Only took me a few hours to make the background, and a few more hours to make all the little pieces. Probably took me longer to sew all the pieces on than it did to actually crochet everything. It’s done though and I’m quite happy with it. There are more pictures on flickr, and all the details you could possibly need on Ravelry.
Yes… I think the title is quite fitting of all the pictures I plan on cramming into this tiny post.
See, my boyfriend got me hooked on some TV show so I’ve spent the past week glued to my computer catching up on all the back episodes. Well, I’ve finally caught up and I can now have my life back. hehe. Last week I had gotten quite a bit acomplished, and took lots of photos thinking I’d do one post a day for each project. However, because I was too busy watching TV to actually write a post, all those pics I took last week were totally outdated by quite a bit.
First let’s begin with the stuff I got at Great Lakes Fiber Show:
Picture #1: The fleece drying. Not all the fleece of course, but some of it. I’ve been washing it in small batches and I’m still not done because so much laundry was done in this house last week I wasn’t able to use the dryer whenever I wanted, so I put off washing the rest. I have finished a big chunk of it though and I hope to finish the rest this week. Also note the big gap in the middle of the table where there’s no fleece. Apparently my beloved cat Oreo things its fun to sleep surrounded by sheepyness.
Picture #2: Creatively Dyed Handspun Yarn. It’s merino (NOT superwash). Total Yardage: 565 yds Total Weight: 228g (about 8oz) It’s a thicker weight sock yarn, nice and sqooshy. It soon shall become Monkey socks. Hopefully very soon because my sis is currently out of town so this is the perfect time to work on them (and hide them) since they will be a birthday present.
Next up! Stuff I didn’t get at Great Lakes Fiber Show.
I took that picture shortly after getting the yarn to show you all the reason my yarn stash jumped so much in the month of May. So that was the photo from the very end of May, probably about the 30th or so.
Here is the blanket now:
As you can see, it’s come a long long way. I finished the background and am now working on all the little pieces that I will eventually have to sew onto the blanket. According to the directions, I should sew them on as I go, but I prefer to wait till the end so I can make sure everything is arranged the exact way I want it.
I’ve posted pics of this project many times. It’s my first sweater. If you’re awake and still reading this post you may notice that it appears to have shrunk considerably since the last time I blogged about it. I was about an inch from the ribbing along the bottom and didn’t like the way it looked when I tried it on. I got the big girl knits book lately, and after reading that I couldn’t let the sweater slide. It needs to be a size smaller, and it needs shaping. So I shall start it again!
I have accomplished some other things on the spinning front this past week. Last Wednesday I sat down to spin up some singles and ply them. I wanted to practice more with the woolee winder. I’m actually quite happy with my woolee winder which is a big improvment over the hatred I used to have for it. Apparently I’ve finally gotten the tension almost perfect so that I can use it to it’s fullest.
So I finished the handspun that was sitting on those bobbins.
This is some of the lincoln wool I bought back in January of 2007 when I went to the Pittsburgh knit and crochet thingy. One skein is 205yds and 143g (over 5oz), and the other is 155yds and 120g (over 4oz). Those are some pretty big skeins.
The last bit of handspun. This was spun up on wednesday as well and I began plying that night. Finished up the last bit of plying in the morning. This was stuff I bought off dragonfibers.etsy.com last summer. Oh and by the way she just updated today maybe? She has some STUNNING sock yarn she just started doing… and I mean I’m so tempted to buy it. And of course she put up more sock batts in colors that I’m currently finding very hard to resist. It’s merino/tussah silk and I’m completely in love with it. Yardage on the large skein is 220yds and the weight is 94g. The oz on the little extra skein is 41yds and weighs 15g. I’m having serious issues with this yarn. I love is so much, but I’m still unsure if I want to put it up on etsy or not. I probably will, because honestly it’d make a great pair of socks. It’s about a sport weight too so it would knit up sooooooo quickly. Although I’m in love with these colors and don’t want to see them go (and honestly, it’s self striping which is making it EVEN harder) if this yarn goes, it means I can justify more yarn purchases… lol.
I’ll decide later. Both the lincoln and the merino/silk still need to be washed to set the twist. In fact, I think I’ll go do that when I finish writing this post.
Last but not least, my evil SP8 buddy strikes again. I swear, she’s trying to ruin my stash diet… she even said so in the letter! (I love you Valerie.)
SP8 ended like 2 years ago and I still get random things from her. Totally makes up for my SP10 pal who fell off the face of the planet after the first package was sent. This is handdyed merino roving from theyoyo.etsy.com. Very, very pretty. And of course, because it was a gift it will be kept forever hopefully spun up very soon. I have some work spinning stuff that I’m currently working on, but after that, this may be the next thing on the wheel.
That’s it… the end. If you got this far, I’m truely shocked. 
Oh, and if you were wondering Valerie really didn’t kill my stash diet, I did that when I signed up for the Spunky Eclectic Monthly Fiber Club like 2 days before this gorgeousness showed up. ;) But I figured since I spun up that merino/silk in less than 24 hours I could surely use up club roving in a day or two. This is me justifying yarn purchases…haha.
Happy 2008 everybody!
Now to start on those resolutions.
The most interesting one to blog about is the yarn stash reduction! Currently in the stash I have 22,217 grams, or about 49 pounds, of yarn. That includes all my handspun, all my sock yarn and my mounds of acrylic. As far as the fiber stash goes, it currently contains 197.3 oz or 12.3 pounds. That’s a scary amount of yarn things.
So take note in those numbers! I’ll be back with updates on them as I finish thing and move yarn out of the stash. :) I already have tons of project ideas in mind, now I’ll just have to find the time to complete them.
ETA: I noticed while adding some new handspun to my spreadsheet today that apparently I had one skein that was at the bottom of my list! Where the yardages and weight weren’t being counted. So I updated my numbers.
ETA2: While looking over the spreadsheet today I found that I had more yarn down than I truely had in my stash! So I fixed my typo.
YAY for CROCHET! I worked on the ripple since I posted Sunday night about it. Guess how much I’ve gotten done since Sunday? 1 whole row! WOO HOO! Maybe more like 1.5 rows cause row number 12 is almost done.
For as little blogging as I’ve done over the past few weeks, I’ve done quite a bit of knitting and crocheting. I even dug out the spindle tonight and got back to that orange sock yarn I’m going to spindle spin. I think I’ll spin it on the spindle, but ply it up on the wheel. I would prefer one or two large skeins of sock yarn instead of 30 baby skeins. 
Now for the crochet picture!
I love this blanket. It’s going to be HUGE and that makes me very, very happy. It’s currently taking almost an hour per row. Right now I’m only on row number 11. This is totally a long term project, just like those socks I’m spinning on the spindle.
School starts up again on the 27th so blogging may slow a bit. Once school starts I’m going to try to update on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday will be for knitting, Wednesday for crochet, and Friday for spinning updates. Hopefully having a set something to update about each day will allow me to post what I’ve been doing yet not bore everyone to tears. So many of my projects I’m currently working on are long term ones and there’s really nothing horribly exciting to show.
Actually I’m only changing the yarn diet in a small way. I was looking at the numbers again and since new things have been added which will give me a LOT more points just by spending time knitting and not so much finishing items, I’ve decided to up the ratio to 10:1. If I count the hours knitting a pair of socks, by the time I was finished I would be able to buy 1 or 2 pairs. That defeats the purpose of this yarn diet. The only thing really changed was the ratio. I’ve got a TON of yarn and fiber, the higher numbers will be good for me. hehe.
I’ve been crocheting quite a bit lately on the ripple afgahn and I’m not very far at all. I’m trying to get some of these FOs off the needles, cause there’s just too many things I’m working on right now.
Yea… so I’m changing the diet YET again.
I’m a big fan of the Lime N Violet podcast and I’m always on the message boards over there. Recently they started a Knitwars where you can gain points by knitting, spinning, crocheting, and finishing up your projects. This little game goes through the chorewars site which I think is just really freaking cool. So in the Knitwars thing when you do your knitting/spinning/crocheting thing you collect points. I’m going to start using these points I get as the cash I can spend on my yarn and fiber. For every 3 points I get I can spend 1 dollar; however, if I want a book I can do a 1 point to 1 dollar type rate. That way I can buy books and patterns if I need to, but I can’t buy excessive amounts of fiber.
I like this idea a little better than my fiber budget, because with the budget I just have to wait a month or so to buy something. With this knitwars thing I have to FINISH something and use up what I have before I can buy more. Which to me sounds like a better idea anyways. That way if I’m knitting 10 pairs of socks a month, I could replenish the sock yarn stash.
I need to go on a yarn diet bad which I’ve said on many occasions without actually doing anything.
Well yesterday I took one of those online stash spreadsheets and used it to organize my own stash with a few exceptions. I didn’t organized every piece of scrap acrylic yarn that I own. In fact I didn’t include most of my acrylic in my organization process because most of it was bought for charity, and organizing the wool/natural fibers wore me out. hehe.. that and there is a lot of other knitting/spinning stuff sitting on top of my box of acrylic which I didn’t feel like moving. The acrylic for that large pink/brown crocheted afgahn I started was organized because it was on top of the giant box of acrylic and accessible. 
My total yardage? 19486.89 yds.
I decided to add up the spinning stash too… made my own spreadsheet for that one and found I’ve got 157.5 oz.
Yea… I’ve got a lot of junk. I’ve still got one more skein of sock yarn on it’s way that I ordered which will but me closer to the 20,000 yd mark. My goal is to use up the stash. DUH. At least using actual numbers I’ll be able to see more of a difference in the amount of yarn being used up.
The blog I got it off of was Katydid Knits. It’s a very detailed spreadsheet and I like that you can put in the weight and yardage of the original skein… then if it’s been used up you can add in the new weight and it auto calculates your new yardage and weight. It’s cool. So if you want to organize your stash the link is in the right hand column with her patterns and such.
Bought some acrylic today. All with projects in mind though.
The massive pound of acrylic are going into an afgahn for me. I already have an afgahn, but it’s just to small so I’m going to start on a massive one cause I get really cold at night.
Also some TLC which is going to be a scarf for my boyfriend. He wants the binary scarf from the latest knitty. You know.. he hasn’t even seen a picture of the scarf, but he wants it because it’s in binary, and he’s a computer science major or something like that. He likes the computer stuff.
Also because I promised a picture of the recently completed handspun…..
Ta dA! It’s pretty. The colors in the picture are very exact too.
It’s 100% alpaca from Moonlight Meadow Farm and I bought it off them at the fiber fest last summer. Gorgeous stuff… 3oz… 310yards.
I wanted to make a hat, but the stuff is definitely a sock weight yarn. Makes me mad. I made it 3 ply hoping that I would get a worsted/light worsted, but no… sock weight.
I guess I just need to spin stuff a little thicker. I’m thinking it might make nice scarf though, maybe lacy. 310 yards should be enough for a scarf right? Opinions are welcome!
Well.. I’m off to start my acrylic afghan. I’ll post when I actually have something to show.. hehe.
Wendy from Wendy Knits! is doing a Stash bust kinda think in 2007. I’m so in.
Especially since I can still buy yarn.
The Rules:
Knit From Your Stash 2007
1. The Knit-From-Your-Stash-a-Thon will start January 1, 2007 and run through September 30, 2007 — a period of nine months.
2. We will not buy any yarn during that period, with the following exceptions:
2.a. Sock yarn does not count. What? You think we are made of stone?
2.b. If someone asks for a specific knitted gift that we really and truly do not have the yarn for, we may buy yarn to knit that gift.
2.c. If we are knitting something and run out of yarn, we may purchase enough to complete the project.
2.d. We each get one “Get Out of Jail Free” card — we are each allowed to fall off the wagon one time.
3. We are allowed to receive gifts of yarn.
4. Spinning fiber of any sort is exempt.
