Look What the Yarn Fairy Brought

I mentioned on Friday that Fabric.com was having a big sale on Rowan Yarn.  Well, look what the Yarn Fairy brought me today:

I can't believe how fast this shipment got here.  What awesome service.  I will definitely be ordering from these folks again.  There's two sweaters worth of yarn in those two bags and the cost comes to around $20 bucks for each sweater.  You just can't beat that price.

The blue is actually closer to a periwinkle blue in real life and is a worsted 75% wool/25% alpaca mix.  The rust color is pretty accurate and is an extra fine merino DK.  I've already go the sweater patterns picked out for these and can't wait to get started.  It'll be a few days before I can get started on it, but I'm so wanting to start now! now! now!

Why yes, those are my children

I was a bad girl today. This is the time of year when you are supposed to buy things for others than yourself, right? Well...

I might have let my van take me to the yarn shop today. And I might have unzipped my purse and let my wallet jump out while I was there.

Look what came home with me:

Cascade 220 Heathers in colorway 9452 - a beautiful turquoise and gray combo

And this dove headlong into the shopping bag as well:

Noro Silk Garden - colorway 211

Oops.

*****

Why yes, those are my children. Why do you ask?

Seeing Red!

Today's post is brought to you by the number 2 and the color red. Yep, there's two red objects for your viewing pleasure.

When I got home from child chauffering this afternoon, there was a package waiting for me. A few months ago I had entered a contest from the Meema blog. I was a runner up, but she said she'd send alpaca my way anyway. I had forgotten all about it until I saw the city where it came from - St. Paul, MN. Oh boy! Alpaca!

This is way cool! Look what she sent:

It's red alpaca!

How sweet this lady is! There is just the barest hint of yellow mixed in with the red. Gorgeous! It's incredibly soft too. The Youngest grabbed it out of my hands before I could do a thing and rubbed it all over his face. Luckily for me, he missed wiping the snotty nose with it.

Anyway, a big THANK YOU to MEEMA!


For our second red object, I lay before you a partial sleeve:


This sucker is taking a while. And it's not like I haven't been working on it either. This may be, next to Annie Modesitt's corset, the most complicated thing that I've knit. Some of my cables tend to get a little tight and after a while it makes my wrist hurt to knit on it. But it's turning out so great! (ahem, So far. I don't want to jinx myself.)

WooHoo! and a Question for you

My yarn stash is growing by leaps and bounds this year. I've got so much yarn and so little time. What a great problem to have.

Here's another wonderful problem:

A friend of mine (who has a gorgeous hubby and four perfect children) went on a mission trip to Peru. I asked her to bring me back some yarn. I didn't mention color or anything, just said "surprise me." Well, she did.

I got 20 skeins of an alpaca/wool/cotton blend. 10 are dark gray, 5 are a medium/light gray and are a bright pink. And get this - all 20 skeins were only $39.00! Woohoo!

Now, on to the problem. The label states that it is 5o grams. There is no yardage listed. I'm getting 13 wraps per inch, so I'm guessing it's either a light worsted or heavy sport, take your pick. I'm at a loss from there. I don't know how to figure out my yardage and I suck at math. Any brilliant math people out there who can help me figure this out?

I also don't know what to make with it. But I'm so excited about this!!!

I don't have a pic of it yet, but here's some sheep pr0n for you: ;)

Valentine's Yarn!

I told you there would be a knitting/yarn post next didn't I?

Well, slow progress is being made on the Circular Shrug. When you cast on 240 stitches, it takes a while to make a row, but it is coming along. I'll have a pic of it tomorrow for you.

I do have some yummy pre-Valentine's Day yarn pr0n for you though:

MMMM! Yummy!

This weekend I went to the Knitting Emporium in Kennesaw, GA. This was my first time in that shop and I loved it. It's in a tiny old house and every single room is filled with yarn. It's a great place to explore every nook and cranny. I found this Colinette sock yarn (colorway - Bright Charcoal) in the back room. It's so soft and squishy, love it.

The Valentine you see is destined for one of the Eldest's teachers at school. I found the idea on a blog a week or so ago, but can't for the life of me remember where. If this was your idea, please forgive me! Let me know in the comments so I can give you full credit for this really cute idea.

It's so simple to make. Cut out a heart. Then take a hole punch and go all the way around the heart with it. Next, grab some yarn and a crochet hook. From the front, insert your hook through the center top hole and grab the yarn and pull it back through. Then do it again in the next hole and the next and all the way around. It was super easy to do and is an easy teacher gift for Valentine's.

Half a Sweater

I'm feeling much better. Antibiotics are wonderful things. Thanks to those who chimed in to wish me well.

I finished the lace portion of Bella Paquita and attached it to the top of the sweater. This part of the grafting went much better than attaching the sleeves did. Not sure why, but I'm much happier with how it looks than how the sleeves look.

Look Mom - Half a sweater!

On to the next portion. I am built like a pear (and I freakin' hate it, but that's neither here nor there,) so based on my measurements, I decided to use the small size top and medium size bottom to the sweater. Lord how I wish I could say the opposite, but child rearing has done me no favors.

Now if I had known how much math was involved with knitting, I might not have taken it up as a hobby. really. It's simple math that always messes with my brain, not the hard stuff. Why me? Why was it so hard today for me to figure out how to get the number of stitches I had on each side, front and back, down to the starting number of sts. on each side? Why? It's not hard, but for some reason my brain refused to wrap itself around these numbers. A calculator wasn't even that much help. And to top it off, I had to figure it out and make sure that the k2p2 ribbing came out even. The first time I did it I ended up with a k2k2p2k2 kind of thing. Not pretty. It was a total BLONDE afternoon.

I like being blonde. When I do stupid things, I get to blame it on my haircolor. :)


I got some new sock yarn in from Knitpicks. I'm playing around with a new sock design idea (cross your fingers that I can figure it out) and it was a good excuse for getting in these colors:

Black, white, pink, soft yellow and green

Need new WIPs

Can you believe it? I currently have absolutely nothing on the needles. For some unknown reason, both of my WIPs managed to get finished at the same time. I'm getting edgy already. My fingers need something to do.

So what did I do? I made the mistake of looking at the yarn sale board over at the Knitty Coffeeshop. I now have some yummy Colrain yarn coming my way to make the Minimalist Cardigan from Fall 2007 IK. The subtle color of the Grey/Olive yarn will be perfect for this cardi.

Here's the Grey/Olive yarn:

Minimalist Cardigan

AND I need a shawl for this one summer dress that I have. I bought the yarn for that on Monday.

So, now I need to get to work. I need to cast on and make my Dad some socks as well.

New Yarn

New yarn! This will be used to make a pair of socks for Dad for Christmas. There's more yarn coming in the mail and a new toy! I'll show ya as soon as I get it!

Sorry, dark pic. Click to enlarge and see more detail.

If it can be climbed while holding a chocolate chip cookie and wearing pajamas, then it should be climbed while holding a chocolate chip cookie and wearing pajamas!

Scrubs, Wallpaper and Yarn

I made a yummy sea salt scrub for the bath/shower a few days ago. This is super easy and fun to make at home. Now please understand that I do tutorials the way that I cook. I do things by approximation and no two batches/recipes are ever the same. I do things by feel, taste or smell. I have never been accused of being a perfectionist and don't intend to ever be accused of it. As long as what I'm doing is close, that's fine by me. As mentioned in a previous post, this is why I am a crafter, not a chemist.

The ingredients are super flexible as well. There are endless combinations of items that you can use. You need sea salt, oils, glycerin and essential oil for scent. That's it. How much of each? That's where the fun comes in. You get to decide!

For the scrub part, I used sea salt. The one I bought from the health food store is fairly fine. If you want more of a scrub you could use a coarse salt. You really don't even have to use a specific kind of salt here. Sea Salt, Kosher - all will work fine.

Put your salt in a bowl. How much you use is up to you - (see, I told you I approximate and I'm about to do it again too!) Now that we've got the scrub part, let's add the stuff that makes your skin feel so soft.

I used some of each of the following: Avocado oil, olive oil, glycerin and essential oil. You can change out the oils if you would like. Jojoba would be great in this. How many drops of essential oil you use is pretty much up to your nose (as is the scent that you pick.) I added a few drops of spearmint. As anyone in my family knows, I adore mint, especially mint teas.

Basically, you want the salt to be really wet. Like I mentioned above this is approximation at its finest. You should not have a dry mix. You also don't want it to be a soup either. Meet somewhere in the middle where the salt is overly shiny.

Put your mix in a small container and shower away! Your scrub will separate. Don't worry, just swirl it around with your hand as you scoop it out to use it.

I guarantee your skin will feel fantastic when you exit your shower.



Oh, and that little bit of wall paper you see behind the ingredients? It's absolutely hideous and was in the house when we moved in. We've been afraid to tackle changing it. You see, the idiots before us had 3 layers of the stuff on top of each other and that was on top of a wall that was never primed. We know this because the rest of the rooms in the house that we have changed have been this way and we really don't want to change it ourselves for fear of destroying the sheet rock. Plus add in no money and two children that like to "help" and you have a recipe for disaster.

Two funny things about it though?
1. Anyone over 70 that has entered our home has loved it.
2. Any artwork (or anything else for that matter) that you hang disappears into the wall paper. I kid you not. I hung a Christmas wreath up on one of the walls and noone ever noticed it. noone. Here's a pic of it in all its hideous glory:

Lovely Ain't it?

For any knitters interested, I've got yarn up for auction at Ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330109158159
It's a cotton/nylon blend. See the pic below.