby quilt basically together. It needs the binding put on, but aside from that, just the tracing of the stencil and the hand quilting is left. I know, that's the long part, but I really enjoyed using the sewing machine, which is astonishing. Way back when, I learned how to sew by hemming sheer silk in a costume shop as part of my theatre major ways. Sheer silk has no sense of humour, and it left me with a terror of sewing machines. Thankfully, the last couple of days has helped a lot with that, even if the first sewing machine I used ended up breaking three times and now needs to go into the shop. The second workhorse, which is much more powerful and aggressive (my poor lightweight cotton!) got me through, even if it isn't ideal for such work.

The quilt is very fall-coloured, and I think it looks nice, if a little 70's-retro. Photos will happen eventually.

I also finished up the actual knitting on the Maelstrom shawl of psychedelic colours yesterday evening, and just need to block it. That will likely happen today. I'd been pouring most of my hours into this, so hopefully there will be forward momentum on other projects now that it is done.

My weaving has been sadly neglected, since I got distracted by many "ooh shiny!" things. Today is Wednesday, so it is for weaving, dammit. I shall get some work done on it. (The problem being that I'm not sure I love this project, and it is hard to work on something you're "meh" about.)

The cross stitch is hilarious. This is a sampler that I started...well, there is a notation on the pattern about buying my sister's 25th birthday present, and she's 35 now. Yeaaaaah. I also immediately remembered why I had put it down. It is done on 22 point fabric, generally over two blocks. The parts I have left are all over one thread, so this is reaaaaally fine work. I'll do it, but you can only look at something that closely for small amounts of time before your eyes start stabbing you in the brain. There really is not very much left, and maybe I'll eventually finish it. I also dug out all of my previously finished, but un-framed cross stitch projects. I really need to get those framed and up somewhere; there are some really beautiful pieces in there.

Turkey Day

2010-11-26T21:33:00.002-05:00

As I was posting this enormous comment on the Pioneer Woman in response to the question "How was your Thanksgiving", I realized I should really make it into a blog entry on its own. So, here you go:

Well, the meal was a little hit or miss. And it inspired me to wax poetic and become rather verbose in the description thereof.

I was up until 01:30 the night before, waiting for the brine to cool because we forgot about the darn stuff until midnight, and it takes a while for things to cool off. Even when sitting outside in the 10F CO night, it took a while. But the end result was an amazing turkey.

Due to my husband and myself being on some rather strict diets, we only cheated a little bit...the "cheat" involved about a cup of homemade applesauce (no sugar, organic apples from our local CSA...SO GOOD) and a couple of pieces of my homemade bread. The bread was challenging, as I made a double size loaf and forgot to take that into account with the baking time. The first time I cut it, the knife came out...gooey. Ew. Back in the oven it went, and was the last thing to be served, but was by far the most popular item on the table.

My mother in law handled the gravy (I am not a gravy girl, so I don't try), whilst my husband took care of the turkey. The turkey, that was supposed to have a coating of canola oil to give it a beautiful brown glazed appearance. My intrepid love realized we had none in the house, so used Pam.

...

So, whilst the in-laws and the husband were out giving the yaks treats, I was babysitting a turkey that set off the fire alarm constantly due to the unfortunate flash point of Pam. I also had a neighbour's cat underfoot, as she randomly showed up yesterday and decided she wanted to be with us for the holiday.

But though the food was beautiful and made from scratch, with only the veggie stock in the brine coming from a box, the one real downer was over napkins. For, you see, three days ago, I had in my hot little hands about 3 dozen cloth napkins. They got "tidied", which means they will never be seen again. I was tearing around the house with the one solitary napkin I could find in my hand, getting unreasonably worked up. When I was told for the four thousandth time "it's FINE" I had a little explosion of noise that startled the heck out of my in-laws. So. Aside losing my mind and yelling at everyone over napkins, we had a great meal, and were pleased that my husband's folks were able to fly in from the East Coast to join us.

Finish-it Friday

2010-11-19T19:30:00.002-05:00

Part of my grand scheme of having thematic days includes Weaving Wednesday (which didn't work out this week due to...I don't know. I was distracted in the morning and in pain in the evening. I failed, but I'll climb back on the weaving horse, promise) and either Finish-it or Forgotten-Object Friday.

This one has been working out pretty well. Basically, either I finish something that has been sitting on the edge of completion and just needs that last little push, or I work on something that I haven't worked on in at least a week.

Today ended up combining the two, and I finished two hats that are gifts (for a mother and daughter) that have been sitting on my desk for the better part of a month. It was the pom poms that stopped my progress.

I hate pom poms.

I like the look, but making them irritates the piss out of me. These managed to finish off one of the teeny tiny balls of yarn I had left from making the hats, so that was semi-useful, but as my sister can vouch (she called me mid-pom pom creation), I swear a lot when I'm making them.

I'm sure some people enjoy these, otherwise they would have fallen out of favour. I am not amongst that population.

Right. Enough bitching about pom poms. The upside is that I finished the hats, and I should be able to ship them out tomorrow. I hope they fit!

Related to this: last night I finished the fingerless gloves I was knitting for Daven. They match a hat I'd knit him a bit ago, and he'd requested them since hands get cold when using keyboards. Between those and the house slippers I knit him a few weeks ago, he's slowly getting kitted out in hand knit goodies.

Now, if only I'd finish his darn sweater. The hold up? Not pom poms, but good guess. No, it is that he has these monkey arms that go on forever, and though I've got the body finished, it has no arms yet. I'll get to it. Maybe next Friday. :)

In case you have interest in such things...

2010-11-15T12:53:00.003-05:00

I started a new blog that I'm using to track my progress with my new bodybuilding program. It is located here: http://braveharlot.blogspot.com/

Feel free to ignore this at your leisure. :)

In fibre progress, I've been spinning and weaving and knitting like a mad woman, as per the usual.

I finished the weaving project that seemed to take forever, and I do have photos that I'll eventually get up here. I had some fascinating weaving-related drama, where I found that my math was Totally Messed Up (TM), and I had about twice as much width to my current project as I needed. This necessitated chopping off some of my warp, which was somewhat nerve wracking to do, and starting over. Three times. Kept getting narrower. Hopefully I've got it set up correctly now. Bloody thing. It is a stole for my mother, in two contrasting shades of purple. The sett is for a honeysuckle overshot pattern, though I'll just be using that in three stripes on each end of the stole, with the vast majority in the darker shade. This is for Lent, so I've got an actual time frame involved, meaning I have to *work on it* to get it done in time. We'll see how that goes.

I finished up spinning the two shades of teal alpaca I had, and decided to navajo ply them, as well as pair them up with a beautiful unprocessed fleece I picked up from the Estes Park fibre festival. I've broken out my drum carder, and have been enjoying making big floofy batts to spin from. I have plots in my mind for a sweater, if I get the yardage for it. Since I'm processing the lion's share myself, I'll probably tweak a pattern so that it customized for me. I'm envisioning another Norwegian style sweater, though I think I'll want to pick up some white alpaca to have as a third contrast colour. And maybe a purple. But first, I work on the silvery gray.

I've been knitting on this for the last couple of weeks, in a perfectly wonderful obnoxious colourway of Zauberball (fuchsia). It is very trippy, and the bright colours make me ridiculously happy.

I, of course, have a billion other projects on the needles, but those are the top ones right now.

We're frolicking! We're frolicking!

2010-10-23T20:40:00.002-04:00

Hopefully that'll work. Sorry about the quality of the video; I was using a little point and shoot, in addition to trying to follow fast-moving yak-beasts. Also, my voice is weird. I blame the fact that I apparently use baby talk on the yaks. I should stop that.

Cautious optimism

2010-10-11T15:11:00.002-04:00

So far today, I've had no head-spinny incidents. If this keeps up, I'll restart my workout routine tomorrow.

Since I've already wandered off the supposed topics that this blog is about, now I'm going to go into further uncharted territory. Specifically the amazing ability for the human mind to strive for change and then be surprised when it happens.

Today, I finally broke down and admitted that with the weight loss that has happened on the incredible diet/exercise program I've been following, my bras didn't fit no mo'. Luckily, I throw nothing away, so I had all of my "thin" bras to go back to.

I feel like I'm turning back the clock. The weight I'm at now I was last at 3.5 years ago. The clothing I am wearing now is from that time frame, too. Back to my 20s, woo! :> As I said to Daven, I can only go back so far, since I was at my lightest when I first met him 4 years ago, at 175. Anything beyond that is uncharted territory for me as an adult, and that is only 12 lbs away. Considering the changes I've had so far, it isn't out of the question for me to reach that again.

This time, however, I will reach it via good diet and exercise, and I will reach it with growing strength. Before my whole "my brain is trying to escape" week, I had hit a new strength record for lifting 15 lbs more than my body weight in my favourite lift. This is more than just a relative strength increase; I had previously topped out with this lift at 175 for three reps, but I got 7 reps at 205, and I felt I could increase the weight. (If you lift, I was doing Romanian dead lifts, which I really enjoy. Full dead lifts are too hard on my knees, and I'm not built for 'em, but Romanians are fantastic for me.)

The last time I was thin, I was "skinny fat". You could poke me in the middle and your finger would keep on going. This was great from the corsetry standpoint, but not so good from the "being strong" standpoint. Now I've got muscles behind the rapidly decreasing layer of squish. This is the leanest I have ever been, and the happiest I have been with how my body looks. I still have a lot of work to go, but with the awesome guidance of my trainer, and the support (and cooking) of Daven, I am going to achieve my goal of being every inch the amazon I want to be!

Not having to do with anything else...

2010-10-10T00:18:00.003-04:00

Yet effecting everything.

Since last Monday, I've been dizzy. Specifically, I've had vertigo. On Thursday, I figured that this should have passed if it was going away on its own, and I went to a walk-in clinic. A nice long wait and a blood draw later, I was placed on bed rest and given a Rx for anti-dizziness.

I'm still dizzy.

It comes in waves, and it feels like the whole world is rushing past me. I haven't fallen yet, but it worries me.

I'm sleeping a lot. I've averaged a 3-4 hour nap every afternoon since seeing the doc, and I'm sleeping in, too, but I'm still tired and woozy.

The best way I can describe it is like being slightly drunk. All. The. Time. With none of the fun parts associated with being drunk, because this isn't on purpose and therefore just isn't a whole lot of fun.

I should have the blood work results by Monday. I hope they are indicative of *something*. Because otherwise, the doc told me to find a neurologist and see about getting an MRI.

I don't think I have to tell you that the combination of "bed rest" and "neurologist" freaks me the heck out.

This is part of why I haven't posted my September photos. My attention span is ridiculously reduced. I've got a sore neck from tensing it during the dizzy spells, and usually have a nice stress headache from the neck tension.

Amusingly, I've started on a really elaborate and complicated project and it is going well...because I *have* to stick to the chart. I don't feel like I can "cheat" by memorizing the pattern. Almost every row is unique, and that is working out just fine with me.

So. If you could cross your fingers that it is one of the suspects that the doc had in mind (anemia or my thyroid freaking out), it would be appreciated.

Pet Peeve

2010-09-29T16:40:00.002-04:00

You know what I want?

I want a knitting book that shows what a finished product looks like. I want to see it from the front, and I want to see it from the back. A side shot would be nice.

You know what I don't want?

An extreme close-up on a sleeve, rather than showing me what the HELL the *whole* damn thing looks like.

Artistry has its place, and hooray for having interesting shots, but don't sacrifice showing me what the fuck I'm making for an artsy shot that tells me nothing about the finished product.

Mmm.

2010-09-27T19:20:00.003-04:00

In something that could be ironic, but actually is just irritating, I hired a personal trainer in August, just when the fruit crop share that I'd signed up for was picking up speed. Guess what wasn't on my diet? Sugar! This includes fruit. So, this has forced me to Learn Stuff. Specifically, I've been canning like it is going out of style.

So far this year:
2 pints of apricot preserves
4 pints raspberry jam
7 quarts (and 1 pint) of peaches in syrup
12 half pints of honey spiced peaches

And today? Today brings pear port compote. 4 pints so far, and another batch on the stove. I was planning on putting some of the pears in syrup, but Daven isn't a fan, and this just smells so heavenly that I'm going to use all of the pears for it.

At some point in my future, I am going to have some really awesome food. In the meantime, I will preserve and look forward to fruit again.

(Is it worth it? Since I moved to CO at the end of May, I've lost 30 lbs. The majority has been on this program. Hell yeah it is worth it!)

As long as it's practical, right?

2010-09-21T17:20:00.000-04:00

...I don't think I approve of this.

Tuesdays are for...something or other.

2010-09-21T14:18:00.002-04:00

Mostly for random updates, I think.

The yaks are settling in well.

Grunt is full of The Frolic (TM), which is funny as hell to watch. He's so bold and friendly, until Snort beats him down a little to keep him in line. He always comes over to investigate when we go into their paddock, in hope of treats or a bit of a skritch.

Snort may have been misnamed (even though he really does snort a lot)...we're thinking we should have called him Cookie Monster. *grin* This boy is totally addicted to his wookie cookie/yak snacks. It has been a while since I've been around livestock that were this clever. He knows what the bucket that we keep the cookies in looks like, and when we tried to use an identical one to distribute the calves' feed, he came lookin' for treats. There are a lot of meaningful glances towards the cookie bucket then back to us whenever we're outside, and some disappointed snorts when he does not get a tasty treat.

He does not approve of the creep feeder-type setup we've got in place to keep him out from the calf food. The post setup we had was insufficient, so it got reinforced with some spare wood pallets we had laying about. Snort has managed to get his horns and upper body between the setup, but couldn't reach the food, and then got a little stuck on his exit, so he is grumpy about the whole thing. He's got a bit of green on his horns now from trying to outsmart it. Distracting him with cookies/COB whilst the other person goes to distribute the very anise-scented calf manna works pretty well.

Maria and Millie are both pretty shy. They'll eat cookies that are tossed in front of them, but they aren't bold enough to get past the cookie hog boys. Hopefully everyone will get more used to us and friendlier as we get to know each other.

I love the inevitable question of "So, how did you end up with yaks?" from people. Our insurance guy sounded really entertained by our purchase. They are enjoyable critters. I'll get more picture of them soon; I always seem to see the most adorable antics when the camera is safely in the house.

On the fibre front, I've been spinning up a bunch of dyed alpaca lately. I'm trying to decide what I want to do with it...I have two bumps of a dark teal, and a bump of light teal that compliments the dark very well. I'm spinning it relatively finely (not laceweight, but not bulky, either), and debating between a couple of options.
- I could do a two ply of the darks against each other and try to figure something out for the light to achieve an equal amount of singles to get a 2 ply out of.
- I could do my favourite navajo plying for a slightly thicker, but shorter length of yarn, leaving me with two yarns that I could work in contrast to each other.
- I could spin all three at about the same thickness and get a three-ply yarn going with the single contrast of the light teal. I'm not sure if I like this as much, as I tend to prefer more solid colours when working, but it could work.

Once I get the singles spun up, I'll take a picture and ask for opinions.

I've also been churning out hats like they are going out of style. There should be a few photos for my end of the month wrap-up, you lucky people.

Yaks!

2010-09-16T22:15:00.012-04:00

Sunday was a busy, busy day.

We woke up a little later than our usual 0700, which was unfortunate, as there was fencing to be done. Our house guests were drafted in assisting as we threw a bunch of 14 gauge 2x4x4' wire mesh fence on to a little paddock to prepare it for the new arrivals. Luckily, we got it all up (I love you, zip ties. You are awesome.) with time enough to spare so we could actually eat breakfast and get the food and water set up.

At around 1100, a huge pickup with a big trailer arrived. After a small mishap involving getting a teeny tiny bit stuck, the driver was able to maneuver into place. No livestock were visible, as it was an enclosed side trailer. The door was opened to reveal:

Our wee herd!

Checking out the lay of the land is important, as this is our lead bull. He is Mr. In Charge, even though he is only a year and a half old. Good boy.

Leading the charge out of the trailer!

This is Sir Snortimir, or Snort for short. Snort is very good at defending the babies, and is only a little bitey when fed wookie cookies. To acquaint you with the terminology, Snort is a Royal yak.

The pack of wee ones.

Gruntulus Maximus, or Grunt. Grunt is a sweetie, who also loves his wookie cookies. We have plans to train him to be a pack yak. Grunt is a trim yak.

Maria. The boys get silly names, the girls get musical-based names. Hopefully she will have a nice brood of Von Trapp calves in her future. Maria is a black yak, which you can tell because she has a grey nose. Yak colour conventions are kind of...odd.

Millie, who is the littlest one, named after the little spitfire from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Again, naming conventions should be easy with her starting us off. Millie is an imperial yak, as she is all black with a black nose. You'd think that would make her black, but, no. Crazy yak people.

The chickens aren't sure what to think of their new neighbours.

We have another 10 year old cow named Kate Grey-Nosed coming around Thanksgiving, once we're assured that she is bred.

So, lo! We are yak owners! We have a business and everything! Yes, we've gone into business with my family. My dad fronted the herd money, and my sister inadvertently named it...Because it is us, our company is The Silly Yaks, LLC. (Yes, Jen has celiacs, thus the pun. She had demanded a photo of a silly yak, and, well, one thing led to another. We love puns. See also: Off Kilter Designs for the leather kilt business. Jackasses are us!)

Expect lots of yak photos, for they are sweethearts and fuzzballs. I'll be collecting their fibre to spin/sell, and we'll sell off additions that don't fit on our 10 acres. Anyone who doesn't sell and isn't pulling their weight (ho ho) will go to the freezer, since, wow, yak meat is YUMMY. Leaner than chicken, with a flavour that is kind of a cross between beef, bison and elk, but tastier than any of the above.

Yay yaks!

Edited to add: Go check out the folks we bought the herd from. They are super friendly, full of great information, and their sense of humour is nearly as bad as ours! I knew I had missed something when I made this post...I was being rushed off for an exciting evening of watching Crocodile Dundee and spinning alpaca fluff. I am a party animal, I tell ya!

Progress!

2010-09-07T17:09:00.003-04:00

I finished the super-ribbed skull cap that I was knitting out of leftover red-based sock yarn today. Unfortunately, I overestimated on the sizing and though it fits, it is a little less clingy than I would like. C'est la vie.

I also finished an impromptu birthday hat. Photos will be included in next month's wrap up! (Spoiler: It is cute.)

Whilst my sister was down visiting me, I got her to pick out a pair of socks for me to make her. She chose purple (shocker), and the pattern I'd paired it up with should be...uh. A challenge. I think I was feeling adventurous when I threw that one into my sock kit box.

The swirl shawl will be a scarf after all, since I'm more likely to use a scarf. I'm plotting to make a matching hat, which ought to be adorable, if impractical.

Just when I feel bad about my stash...

2010-09-03T23:09:00.001-04:00

I find this.

Ah, I feel much saner now.

Oh, right, there was that thing I was doing...

2010-09-02T18:38:00.011-04:00

Remember when I used to do that monthly check-in thing to keep myself honest on my knitting and spinning? No? That isn't surprising, since I stopped doing them in April. What I've been up to since I moved. (Warning: Ravelry link heavy post.)

656 yds of mohair/wool blend of some description. Somewhere between worsted and bulky, depending on how "rustic" it got. This was some of the first fluff I bought; I got it at the same time and place as my wheel, and figured it was time to stop dragging it around and do something with it!

204 yds of the same mohair/wool blend, from the same purchase time. I have another 236 yds of this same colour that I should be able to use with it, but I spun that a while ago.

Not pictured FOs:
Some 2 ply purple stuff I was working on back in VA, and finished off here.
86 yds of some of the flame coloured navajo plied stuff that finished off the ball of roving I'd been poking at since January.
44 yds of drop spindle yarn for a shawl that is mentioned below.
Not pictured WIPs:
Half a bobbin of gray and white angora; my first attempt at it. So soft! I have another bag of white angora. I'll probably spin that and ply the two against each other.
The spindle is darn near full again with the shawl yarn. I need to actually work on that.

From my ill-used sock of the month plan. These two were both unique snowflakes that I had not knit before. I'm counting the green as May and since I just finished them, the blue/purple as August.

Jaywalkers started out as unique, then my mother liked them, so I knit the pair on the left for her. Jaywalkers 1 were knit in May, Jaywalkers 2 in July. See, I got my pair of socks a month thing in!

Not pictured FOs:
One striped sock that is plain stockinette. This is purely "blind" knitting, so it only really gets worked on if I go to the movies, thus the lack of progress on it.
A red and blue ball, because it was hilarious.
An arigumi 'gator for Daven.

Not pictured WIPs:
Shawl 1 (currently waiting on finishing the spinning for it. Using my drop spindle, which is a bit slower, so it has been stalled for a while.)
Shawl 2 was just cast on yesterday, as was Shawl 3. I'm in a mood. Shawl 3 may end up as a scarf, depending on just how much of a mood I am in.
Also actively knitting two of these in varying yarns. The second one is using up all of the left-over red-based sock yarn, striped against each other, and it is looking pretty awesome.
I've got another pair of these going on, in some yarn that involves pink that makes me happy. This is my default pattern. What do I mean? I mean I just had yarn with me, and had a social call to make. I stopped by a shop and picked up new needles (Hiya Hiya 5" bamboo, which I think I have a crush on. They fit my hands so nicely!) and this is the pattern I carry around with me in my wallet. That's normal, right? Everyone...carries a knitting pattern in their wallet...just in case. Hm. Maybe not "normal".
I still have Daven's sweater to work on, but I haven't been feeling the urge lately. Urge to cast on 3929374 projects, not so much to finish them.

Maybe I'll take pictures of some of the other FOs eventually. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. :)

The tally so far

2010-08-25T22:39:00.003-04:00

We were good.

We resisted naming chickens for a long time.

But the last week and a half, names have been sticking.

Obviously, we have Henry and Abby. (Barred Rock rooster and Black Star Hen, respectively.)

They have been joined by:

Blueberry the light Brahma hen. Guess what her favourite food is, to the point that she will come if you say the word?
Raptor the Brahma rooster. The Brahmas have these almost eagle-like heads and beaks, and this is the fiercest looking of the lot, though he is relatively friendly.
Road Runner the mystery bantam chicken. (I think he/she is an old English game bantam.) He/she runs around like a crazy thing if you get too close, and constantly zips out of our reach.
Lunch and Dinner, the white Wyandottes. (At least I think that's what they are.) These are the stupidest and most "I will eat your toes, durr" chickens, so they have volunteered to be first in line for the freezer.
And tonight they were joined by Splenda, the Barred rock hen. She is smaller than the other BR hens and went from being utterly stand offish to being accepting of being pet and picked up to roost on my forearm. So, she was small and surprisingly sweet.

Blueberry, Lunch, Dinner and Splenda. Can you tell I'm on a diet? :)

Also: One of the white silkies has started to try to crow. It is like listening to a 15 year old boy try to sing an aria. Half painful, half hilarious.

No, I don't think I have a problem at all, why?

2010-08-23T13:29:00.002-04:00

So, I'm going to participate in an organized yarn crawl this week. It is the "First Annual Hot August Knits Yarn Crawl", and it involves driving all over hither and yarn and fondling string. I'd heard about it in passing a few weeks ago when I popped into the fibre shop in old town Fort Collins, and so I started off by hitting that shop again (to expensive results) on Saturday.

Some time this week I'm going to drive a couple of hundred miles to Laramie and Cheyenne to go to 4 yarn shops, to get my little "passport" stamped. I'm on the lookout for some lace weight yarn for a shawl pattern I bought years ago and haven't touched yet, as I haven't found anything I've fallen in love with yet. Then, on Saturday, I'll drag Daven over to Greeley, Loveland, and finally up to Estes Park to hit the rest of the shops involved. I have one more in Fort Collins to visit, too, which I hopefully can do tomorrow.

Incidentals will no doubt include sock yarn of various types, because sock yarn doesn't really count towards the stash, right? Right.

By the way, what brought us back to the shop in Old Town was the promise of yaks. I pet the yaks, then went inside to shop, leaving Daven with the yak lady. Well, long story short, we are now getting yaks sometime in the next 6 months. Daven really liked the yaks we met up at the Estes wool fair when we first came out here, and meeting more has solidified his enchantment with them.

We spent a couple of hours discussing our critter plans last night, which resulted in some modifications to our existing ideas. The plans now call for a lot of fibre sources! What we ended up with:

Short term (within 6 months):
2-3 yaks, once we add a little fencing behind one of the outbuildings, and along two bits of fence. Yaks have an amazing undercoat, so they would be useful, as well as compact, non-stinky, easy to care for and playful.
2 dogs. Why am I counting this as fibre producing? I want a Samoyed and a Newfoundland. Black fluff and white fluff! I really am a farm girl, so these will be primarily outdoors dogs. We have a really nice dog run with a big dog house already, we just need to tidy it up a bit. It also has a door into the garage, so we can keep the food in there, away from too many critters. There will be lots of visiting the dogs and playing with them, but I have never had indoor dogs and the house just isn't very "big dog" friendly. Both breeds are very cold hearty.

Medium term (within 1 year or less):
3-6 alpacas, again, once we fix the fencing situation and get them a loafing shed. I was making this really difficult, but after some random research that kept me awake last night (Really? I had fencing based insomnia? My life is weird.), I think we can just modify the existing fence by attaching the mesh-style fencing to the pre-sunk cedar posts. I had thought they needed a 5' fence, but most of the places I could find suggested about a 4', which the existing fence is taller than, anyway. This will save so much time and money that I can't even tell you.
1 guard llama. We had planned on getting a Great Pyrenees as a guard dog, but I've never trained an animal guard dog, nor has Daven, and this way...more fleece!

Long term (maybe, not really a priority):
There may be a couple of sheep of various breeds. (Finn, Icelandic, Jacob)
Also, I want a pony. Maybe "pony" isn't the right word. I want a Shire. I just need to re-learn how to ride so I can get a giant horse!

I love having plans!

Well, I feel better now.

2010-08-19T20:02:00.002-04:00

Because no matter what, I wasn't crazy enough to design this.

Worst. Pirates. Ever.

2010-08-05T14:45:00.003-04:00

Henry, the Shoulder chicken.

Abby, the other shoulder chicken. These are the only two that have names, as they are the friendliest of the bunch. My chickens. They please me. :)

Take one down, pass it around, 41 chicks in the coop on my farm...

2010-07-19T19:42:00.002-04:00

There is a certain feeling of failure when one loses a critter. I just lost #3 (one of the white meat birds), which isn't a terrible record, but I still am not terribly happy about it. This one was fluffed up and limping last night, and after a thunderstorm blew through, I went to visit the chickens and found him gone. Ah, shoot.

Well, 41 still with me. I wish it would cool down a bit so they wouldn't be so stressed. Weeks of 90+ temps is hard on anything.

My latest sewing project

2010-07-14T20:17:00.009-04:00

No, really. I sewed that together with fishing wire. There are multiple panels on each part of the run, and I spent about a day and a half in the nice hot, 90+ degree weather, stitching them together. It may not look like much, but I am damn proud of it. I even built the door, which was a first for me.

And now, chickens in their new coop. Starting with Henry and then some of the fluffy chicks who are looking more and more like muppets every day:

The Coop: Or how refurbishing can sometimes be as big of a pain as building from scratch.

2010-07-09T18:56:00.006-04:00

Gratuitous shot of Henry sitting in my hands. I can't help myself.

Sources can be misleading. For example, many sources said "your chickens will be fine in their initial container for up to 6 weeks!"

Well. I don't think they were expecting us to have 42 of the little buggers, and apparently I am feeding them something that makes them enormous very quickly (enormous being relative to how tiny they were when they arrived), so after the first week, Daven and I started working on the coop.

Step one: Plot, then purchase some lumber, chicken wire and bird netting. Dig fence post holes. (This was done by Daven, thankfully, since he has described the ground as having the consistency of sun-hardened clay, which, incidentally, it is.) He ended up using a pick axe for some of it. I love my husband so very very much.

Step two: Fall in 18" deep post hole. Acquire bone bruise, but do not manage to break leg. Spend the rest of the day drinking wine, applying RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and napping.

Step three: Have sister and her family come visit for a week. I accomplish almost nothing for the week aside from hang out with sister, nephew and brother-in-law. Daven sets all of the fence posts and puts up top beams.

Gavin learned the word "chicken", and was absolutely infatuated with the little cheepers. He's not quite 2. I'm such a proud aunt, and an excellent bad influence.

Step four: Change plot. Purchase more lumber and other supplies. Realize that what you have purchased Will Not Work. (Wallboard. Great for areas where the residents don't constantly try to eat the walls, but not so good for chickens, who will.) Cuss. Plot to return wallboard, remember that we are going to be finishing another room, and keep it anyway.

Step five: Purchase more lumber. Be amazed at how much money can be spent on refurbishing a crappy chicken coop to make it not suck.

When we started, it was filled with the following:
1 nasty nesting box
1 raised box that kind of looked like a rabbit hutch, if it was really crappy
1 giant pile of old gross wood
1 giant pile of straw/chicken shit/assorted other nasty things
1 dead cat, in the rabbit hutch. My dad found it (it was the source of the Aura of Funky that was emanating from the coop area), Daven buried it, and I never had to see it. Have I mentioned how much I love my husband?

Step six: Struggle with chicken wire. I popped for the expensive kind that should hopefully keep diggers out of the coop. My construction is not perfect. It is not even very good, imo. But hopefully it will be serviceable, and that's all that matters. Spend two days putting up wire. Acquire some interesting scratches on arms and (because chicken wire is tricksy) my left ear. Daven laid the groundwork for the new raised floor in the coop, and has over half of the floor down now. I finished the chicken wire and put up a section of the astonishingly stretchy bird netting. I had these thoughts that the netting was going to be attached at the top of the loafing shed, but, really, all we need is for us to be able to walk under it, and for birds of prey (we have a lot around here) not to eat my damn chickens. So, it will be applied at just over the height of the door into the coop, which will make life much much simpler.

Of course, we are on a bloody time limit, at least in terms of having Mr. Helpfulpants around, as he is heading off on Sunday to DC for a business trip for the next week. I'll be able to do a lot of this stuff, but it really is easier having him here to help. But, chicken's growth waits for no business trips, so they'll go in with just a floor, and no insulated walls yet. Those can come...later. The same can be said for the photos of the coop. I didn't take any before pictures, so you don't get any progress pictures. I'll just spam you with finished shots, whenever that happens.

Size matters

2010-06-30T16:43:00.003-04:00

In case you thought that I was overstating that the bantams are much smaller than the standard birdies, here is a side by side comparison. The black ones are even smaller than this!

Also, meet Henrietta. She will hop into my hand as soon as I stick it into the stock tank. Mostly to attempt to escape, but it still is endearing as hell. I'm glad that the Barred Plymouth Rocks are the friendliest ones, since they make up the majority of my future layers.
(Edited: I think this may be a Henry, instead of a Henrietta. Either way, I am keeping 'em, since this is the only one who likes to be picked up and held. Fell asleep on me twice today. That's a heckuva improvement over the terrified shivering that happened when I started picking 'em up.)

Learnin'

2010-06-29T13:47:00.007-04:00

My cousin Kristy came to visit my farm after an excellent trip to the Estes Park Scandinavian Solstice festival this last weekend. On the festival side of things, Daven and I have been recruited by live steel Viking re-enactors. On the farm side of things...Well, Kristy has birds.

We sat and hung out with the chickens for a while. She mentioned that most people freak out and jerk back their hands if a chicken pecks at them. Ahem. Guilty as charged. :( So, she just left her hand in the enclosure for a while, and sighed sadly. "You should really work on socializing them."

Well, yes. I should, I suppose.

So I have.

The results:

I'd say that worked out pretty well. :) Now I can get a few of them to eat out of my hand, and hop up to explore my arm, too.

Somewhat unrelated, but because I mentioned the alpaca chickens, but haven't been featuring them in photos, here ya go:

They are really itty bitty things. Bantams look somewhat hilarious compared to some of the bruisers that I've got in my flock. Soon enough I'll have to split the roosters off from the hens, though I'll leave the silkies with the hens, since they have, shall we say, longer term plans.

In just seven days, I will make you a chii-ii-ii-iicken!

2010-06-25T19:50:00.006-04:00

Today, the chicks are 7 days old. The changes are remarkable! Look at those wings! Scroll down to the previous entry for their little fluffball stage. Some of the chicks have tail feathers, and one of my favourite boys has feathers growing in on his fluffy feet. Ah, pre-teens. Next week: teenagers.

Rhode Island Reds - 5 days old

Rhode Island Reds - 6 days old

Rhode Island Reds - 7 days old

Today got up to 97F, which is REALLY HOT for wee chickies. Cooling them off was a multi-step process!
Step 1: Turn big fan on.
Step 2: Try to explain to chickens that the noise is really not going to kill them.
Step 3. Realize I am trying to rationalize with week old chickens.
Step 4. Sigh.
Step 5. Investigate giving chicks cold food to cool them down.
Step 6. Steal frozen strawberries from husband, have him chop them up.
Step 7. Put frozen strawberries on dishes, place in pen.
Step 8. Try to explain to the chickens that the little dishes really don't have poison, and they can stop flipping out.
Repeat step 3.
Step 9. Sit and watch chickens as they eventually get the idea, once I add some feed to the top of the strawberries.
Step 10. Watch chickens start swarming like sharks, then start playing a game very similar to football, where one chick gets a stained bit of bedding in its mouth and runs like hell whilst the others chase it.
Step 11. Try to explain to husband that the chickens are playing football. Husband was lifting weights, seemed amused but dubious.
Step 12. Realize that chickens will never replicate this game in front of husband, no matter how long he sits there.
Step 13. Contemplate if chickens are trying to make her look bad.
Step 14. Go inside and post instead of repeating Step 3 in regards to talking chickens into playing "football" when anyone but she is there.

I've also dropped a small fortune on materials for a chicken run. Hopefully the little buggers like it, as we'll start working on it tomorrow. Photos...eventually.

Chickies are delicate.

2010-06-22T13:42:00.007-04:00

So, just lost a second chick. (No, it wasn't the one my mother was holding in the above picture. I just thought I'd start things off with some cuteness.) They got riled up yesterday due to being startled, and one of them got knocked down and trampled. He seemed fine last night, but this morning he had a sticky bottom with bloody stools. I put him in the Box of Isolation (which seems to be an elaborate coffin, at this point) and he had died by the time I came back out to check on them 2 hours later.

Sigh.

Well, I still have a lot of chicks. This is why I bought oodles of the little buggers. I knew there would be a certain, shall we say, shrinkage to the flock.

It is disappointing, but not unexpected.

In other news, some of the chicks are already getting wing feathers! These guys are only 4-5 days old! They'll be out of the cute fluffy stage sooner than I expected.

Here is a comparison of one of the Rhode Island Red hens:
2 days old
3 days old
4 days old

Crazy, innit?

Chikkinz!!

2010-06-20T00:20:00.007-04:00

There is always one in every crowd who can't act natural, and ends up looking at the camera.

Completely unexpectedly, my chickens arrived today. They were supposed to be here on Monday or Tuesday, so Saturday left me in a bit of a tizzy. We had an exciting run down to Fort Collins (they didn't go to the Wellington post office) to pick up the little peepers. In the process, we ended up missing out on a family dinner, but I think everyone understood.

When we got to the post office, we opened up the box and the chicks were so excited/freaked out that they started trying to hop out of the shipping box. Everyone looked OK from the cursory glance, and after another errand, we headed home. This is the box:

I had just found the kind of bedding I wanted today, which was really opportune, as well as getting the length of chain we needed to hang the heat lamp. Here is our setup:

The little box contained Steve, The Sickly Chicken (as dubbed by my cousin Brandon who came with his folks to see our new house/visit the tiny baby chickens). Steve was one of the silkie bantams, and got a little smushed during shipping under his many (44!) fellow chicks. After general shenanigans involving Nerf Swords, and impromptu prayer session/vigil for Steve (as headed by Brandon), sadly, Steve didn't make it. I didn't really think he would, but man, nothing like a 12 year old's perspective to make you look at livestock a little differently.

And now, to shake off the woes of Steve-the-no-longer-with-us, here is a photo of a chick asleep in his food trough:

Where do you go?

2010-06-16T10:15:00.002-04:00

So, I'm giving up on the whole "keep this all fibre, all the time" premise of this blog. There will be anecdotes from the farm, possibly wibbling about health and general "huh, that's weird" stories.

To start this off...

We have a spider. He (or she, but I randomly have deemed it to be a him), lives in our downstairs bathroom, up on the ceiling. He has been there since we moved in, and since I'd rather have a non-dangerous spider keeping bugs under control than using a bunch of chemicals, we let him stay.

At first he had a friend of a similar size. Then, one day, no friend. Oops.

But this is all just background. The real question I have is to his whereabouts in the morning. By noon and into the evening, he is in his normal spot. Mornings, however, he is missing. I honestly can't figure out where he goes, since there aren't a whole lot of places to hide in that bathroom. Maybe in the fan?

Or, I can go with the solution that my brain presents to me: Trans-dimensional spider. Aw, yeah.

Estes Park Wool Market

2010-06-12T21:31:00.003-04:00

Today was very very different than the trip to MD S&W. MD was immensely crowded, we had a minivan full of people that we hauled up there, and it was HOT. We went up to the festival today with just Daven and myself, and due to the weather being around 44F and drizzly, there was not so much with the crowds.

The first thing I have to say is that this is an amazing location. Estes Park is so very beautiful. The drive was about 1.5 hours from our house, but the lion's share was through some amazing rugged mountains. Estes Park is about 2000 feet higher than our house, so there was a little *gasp gasp* when we first got out of the car and started walking around, but we adapted pretty quickly.

With the weather as it was, we were wearing our oil skin dusters and cowboy hats, along with combat boots and bdus, as we knew it would be rainy and horrid. We got a lot of odd looks, but we got even more "You guys are the only ones who are actually dressed appropriately" comments from folks. Yes, I admit to snickering at the drenched girls in shorts and flip flops. Weather.com, people. Use it.

The festival is much much smaller than MD S&W. Whereas MD has an air of "family fun fair that happens to have a billion sheep", this was more "so you want to show your critters; we can do that for you." The vendors would fit into about 1.5-2 of the smaller vendor buildings at MD, but the quality of products was excellent. Creatively Dyed was there, as was my favourite sheep artist (shut up, I'm allowed to have a favourite sheep artist), but just due to the fact that it is kinda out in BFE, there was a much smaller group of people vending and displaying.

There was a much better variety of critters though! The organization is that each critter type got its own barn/tent. There were adorable yaks, including a baby that made the cutest noises ever. I got to pet a Paco Vicuna fleece, which was stupidly soft (I got the contact information for the breeder; she wasn't allowed to sell her fleeces at the market for some odd reason). There were actually as many goats as sheep at this festival, which is a contrast from MD. But the main critter types there were definitely alpacas, and even more so, llamas. They had llamas comin' outta their ears! Rather than the one or two alpaca farms, there was an entire tent of breeders, so you could wander around and eyeball a bunch of different livestock.

After I purchased a light grey alpaca fleece (surprise, surprise), we ended up over talking to a couple that have been raising alpacas for 12 years. They give seminars on raising alpacas, and initially invited us to join one of their classes. We talked a while longer, I gave them a general rundown of what my plan was, and they then modified their invitation to "come and have a beer with us on our farm". We'll probably be taking them up on that offer the last week of June. They're down in Loveland, about 45 minutes south, but they're familiar with our area. I was stupidly proud of myself for actually talking to some alpaca people, as this was on my list of things I must do at this festival. I get weird and shy about talking to folks on occasion, so it was nice that they were friendly and had really quirky senses of humour that we clicked well with. :)

I did manage to pick up a couple of ounces of angora bunny fluff, as well as some cards for breeders in the area of various types of bunnies. Again, I must find out if I can *spin* the stuff before I'm all crazygonuts and get a bunny, even if they are adorable and fluffy and...yeah.

Another triumph was getting the contact info for the bison ranch just north of us on the CO/WY border. One of the vendor's sister owns that ranch, and hooked us up with a card. Yay! Tasty meats for our freezer!

Unlike the feeling of being rushed and having to tear ass around MD, this was a very relaxed place. We ended up only spending about 3 hours there, and saw pretty much everything we wanted to see.

The drive down wasn't quite as much fun for me, as we were pointed downwards and I was definitely having some control issues with not driving. The last 5 minutes in the mountains was very close in, which triggered a bit of claustrophobia, but I lived through it. Apparently it is just a craps shoot for what the weather will be like. The vendors we talked to said that it can vary between snow and running around in shorts and tank tops. Variety pack weather!

Estes Park is absolutely going on the list of places to bring visitors, and I know I'll want to come back to the Wool Market next year. Hopefully by then I'll have some critters of my own!

Life in the clouds

2010-06-10T12:30:00.007-04:00

The tree that is an excellent landmark, which shows people where to turn onto the dirt road to get to our house. This picture makes me want to buy a nice camera to take more photos. Totally wrong species, but very reminiscent of Yggdrasil to me.

So, the move is done. We still have piles of boxes, and a lot of work to do to settle into our new farm, but so far, so good. Some of this information will be repetitive for those of you who see me on Facebook, but it should be a little more fleshed out here.

Moving to a farm has a few novel expenses that you don't get when you move to just a new house. I've purchased a scythe, the better to mow my field. I'm not terribly good with it so far, but I'll get the swing of it eventually, and it is a darn sight cheaper than a tractor. I also picked up a livestock tank, which will be the first home of the baby chicks when they arrive in a week and a bit. A chicken light and infrared bulb were also acquired.

My dad was able to scrounge up the chicken feeders and waterers from back when we raised chickens when I was growing up, and will be bringing them down to me next weekend. Lest you think that he is mad enough to drive from ND to CO just with some chicken supplies that I could easily purchase, he and my mother will also be bringing down the antique dining room set that I grew up with (It was 85 years old when they bought it. I was 3 at the time.), along with an antique table that my maternal grandfather's aunt had owned, and a bureau that has also been around as long as I can remember. The dark woods should go nicely with the new living room set we purchased. Hooray for Memorial Day sales, and delivery people who know how to drive down a narrow driveway!

Daven picked up a nice Weber grill and a table saw (the better to build chicken coops with, my dear), with my encouragement, and a few 10% off coupons for Lowe's.

My "office" is set up in the corner of the living/dining room. I've got my loom next to me and my spinning wheel on the other side of the big brick fireplace. I've got a great view, as illustrated below:

Our neighbours on all sides have horses. Must re-learn how to ride. After the house is set up, maybe.

Speaking of neighbours, we've actually met quite a few of them! We've been taking walks in the mornings, and some evenings, and have had a chance to chat with the folks to the east and west of us. The fellow to the south seems a bit reserved, but that is fine; not everyone has to be my friend.

We've got all sorts of critters here, too. Especially birds. I was simply thrilled when we arrived and one of the first things I heard was a Western Meadowlark. These were my favourites when I was growing up, and the fact that our land is simply filthy with them makes me grin. They have such a unique call.

Gratuitous critter photos:

Chicken pictures will be coming soon! Also, I failed to check in with my knitting progress for April or May. Those pics will turn up...eventually.

Ah, Spring!

2010-05-16T10:39:00.003-04:00

When a girl's thoughts turn to...working on that big heavy sweater of Daven's. I'm blaming it on the fact that I came across it again when I was packing up. I finally finished the back last night (with about 3" extra knitting to accommodate for Daven's Mighty Shoulders), and now I can finally get started on the (stupidly long) arms. At least those won't be as ridiculously hot to work on during the drive to CO, even if Daven has monkey arms that take forever to knit for.

Socks continue, of course, as well. I'll get the April work shots up eventually; probably after I clear off the guest bed enough to take a picture of the blanket that I finished. (I realize the majority of people who even read this blog have already seen it in person, but it's so I can remember what I make. Some months I feel so unproductive, it is nice to see that I really am making a lot of stuff.)

Now, off to pack up the couch to give to Dave and Britt. The next week will be crazy. More non-knitting stuff will likely leak into the blog, but don't worry, I'll stay pretty fixated.

Also, hi to the lovely lady who found me via Pioneer Woman! *wave* Yes, we totally need to teach Ree to knit. You know, in her copious amounts of spare time. *grin*

MD Sheep and Wool 2010

2010-05-02T15:14:00.005-04:00

This year's MD S&W was a bit different from past excursions, but very fun.

The weekend started with Jennie and Happygoth coming up from Atlanta late Thursday night. Within 5 minutes of their arrival, there was an epic battle around the living and dining rooms with the Nerf swords. Just having them around made me so ridiculously cheerful that I stayed giddy through work on Friday, and I was more of my "yay, stuff is awesome!" self, rather than the "meh, stuff sucks and I'm tired" self, which gave my coworker pause. He playfully accused me of saving all of the grumpy for work, which was terribly thoughtful of me. *chuckle*

I left work early on Friday, to make up for some hours that I'd worked extra the week before, and once I got home, we started working on the evil plan that I'd hatched halfway through the work day. This was the painting of our new 6'x12' trailer that we bought for moving purposes, and for general "haul stuff" once we arrive in CO.

The end result:

Daven's sister Rattlefox appeared about halfway through the painting the first side, and dove right in to helping us paint. She is the creator of the slightly dazed looking crab. Dave also popped by to escape some traffic and helped out. I love the end result. It makes me feel like I should run away and join the circus! I look at it and have to grin; it is too ridiculous not to.

After we were done getting high on paint fumes (Whee!) we hit our favourite sushi joint and had yummy bento boxes. The girls played dress-up with the stuff I have left over from the big "please take away my stuff" purge, then sat around and knit in the living room before turning in relatively early for our big day on Saturday.

Saturday, Daven got up early to cook a fabulous tasty breakfast, which we enjoyed immensely. Rattlefox had stopped to get donuts, which we each cut chunks out of to sample, and they were AMAZING. *drool* I think we'll have to stop and pick some of these up on the first leg of our move, since we'll be heading to her place first. So, after breakfast, Spyke came over and we headed off to the festival, following some kilt-based shenanigans.

That took a while. A long while. For, lo, MD S&W has become STUPIDLY popular, and it ended up taking about an hour and a half to go about 4 miles. Highway 32 sucked. On the upside, we had a lot of fun and silliness with the herd of folks in the van, but, dude. We had planned to arrive around 10:30, and it was closer to 11:30 when we arrived. That was no fun at all.

Once we got into the last portion of the drive, Daven went off with the van to park, and the other 5 of us got out to walk the quarter of a mile or so to the show. Also, to have dandelion fights, as we do. :) Once we were in the festival, we met up briefly with our friend Jim and his wife, before beginning the shopping spree. After fighting similar traffic (though we warned him to not use 32, so he missed that nightmare) Bald Scott made the good call of parking a mile or so away from the festival and walking, rather than dealing with the retarded parking traffic. Food was attained (though, since it was nearly 90 degrees and I don't deal with heat well, I mostly lived off of strawberry lemonade for the day) and once we stopped feeling all angry and hungry, shopping for the fibre fiends continued, whilst those slightly less interested in the difference between a Romney and a Lincoln cross fleece went to sit and enjoy the people watching. Darcy helped me select a couple of fleeces and when we went back to deposit these relatively heavy items to our fibre sherpas, they cleverly made a base camp under a small, but useful tree. Dave and Britt turned up and joined the merry gang of folks sitting under the tree. Further shopping excursions were made, but we would constantly re-group with the pile of stuff and people. During one of these lounge breaks, Colleen happened past, whilst taking some fibre to be processed, and to pick up a few big bags of finished yarn. I volunteered Scott and Spyke to sherpa for her, as there was a whole lotta yarn involved. (So pretty! But I'm kinda trying to behave. And yes, though I bought some stuff, I didn't buy nearly as much as I did last year, and most of it was on my mental list.)

Beside the oppressive heat that prevented me from really being able to eat anything (ugh), what was really weird for me was that they had rearranged the vendors a great deal. Basically, if someone had a tent, and was popular, they got moved to the back 40. That sucked for them; they'd previously been in very highly trafficked areas, and we spent most of the day going "man, I wonder where vendor X went to...maybe they aren't here this year..." before finding them right at the end of the day. I spoke to a couple of the vendors, and they were just languishing. Yes, I understand that they did this for safety reasons, but this seemed to be a last minute change of location, as evidently they were not on the site map. Yes, you should totally take some of your most popular vendors and isolate them so they have a terrible sales year. Great plan! *smack smack* If I was a vendor, I would be seriously pissed off. They were trying to be upbeat, but as I've been on their side of the table...this was tough. :/

We managed to close the place down (a first for me), which meant the lion's share of exit traffic had already dispersed. There was a caravan to a fantastic Mongolian joint near Scott's house for dinner, with Daven, myself, Jennie, Laura, Darcy, Scott, Dave, Britt and Spyke slowly becoming more human again following food and lots of water.

I'm still a little dehydrated today, but I had a fantastic time. I was so happy to visit with so many folks that I don't see nearly often enough.

And the haul round up:
1 Romney fleece; dark gray. Skirted, but otherwise unprocessed.
1 Rambouillet fleece; 2 shades of gray. Same state of unprocessedness.
4 hanks of sock yarn from Creatively Dyed.
1 hank of sock yarn from Spirit Trail Fiberworks. This is so luxurious. 75% superwash Merino/15% Cashmere/10% Bombyx silk, in the "Firedance" colourway. I totally have to buy more yarn from these people. Everything I touched made me go "oooh!"
1 astonishingly soft black fur hat that is totally an old lady hat and I DON'T CARE BECAUSE IT IS AMAZING. Also, I usually look like a moron in most hats, but I don't in this. *beam*

And more fibre-related goodness: Whilst I was lamenting being so far away from MD after the move, Rattelfox cheerfully brought up the Estes Park Wool Market. Yeah, that'll be an hour and a half from our new house. Yes, even after hitting MD yesterday, I'm totally going to Estes Park in a little over a month. YAY! *happy wiggle* Hopefully I'll find good suppliers for critters that will be semi-local to me! Plans are already being hatch to get Jennie and HappyGoth out for that one next year. *glee*

No strings attached.

2010-04-14T08:09:00.002-04:00

So, in the effort to diversify a little bit around the blog, I'm going to be putting down my thoughts on the whole "farm" thing, too. The yarn talk will continue, but this will track what's going on as I transition to CO farm chick.

Speaking of chicks...I placed an order with McMurray Hatchery last night. 5 Barred Plymouth Rocks, 2 Black Stars and 3 Rhode Island Reds, all hens. 4 "straight run" silkies, 2 black and 2 white. (These are clearly pet chickens, but they are so cute. Daven keeps calling them alpaca chickens, so they had to come along.) And just to keep my life complicated...a variety pack of 25 meat roosters. I figure I'd like to try a bunch of different breeds. Yes, as of last night, I've locked myself into killing and eating a bunch of birds. I've already asked my parents to come down to help with butchering, since they raised chickens when I was growing up, and I certainly remember slaughter time. We'll be doing things a little differently, or at least that's the plan. More about that, later. I'll give warnings before launching into (literal!) gory details.

A day late, but the monthly round-up of photos

2010-04-02T21:21:00.005-04:00

This is what March has wrought for me. I've been a little busy.

Welcome to my living room. It is full of string and crazy. Watch out for the brain eating cthulhu plush dolls.

My dad's birthday socks. I sent them along with the red&pink socks that I knit back in January for my mother, as I am a slacker and their birthdays are within a month of each other. I enjoy the fact that my parents are very happy with receiving socks as presents. :)

More socks that will be presents. Hopefully they'll fit. The first socks I've knit using the magic loop method. I've cast on another pair of stripey socks using the same method, with different yarn. This is my blind/travel knitting that requires no real attention from me.

The first of the pair of socks from the big box of sock kits. I'm not keeping up with the "novel pair of socks" every month, mostly because...uh...I'm knitting everything else under the sun.

I didn't knit all of this in March. No, I cast this on back before Daven and I got engaged and had knit about half of it. I've been moving it around from house to house ever since. Funnily enough, once I picked it up and started working on it again, I finished in about 3 hours. Self, please remember that in order to finish a project, you must WORK ON a project. As I said to HappyGoth on IM "This is going to be a lesson that I feel I will learn numerous times in my life, and always be surprised by it."

And this is the big bastard that has been taking up most of my time. It's a queen sized blanket, obviously knit in panels. Size 17 needles, 4 strands of acrylic. I decided I would rather move a finished product than a big bin of random acrylic yarn, so cast this on. It is super easy, but incredibly heavy, so I have to wear my elbow brace if I'm working on it at all. I hopefully am on the last panel now, and hope to finish it before too long.

I also spun a bobbin of fine yarn, but I didn't take a picture because it loses something on the bobbin. Maybe next month.

For every horror show, there is at least one cute thing.

2010-03-30T18:15:00.001-04:00

And this is that cute thing. Oh, I squee. Must. Make!

Reason #349587 that people look at knitters oddly

2010-03-22T14:51:00.002-04:00

Because there are knitters who will design things like this. The page tends to imply that they then expect others to want to make this item badly enough that they will pay for it. (For those without Ravelry accounts, BEHOLD!)

Also, these are tragic. Why? WHY?!

Monthly Progress Report

2010-03-02T19:13:00.004-05:00

Well, I think I documented what I knit during February pretty darn thoroughly, really. I did knit the second sock to the single sock I took a photo of at the beginning of February, but then I had a friend compliment it, and as she has the same size feet as me, they followed her home without a photo being taken.

These things happen with me.

I have done a teensy bit of spinning and I cast on a sock, but nothing really to write about. I finished the Adult Surprise Jacket (stupid i-cord) but it's waaaaaaaaaay upstaaaaaaaairs and I'm laaaaaaaaazy. Maybe there will eventually be a photo, but it really isn't all that different from the last picture.

I've done almost no knitting since finishing the Olympic sweater. I think I finally found my knit-limit! *gasp*

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be back at it soon, and there will be more pictures in the future.

End of Day 16

2010-02-28T00:22:00.003-05:00

Lo, Verily. Behold!

Steeks! That worked!

I'll come up with a better post another time, but mostly...I'm exhausted, but happy that the sweater is (basically, I've got a couple of ends to weave in) done.

HOORAY! I DID IT! *happydance*

End of Day 15

2010-02-26T22:41:00.002-05:00

Ta da! Collar and neckband! I'll deal with the sleeves...tomorrow. I'm terribly pleased with how this turned out. Ah, so you steek to get very crisp lines. Cool.

Still afraid of the sleeves.

End in sight. Knitting all done. Only cutting and sewing left. *crosses fingers* AH CAN DOOO EEEEEEEEET!

End of Day 14 - Steeeeeeeeeeeek!

2010-02-25T23:33:00.003-05:00

Sleeve/Crotchless leggings.

Pre-steeked body.

Post-steeked body.

And now that I'm set up to knit the collar tomorrow, I'm going to take Elizabeth Zimmerman's advice and have a nice lie down in a dark room.

Steeks are still scary. I hope it all stays!

End of Day 13

2010-02-24T22:05:00.003-05:00

Getting nearly out of time now. Though you can't see it, with the way the steeking and the bound off stitches work out...I seem to have knit some crotchless leggings. How unexpected.

I was off of work due to being sick today, which wasn't nearly as helpful to knitting progress as you might think, since the sick involved being incredibly disoriented all day and having no attention span. It was not fun, but I managed to get a reasonable amount of progress despite the fact that I was pretty darn brain dead.

End of Day 12

2010-02-23T22:39:00.002-05:00

Today was not a great day for knitting progress. I'll have to do better tomorrow. :/

End of Day 11

2010-02-22T23:28:00.001-05:00

There is no sweater. There is only Zuul.

Or sleeve. One of those.

And now, there is only sleep.

End of Day 10

2010-02-21T22:11:00.003-05:00

Well, there has been no change to the body of the sweater, so here's an arm. I'm to the point where I need to cast on and knit my second sleeve, so the tops of the two sleeves can be worked at the same time, with steeks between them.

Somehow, I don't think the second sleeve will move *quite* as fast as the first one. Still lovin' magic loop, though.

Onward!

End of Day 9

2010-02-21T00:36:00.003-05:00

So, the lion's share of the body is done, and the first sleeve is cast on.

Hilarious story. Apparently, when I ordered a set of size 5 interchangeable tips from KnitPicks, they sent me a pair in a size 5 container...but they're size 4. That means I knit the ENTIRE SWEATER in the wrong side needles.

Guess what? I. DO. NOT. CARE. There is nothing to be done about it, and at least it means that the poor thing is consistently screwed up. (OK, I care a little bit, but not enough to do anything about it. It does emphasize the fact that I need to order more *actual* size 5 needle tips, though.)

The fascinating part of today (because today was Challenging (tm)) was teaching myself the magic loop technique. Right, I'm a convert. I still love my DPNs, but I finally see what the fuss is about. I did the three inches of stockinette on the bottom of the cuff in what seemed like no time.

And whilst I'm cataloging my woes; you know that something has gone terribly badly when one's husband says "Uh...that's kind of ugly." in response to a portion of your knitting. Especially with my colour coordinated husband. For reasons that I do not understand, the kit wanted me to do a three needle cast off on the exterior of the sweater, with the teal'ish yarn. I was dubious, but by then I was so mentally fried that I just wanted to stop, so I followed through. Daven asked if that was a temporary cast off, and when he found out it was not, he made very unhappy noises. So, that means that I tore back the weird teal cast off and redid it with the dark blue. Much more cohesive. I think they meant it to be decorative, but mostly it just looked like poorly planned out crap.

The sleeve was an adventure, too. As I previously stated, I'm knitting the size 48 sweater. Well, the cuffs that go along with that are HUGE. Yes, I understand that you think that the person knitting the XXL is really enormous, but I've got tetchy little wrists. 6" wrists, people! Therefore, with the help of the handy husband-calculator, I figured out how fast my increases will have to be, as I'm making the smallest size cuffs, which fit just great, thankyouverymuch.

Here's to hoping tomorrow is less "beat my head against a wall" and more "tear ass through more stockinette on that sleeve". *fingers crossed*

End of Day 8

2010-02-19T22:51:00.003-05:00

This is about the halfway mark for time. Eeek, I hope I can get this done. I'm a row or two away from casting off for the neck, so I'll hopefully finish the body tomorrow and start on a sleeve.

End of Day 7

2010-02-18T21:58:00.003-05:00

So, here I am, a week in. Not that I've really been able to use all of that time (see: worked a con last weekend that caused my elbow tendinitis to flare like crazy), but it is comin' along.

I will point out that this sweater has a mountain range right across the bustline. Real subtle, sweater.

End of Day 6

2010-02-17T22:35:00.003-05:00

Back to the colours! Fie on you, stockinette stitch of boring!

...Of course, tonight I was feeling pretty good about myself. "Yeah! I'm FLYIN' along!" You can see where this went. "So I need to cast off for the steek...2 rows ago." *cusses a lot* *tinks* I think I did more tinking tonight than knitting, between being mentally distracted and kind of crashy with waiting too long between meals. But, still, here we are.

I admit it. I have never steeked before. I am a little frightened. Let's hope that this totally normal thing that thousands of people do ALL THE TIME doesn't get totally messed up by yours truly.

End of Day 5

2010-02-16T22:05:00.001-05:00

2" left of blue stockinette to go!

End of Day 4

2010-02-15T22:07:00.003-05:00

So much stockinette to go before the next patterned part. *groan*

This is also the 48" size, so, it's not going to exactly zip along. Hey, I've got a lot up top, and the pattern calls for it to be loose. Ha, good luck with that.

Day 4

2010-02-15T12:32:00.002-05:00

Unsurprisingly, considering I had a con to work this last weekend, I am behind schedule on knitting. I'm most of the way through the bottom fair isle band on the body, and will have inches and inches of plain blue knitting very soon.

On the upside, today is a holiday, so I'm spending it mostly knitting and watching musicals, so I might get slightly less behind, though it'll be quite a trick to catch up. I might do end-of-day photos to document my progress and keep me motivated. Whee.

Oh, what have I gotten myself into?

2010-02-10T20:32:00.003-05:00

I've gone and officially signed up for the knitting Olympics on the YarnHarlot's blog.

Well, hopefully I'll have a nice blue sweater to show for it at the end. Pity it wasn't this week, when I've been out of work due to snow.

Huh.

2010-02-10T14:09:00.001-05:00

So, it isn't the pattern that bothers me here, though it isn't my thing.

What I'm looking at is the size of this woman's hands. Yikes. Those are some paws she's got herself.

Uhhh...

2010-02-08T19:29:00.001-05:00

Yeah, two posts in one day. That's called being snowed in, babycakes.

So, this is horrifying. It appears that she has tripe, or possibly strips of a brain, draped around her neck. That is a really unfortunate colour choice for it. Maybe I'm just not a ruffle kind of girl.

We interrupt this radio silence with an important announcement.

2010-02-08T15:32:00.004-05:00

Well, no. Not really. But I have been quieter than normal; nearly two months without a post seems a little excessive.

I'm going to try a new thing, though I'm not sure how well it'll work. I'll post everything that I've worked on/completed each month. Since I was a little slow out of the gates with this, these are the photos of everything I've done since around the first of the year.

Some of the spinning that I've worked on. I'm poking around at making more of the flame coloured good stuff.

Stuff That I dyed: Three hanks of sock yarn (the one with the red is a 10 yd hank, which was fascinating to wind off on my warping board, and will be an enormous PITA to turn into a ball once I start working with it) and three 100g hanks of ramboulliet fluff.

Adult Surprise Jacket. I'm not in love with the button holes so I'm putting some ties in to have it in more of a kimono closure. I also made the pockets deeper. There will be another photo of this next time, most likely.

Sweater for Daven. This has been slowly creeping along for the last couple of months. The front is done, and this is the back. I knit this in the round so I wouldn't have to do much finishing up, but going back and forth for the back is...boring. As Daven put it this afternoon "So long as it's done before next winter, I won't give you too much shit about this." OK, love. You'll have a sweater by then. Promise. :>

Socks! Yes, I've knit all of these since the first of the year.

I have a Sock Scheme (tm) that I stole whole cloth from the YarnHarlot, and I've set up a bunch of sock kits. And when I say "A bunch" I mean that I have more than 20 kits set up with the yarn and pattern matched up. The tricky bit was that every pattern is one that I have never knit before. I admit it, I'm a comfort knitter, which means I haven't been learning much lately. I'm sick of that, so, this is my new strategy. Also, because I'm a picky bastard and I didn't like any of the options available to me, I ended up merging several things together into an entirely new (to me) sock pattern. It is serious business when I drag things like Traditional Scandinavian Knitting out.

In addition to finishing the Adult Surprise sweater (I hate you, I-cord), I'm working on the second sock to match the solitary guy up above, I continue to plug along with the Daven Sweater (when that gets done, I'll probably have a nice image heavy post of it), and I've purchased a sweater kit that I couldn't resist. Though I'm not much of a social crafter, I think I'm going to try and make that sweater during the knitting Olympics. This would probably go better if I, oh, watched the Olympics (no telly reception, yes, on purpose), but such things have never stopped me before!

Unrelated to crafting: I am plotting about chickens when the summer comes. I'll probably ramble about that in the future, so be prepared.

Truth in Advertising

2009-12-17T08:35:00.002-05:00

Ah, Ravelry. How I love some of the crazy shit people post to you.

To humiliate the Dog

What a thing to do to a canine companion.

Why do I even ask?

2009-12-10T21:00:00.001-05:00

My mother and I have had the same conversation multiple times.

"I'm knitting dad socks. What do you want?" "I want socks too!" "What colour?" "Black!" "Black sucks." "Blaaaack." "Aw, c'mon, you're killing me." "Blaaaaaaaaaaaack. Maybe white." *nrgh*

So, because I love my mother, I am going to take a pair of lovely teal and purple and blue socks off the needles (I'll put 'em on a stitch holder for later) and knit my mother a pair of blaaaaaaack socks.

Blaaaaaack. >_<

Bwee-ooo

2009-12-06T21:21:00.002-05:00

We interrupt these wool reviews with the following news flash:

This is an awesome pattern. It is just the right amount of fiddly to demand your full attention until you get the hang of it, and has a few bits that are quite clever. It's a chatty pattern, but I had a heckuva good time knitting this today. The end result is super cute and squooshy. Hopefully the little person it is intended for likes it, too, or at least said wee person's parents do.

...I might have to make one of these in a Wendi size. The pattern could be translated into socks, too, for extra warm socks...ponder ponder.

Anyway, back to wool soon enough. I've stalled out on the fleece processing, as I'm spinning up some stuff I dyed last spring. I need to get back into that before my time is no longer my own again.

Review 3

2009-12-05T15:59:00.002-05:00

Icelandic: This was an enjoyable chunk of fleece to process, but, hoo boy, is the reward limited. Half of the fleece is the hair, and the undercoat is very soft, but not much fun to spin. I wouldn't turn this down if it presented itself, but I don't think I'd actively seek it out again.

Welsh Mountain: Black and scritchy. This was ridiculously easy to process and it was begging to be spun. Pity about the scritchy aspect. This is also the sheddiest fleece I've worked with thus far. *shrug*

Romney: Oh, I am in love. I really enjoyed flick carding this long staple; taking something that looked ropey and tragic and making it giant and floofy was really fun! Once I figured out the trick of spinning this (which took a bit, and I finally broke out my drop spindle to get a better idea for how much spin vs. uptake was needed), I really enjoyed myself. The colour is shades of heather gray, and the end result of the yarn has a good squoosh to it. I will be on the lookout for a Romney fleece at MD S&W in May, as this would make a beautiful sweater.

Next in queue: Wensleydale. Curly, white, and somewhat filthy.

Review 2.0

2009-11-15T12:19:00.002-05:00

East Friesian: Nice dark colour, amazing amounts of crimp, but, ugh, so crunchy. This was not a pleasure to spin, and the end result is a resounding "meh". I think I can skip this in the future.

Icelandic: De-haired it pretty easily, which cut down the volume of the actual fleece by about half. Also, I need to pay better attention to doing a final skirt of fleeces before washing them...I missed a few organic bits that...uh...melted. Ew. I haven't spun this, but the undercoat is amazingly soft and floofy. As an aside, the tip about feeding fleece into the drum carder so that it is perpendicular to the teeth really does create amazingly fluffy batts. I'll spin this up soon and give a final opinion, but this has been pretty fun so far.

Currently on the drying rack: Romney

And in knitting news, I finally cast on a sweater for Daven that I started plotting out...uh...a long time ago. I've had this yarn for quite a long time, and it was just waiting for me to get the bug to knit it up. It'll be a gansey'esque thinger, and I'm swapping out the XOX's that ran up the front and centre with some knots that Daven preferred. Yay for cabling! It pleases me. I'm attempting to knit this in the round again, as I am full of hate for seams.

With that in mind, I finished knitting my black cardie a while ago, but it's been waiting on me to finish all of those ends. Poo. I've got the finishing about half done, with just the back and one more sleeve to sew in. Le sigh. Maybe I'll do that today, if I get the motivation.

First in a series of wool reviews

2009-11-06T19:26:00.004-05:00

These will be rather random updates as I review the process of cleaning and spinning samples of various sheep breeds that I got via The Spinning Loft wool sampler. (Disclaimer: the box I got has more varieties than the one that is currently offered. Oops.)

On to the reviews!

Finn: Two toned grey shades; a charcoal and a silver. It was very easy to separate the two colours so I could spin them individually. Washing was pretty straightforward, and though it took a bit to pick, it wasn't too terrible. Ran it through my drum carder to make two big fluffy batts, then had a really enjoyable time spinning the two tones. My always favourite navajo plying resulted in a yarn that is right around worsted weight. The yarn has a bit of a sheen to it, and a teeny bit of a halo; it is soft, but has a bit of a bite to it. It might be a little harsh for garments that are worn against the skin (sweaters and such) but hats and such would be quite lovely. I really enjoyed working with this, and would seek it out again.

Southdown Babydoll: Oh, I am so sad. This is also two toned, a light grey and almost-black. This was a simply filthy sample, and had so much lanolin that it was chunky and disgusting. I washed it repeatedly and still didn't have a workable fibre to use. The grey may possibly be usable with a lot of work, but the black had the texture of a brillo pad. This is really disappointing, as I find babydoll sheep to be adorable and was considering having a couple. Well, bucko, if you can't do anything but look cute, you're no good to me. I demand usefulness, dammit! I might look at a fleece in the future, but this sample was horrid.

By the way, this is mostly for my own records. I lose papers, but hopefully I won't forget how to access my own damn blog.

Currently in the sink: East Fresian. Nice dark colour, we'll see how she works out.

Random update

2009-10-18T12:21:00.002-04:00

I decided to knit Amber for my cardigan. I knit the back and front together, and have one sleeve done. It is progressing reasonably well, though I still need to knit the little finishing part of the front. Knitting pure black things is a challenge. You can't see what the hell you're doing, and there's no pretty colour changes to distract you from the four hundredth row of stockinette stitch. I shall slog on, though, I'm nearly done! I think I'll block this bugger before seaming it up, as the cotton/bamboo blend seems to like curling in on itself and looking sullen.

I've got lots of ideas for hats for people, but I'm trying to behave and knit just the cardigan. I had a brief fling with a sock, but the gauge was off, so, back into the stash that yarn goes.

I also decided to pimp my loom a bit. I just bought a sectional warp beam and a new 15 dent reed (I have a 10 dent currently). For those who are blinking and going "huh?", that means that the string I put on the loom will be more easily corralled and I can have a finer weave result. Just smile and nod, ok? :)

Other exciting things are in the pipeline, though they have little to do with current projects, and more to do with long term plans. I'll talk more about 'em when they're more solidified.

Funny how that works.

2009-09-17T19:09:00.002-04:00

Huh. Swatch, work on project, it gets done.

Wild.

Piratical hat for nephew is finished and ready to go zooming away. Whee!

Maybe I'm doing this wrong.

2009-09-16T12:19:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about my knitting, as I am wont to do.

I realized that once I knew someone else knit, I haven't really given any handmade gifts to them (aside from the handspun to Laura).

I think this is the wrong approach. After all, who better to appreciate a well-made item than someone who actually understands what goes into making it? My reasoning has always been that "they can probably make it themselves, and probably would want to."

Well, everyone is good at different aspects of the craft. Personally, I love cables, socks and two-strand colourwork really seems to blow my skirts up. I can do lace, and can enjoy it, but I'm not totally in love with it, as evidenced by my half-finished shawl that I wandered off from sometime in May. Since that time, I've tended towards comfort-based projects; things I can knit on in the dark, or without being glued to a pattern. I tend to knit as a means to keep my hands busy whilst being social, when I'm on the road, or with my yarn shoved into my bag as I wait for someting. You know, activities that involve being distracted and interrupted a lot, which lace has no patience for.

Maybe this winter I'll have some time at home where I'm sufficiently relaxed to be reabsorbed into fiddly projects.

And in the meantime, maybe I could think about actually making gifts for my crafty friends. Just because you can do it yourself probably doesn't mean you wouldn't enjoy the occasional pressie. Just a thought.

And the number shall be three!

2009-09-15T19:07:00.002-04:00

For I've just finished knitting the third Baby Surprise Jacket.

I'm a woman obsessed.

But who is about to be distracted. My sister and brother in law both have this hat. Jen has it in purple, Brian has it in black. They've requested it for Gavin in navy. What kind of a doting aunt would I be if I were to ignore this request?

(Never you mind how I heartlessly gave up on the duckie blanket. I just haven't felt like crocheting for the last couple...years.)

I'll be modifying the pattern a little bit, to make it a little less...tall. Just trust me on this. Unless you happen to be a conehead, there is no call for having that third layer so damn tall. Maybe I'll even remember to take a picture, though I'm not holding my breath on it. I suck at remembering to actually photograph things before sending them off into the wild.

Cardigan Ideas

2009-09-14T10:47:00.002-04:00

So, I know that we are all loath to comment, but I'm looking for input. As I said yesterday, I am not in love with my knitting project. Maybe if it wasn't in black, it wouldn't be so damn boring, but I want a black cardigan.

Thus, I have found options. Please to be making with the voting.

Nifty circle cardigan. It would be fiddly as hell, and I'd have to mess with gauge a little, but it's interesting.
Honeycomb cardigan. The sample colour is quite dark, so hopefully it'd work in black. I like the shaping. POCKETS! I friggin' love pockets. I have a rant about how corporate America is actually trying to kill off all female workers by not enabling them to have pockets to carry cell phones in, so we'd never get those nifty "the world is ending, duck and cover!" messages that get sent out. ...Maybe this comes from me working with the gov't too long. Anyway. Pockets are good.
Lace. Would work with black, though it would still be fiddly, as, well, LACE.
Cross-hatch cardigan. Similar to the honeycomb, but no pockets.
Feather and fan. I'd make the sleeves longer, as I do not want 3/4 sleeves for my cardigan, dammit.
More lace. This is actually the correct gauge, and intended for cotton, so there are two points in favour of it. I'd have to make it shorter, as I don't have as much yarn as they want me to have.
Pointy lace. It'd work in black.
Amber. This is pretty much exactly the shape I'm looking for, though I don't know if I'd dig out beads for it or not. Beads are fiddly, but...shiny!

Oh, dear.

2009-09-13T17:25:00.002-04:00

Between a flurry of hats, and the third incarnation of the Baby Surprise Jacket that I've made in the last month or two; I've been trying to work on a cardigan.

It is a very practical cardigan. Because my prior work cardigan finally gave up the ghost, I decided to replace it with a handmade version. Thus, it is black. Cotton/bamboo blend, which is nice and soft, and not too oppressively warm for the workplace. As I know myself pretty darn well, I know that where my creative impulse dies is when I have to actually hem up projects. Thus, I've decided that knitting the thing with as few seams as possible is a good idea. And it is a good idea.

The problem is that it's deadly boring. I knit one impossibly long row, sigh, and put it down. There is a bit of lace, which means that I'm failing to memorize the pattern entirely, and it necessitates actually looking at my work. It isn't as fiddly as cabling, nor a totally lacey pattern, and it has a lot of working through the back of stitches. It isn't hard, but it isn't really fun, either. Again, practical.

Either this will be a long-term project, or I need to find a different pattern that grabs me a bit more. This has the finished look that I want, but dear gods. Just shoot me.

I am such a nerd.

2009-08-19T20:32:00.004-04:00

But this link makes me giddily happy.

Yes, I've been spending a lot of quality time with my loom lately. I've managed to strain the tendon in my left elbow, so whilst letting the darn thing rest, I've found that having my elbow constantly bent doesn't feel good. You know, like when one is, oh, knitting.

Fie on you, gimpy elbow. Fie.

In the meantime, I'll be over here, with my wheel and my loom, bein' all old fashioned and such. Just as soon as I utilize the interwebs a little more. Lack of advanced technology can only go so far, you know.

Also, AWESOME!

But...But...WHY?!

2009-08-05T22:59:00.001-04:00

Dear gods, why?

Argh.

2009-07-01T11:04:00.004-04:00

So. I've gotten to the point in the knitting process where I was finally able to try the cardigan on yesterday. I'd finished knitting the yoke and shoulders and lo, when I put the sweater on...the arms are too long. Like, way too long. I don't have palms when I have this sweater on.

Unfortunately, due to the Clever As Hell (tm) nature of the pattern, in order to fix this...uh...I'd have to pull out about 1/4 of my work. I'd have to tear back to before I had joined the arms, then shorten the arms individually, then do all of the work of the join/yoke/shoulders/half of hood that I already have knit.

I don't know if I have it in me to do this.

I also don't know if I will want to wear a sweater that doesn't fit. The sleeves have a fancypants flare to them at the bottom, so if I tore back that way, it'd take away that part. Also, I'm not sure if I can do that or not. (Oh, I know I could, I'm just being wibbly.)

So, I need input.

Continue to knit, knowing that I will hate the end result?

Tear back a week's worth of work, with the concern that after I do that, the will to knit this sweater will likely be sucked right out of me and it'll end up on the UFO pile indefinitely?

Or try to mess with the bottom of the sleeves to make them a more acceptable length, cute flared sleeve be damned?

Or is there another option that I'm not thinking of?

Nrgh.

Edit: After knitting a quick test swatch, I can tear back the sleeves from the bottom. It'll be fiddly and tedious but hey, I knit. Fiddly and tedious is what I do. It's *repeating myself* (be it via speech or re-doing work that I already did once) that is so disheartening to me. I can deal with a little less fancy sleeve bottoms.

Secondary Edit: Oh, WTF. The sleeves are supposed to be that long. That is a retarded design "feature". I'm docking 3 cleverness points from this pattern for that.

Ravelry links 'o terror and cardie progress report

2009-06-29T18:30:00.004-04:00

I wonder why nearly every pattern for monkey toys I can find to knit ends up being terrifying.

I'm quietly relieved that this pattern is no longer available for download, as the one on the right has...well...apparently Lovecraft designed that monkey. Monkey faces should not resemble lady bits quite so closely.

This isn't too bad, though the finished objects that people posted pictures looked NOTHING like this.

This appears to be a monkey/pig crossbreed. At least it isn't nightmare inducing.

Apparently this monkey is also a vampire, judging by that widow's peak.

This has potential, but only if you apparently figure out some short row deal on the face. The third monkey isn't too bad, but the one with the hat on it seems to be posed like it's trying to be sexy, which is disturbing to me.

DEAD MONKEYS! They'd be cute, if their little eyes weren't x's.

And just because it came up in searching for "toy monkey free" on Ravelry, I present the Useless Knit Object of the Day.

I found a dog pattern in a book that I think could be converted relatively easily. It'll be a gift, so I'm not really aiming for that kind of mental scarring.

Oh, and as an update on the blue cardigan; I'm up to nearly the top of the yoke, and will be working on the shoulders soon. I love this sweater, for it requires no seaming up. The body is knit in one bit to a point, you knit the sleeves, then join the whole shebang together and continue on up. Admittedly, it now weighs approximately a ton of wool/alpaca blend, but I think the stitch definition and drape is going to be quite lovely. It will be perfect for cold days. I'm debating if I should make the hood or not...I'll probably try it on and figure out once I've finished the shoulders. This thing knit up stupidly fast, considering I cast on less than a month ago. Ah, the joys of projects!

I live!

2009-06-04T21:24:00.002-04:00

I've got two different sock patterns on the needles, (this and this) and really just want to knit another pair of these. (I've knit two pairs. I'm in love with this pattern.) It's not anything against these two patterns; it simply is the fact that neither of them are blind knitting, and that's what I need. That leads me to...

I splurged and bought some of this (in the quenko sky colour; the actual colour is darker than the photo) for this. Now, you know how sometimes projects just flow from one's fingers as smooth and easily as breathing? This didn't start out that way. Not even a little bit. I had to tear back twice due to inability to read the chart, and I still had to fudge it a bit after I figured out that I still couldn't read, but no longer gave a darn. Once I got the pattern established, it knits up like nobody's business. It has been a long darn time since I've knit with chunky weight yarn; it is so satisfyingly zippy!

After sitting down and forcing myself to spin a yarn that is somewhere between aran and chunky (and really not enjoying it very much, but there was a lot of wool and I wanted to BE DONE with it), I've returned to spinning nice and fine. I'm spinning up some of my hand-dyed rambouillet, which, when properly rinsed out, is glorious. It requires quite a bit of twist, as it's a very sproingy fibre, but I should be getting a decent amount of yardage out of the 100g I have. I split it into 50g hanks so I can ply it against itself. (OMG! 2 ply! Not Navajo! Will wonders never cease?!) As much as I love Navajo plying, I want a finer finished product, so 2 ply is the way to go.

I bet you have missed these posts, haven't you? :p

Enough with the Fibre! On to the Wonder! To liven things up, I'll tell you a few horrifying Things Wot Have Happened To Me at Ren Faire This Season.

In the "Oh dear, I'm going to go crawl into a hole and die now" Category: I was tying a woman into a corset, and had just finished doing up the busk. Now, there's a lot of Nature in our tent. Lots of wiggly Nature. Sometimes that wiggly Nature gets to where it shouldn't be. As I look down to inspect my work, I'm horrified to observe that it appears that this lovely lady has a bit of Nature that is in her cleavage. I make a non-committal "Ah, my dear, I think you've got a..." and gesture towards her chest. "No. That's a mole." Oh. Oh dear. I've just tried to pluck a mole off of a woman. *facepalm*

In the "Let's horrify the customers" Category: Speaking with another woman about the glories of our corsets vs. other corsets, and the following phrase comes from my lips. "Ah, you see, our corsets are different! Our corsets are...COVERED IN SPIDERS!" *brushed spider off of hand, unfortunately directly at the woman, who screeched and backed away* (It was a Daddy Longlegs, we've got an army of them, and are nearly immune to their constant creepy crawliness.)

There was also a woman with a certain...let's just say "aura" around her. It was nearly palpable. An impression that is not soon forgotten. She was...interesting. *twitch*

Let's just say is quickly now: ThankgodsforFebreeze.

2 more weekends to go! I've had a lot of fun so far, and even if some days I'd rather be knitting, at least I still get to play with string *somehow*. :)

Hooray for fluff!

2009-05-05T16:24:00.003-04:00

This last weekend brought the most wonderful time of the year again. That's right; Maryland Sheep and Wool. I don't celebrate holidays, and I'm not much of a shopper. I think the amount of glee that I get out this event is why; I use up all of my shopping in one fell swoop and I'm done for another year. (Unless I could get to another fluff festival, where I'd totally do it all over again.)

Laura and Jennie came up from Atlanta to join us for my annual pilgrimage to Mecca...er...West Friendship, MD. We also met Dave and Brittany at the show, and I had a lovely time with my fluff posse.

Unlike previous years, I had a budget. A nice budget. A budget containing the money that I've been earning by working my fingers to the bone tying women into corsets. Even better, it was a cash budget. When there was no more cash, there were no more purchases. It was a lovely way to operate. The credit card never had to leave the wallet, and I loved it.

Of course, there were a few hiccups...we ran into some intensely retarded traffic going through Tyson's Corner, and ended up missing out on introducing the girls to Colleen (and seeing her myself, pout pout). And when leaving the show, the cops wouldn't let us go left, claiming there was a horrific backup that way. So, we went right; the way we didn't know. The way that a certain sugar-crashing amazonian type insisted would take us to places that we would never go to. Jennie was trying to be helpful with her GPS, but by that point, Daven and I had both reached the "No, we are large and dumb and we will FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT, DAMMIT." point of the day. We eventually got on the correct road and ended up at the same "hideously backed up" intersection. ... So, either these cops had never seen traffic in their lives, or 20 cars was a big backup that necessitated our going way the hell out of the way for. So much hate. So much. Grr. We eventually escaped the "terrible" traffic and got some food at our favoured Mexican joint in Vienna. Food and drinks. Mm. Drinks.

Anyway! The actual festival part!

We got there around 12:30, and Daven kindly offered to park the car whilst we scampered out to start the perusal 'o stuff. As there really was horrible traffic at that point, we went for it. Some 20-30 minutes later he finally rejoined us, after parking waaaaaay off in BFE. I must say, this is the fourth year I've been, and it was the most packed I've seen it. This, with the threat of rain looming over us all day! I can't imagine what madness would have occurred if it'd been sunny.

We saw many lovely things. Highlights include: jewelry made out of antique cutlery, a beautiful spinning wheel that was going up for auction that I valiantly resisted, a felted yurt with incredible wet-felting going on inside (this was Art, man), giant sheep that looked like small cows and bellowed like death metal singers, and, of course, an incredible amount of gorgeous fluff and string.

We hit a few standards; the giant eclairs (shared between Jennie, Laura and myself; Dave and Britt each got one on their own, and Daven stood watch to make sure no ninjas attacked us and took our fried sweets), the funnel cake, and the corn dogs. Because I love me some fried fair food, y0.

I've got a picture of most of what I've bought, which I'll try to upload at some point. For now, the list:
Sock yarn: 2 Skeins from Creatively Dyed Yarn, one that is bright orange/red and one that is bright red/black variegated. 2 skeins from Tess, one deep forest green tonal and one chestnut tonal. (Surprise! That's all of the yarn I bought all day!)
Fluff: 2 oz baby camel down. 2 oz yak (softer than anything I could possibly imagine). 2 oz cashmere/silk blend that is to die for. 3lb 9oz of unprocessed black/dark brown alpaca fleece. 4 undyed silk hankies. (Actually, all of the fiber that I bought was all natural coloured; I can dye my own now, thanks.)
Spinning: I got another drop spindle, made out of some beautiful wood with an incredible grain to it, as well as a little ebony. It spins like a dream, and I was trying out all of my delicate fibres that I'd picked up over the course of the day with it.
Jewelry: (This was a surprise category.) 1 pair of spinning wheel dangly earrings that I couldn't resist, and a ram's head necklace for Daven.
Food: In addition to the fried delights, we also picked up a metric buttload of jam (6 jars) from the Lion Potter, who does wonderful things with jam. Also, apple butter.
Household: Art! I bought 3 prints from the sheep artist that I'd been admiring for years. (Not that we can hang artwork in our current house, but when we move, stuff is going back up on our walls.) We picked up two sheepskins, as after spending an evening wrapped up in a sheepskin many moons ago, I decided I wanted one. There's one incredibly soft "cheapie sheepie" chestnut coloured skin that we're not sure what we'll do with, but it was too soft and too cheap to turn down. (We were a bad influence; almost everyone we were with bought a skin from that place.) Then there's the luxurious long, fluffy black sheepskin that I want to poke a hole in and attach a button to and have a really ridiculous (but warm) shawl.

All in all, this was a totally different shopping experience than what I've done in the past. The first two years were all about the yarn. Last year was mostly about the yarn, but also turned out to be about the spinning wheel, and buying a lot of lower-quality fluff that I felt like I could handle. This year was more about high quality items that I'd lusted after last year, but didn't feel like a good enough spinner to buy. To quote the Yarn Harlot in her Sheep and Wool Festival guide on Knitty: "Buy the best that you can afford." This year I did, and I don't regret a single bit of it. :)

Surprising to no one.

2009-03-26T18:11:00.002-04:00

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. :)

In which there are links and rambles.

2009-03-21T13:29:00.002-04:00

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.

Grr. Argh. gnashing of teeth

2009-02-02T18:15:00.002-05:00

I don't know why, but I suck at baby hats. Invariably, they either fit me or are so incredibly tiny that they'd cause an orange brain damage via compression.

Just because the gift I've been working on somewhat revolves around a baby hat, I was very confident in achieving my goals.

Oops. Too small. *frog*

Too big. *frog*

This one seems to have the shaping right, but it fits me, and I have no need of it. *frog*

*contemplates, decides to simply knit a beanie, and then add on from there*

Amazingly, the beanie works. It doesn't fit my wee head, but won't turn the recipient into a conehead.

Now, to add the shaping. Short rows sound good...look good for quite a while, until the last few steps, at which point it all looks like hell and I'm frustrated and pissed off again. I have one more idea left in me, and then I'm just going to rip all of the shaping out and simply send a plain beanie and no explanation why it doesn't look right.

Nothing like wasting most of a day working on something (really, I was very single minded in it) and having it Not. Work.

Grr.

"Finish him!"

2009-01-19T17:40:00.002-05:00

Or them, as the case might be.

I was reminded by my darling husband that the sweater I had knit him oh so many moons ago had no collar. This came up because there was this cold snap, ya'see, and a huge heating bill and, well, we're trying to remedy the one of those that we can control. Our (rented) house is huge, and though all of the other levels stay nice and toasty, the one that we actually spend most of our time in is bloody Baltic. So, abruptly, a sweater was a very desirable thing for him to wear. Without the collar, it looked like he'd escaped from an ill-conceived 80's flick, so collar it was.

Of course, I forgot one important thing about collars: stretchy bind-offs. What had previously slipped effortlessly over his head abruptly stopped at his temples and he made sad, muffled noises about being trapped forever in a sweater. Fiiiine, whiner. Tear back bind off. Try same bind off on bigger needles. Now it got to his ears. Swear excessively about not learning from my own mistakes. Knit a swatch and try a different bind off, as the yarn was getting to that point where I really only had one more knit left in it before it started being problematic. Success, albeit somewhat frilly success. I decided I did not care. I queried the husband as to his state of caring, he seconded that he did not care, was simply cold and would like his sweater now. I slipped it over his head to make sure it fit, and lo, I was pleased to see it went over his head. I asked "Does it come off easily? No, nevermind, I don't care. You're wearing it forever." More whining, and we figured out that yes, it fit, came off and on easily, and no, it didn't look frilly when being worn. Hooray!

Continuing in the "finished" vein, I finally used up all of the warp on the loom. This was a goal prior to having many people in my home, as the loom has been transported up to the craft room, instead of hanging out in the middle of the living room where it had become accustomed to residing. Now, I have many, many tiny knots in my near future, but I have more options on how to make the tiny knots look awesome due to (of course) my faboo SiL and her imparting a crapload of fantastic info sources to me over Christmas. (And our visit, too. She gave me a great book that she knit swatches for, and can't wait to try some of the techniques in it out!)

So, yay! Finished a few things (including the fun stripey socks that I bestowed on Heather, as when we'd visited she showed off her stripey socks and noted that they were already wearing out. This was Unacceptable as a knitter and friend, so socks had to be made!), and haven't cast anything new on as of yet. We'll see how long that lasts...