FO! Charity Prayer Shawl

I finished the Prayer Shawl I had been working on for charity!

Overall I’m very happy with it. The yarn for the main body was Red Heart in Burgundy, and the yarn for the border was Red Heart in Mexico. The pattern is this one: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/simple-triangular-stash-shawl. Yes it is a link to Ravelry, so if you don’t have ravelry let me know and I can give you a link directly to the PDF on her website.

In other excitingness: Great Lakes Fiber Show is in 3 days! Well sorta, 3 more full days without fiber fun until I get to blow lots of money! And finishing this up, just justifies more purchases.

*almost* an FO.

I thought I’d have an FO today… but it’s not going to happen.  See how much of the border was left?  Not much at all!  But I knew that yarn supply was running low, yet I didn’t let it stop me.  I HAD HOPE.  Well the yarn did run out.  So now I’m trying to decide what to use for the border.  What do you think… Red?  Black?  or should I just rip out a few rows of the main shawl to use in the border?

Oops.

Well I was online today… and the internet magically took me to the site of my LYS. Well I decided I really needed a skein of trekking since they just got some in, and hey, I survived this year! I deserved it!

So I went, but I didn’t come home with trekking. I came home with this:

I’m in love. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. I’ve been reading about it on Ravelry. People have said good things and people have said some not so good things. But you’ll get that with every yarn. Of course it’s not the typical yarn you’d see for socks, but the look and texture reminds me of handspun, and who would dare say handspun would make bad socks? Not me.
I want to knit it very badly, but I have some other projects that need to get off the needles and hook first. You can bet though that this will be cast on fairly soon, even if it means starting yet another project. Most of the current projects I have started really are too hot for summer knitting anyways.

Handspun Galore!

Well I did finish all the handspun up, and listed it in etsy last Thursday. The link is www.kraftie.etsy.com for any of you who might be interested. In other news: I’ve been knitting! And CROCHETING!

I know exciting!

This is obviously something that doesn’t photograph well. The yarn is busy, the pattern is busy, and it looks good in person, but pictures, NO WAY.

Yet another busy picture. But if you click it, it’s a little easier to see the pattern in the larger picture. I bought this yarn about two years ago because I loved the color and they were discontinuing it. So of course it was on sale for $1.50 a skein! I couldn’t resist. I have 5 skeins in this dyelot and I figured it would make a great baby blanket. So I grabbed a Sampler Afghan book, picked a square that appealed to me, and started knitting away. I plan on doing it in panels which I’ll sew up later. I’ll probably add a border too at the end, depending on how it goes.

And now for a long overdue Stash Update! I was apparently busy and never did one for April. oops.

Current yarn in the stash: 22967 grams (+605 grams for the year)
Current fiber in the stash: 173.3 ounces (-24 ounces for the year)

The reason the yarn stash numbers went up is because of all the recently finished handspun. Since it is now part of the yarn stash, it’s counted as yarn. But, because I finished the fiber off, I removed the fiber from the fiber stash. That explains the decrease in the fiber stash. Also, if you look. 24 ounces is approximately 680 grams. That means that I’ve used up 75 grams of yarn this year! YAY! My stash is getting smaller! If not by much. And if the yarn that I currently have listed in etsy sells, that number will drop even more.
Of course, the fiber festival is coming up soon, which means more fiber will be brought back into the stash. Although I will be buying fiber, I’m trying not to go overboard. The current shopping list for fiber is something superwash to make socks for my sister, dad and boyfriend. I also want to get something for me, as a reward for passing yet another semester at school. I got my grades back and although they weren’t quite what I was hoping for, I’m happy with them. I’m really hoping to find some nice handdyed superwash at the fiber festival. Because it’s a fairly small show I’m somewhat worried I won’t, but I’ve already seen the perfect colors for all the gifts I want to make online so getting fiber won’t be an issue.

Finally back in the Blog World.

Well, life has been hectic, but the semester is over!  FREEDOM!
So what have I been doing since I’ve been out?  Spinning.

I noticed recently that spinning is taking over my life, and I love it.  :)  Knitting and crochet still happen, but those are things I tend to take with me when I’m out and about.  So much easier to haul around than a spinning wheel.  Now for the pictures!

The CTH I was spinning is finally finished!  There are 3 larger skeins, and two little tiny ones.  This picture was taken before I washed it which it has so much bounce still in it.  I love spinning and plying tightly because it gives such a nice squishy quality to the yarn.  After I washed it the yarn did calm down a bit, and right now it’s hanging in the bathroom drying.  This will probably be going up in my etsy shop after it’s dry and I can get some better pictures.  As much as I love the colors and the texture of the yarn, the original purpose of making socks for my sister just won’t work with this yarn.  My sister needs something superwash, because she is the queen at felting socks.  And it’s not that she felts them while washing them, she felts them while wearing them on her feet.

The Lincoln/Mohair blend that I bought back in early 2007 is almost done as well! I finished up those three skeins yesterday, and theres only a small bit of fiber left! If you enlarged the CTH picture any, you might have seen the little bits of fiber all over it. Yea, apparently this lincoln/mohair REALLY sheds.  The whole shedding thing is really driving me crazy, as I’m sure you can all imagine.  The good thing though is that the random bits of fluff are all on the outside of the yarn, it’s not like they’ve been spun in with it.  So it will be very easy to remove later.

And now for one last picture. My new knitting/fiber basket:

I love having a basket to carry around with me.

Well that’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll be back more often with updates and more substance to my posts.

March yarn update!

Well it’s the first of the month!  Or well… past the first of the month but I’ve been busy so I’m just finally getting around to giving you my current yarn stash update!

22461 g currently in the yarn stash!  (+103 grams this year which is down 2 grams from last month!)

197.3 oz of fiber in the fiber stash.  (Hasn’t changed yet this year)

Last month I said the increase in yarn stash was from the fact that I had spun some stuff from my fiber stash but didn’t take it outta the fiber stash since there’s so much left it’s just hard to measure.  Well this past month… the was a yarn purchase.

TA DAAAAAAAAAA! I’ve been searching for this yarn for awhile, but well, they stopped making it. Bummer right? The stuff is gorgeous, I’m not sure what they were thinking when they discontinued it. Well, to make a long story short, someone on ravelry put it up for sale, and a friend of mine who knows I was searching for it contacted her telling her that I might be interested. So yea. I bought it. Because although I didn’t *need* it, it’s something they’re not making anymore. So that added 100g to my yarn stash this month.

However, 102g was removed when I finished the criss cross scarf! So far then I’ve used up a total of 2g from my stash! Pathetic eh? hehe.

This was made with a pattern from one of my books The Encyclopedia of Knitting. I did change the pattern a bit. Basically I changed it so that it was garter and I didn’t have to mess with stockinette. Wasn’t much of a change.

The yarn used was Sassy Stripes by Moda Dea in the color Crush. If it looks familiar it’s because I have made many, many things out of this same color of Moda Dea. The scarf is for one of the girls I tutor and I think she’s trying to make an entire ensamble out of it.

Here’s a close up of the stitch pattern for ya.

busy Busy BUSY!

I feel like that’s the title of every post nowadays?  Life is crazy.  What else is there to say?

Well first news first… I PASSED MY PRAXIS II!  Well, I passed the first test, which was the Mathematical Content one.  This means that I’ll be able to start my student teaching without a problem next year.  Always good news.  Especially since that test costs like $80 plus their $50 registration fee.  Now I have one more to take and pass before I can get a liscense to teach.  The plan right now is to take the one in the middle of summer so that I have plenty of time to go back through all my old notes and study.

What’s going on with my knitting?  Same old, same old.

As you can see the sweater is coming along.  I’ve gotten all my neckline issues fixed, it’s been joined in the round and I’m only about an inch from slipping stitches off for the sleeves!  WOOHOO!

It really isn’t taking long to knit at all.  Just takes a long time when you screw up the pattern. :P  If I didn’t have homework stuff getting in my way all the time, this thing would have totally been done by now.  Oh well… guess homework should come first huh?

In other news I’ve got a picture to show you all of the prayer shawl that I started back last November.  Shocking that I started something and didn’t post about it huh?  I’m sure somewhere I had planned on talking about it, but then school probably got in the way which caused me to just neglect blogging.  hehe.

It’s red heart.  It’s garter stitch.  I love it.

Pattern is a cake walk.  I think it’s one I found searching ravelry for free shawl patterns, and the word “scrap” in the name just caught my attention and stuck.  It’s for charity, so I figured Red Heart is good and washable.  Also because it’s in garter there is really no worries about it curling.  Which is always good.  When I’m giving gifts I like to make them as easy to care for as possible, especially when you don’t know who the recipient will be.

This last picture I took awhile ago.  I was sitting in the living room spinning, and I like watching the birds out the window on the feeder while I spin.  This is the squirrel proof feeder we got our mother for Christmas.  As you can see it isn’t so squirrel proof.  Either that or the little things are getting SMART. 

As you can see the little thing is sitting on the branch of the tree.  He then reached out, grabbed the birdfeeder by the little foot stand thingies, and PULLED it towards him!

Yarn Diet Update!

YAY yarn diet!

So it’s been a whole month, and the only new yarn type thing that was added to the stash was my own handspun that came out of the fiber stash anyways. 

Here are the numbers as of February 1st.

22463 grams of yarn currently in the stash (+105 grams this year)

197.3 oz of stuff in my fiber stash.  (+0 oz this year)

So far.  So good.  Cause I know that 105 extra grams really came out of the fiber stash, but I’m probably not going to change my numbers there until I get that orange roving down to a reasonable level so I can actually weigh it.

ugh.

The Essential Stripe Sweater…. after I ripped about half of it out.  Yes, apparently I STILL can’t read the directions…. ::sigh::

Who wants to guess what I did this time?  Well… I increased the way I was supposed too!  Back on take one of the sweater I increased until there were 8 stiches on either side of marker A.  Cause that’s what the directions said.  Well when I screwed it up last time I noticed it didn’t say 8 on either side of marker A…. it said… 11?  I could have sworn it said 8, but wow just figured I was imagining things again and well I’ll increase to 11 like it says.

Last night at knitting group I hit that 11th stitch, joined the sweater and started knitting it IN THE ROUND!  WOO HOOOO!  I was pumped.  Came home, pulled the PDF version of the pattern up… and what did I see…. Increase until there are 8 stitches on either side of the marker A.  WTF.  NOOOOoooooooooooooo I KNOW it said 11!

Then I scrolled down a bit… and saw that the 11 was there… but it was under the part labeled “Sport Weight Version.”  Soooooo I ripped back.  But I will say it did look fabulous when I draped it around my shoulders before ripping.

This my friends is why I have absolutely zero blog content.  I can’t get anything finished. 

Although I did get a new knitting book!

Making Mathematics with Needlework.  I LOVE it.  It has a variety of needlework projects so there’s definitely at least one project for everbody.  The projects aren’t what I would call “stunning” as far as knitting projects go, but if you like math (and I mean scary, higher level, above calc kinda stuff) then totally check it out.  It’s definitely not a book for everybody.  But me… I’m in love.

Yay KNITTING!

School has been busy as usual. I did however get lots of knitting done at the basketball game last Saturday, but the knitting did stop once the girl behind me asked, “hey… is that Lebron James over there?”  huh.. guess so… does look like him.

So the rest of the game was spent talking to the two girls behind me, making stupid jokes, and comparing our cell phones. It was quite entertaining.  And hey, the girl next to me is in the prayer shawl ministry group that started last semester so we had fun talking yarn for a bit.  Over all fun times and much knitting… can’t beat that.

Obligatory picture of scarf progress after game.

That is all.

OH WAIT!  I do have something else to say.  I’m a huge Jane Austen fan… and I’m sure I’ve mentioned that somewhere on here before.  I’ve listed to all the books on tape cause I just can’t put down my yarn and fiber long enough to pick up a book and exercise my eyes.  But anyways, I’ve never seen any of the movies they made about the books except for the most recent P&P.  WELL!  PBS is doing the Masterpiece Series thing on the Jane Austen movies right now.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!?!?!  It means that practically EVERY Sunday until some time in April there’s a different Jane Austen movie on!  Persuasion was on last night and I went running to the TV about 2 minutes before it was going to start.  Didn’t take any knitting cause I was planning on grabbing a quick snack.  I figured I’d run back at the first commercial break and grab my wheel or the sweater… well… there were ZERO commercials.  So there was no yarn with my Jane Austen.  Ohhh well… I’ll be better prepared for next week.  The lovely thing about this is now I know what Jane Austen movies I need to add to my wish list.

Oh.. in other exciting news… I took my Praxis II test last Saturday morning.  YAY MATH!  Overall I don’t think it went *too* horrible.  I know my score isn’t going to be perfect, but upon doing some research into the scoring of that test yesterday made me feel MUCH better about it.  Turns out my particular test has a point range of 100-200 and I only need a 139.  Doesn’t seem bad when the minimum is 100 and the max is 200.  The real trick is not going crazy until I get my scores in a month.