Created By Artsygal

Another late night return home from a weekend from up in the bay area. This one was quite the trip! We hit the road and within minutes discovered we were going to be all but swimming our way home through fog as thick as pea soup.

Yeah.. great visibility huh? That was the view for much of the 4.5 drive home. I did see a licsence plate that made me laugh.. but htis was the best pic I got of it.

Not very impressive huh? Any guesses what it said?

I spent several hours today on the road looking at this.

This time though, I came prepared with knitting.

Perfect knitting time for me to write up the short row heel pattern I cobbled together from all the different tutorials I've found on various blogs. This one has absolutely no holes anywhere! I'll get photos to go with the tutorial when I get a chance and post them here in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully I can find my tripod, because otherwise, taking photos may get.. interesting.

Now that everyone's done with the madness of black friday shopping, there's still a sale going on! If you haven't done so yet, stop by the 2nd annual Artsygal Black Friday Sale! Take 25% off every skein of yarn or roving in the shop all weekend long! And just for fun, one customer will get their order at 50% off! I'll pick one at random on Monday night and refund the difference. Here's your chance to get an amazing deal on some yarn for yourself or for a gift!

Also introducing the Stripey Yarn Club! Sign up for 3 months of stripey goodness delivered right to your door. Lots more details in the shop This is something I'm really looking forward to since I have so much fun dyeing up the yarns, and will be doing each one based on YOUR favorite colours! So this is the best way to get a custom colourway! Signups are open now and the first shipment goes out in January. Gift subscriptions are also available!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope yours was as good a mine. Here's about how I felt after we were done eating.

Happily stuffed!

My contribution was was to make sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Lets just say that we have a WINNER! Even the people who say they don't normally like sweet potatoes were scarfing it down. This is an original recipe that I made up on the spot - so I figure I better write it down!

Jas's Maple Pecan Strusel Sweet Taters
5 lbs sweet potatoes - try to get smaller/skinnier ones
4 tablespoons butter
2 eggs, beaten
1/6th cup dark brown sugar
1/6th cup 100% pure maple syrup
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon marmalade
1/8th teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt

Wrap each of the sweet potatoes in aluminum foil and bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes or until they're soft. Peel and mash the sweet potatoes. Melt butter and mix in all remaining ingredients. Pour over the mashed potatoes, mixing until everything is combined. Spread mixture into a greased 2-quart rectangular baking dish. Top with struesel topping (See below)

Topping
4 tablespoons butter
2/3 cups chopped pecans
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 bag marshmallows

Melt butter, add pecans, brown sugar, maple syrup, and flour. This should make a goopy sticky mess. Spread over the mashed swet taters and bake for 20 - 30 minutes. Spread a layer of miniature marshmallows over the top and bake for about 10 minutes till they're toasty brown. Rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Good Eats, I tell ya!

Funny looking isn't it? The dark blue vertical line is the center back, so as you can see I'm just a little past the half way point of the body. Here it is folded at the side so it is shaped a little more like a jacket.

Of course, I didn't notice until I previewed this post that I photographed it from the wrong side. Whoops! But it's seconds away from midnight now so I don't have the time to go take more photos!

While I was trying to decide what to blog about today, Precious climbed half way up into my chair and poked at my toe, as if to say 'hey.. I'm here!' So once she settled herself into my lap I reached for the camera.

How can anyone say no to that face? Especially when it belongs to a kitty who climbs into your lap and curls up happily while you scratch her chin? (Besides, I haven't made any progress on any of my knitting in the last couple of days. This blogging every day thing is hard!)

Why you keep pointing that damn thing in my face. Go find something else to blog about!

I came across a weather forcast for Philadelphia recently where it said snow was expected. Here in California, it's still in the mid 70s during the day. I think it's safe to say that it's not going to be snowing here any time soon. So what's a girl to do?

Make her own of course? I used to crochet quite a lot years ago, though it got pushed to the side once I started knitting more. A bit of fiddling around and it all came right back. This is just the first of what I'm sure will be many more. I'm going to have to try starching them to have them hold their shape. I may even be tempted to go buy some glitter!

My Mermaid jacket continues to grow - I've gotten just past the half way point now, so I'm knitting a mirror image of the first half. Hopefully since I've charted the first half out already it should go a lot easier. No more frogging because I misunderstood the directions! I need to get a photo of it soon!

How many of you have stuck your hand into your purse or pocket for kleenex only to find a shredded mess that has coated everything wiht lint? I know I've done it more times than I care to count. So today the sewing machine came out and I started playing a little.

A handful of tissue cases for my purse. I was tweaking my pattern as I went since all the ones I saw tutorials for online lead to way too much bulk in the seams, and I think I've finally gotten it! The black and gold one was my last one and it lays nice and flat. Tomorrow I think I'll make a couple more to perfect them and then I have other ideas of things I'd like to try!

Just about half of the colourways I put up in the shop today! I've been having fun with this stuff.. can you tell?

I've become a movie junkie recently. I signed up for the free trial of netflix at the beginning of the month during a fit of frustration when I couldn't find a single thing to watch on TV on the many hundred channels that we get, and boy am I hooked! Between constantly rotating the DVDs I have, and watching movies online, I'd have to say I've watched atleast 25 movies this month, if not more. Skeining and winding yarn makes for lots of movie time - not to mention all that knitting time in the evenings when I otherwise end up watching reruns of Two and a Half Men or Fraiser.

So it's very annoying right now that the Netflix site is down and I can't watch any movies online! Bah humbug! How am I supposed to knit miles of garter stitch without a movie to keep me entertained? I had Like Water for Chocolate bookmarked to watch next.. seems like the perfect movie to knit my never ending garter to, what with that never ending blanket that she makes through the entire movie.

I need more movie suggestions though. So leave me a comment with your favorite obscure movie. I generally can't stand horror, and rarely watch sci-fi... give me comedy, indie films, obscure stuff and foreign films any day. Movies with subtitles are fine too.. Which movie is your 'must see' movie?

PS.. that yarn I was winding in the video in yesterday's post? It goes in the shop tomorrow (Friday). Probably sometime around the middle of the day or so. Possibly afternoon. Don't say I didn't warn ya!

Remember that box I showed you sitting at my front door? I'd show you all a picture of what was in it, but a regular photo just doesn't do it justice. So I shot you a video.

Well nuts. My blog script needs some special plugins to get a video to embed. And I don't have the patience for that right now. Clicky on over to youtube to see it here!

Enjoy!

My mitten isn't finished yet, but I had the urge to pick up the mermaid and knit some plain garter again. So for now, I'm back to working on it. Which is exactly why I cast on those mittens - a little while knitting on cables that twist every which way is fun, but after a while it makes me want to knit plain garter (or stockinette) again. These 2 projects are perfect for switching back and forth between.

The mailman delivered a box to my door today.

Any guesses what is in it? Just a hint - it's not yarn.

Unfortunately, I've been too busy to even unpack it and start playing with it, so you'll just have to stick around to see what's in it later this week. Hopefully tomorrow.. or at the latest by wednesday.

Meanwhile, I did make some progress on my right mitten tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I"ll finish it up, and then I'll spend some time on my Mermaid jacket again!

My Chevalier mitten continues to grow - much faster now that I'm back to knitting just one at atime. The two at a time thing was getting awkward and annoying, so I stuck one back onto waste yarn. I've just gotten into the thumb gusset, and it's also the area where the cabling on the back starts to get interesting. This is the sort of cable knitting I love!

I sure hope that it gets cold enough around here that I'm going to actually get to wear these! Goodness knows I almost never wore gloves or mittens when I lived in Philly, unless it was to shovel snow. But with mitts this pretty, I'll find an excuse to wear them I'm sure!

And I've been so good up till now about blogging everyday! I can't let that stop yet! So.. I blogged today! Yes, this is a cheap shot at making a post, but I've been busy dyeing more stripey yarn allllll day! So this post will have to do! ;)

While you're here don't forget about my contest! Every comment (one per post per person please!) you leave me between now and when I finally fall off the wagon of posting every day (or Christmas, which ever comes first) enters you into a drawing for some goodies from my shop. So fire up those comments - and don't forget to come back every day for another entry!

I didn't get too much time to knit on my mittens today, but the pattern is already addictive. I'm knitting them both at the same time so that I don't end up with SMS (Second mitten syndrome) since the last time I attempted to knit mittens they sat there for months before I got around to mitten number two,

Back to knitting again!

I'm so tired of itty bitty needles. All 4 of my current WIPs are on sz 3 or smaller needles, and I'm getting tired of not really seeing any progress here. So what happens when I come across a pair of mittens that Adrian of HelloYarn just finished? The logical thing of course.. cast on a pair for myself!

First, I had to wind the yarn...

Yeah.. the tables I normally clamp my ball winder to are currently occupied with you know.. dyeing stuff. So I had to get resourceful.

And now, I'm about to go cast on.

There was a point where I thought this was a lot of naked yarn for me to have in my possession.

Then.. that became a small amount compared to this.

Of course, all that pales in comparison to this.

As recently as last month I posted this.

I spent this week reorganizing my undyed yarn stash. Here's how it looks right now.

It would be more helpful if I'd put the labels for each tote on the side that is facing outwards, but originally I'd had them all with short side out - only to decide AFTER labelling that side that I wanted them the other way so I could put my printer on the top of the dresser behind them. All but 2 contain yarn. One contains merino roving, and the other contains shipping supplies. Oh, and there's a 22 lb box of roving in my bedroom currently functioning as a nightstand. It's getting a little crazy in here! I do love the fact that I can keep each type of yarn separated in its own tote though.. no more looking at skeins of white yarn trying to remember if it is bamboo/merino/nylon or merino/tencel.. There's been a few times where I've dyed up what I thought was 4 skeins of one type of yarn only to discover that one of them is a completely different base yarn!

After all that nekkidness, I have to counter it by showing you some dyed up yarn. Here's a couple of my favorites from my current shop inventory.

I'm spinning again today - this time with some fiber I picked up this year at MDS&W. I don't remember the fiber content or whose booth I got it from any more (though I can look that up I'm sure) but it's very different from the kind of stuff that I normally gravitate to.

Ohh glittery! I'm spinning this up into a heavy laceweight single that depending on how many yards I end up with may possibly get knit into a very simple Pi shawl, just alternating rounds of plain knit and YOs. I'll post pics of the yarn once it's all spun up.

As for the kitty? I keep posting photos of Precious - mainly because she's the kitty who'll sit still long enough for me to pick up a camera and point it at her when she's being cute. Flash however lives up to her name and never stops moving.

I think she approves of the wheel.. here she is rubbing her face against the treadle the way she rubs against my foot when she wants me to pet her.

One big downside of moving (other than all that packing and hauling boxes and what not) is that all your stuff gets shuffled around. My roommate asked me if I had any superglue yesterday. I KNOW I do... but I'll be damned if I have any idea where. Though I can tell you exactly where I kept the superglue for the last 3 years in my apartment in Philly! That doesn't help much now that I and all my belongings are here in California though does it?

One big upside? Finding all kinds of goodies as you sift through the boxes. When I first reached here my priorities were to set up my bed so I'd have a place to sleep, unpack my clothes so I'd have something to wear, and unpack all my dyeing stuff so I could start dyeing again. And unpack my spinning wheel and enough yarn and fiber to keep me entertained when I wasn't dyeing. But now that I'm settled in, I've started working my way through some of the boxes and rediscovering some of my belongings. Like my drop spindle collection!

I spent the evening playing with what may possibly be my favorite spindle - a 2 inch Golding Spindle

I bought this spindle at MDS&W this year. Even though I'd already found the spindle I was shopping for at the Bosworths booth, I still wandered over to the Golding booth to see what they had. And the minute I picked this one up and tried it out, there was no putting it back.

Once I got it home it sat around a few days while I tried to decide on the perfect fiber to spin on it. At one point, I grabbed a tuft of a fiber I had sticking out of a basket next to me just to play a bit. This was some corriedale I dyed up way back when I had just started dyeing and didn't particularly care much for. I had no intentions of actually spinning it up any time soon, I was just fiddling around while I watched TV.

Imagine my delight when I realized that the fiber that had spun up just so so on my wheel at a worsted weight was spinning up into a lovely wooly laceweight on my new spindle! What a huge difference it made.

The image above is what was already on the spindle when it resurface amongst my belongings this past weekend. I wound it off onto a dowel and started spinning some more, much to the distress of the kitties who keep thinking I'm dangling something for them to play with, only to yank it away again at regular intervals as I wind on. The yarn on the spindle itself at the start of this post is how far I've gotten tonight. And that pile of fiber is how much farther I have to go. It's going to be a LOT of yards of laceweight by the time I'm done!

I went thrift store shopping this weekend in search of sweaters to frog. Unlike in the past when I've done that looking for silk or cashmere, this time I was looking for plain ole cotton. Specifically, light coloured DK to worsted weight cotton sweaters that I could take apart for the yarn.

I came home with 4 sweaters for under $10. Not a bad price at all when you consider how much yarn I ended up with.

That's just ONE sweaters worth of yarn - and that's no regular sized bobbin - see my hand in there for scale? I used my bulky spinning wheel to frog the sweater, and from there I'll use my skeiner to wind if off into hanks. I'd be willing to bet there's atleast a couple of thousand yards there.

As for WHY I'm doing all this? It's all a part of my effort to go a bit greener in my dyeing process. I've got the process down to where the only thing I throw away is the waste yarn I use to tie skeins together as I dye the yarn. I've been using squeaky acrylic yarn for that. Other than that, everything is reused over and over. My dyestock is mixed up in water bottles scavenged from the recycling, I've reused the same 8 oven roasting bags that I've steamed my yarn in for the last year and a half instead of going through a roll of plastic wrap a week.

Back to the cotton though - I was running out of the acrylic yarn I've been using for ties and decided to switch to cotton. It will still end up getting thrown away, true. But atleast it won't sit in a landfill for the next 2000 years. I've had someone suggest to me that cotton can be tossed into a compost heap even since it is a natural material. Or I could use it to stuff a knitted toy. While I'm not likely to do either of those things, I just feel a lot better about tossing something in the trash that is much friendlier to the earth than plastic yarn. And the fact that it is recycled from a sweater I've frogged makes it even better. While it's a small step really, I'm a big believer in small steps by lots of people coming together to make a big change in the world.

I've gotten it into my head that I'm going to catch up to where I was on my Mermaid Jacket before I go to bed today. I've still got most of the gusset and the rows past that to knit.

I have an audience as I knit tonight. Precious is starting to get upset with me because I'm paying too much attention to the pile of yarny stuff on my lap, and not enough attention to her. (Yes, I know it's a dark photo, but unlike Turtlegirl76's kitties she refuses to cooperate with me when it comes to taking pictures.)

Time to give her a little attention and then back to the knitting!

I've spent almost all my life living in large cities - Bangkok, London, Dallas, & Philadelphia, just to name a few. Big urban sprawling cities with tall buildings and lots of people. So my recent move to the boonies of California has quite the change for me.

In the same amount of time that it took me to drive from my apartment to the grocery store in Philly, here's where I ended up today. My roommate and I spent the afternoon throwing away our money by playing penny slots at the casino on the nearby Indian Reservation. Or more accurately, I spent the afternoon throwing away my money - she came home with $50 more in her pocket than she started out with! I was hoping for a repeat of the good luck I had when we stopped in Las Vegas for the night on my journey west, but I guess it just wasn't my day.

What happened in Las Vegas you ask?

I found something I'd never seen before - HALF penny slots. Being the frugal (and broke) person that I am, that was the machine I had to play. I played a few rounds and decided I didn't like that particular machine. So I hit spin one last time as I stood up and got ready to cash out. And watched in shock as the screen went crazy. Lights flashed, sirens blared, coins ka-chinged. And the 'winnings' number started to spin upwards crazily before finally coming to a stop at 18066 credits. On a 10 cent spin, I had just won $90.33! Yeah, it's going to be hard to top that any time soon.

The deed is done. And I'm out of chocolate. Note.. frogging knitting that alternates rows between 2 colours is a bit annoying. Now though, I reknit.

I've had one of my WIPs stuffed in a corner for a couple of weeks now. One that when I started I was all gung-ho about. One that I still LOVE the yarn and the way it's all knitting up. So what caused it to get shoved aside? Those two scary words - reversing shaping.

Looks pretty symmetrical in this picture doesn't it? In reality, not so much. The right most section's increases at the top are supposed to match the leftmost section.. and they're completly off. And how far do I need to frog back to? See the dark blue gussets that I've knit 4 of? I need to frog the right most gusset, and all the striped rows inbetween. Yup, I have to go all the way back to the third gusset.

It's very tempting to say screw it, and shove it away, casting on for a new sweater in a much larger gauge. But I really REALLY like this pattern. I think it will look just perfect on me, and I'm looking forward to getting to wear it. So I'm going to sit down tonight, armed with a bar of GOOD chocolate (bought specifically for this purpose) and rip out a weeks worth of knitting.

My non-pooling secret patterned sock is coming along well. The heel is turned, and I'm working out the stitch count for the leg. I've also sent the stitch pattern to a test knitter to put through its paces with various yarns, asking her to test it out on whatever stitch count makes that particular yarn pool, to see if the pattern takes the pooling away. Once I finish my pair, I'll be looking for someone to test knit another full pair for me. If you have a skein of my yarn sitting in your stash waiting for a pattern and you're interested in volunteering, keep an eye on the blog!

I hope everyone in the US went out there and voted today! Here's a little something for you if you did. Since I didn't post it until late today... I'll run this until the end of tomorrow, Nov 5th.

http://shop.artsygal.net

I posted last night that I spent a few hours staring at the road and some of you asked why I didn't have knitting with me.. or whether I can knit in the dark or not. I actually had 2 socks in my purse. But since the original plan was to hit the road to head home much earlier, I didn't pack any plain stockinette knitting. Granted, I didn't have much time to knit over this past weekend anyways. But when I did.. I worked on this:

Yes, I know.. it looks suspiciously like a plain stockinette sock, doesn't it? Except, all you're seeing is the back side. The other side is patterned, which is why I couldn't knit it in the dark. But.. thanks to the pattern.. no pooling at all! But until the pattern is done, it remains secret since I haven't decided if I want to submit the pattern anywhere yet.

I'm loving reading everyones comments by the way! Keep them coming!

After helping my friend move this weekend, I just spent the last several hours staring at this.

That would be a car ride where it was too dark for me to work on any of the knitting I had with me. Here's when we finally got home:

I'm going to bed.

I'm giving away free yarn. Yup, you heard me right.. FREE YARN!

Ok.. now that I have your attention... I've decided to challenge myself to blog everyday. I'm not putting a specific time constraint on how long I have to do this for, I'm just trying to get into the habit of blogging regularly. And to make it more fun I've decided to give away some yarn in the process. All you have to do is leave me comments on my posts. Every day that I post gives you another chance to enter to win the yarn. I'll randomly pick a winner from ALL the comments when one of 2 things happens. Either I fall off the blogging wagon and a whole day goes by without my posting. OR I've managed to blog all the way till Christmas without missing a day. In fact... if I make it all the way till Christmas, I'll give away yarn to TWO people!

Simple enough right? I blog, you win!

Hmm.. this post needs a photo or two. How about some gratuitous yarn pron shots?

Artsygal 3 ply Stripey yarn
100% superwash merino

Mmmm squishy!