blech

So Ravelry was having an event to coincide with the Olympics called the Ravelympics. There were many many events to take part of. The point was to start and finish a knitted, crocheted, spun item during the Olympics. What item depended upon what event. Examples included the hat dash, amigurumi toss, etc. Well I figured none of those were for me, but WIP Wrestling seemed like a good idea. The idea was to finish as many WIP's as possible during the Olympics.

Well, I'm pretty sure I managed to finish in absolute last place. Not only did I not complete a single item, but I cast on a couple extra. I fail, and obviously have some WIP problems. :)

A fun Weekend

Birthday fun was had this weekend. I met my mom in Parkersburg. On Saturday, we did some running around. My favorite errand was to Market Street Yarn and Crafts to spend some of my hard earned birthday money. I had been meaning to go for a while, since I have to go to Parkersburg to visit my dad. Instead I managed to drag my mom, brother and husband to go look at yarn with me. I had bought the Fall 2008 Interweave Knits magazine the night before and had been oogling the Dumpling Bag. Well, the yarn store just happened to carry the exact yarn called for. So for once in my life, I actually used the yarn specified in the pattern. It knit up so freakin' fast. A couple of hours in fact. It is done, it was done Sunday morning. It is waiting for the Giant Mittens of Doom to be done before getting felted. Conserve water by felting multiple things at once and such. I can't wait.

And in the spirit of it being a true birthday present, I think I will add some needle felting to it, since my needle felter was bought for my birthday. I just got it a bit early. I also had fun going through all my grandma's buttons and picking out some I really liked. And my mom and I had both gone through our closets before the trip so we each brought a couple of garbage bags of clothes and traded. I ended up with quite a few new shirts and a comfy jacket. Very exciting.

To give credit where it is due, I would also like to mention a few other birthday gifts I got. My sweet husband got me the movie My Blueberry Nights. Have I ever mentioned before that I love Norah Jones? To elaborate, I nearly wrecked the car one Valentine's day when Zach got me her newest album and snuck it into my car's cd player the night before. When I got in and started driving, I realized what I was listening to and started squealing and not really paying attention to where I was going. He also promised me a video game. They keep pushing back the release date. It was supposed to be out before my birthday. And I honestly can't remember which one. Either Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. I think Harvest Moon. <---very addicting game by the way. And all you do is tend a farm and try and get married. In fact, I am getting the urge to play the PS2 version just by mentioning it. Aimee got me some spinning fiber from Crystal Creek Fibers. It is a glorious alpaca/mohair/angora/silk blend. I just want to stick my face in it and never come back out. It is rather large, I wonder if I could wrap myself in it. And Dana got me...wait for it...Holl's Chocolate. And to prove how well she knows me, it was a custom assortment with all of my favorites in it. They know me all too well.



As you saw in the last post, AC Moore has sock yarn. To the left is what I picked up yesterday. Today, I went to get more, but I got distracted. I have been wanting to make the Mesmerize Sweater from Crochet Me, well, since I saw the pattern to be honest. But I've been having trouble deciding what yarn to use. The yarn it calls for is much, much to expensive for a whole sweater's worth. $28 per skein and I was going to need 8 skeins. So I had toyed around with Rayon Petalspun. Rayon has a similar feel and drape to silk because it was developed as an alternative to silk. So I have been thinking about it for a couple days. Asked some people on Ravelry. And then when I was at AC Moore, I started thinking about using Caron Simply Soft. It has the shine and a nice drape. Not exactly like silk, but it could be a good first attempt. Well, I started doing the math and realized the Caron would be about the same price as the Petalspun. I tend to wander around while I am thinking and I wandered by the bin of bags of mill ends. 1 pound for 5 dollars. Well they had a bag of dark blue Simply Soft. I compared it to the dark country blue colorway. I knew I had 2 3/4 skeins of that color at home and with the mill end bag, I should only be short about 1 skein. So I used my 50% off coupon on the bag of yarn and have decided to start the sweater. This could be a very good or a very bad thing. But it is going to be pretty cheap so if it doesn't work, I won't be so freaked out.

And if I ever feel sad or upset about knitting I plan on reading these articles. I nearly cried at the end of the sock one.
I believe in Knitting
I believe in Hand-Knit Socks

Breaking News!!!

The Huntington AC Moore has been doing some restocking in their yarn sections. Specifically in the vein of sock yarns. They now are carrying Red Heart Heart and Sole $3.99, Patons Stretch Sock $4.99 and Patons Kroy Sock $5.99. Squeeeeeeee!!! I picked myself up some Heart and Sole and am going back tomorrow for some of the Patons Stretch.

On top of that breaking news, they have a bunch of other new yarns. Patons Silk Bamboo, Red Heart designer sport (very similar to Vanna's Choice), Lion Cotton and Red Heart eco-cotton. Along with these, pretty much every yarn has some new colors. Especially because AC Moore has a 50% off coupon for Tuesday.

What have I been up to?

I didn't do a freakin' thing this weekend. We watched the Olympics. That was fun. But I do have stuff from last week to update about.
Haley lent me her copy of Crochet Me. An excellent book (with a great website to go along with it). I might have to acquire a copy for myself. So far, I have made the Shades of Plaid scarf. I love it. It is such an interesting technique to create an interesting scarf.





My giant mittens. I actually have the thumb done now. So one of two mittens done. I might actually have a Christmas present done before Christmas.






A cute hat for a friend going through chemo. Well, I don't really know her. I met her on Ravelry and she asked if people could make her hats. I need to send this off soon.






















And Mary Alice is done. Woot. Now all I have left is Geof. If I can get his hair right, he should be done soon. I can't wait to have these guys done.

been a while

My mom told me I had to post more often. I'm sorry, I'll try to do better.

But all of last week I was at Vacation Bible School with Grace. After sitting out in the sun for 2 hours I would get home kinda tired. So I didn't get much crafty stuff done.

This is the weaving I worked on while at VBS. It was pretty fun. I took a cross stitch frame and warped it with the cotton yarn I made my first socks from (it proved itself to finally be useful). It is cute, but it is definitely trapazoid shaped. There are some good pictures though if you go here under Marketplace and Marketplace 2.

On Sunday I watched like 3 hours of sewing/craft shows on PBS. In fact, I saw a rerun of the show that started my fasination with needle felting and the first time I saw a needle felting machine. They said you could get water soluble stabalizer and felt shapes onto that then disolve the stabalizer. So I made a daffodil and a daisy flower thing. Note to self, don't use a pen the bleeds when wet.

But these are just about all I've been working on. Geoff's hair is being fiddly so I have set my Ace of Cakes guys to the side for a bit. So I have been knitting the hugest mitten ever. I just keep telling myself it is going to shrink when it felts and that guys have big hands. And I made a hat for a friend (need to get that sent off). Haley lent me her Crochet Me book last night and I have picked out like half of the patterns to make. I am going to start with a scarf. Mostly cause the sweater I want to make requires 7 balls of yarn that cost $28 each. I was in too much shock to look at what the other yarn the pattern called for cost.

VBS and some funny

I haven't been doing much knitting as I've been spending my nights at VBS with Grace. So instead of pictures, I will leave you with a blonde joke Tiffany sent me.


A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway.
Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the
wheel was knitting!
Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the
trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled,
'PULL OVER!'
'NO!' the blonde yelled back, 'IT'S A SCARF!'

Fiber Apostle

So I was going to have this fun post about how I have become a fiber apostle while out running errands today... But my Loop batts just arrived. I'm gonna go spin. I'll tell you the funny story later. :)

STORY ADDED:

So since we had Friday off, it became designated as Errand Day. So I made plans to get my car inspected (past due of course, but I had originally been scheduled to do it before it ran out, but I forgot my insurance card). Since I was up that way, and my ring needed inspected, I would run to the mall and do that. And I needed some fabric for VBS robes. Something light, because all the fabric I had probably would have killed me after about 10 minutes of being in the sun.

So I started with Joann's. I found some great fabric. Very excited. I also found some very interesting felt by the yard. It is embossed with designs. I got blue with a fleur-de-lis pattern and magenta with a sort of floral design. It looks very cool and mostly I just want to play around with it to see how it will look as needle cases. Plus it was $2.00 a yard. Yay. I also picked up a remnant piece of their wool/nylon blend felt. I want to see how it compares and to see if it is worth the extra $3.00 a yard. They didn't have any 100% wool though. So I take these huge bolts of felt to get cut and the lady asks what I am doing with it. So I tell her I do needle felting and make needle cases out of it. So she asks me what needle felting is. And about 5 minutes later I stop talking. Some how we get on the topic of spinning and she mentions how her friend used to have a buffalo farm and would spin their fiber. She said when they shed their winter coats she used to walk along the fences and pick off huge pieces that they would rub off. **drool** I seriously need to make some friends who have fiber animals (who don't use their fur).

Then I went to get my ring cleaned/inspected at the mall. As I was waiting, I overhear two of the sales associates talking about yarn and crocheting. So I start sidling over to them. They ask if I want to see anything and I confess that I can actually heard them talking about yarn and was curious. Well, one of the girls says she was wanting to learn how to knit and was trying to find a place to learn. "Well," I say. "There is a SnB that meets every Thursday at the Java Joint by Marshall. We are mostly a younger group (she was college age-ish) and we are glad to teach anyone whatever they want to learn. There are people who crochet, knit, spin, loom knit, cross stitch...pretty much any kind of stitching. And there are some girls who just come for the bitching part." And again 5 minutes later I pause to take a breath. I even managed to get info about Ravelry in there. Spreading the good word.

And then, while I was sitting in the waiting room on my car, I was knitting. And the older ladies next to me asked what I was doing. So I was talking about knitting and making Christmas presents, and how knitting can be good for your hands (keeping them moving and such).

So I feel like I properly represented the wide world of fiber arts. I left all the spinning to Aimee. She was representin' at SnB with her wheel out. She had several people stop and try to figure out what she was doing and she did a good job of demonstrating and explaining at the same time.

So that is why I felt like a fiber apostle, meaning an ardent supporter of a cause or movement [Greek apostolos a messenger].