Created By Artsygal

Did I really say I don't know how to do colour stranded knitting? I wonder what this is then?

It's 1:30 am on Monday morning. I should be fast asleep in bed. But I'm not! Why?

See for youself..

The picture is crappy, but what do you expect when I'm taking it at 1:30 am? The important thing though, is that it is FINISHED! I can't believe that I knit almost 50 repeats of the border this weekend. I didn't do ANYTHING else all weekend. Wake up, sit on the couch, turn TV on, and knit. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think I've left an imprint of my butt on the couch. But it was worth it.. I mean... LOOK!

I still need to weave the ends in and block it. I have no idea which should be done first. Opinions anyone? Since this is the first lace I've ever finished, this will be the first lace I've ever blocked. (Yeah, I'm one of those idiots that starts with hard projects first) so any and all advice will be appreciated!

Right before christmas I posted this:

Which of course lead to all the appropriate reactions from all my visitors. I just realized I never did post the FO, nor the explanation of why I was cutting my knitting. Contrary to what most thought, I was not steeking. If you look at the image again, you'll see that I'm cutting horizontally, not vertically!

Before I continue, I'm going to have to let you into my dirty little secret. I.. I.. I own a knitting machine.. There, that's out in the open now. Because it is bulky guage, it really doesn't get much use. It is, however, perfect for making that last minute christmas present. Lets follow along.

Knitting on a machine is a little different than knitting by hand. For one thing, casting on and binding off are a royal PITA. And since I was making two pieces of something, it was much easier to just knit one long piece and cut it into two, picking up stitches afterwards to take care of the finishing. Why the neon orange? Because I don't want to cut knitting done in yarn that is actually being used for the project - I'd rather waste some icky acrylic.

Once the knitting was done, I took the scissors to it. That is the first time I've done that, and even though I was cutting into waste yarn that was meant to unravel, I will admit I had a moments trepidition. Then I went at it!

On closer inspection of each of the two pieces you find two more knitted in bits of orange waste yarn. They seem to be located about three inches down from one end, and go in about one quarter of the way on each side from the edges of the knitting. I wonder what they could possibly be for? Nevermind them for now. Each piece was then sewed up into a tube, with the orange bits being carefully lined up so that they met at the same spot.

Carefully, the orange stitches are unpicked, and the live stitches transfered to double pointed knitting needles. I don't know what you're thinking - but this is starting to look suspiciously like an afterthought heel to me! The heel was then knit into place with the last few stitches being kitchnered together rather sloppily. Or maybe I just turned the whole thing inside out and did a three needle bindoff. I forget.
Next, the orange waste yarn was unravelled, which resulted in a billion little tiny bits of orange acrylic fiber dispersing themselves all over my apartment. A month later I'm still finding the random stray bit. The edge three inches away from the heel was bound off while the lice stitches on the other end were once again put onto double pointed needles. Before I knew what hit me, I suddenly had a heel knitted onto the piece! Ends were sewn in, and the process was repeated a second time, with some lessons learned from the first.

Then, much to the amusement of a couple of total strangers the whole thing was tossed into a hot washing machine at the laundromat. They watched, and laughed and snickered as I kept opening the machine to check on my sopping weird mishapen looking thing, and occasionally started scrubbing it against itself before tossing it back into the sudsy water.

I however got the last laugh.

Pattern: Fuzzy Feet on Knitty (with some MAJOR modifications in technique, even though the end result was identical)
Yarn: Patons Classic Merino - which was lovely to work with, but.. the pinks bled all over the natural colour while felting. Thankgoodness the end result was one I still liked!
Needles: Bond knitting machine & Size 10 1/2 Clover bamboo DPNs
Recipient: One very happy little sister.

Lesson learned: I can knit two pairs of fuzzy feet (I forgot to photograph the second pair - will do that next time I'm at my moms) in 24 hours. And, I can do them on the knitting machine yet! The second pair I tried something a bit different and actually managed to knit the heel AND toes on the machine. That was.. quite the adventure.

YAY for fuzzy feet!

Spinning plain white fiber can get boring sometimes. That's why I kept dyeing the stuff I had. But sometimes, just plain white is perfect.

Here's my first attempt at spinning a single that I'll be able to use just as is. It was a bit of a struggle to not overtwist it into one big huge curly mass.

Of course, that picture hardly qualifies as yarn porn. So lets get a little closer.

That's better - but still not good enough. How's this though?

Better? I have an even better image of it - but you'll have to click on the photo above to see it! Go ahead, you know you want to!

In related news - I bought a new toy! I love taking close up shots, but often find that even the tiny amount of motion caused when i press the shutter is enough to throw many if my pictures out of focus. So I started searching for a tripod. So humour me here as I unveil what I truly belive is to be the coolest tripod in the world. The Gorillapod.

Cool eh?

It's here! I ordered a lb of cotswold and almost 1 lb of llama recently and it arrived today. In anticipation, I brought my drop spindle to work even! You know, just incase I managed to sneak in a few minutes to try the fiber out?

I haven't done more than peek in the bag and pet the llama yet (it needs processing - this should be fun!) but I did grab a small puff of cotswold to try out. This stuff isn't nearly as fine as the corriedale I've used so far. Infact it's downright HAIRY! Look!

Just a couple of yards or so that I spun up quickly. It's not in roving or anything - according to everyone at knitty chat, it's 'top' ? I'll get a pic of that sometime to post as well. This is going to need some work! But it's a learning experience right?

On the cooking front - here's the start of a yummy dish I made the other day. I have horrible knive skills, so I was quite proud of this lovely chopping I did. Doesn't take much to make me happy eh?

I've gotten lax about posting on Fridays recently but this week I'm back with a vengence. Let me start with a picture of the roving itself. This is about 6 oz of corriedale fiber - the last of the 1 lb of white corriedale I bought several months ago when I wasn't sure if I wanted to spin or not.

Colourful isn't it? I used just red, blue, black, yellow, and teal to achieve all those colours. Lots of fun!

Then I sat down at the wheel. I didn't really have a strategy for this roving - instead I just tore of strips haphazardly, and spun from them. The goal was to get a single that was fairly consistent, and would have just enough twist in it to hold it together since I was hoping to be able to keep it as a single instead of plying.

I had so much fun watching the colours emerge that part way through spinning, I just had to take the bobbin/flyer off the wheel and prop it up outside to get a picture. I'm sure that the guys climbing up the outside walls of my apartment building to replace the gutters thought I was nuts to be taking pictures of yarn. I'm not entirely sure that they're wrong.

It was a bittersweet moment when I came to the end of this roving. I had produced my best yarn to date on the wheel, and I felt that by dyeing it myself and then spinning it, I've created something truly unique. However, it also meant that I was OUT of roving! I couldn't believe how quickly I went through 6 oz! When I first bought the 1 lb of roving, I was teaching myself on a CD spindle and felt that the 1 lb would last me forever as I was spending most of my time picking the spindle off the floor. Then I had a lesson and bought a real spindle - that sped the process up considerably, but I was still spinning fairly fine weight yarns, so the 1 lb still seemed quite substantial. Now with a bulky wheel, even while trying to spin a single that comes to about DK weight (maybe? Probably a bit thicker, I'm really bad at this)I swallowed up the last 6 oz in just a couple of evenings! I could easily see my self going through 1 lb a week at this rate!

I think this is the beginnings of an expensive addiction!

To see the yarn in its full glory, click the image below. I've sized it large enough to use as your desktop wallpaper on your computer. All you have to do is right click the larger image and select 'Set as desktop background' if you want to use it. Enjoy!

At one point I had grand plans for the shetland tea shawl I was working on. I started it in October, and despite being the first real piece of lace I've knit, despite being a notoriously slow knitter, and despite knowing I get bored to tears knitting the same thing repeatedly, I thought I could finish it in time to wear on New Years Eve. That was not to be. I got through the entire body of the shawl without a glitch and was feeling quite confident of my abilities. And then it happened.

I reached the border. 115 repeats of the SAME pattern. Stitch count varying between 17 and 22 a row. 10 rows per pattern repeat. Did I mention, 115 repeats? It isn't that it was hard. The pattern itself was a piece of cake compared to the diamond pattern I had just completed. And it wasn't that it was such a HUGE amount of knitting - only 17 - 22 stitches a row. But the 115 repeats! That did me in. Turning my work around so frequently drove me nuts. Working with one end of my circular flapping around drove me nuts. I lost the will to go on. And so I bundled up the shawl in my knitting bag and sent it off to the naughty corner.

Then, Karen announced to me that she was up to the border of hers. She had caught up to me! Not that this was a race or anything, but it made me start giving the corner a few guilty glances. I picked the shawl up a few times. Knit a row or 2. And slowly, I got into the swing of things. I managed to memorize the pattern. That sped things up. I knit enough so the circular needle was no longer so crowded that stiches were in danger of sliding off the other end and making a run for the canadian border. That improved my mood. Before I knew it.. look!

I'm almost half way there! (and yes, that is a bottle of laundry detergent you see in the corner. I was knitting at the laundromat and snapped a couple of quick pictures on their nice big folding table)

Incase you need a little more convincing:

I even made you a pretty schematic. I was posting this in my gallery earlier before setting up the blog and had abandoned it. But it's back. I look forward to colouring in those little points till there aren't any left.

Now that the needle is half empty, I'm gaining speed. I no longer need to use a bamboo dpn to knit the stitches off the circular - I can just use the other end of the circular itself. No more dangly needle! And instead of knitting with one addi turbo, and one bamboo needle (which made for some interesting times!) I'm using the addis on both the knit and purl row. That too has made the experience much more pleasurable. I am once again looking forward to knitting this shawl and completing it. Then I can face my next demon - blocking lace for the very first time.

Wish me luck.