MORE Presents!
Not two days after I post about my secret pal presents, another package shows up! (Did I mention that I just finished
At Knits End?)
So now I'm posting immediately in hopes that another one shows up I got a great spa package this time around...
That's green tea (which I have to start drinking at work now - after all it's caffeinated and has antioxidants, which coffee does not), a scrub brush/pumice stone, an eye mask, bath salts and a pumicey peppermint soap. I'm going to have some fun with this package, I think.
In other news, I am now a proud mama. I MADE YARN AND THE YARN WAS GOOD!
It's a consistent weight, and even if there are some wonky bits from over lapping, it's a consistent yarn. There was only one break when I was skeining it, and spit splicing took care of that. I even set the twist properly for the first time (you mean it's WARM water and soap? Ooops).
And soon, I will send it off to my secret pal. I DON'T WANT TO LET IT GO!!! You better appreciate this, Ms. Pal.
If you listen closely, you can hear a pin dropping...
Work has kept me so darn busy that I haven't had time to knit! Or even spin!
Well, I finished a few ounces of ingeo for the secret pal. And in this DC humidity OF DEATH, I'm lucky to have the yearning to do that.
Speaking of secret pals, I got a package from mine last week
and haven't blogged about it because I am a slacker! slackity-slack!.
I got
At Knit's End, some stitch markers, a row counter, a box of cinnamon altoids and a package of Starbust fruit cremes. Which I totally didn't eat. I gave them to starving children. And a homeless guy. And I totally didn't eat them. In about two minutes.
Thanks secret pal!
Spinning!
My spinning wheel arrived back from the folks at Babe yesterday, and it's running like a dream. I've already spun some ingeo silk and made inroads on plying.
Unfortunately, I have problems both drafting and plying. The yarn breaks. And then we run into the problem of the Magical Disappearing End. I seriously stare at the bobbin for 5 minutes and I can't find it anywhere. And then I'll find when I think is the end but it's actually a crappy join from earlier or an accidental yarn breakage from earlier and that works for a few minutes and then you have a Magical Disappeared End and an end that you can't actualy use. OR after 10 minutes of searching, I randomly break the yarn to see if I can get it going again.
Of course, it's midnight and I'm incoherent, so this probably doesn't make any sense.
In the end, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have breakages in this yarn. And it's for my SP5. Sorry, SP5.
Shawl time!
I've cast on and gotten going on Madli's Shawl from Interweave Summer 2004.
I'm totally in love with this pattern, except for the bobbles. They're annoying. Of course, I'm only on the 3rd of 31 repeats (it may end up being 30, depending on how much yarn I have). Around repeat 27, I may be cursing this shawl.
Of course, my brothers, with only slight nudging, gave me the bestest birthday present ever.
2400 yards of a cashmere/silk blend laceweight yarn. This will become a Lily of the Valley shawl.
Happy knitting!
Sitcom Chic... Take two!
Please observe the difference.
Sitcom Chic two years ago:
I was 30 pounds heavier, and had made a sweater out of TLC acrylic and thought it was faboo. The sweater rolled terribly, even though I'd overstretched it when I'd sewn grosgrain ribbon along the front edging.
Sitcom Chic, version two:
The yarn is TLC Cotton Plus, which is pretty much perfect for this sweater. The front edge still rolls a bit, but I haven't sewn in the ribbon yet. It's probably about 5-10 stitches too big (even if my bust size hasn't changed with the weight loss, the rest of me has!), but it's hard to adjust sizes with a seamless raglan sweater. The button was pulled from the old sweater, and if I decide I need ribbon, I may pull that from the old one, too.
I wet blocked this sweater, which was kind of the worst idea ever. It took three days to mostly dry, though the worst of the curling stopped.
I'm very happy. And I mean it this time.
