Cable Technique

Process Knitter: This type of knitter is not worried about when or even if a project is ever completed, but simply enjoys the process of knitting.

Project Knitter: This type of knitter totally wants to wear that cute little chic sweater.

I believe that on most days I fall into the second category.

However, not on my current project.


I will almost always let a mistake slide or fudge the pattern in some way to fix it in order to get to the finished product so that I can wear it without a care that there may be a mistake hidden somewhere in the mix of things. I'm being a rebel to myself and not doing that this time around. I want this project to be right in order to publish it. I have ripped back this project so many times my yarn is becoming more and more frayed as time goes on.

I'm continuing to take my fingerless mitt project from design sketch to finished project. There have so far been eleventy bajillion steps in doing so.


The problems have been numerous.

One of the things that was really bugging me yesterday was the look of the cables. It had nothing to do with pattern and everything to do with technique. As the cables would cross and then attach themselves to the next stitch, the one that was attaching itself to the next stitch always seemed wonky and larger than it's peers. You may remember me complaining of this once before here.

The problem, it seems was not in tension, but in size. As in that, somehow, the way that I was creating the problem stitches made them use more yarn, thus creating larger loops. I thought that if I increased the tension, really tightened up the stitches, then the problem would go away, disappear forever. Not so. All I did was make the stitches on the next row nearly impossible to complete and still had huge stitches.

I now have the solution to that little problem (thanks to a wonderful person's advice on Ravelry) and a great need to share it with you!

To make neater, tighter, more professional looking cables: Whether going from a purl to a knit or a knit to a purl, it doesn't matter which direction,
Move the yarn to the direction of the stitch that must be made next before taking the stitch you have just made off the left needle.


For example:

You have the following cable stitch layout:

P P K K K K P P - where you are going to be doing a cable with the Ks (which direction they cross is unimportant in this instance.)

1. You would do one purl, move it off the left needle and onto the right. 2. Again, make the next purl, but before taking it off of the left needle, move the yarn to the back, then remove the loop from the left needle to the right.
3. Make your cable up until the last knit stitch.
4. Make the knit stitch, but before moving it off of the left needle, move your yarn forward, then move the loop from the left to the right needle and begin your last two purls.

It is amazing the difference that I've had in my cables since learning this! I'm just shocked and stupified over it. It's like (in my silly mind anyway) you are making a yarn sandwich. You make the stitch, move the yarn so that it sits between the two halves of the stitch (see? a sandwich!) and then move it. The yarn now holds down and shortens the stitch that was causing all the fuss!


Completely Off Topic:

Beware what beautiful trees you plant near your home and driveway. In this case a beautiful Gonzaga Cherry Tree. See the gorgeous carnation-like flowers?


It just might make it snow pink blossoms everywhere and make your home and automobiles look like they've been in a rose parade.

What Happens When...

This is what happens when you leave roving in the washing machine after you spend all that time dyeing it, spinning it and forgetting to take it out and then running a load of heavy bath mats:


It makes great dog dreads too:

Oopsy.

Dyeing and Spinning Day

Yesterday was chock full of dyeing and spinning. I got nothing else done except for making dinner and taking kids to and from school.

Here's what I got busy with:

1. Easter Egg Dye: I had three goals with this project.

a) I wanted to play around with mixing some colors. There's a green that I would really like to have a on a sweater, so I got out the Yellow, Blue and Orange dyes and mixed them up. I put a tablespoon of citric acid and one cup of water in glass containers with the dye tablets.

b) Then, I took out some scraps of roving and made crochet chains with them. I wanted to do a different dye technique where I colored the bumps of the chains. I was going for a mottled effect where I would still have some of the white in the roving showing. In the first chain, I combined one part yellow, one part blue and two parts orange. This ended up giving me a lovely olive color, but not what I wanted. The second chain had one part yellow, one part blue and half a part of orange. Got the perfect green in that one. The last chain had all three colors randomly placed all over it, just for fun.

c) Microwave setting the dye (Mini Tutorial). I put the chains, one at a time in a glass dish that was lined with plastic wrap. I then colored them with the dye and then covered the whole dish with more plastic wrap. Next, I turned the microwave on for two minutes. Let it rest for two minutes. Then repeated until the dye was exhausted. Really simple, but you want to be careful not to cook it for longer than two minutes at a time. You could felt your roving/yarn if you cook it longer. Slower is good and it's always better to be safe than sorry!

The Results (re-chained - they were unchained so that they would dry better):

Moss green on top, Mix in the Middle, Olive on the Bottom

I'm thinking I might mix all of these in one tiny spinning project, just for fun.


2. Second dye Project of the day: Dyeing with Dandelions. I made the kids go out with me and pick a big pile of dandelions. It was great fun until we realized there were tiny little bugs on them. Now, I'm a self confessed hypochondriac. It's not good for us to see tiny bugs that might possibly crawl from our hands to the top of our heads. I'm positive no bugs made it into my hair, but now the top of my head has been itching like crazy for two days! I'll tell you about this project more tomorrow, it's still in process.

3. Spinning Project of the day: Actually, this would be a Plying project. I had two bobbins that needed to be plied and this was not how it turned out, at first.:

This was the second time around. The first time was way over-plied, crunchy hard and mega twisty. I ran it back through the wheel and untwisted quite a bit of it. This is approx. 216 yards, give or take. This is a two ply yarn and was intentionally made thick and then. I want this yarn to be more rustic looking.

I have a bobbin of more plied yarn that needs to be skeined and I've got about 4 more ounces to spin and ply of this stuff. I have a project in mind, but there's no guarantee I'll get enough yardage for it. So, I'm keeping the project under my hat until it's determined whether I'll have enough yarn or not.

Whew! That's it. Now can you see why I didn't get anything else accomplished yesterday?

How I Spent My Morning

I haven't knit anything in, like, four days. I'm starting to get the shakes. My hands have been all twitchy and stuff.

I finished a big project and want to start another. The problem, is that I used up my spare change to buy fiber to spin, so there's no money for yarn. So last night and tonight I will be spinning like crazy to get enough yarn for a medium sized project at least.

Meanwhile, this morning I started opening boxes of Easter Egg dye (25 of them to be exact) and breaking everything down into it's component parts:


I now have 25 of each of the 6 colors that came in the box in separate bags. I also clipped the directions and put one in each of the bags. The directions were interesting because they gave instructions on using different kinds of acids to get different shades of each color. I probably won't pay much attention to these, but it will be nice to have them if I get curious. I ended up with one mixed colors bag. I had one box of PAAS dye that came with 12 different colors in it. Nothing labeled, so telling one from the other was just too much to take. I'll play with those later and figure out what they are the hard way.

Unfortunately, I now have 25 sheets of stickers, 25 sheets of an Easter memory game, 25 sheets of cardboard circle creator thingies and 25 egg dipping tools. There has to be some use for these, doesn't there? I hate throwing these kind of things away. Feels wasteful. The stickers won't be a problem, The Youngest will take care of those, but the rest? If anyone has any crafty ideas on what to do with those, I'm all ears! My Sister In Law is a teacher. Maybe she could use some of those for something.

This afternoon's project will be to dye some wool top in the microwave. I haven't done that before. I'm also going to experiment with mixing some of the egg dye and hand painting it onto the wool. I'm really looking forward to making a big mess in the kitchen. I might, maybe, eventually cook dinner for the family too.

Something Useful for Bloggers

I found a useful site that I thought that I would share with the other bloggers out there. It's called Tracer and it helps protect the content of your site. If anyone copies the content of your site, it basically forces them to give you credit for your work. No more of this copy/paste/change a few words and take credit nonsense! Yeah!

It's free and quick to add this to your blog as well. You register on their site, insert a simple line of script into your html on your blog and you're good to go! Love this.

Believe it or not, I got more than enough time to knit this past weekend. I actually finished the Owls Sweater. It's not blocked yet and I don't have a modeled photo of it yet (fits great, but snug - note to self: block it bigger, lose weight or get another pair of Spanx), but I do have this:

I used glass beads for the eyes. They are not gold in real life. They are red with swirls of gold, green and blue and are stunning to look at. This pic does not do them justice. I tried and tried to get a good one for you today, but the stars were just not aligned right.

This morning I took a trip to Walmart for some 50% off Easter goodies and boy, did I find them. Check it out:
Normally 88 cents a piece - Got 'em for 40 cents a piece. I bought 20 of them. Gotta love a good sale. Have I told you that Sale is one of my favorite words? It ranks right behind the word Free. :) These should color a heck of a lot of roving/yarn. Not pictured: I grabbed some dessert paper plates and napkins for 50 cents a piece, 1 yellow and 1 green. Also, some cute brightly striped kitchen towels for a buck a piece.

Somebody got some fake teeth in his Easter Basket this year:

A face only a mother could love?

Notice the chocolate on his face as well. Boy devoured his chocolate bunny in about three seconds flat.

The Owls are Emerging

It's been deathly quiet here in my abode. My Mom came and got the kids yesterday and they couldn't wait to be away from Mommy and off with their Nanny and PawPaw.

Whoopee! I've managed to pick up the house a tiny bit, go out to dinner, relax, pack, knit, card, and sleep in. Who could ask for more?

The owls are emerging on the sweater.



Since this pic, I've gotten the beginnings of their wee little heads started. My hands are aching a bit. The combination of cables and two yarns held together are really tight and my hands have been working overtime to get the cables completed.

Well, I'm off to the folks to face the little heathens again. Wish me luck. :)

Have a Wonderful Easter Holiday!

A Solution!

A while back a very nice lady that I met through Ravelry gave me some lovely Corriedale fleece. I cleaned it carefully and then dyed it with some Lanaset dyes aiming for a deep brown (came close, but was more a deep plum instead.) Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite well and I despaired of ever getting the chance to have usable fleece. The d*mn fleece had been overprocessed and when I tried hand carding and spinning it, it felt like dry rope in the hand. I tried hand carding some bombyx silk in with it, but it didn't help. So I set it aside a while in disgust until I could decide what to do with it.

After I received my drum carder, I ordered some fiber from Sheep Shed Studio. I got some top that was a deep black and dark brown with a touch of mohair mixed in with it. I picked out as much of the mohair as possible, but it was impossible to remove it all.

I was then hit by an idea. I have some dark brown and some black alpaca in storage. What if I mix it all up? What if I mix the brown/black, the corriedale and the alpaca? I'd then have a sweater's worth of the dark brown that I was looking for.

I wanted to make sure that I have the same amount of all the fibers in each of the batts that I would make. I've been going all scientific-y lately and so, to make life more interesting, I decided to card together the fibers that I have seperately first. Then, it would be easier to divide by weight and would be smoother when fed through the carder with the other fibers.

I spent all of last night carding up the black and brown domestic wool from SSS. Then tackled the dreaded Corriedale. I got three lovely batts of the Corriedale before I quit.

I couldn't wait to see what it would all feel like together and went ahead (before tackling the alpaca batts) and carded up a batt. I really wanted to see if the Corriedale was going to hurt the mix. I had so little faith in that Corriedale, but wow, was the completed batt gorgeous:

Left: black/brown batt, Middle: Corriedale, Right: Both combined w/ alpaca

It feels so soft and silky and is the perfect chestnut brown that has just a touch of sheen thanks to the tiny percentage of mohair. Lovely stuff and it's going to be so drapey.

I still need to finish carding the Corriedale and then start on the alpaca. It won't be finished in the next couple of days due to me going out of town on Thursday evening, but I'll get this at least partially finished next week.

I found time today to attach the sleeves to the Owls sweater and begin on the yoke:


I'm taking this with me this weekend and I'm hoping I'll have time to work on it then.

I can see to blog now!

I had an interesting new experience yesterday. My monitor decided to bug out on me. It would stay on for about 10 minutes and then turn off. Then, when turned back on, would stay on for a total of 1 second (literally) and turn back off again. Repeat the 1 second thing ad nauseaum. Do you know how incredibly difficult it is to write in your blog with this happening?

Today, The whole mess has been rendered moot with a new monitor. Yay! Much less frustrating. Cool thing? Cost me about $30 bucks for an 18.5" widescreen lcd thanks to a nice $75 gift certificate the hubby has been squirreling away from Fry's. Cool huh?

I have been knitting, some. I am almost finished with the second sleeve on the Owls sweater. I fully expected to be finished with this thing weeks ago, but life loves to interrupt our best laid plans. From here, I've got another inch or two on the sleeve and can then begin work on the cool Owl cable on the yoke of the sweater. We'll be heading to the folks again on Thursday evening and I'll take it, but probably won't get much done on it. For some reason, I have the hardest time getting a lot of knitting accomplished there. Of course, I'm taking my carder with me and all my beads, so the knit may get put on the back burner. We'll see.

Why should the kid always get the comfy seat?

Dyeing versus Dying

Children should come with signs from the womb that say: Warning! This cute tiny little apple of your eye will grow to be a not quite as cute, but still cute apple of your eye that carries infectious diseases. You do not even want to know how sick I became on Thursday night. The sick continued up until yesterday evening. It was not fun. It should have come with a warning.

Very late yesterday, I was bit with another bug. While I had gotten past the point of wanting to die, I suddenly wanted to dye. So I did.

I was using Kool-aid and a tiny bit of Wilton's paste for the dyeing and I wanted to try and do things a bit differently than last time.

1. I wanted to be a little more scientific so that I could re-produce the colors later instead of the fly by the seat of my pants method that I usually employ.
2. I also wanted colors that weren't quite so in-your-face clown barfy. I didn't want all neon primary colors, so that took a little thought.



Here's what I did:

I have a whole bag of lumps and bumps of fiber. I got out my digital postal scale and started weighing. Most of the lumps were .2 ounces in weight. One of the lumps was .8 oz and another was 2oz.

I ignored the total amount of water used. I went with the fiber weight versus ounce of dye route.

I heated water in pots on the stove to boiling. If you are using just the kool-aid, you do not need to add citric acid or vinegar to make it color fast. However, if you are using just food coloring, you're going to want to add them. I do not measure this out usually, and I probably use way too much of either because of it. I did put 1 tablespoon in the pot that was going to be used with the Wiltons.

I used Mason jars and glasses for the smaller lumps and the pots for the bigger ones.
Once the water was boiling, I turned if off, filled up my containers about half way, added the dye and walked away until the dye exhausted (the water was clear, the fiber colored.) Then rinsed and dried the fiber. Easy peasy.


I actually took notes! Can't believe it. It's just not like me.

I'm going to show you a pic and then give you my mix of kool-aid and Wilton's so that if you want to produce some of these you can. You'll have to do your own maths to get the ratios correct for the weight of your fiber.



Starting from the right and going clockwise:

Rust - For two ounces of fiber: 2 packetss yellow KoolAid, 1 packet BerryBlue Twist KA, 1.5 tsp Cherry KA, 1/4 tsp Orange Wilton's Food Coloring (paste)

Melon Orange - For .2 oz fiber: 1 tsp Orange Koolaid, 1 3/4 tsp Yellow Koolaid, 1/4 tsp Cherry Koolaid

Mossy Green - For .2 oz fiber: 1 tsp Orange Koolaid, 1/2 tsp Berry Blue Twist Koolaid

Purple - For .8 oz fiber: 1 packet Grape Koolaid

Red: For 1 oz. fiber: 1 packet Fruit Punch Koolaid

Dark Mossy Green: For .2 oz. fiber: 1.5 tsp Orange Koolaid, 1 tsp Berry Blue Twist, 1 tsp Lemonaid Koolaid

(I'm skipping to the almost black here, so bear with me.)

Black: For .2oz fiber: 1/4 tsp. Wilton's Black Paste Food Coloring. let fiber sit in glass jar for 1/2 hour. Put in microwave and cook for 30 sec. Repeat the microwaving every half hour for about 4 times. Then let it sit over night to let it fully exhaust.

Warning: The Black does not give consistent results. It "Breaks". Usually the fiber absorbs the reds first, then the blue. If I had let it sit all night, it would have probably made a truer black. But I couldn't leave well enough alone and added another small bump (about .1 oz) of fiber to it and left it all over night. That small bump ended up being that beautiful blue.

So there ya go. Your mileage may very. For me this was very scientific. For any real scientific and anal-retentive folks, my method may very well send you to the crazy house. :)

Moving on

Okay, I managed not to kill The Youngest yesterday, but it was a close call. As Marie pointed out in the comments yesterday, yes, things went overboard and I stooped down to his level. But in my defense, the child pushed very hard with both me and his teachers yesterday and not all over food. Basically, if something could be argued about, he did. It was a long damn day and I'm thrilled that it's over. My mom actually called today to find out if the child survived. I was more worried about me surviving yesterday to tell the truth.

Today was much better. Except for taking the Eldest to the doctor, that wasn't fun either.

Moving on.

This is what I meant to show you and discuss yesterday before a certain three year old got me sidetracked:


I finished this batch of batts. The camera washed it out a bit, The batts are a lovely burgundy and black color in real life. This is 8.8 ounces of domestic wool and mohair that was purchased from the Sheep Shed Studio. It was originally black and white and was dyed with koolaid. It will probably take forever to get it all spun up, but it'll be a fun forever. :)

Pssst. Don't tell Widget the cat, but Roxie the puppy is almost touching her (it won't be pretty once she realizes it):

Child Rant

My day has totally sucked. The Youngest chose today to push every button on every adult that he could find. He told his teachers to "Shut-Up" and then refused to do anything that they told him to do. Can you guess how incredibly embarrassing it is that you can't control your child when you're not around him? I can. not. control. him. I have no idea how to get it through his little stubborn rock-hard head that he needs to learn to mind the grown ups.

As soon as he got home he was disciplined. Then he refused to eat lunch. Fine. I put him down for his nap without it. He refused it when he got up too and told me no in no uncertain terms to my face. Fine. Discipline ensued. I put dinner and his lunch down in front of him tonight at supper and told him I didn't care which he ate as long as he ate. Temper tantrum ensued. More no's. He was disciplined again. An hour later he is still staring at his food.

Now it's basically his will versus mine. I'll be damned if he wins this one. He may still be sitting at the dinner table til morning at this rate. I can totally see why parents go off the deep end with their children and make the five o'clock news, I really can.

It's Here!

The Fancy Kitty Kitten Drumcarder finally showed up on my doorstep this afternoon at around 4pm. I spent most of my day sitting right in front of the window looking for that big brown truck to show up. How pitiful is that? Then, to top it off, dinner will now be late because I had to break out my new toy and play with it.

I heart this so much! Here it is straight out of the box:


And here is my first lumpy bumpy beginner's batt (run through 3 times):


I used some roving that I had dyed a very long time ago and never really liked. I like it much better in the batt and can't wait to see it spun up. Once I finish carding up the rest, I'll get out the wheel and see what it looks like.


On a side note, this past summer my Mom shelled a bunch of purple hull peas. She and I "cooked" up the hulls and I stored the juice for later use. Last night was the later use. I heated it up, added vinegar and put some white roving in and let it sit all night. I was really surprised. It came out a pretty tan, but not at all what I expected. I still have some of the juice left and I'm going to play around with it some more and see what I get. Here's the result:


I have to go cook now before the family shoots me and then have to go play with the carder some more. Bye!

Jam Packed Weekend

On Friday I ordered my drum carder! Woohoo! It should get here sometime tomorrow. In honor of it's showing up on my doorstep, I ordered a couple of pounds of fiber from Sheep Shed Studio to dye and play with, so you should see some fresh dyepot pics soon (especially with all the Easter egg dye going on sale in a week or two). It's absolutely killing me. I want it, and I want it now! I'm taking temper tantrum lessons from the three year old, is it working or should I put a little more whine in there? :)

Here's the latest pic of the Owl Sweater:


I've finished about 4 more inches since I reported to you. Last week was so busy with getting ready for yesterday's performance that the knitting got back-burnered.


The performance went great. I didn't blow my solos, so I consider that a plus. My go-go girl outfit got rave reviews. Here I am in all my stage makeup after the show:

Here's a shot of the group on stage - that's me in the blue in the center. Different costume. I wore about five of them last night.

I did get to mix two of my passions (theater and spinning). We did a Les Miserables medley and I had a ton of time to sit on stage so I took a basket of wool and a spindle up there. It actually looked authentic. What else would a poor woman of that time have done but make her own yarn for her family's clothing? Of course, the hubby didn't get a pic of that one. He was at a really bad angle for it and was wrestling the Youngest to keep him from running up onto the stage with mommy. It was the first time he had seen me do anything like this.

Anyway, it's been a busy weekend and I'm glad it's over. It's time to get back to dull routine around here so I have time to play with my new toy. :)

How do you pronounce her name?

I'll be back to knitting things next week, but for now:

The lecture given by Dr. Zahi Hawass last night was an absolute hoot. The man may be the most renowned archaeologist on the face of the planet, but he could easily ditch that job to become a traveling comedian. He kept us in stitches for the entire night.

There was only one problem. The man wouldn't frickin' keep still, so I got a lot of pics like this one:


I did get a less blurry (but not by much) pic of him standing at the podium:

This was the clearest of the night and it was a pic of the slide projection screen he used during the lecture:

I was kinda disappointed to see him in a suit. I wanted him in the blue shirt and fedora. oh well.

He is a fantastic public speaker and his job may be the most fascinating job ever. He was so cute, absolutely passionate about his career and the history that he is literally uncovering.

He seems very sweet as well. He had been corresponding with a 10 year old little girl and her parents and he called the girl up on stage with him. Then he astonished her and her folks by giving her an all expense paid 10 day trip to Egypt with him as their guide. It was all I could do not to stand up in my seat and scream "Me too! Take me too!" :)

We did not stay for the book signing. I wish we could have, but it was around 10pm when we left and there is no way we would have gotten home before 1am. The Fox theater was packed, and I do mean packed (between 1500 and 2000 people -way more than I expected would be there), and everyone of them grabbed the book they had either brought or purchased while there and ran to the room where the signing would be. Practically a stampede.

But wow, was this guy fun. I would like to have met him. Maybe one day.

He spoke on all the excavations he has going currently all over Egypt. He spoke only briefly about Tut, most of it was about other mummies and pyramids. So cool.

By the way, some geeky trivia for you via Dr. Hawass: If you ever need to remember how to pronounce Queen Hatshepsut's name, just think "HotChickenSoup" and you'll have it. Told ya it was geeky.

Productivity for a History Geek

Today is looking fairly productive, just not knitting and craft wise. I haven't had time to pick up the knitting in almost a week. I'm starting to get the shakes.

But despite the shakes, I managed to have a Venison stew in the crockpot by 9:30 this morning, the house picked up of toys and vacuumed by 10:00. Technically, the second part should have been quicker, but the Youngest was "helping". By 10:30 I had a batch of refrigerated bread dough put together from scratch and rising. Damn, that's not half bad is it? Especially from a lazy couch potato like me.

Tonight, my inner history geek will be in fine form. I'm going to see Dr. Zahi Hawass speak at the Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta. If you aren't familiar with him, he's the top dude in Egypt dealing with antiquities. He has a prettier title than that, but you get the point. Nothing, but nothing, happens within Egypt's tombs/pyramids/museums that isn't approved by his say so. He also wears a cool hat. If you have ever watched an archeology program on Discovery or the History Channel, you have seen him. He manages to make it into just about all of them. He will speaking on Tutankhamun and other subjects. This is all due to the King Tut museum being here in the ATL right now. I've already seen it and it's awesome. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Dress complete!

Okay, I know that I've teased you for two days about my new little black dress, but now, now you get to see it in all it's little glory. I'm so tickled with how this little number turned out. I've been prancing around in it for the last fifteen minutes or so, squealing (quietly - the kid's down for his nap) for joy.

Lookee:


It fits me better than Endora here. Evidently Endora is well endowed with broad shoulders. In this shot, I couldn't get the dress zipped up all the way, but you can't tell it from the photo.

I had a devil of a time trying to get a photo of it to show you, which is why I put it on Endora. My official photographer is not home from school yet, but I did get a shot of it on me. Behold the ubiquitous bathroom shot. Notice my fingers balancing me on the countertop as I stand on tip toes in order to show the flowers at the bottom of the dress:



We're doing a sixties number for the upcoming show that I'm in and I'll be wearing this and a pair of white go-go boots for it. Otherwise, I'll be wearing it every chance I get this summer and I've got several sets of sandals that will go with it nicely.

I love the A-line dresses! They are incredible flattering on us pear shapes - smaller on top than on bottom. ahem. When the pattern was cut I opted for one size larger on bottom and the dress absolutely could not fit me better.

I think without the flowers, this would be the perfect little black dress for going out in.

Finances and The Hobbies

I've mentioned that I'm saving up to get a Fancy Kitten Drum Carder. The one that I want is the Fine cloth 90/120 carder without the brush attachment. I just can't see paying $50 extra dollars for the brush attachment when I can run to Home Depot and get a wallpaper brush for way less. And just maybe, I can figure out a hack that will hold it in place for a couple of bucks too.

I really want this now! I could run out and put it on the ol' credit card, but in the long run I would pay a lot more for it due to interest since right now, we can't pay the cards off in full.

Money has been pretty tight around here for the past several years. I could put the blame all on my husband (left a big buck job to work as a mortgage broker at the dumbest time ever resulting in $0 income for 2 years. He's since gotten a new job, but it still pays a lot less than in the big buck days.), but morally I can't do that. I know that my spending has contributed to the problem. While I cut back my spending in some areas, in others I was still living like he was still pulling in the big bucks. Very dumb. We plowed through all of our savings (which was fairly good sized) in no time flat and now have nothing to show for all the work that we put in before having kids.

In the past two months I've been on a saving money and budgeting kick. I'm trying to get us out of debt by using the Dave Ramsey Snowball Method.

I've also been tackling my grocery and Walmart spending. Do you know that we were spending between $600 - $800 a month in groceries? Mostly processed junk. The family had a conniption when I cut those out. At Walmart alone I was spending about $400 a month on crap I didn't need. We were also eating out at McDonald's once a week and that was costing us about $800 a year.

So. Out went the McDonald's and Walmart spending. That's $5600 a year saved right there. Ouch. In one month I've already gotten the grocery budget down to $300 a month for a family of four and I know I can do better there, but it's a good start. So that makes for $9200.00 saved a year so far. I've been tired of living with little to no money but, Wow. What were we thinking by spending so much on junk? Maybe there's a reason we're poor. What else are we doing that's dumb?

Now, back to the frugal drum carding point. My hobbies are fairly expensive. Knitting and Spinning and the required equipment and supplies for those ain't cheap. When I decided to buy my drum carder, I started selling stuff on Craigslist and EBay to finance it. It's going well. I only need $30.00 more in sales to get my new toy.

If I can ever get my act together (which is difficult to do with a precoscious three year old running around the house "helping" me), once I get the carder I would like to begin selling some of the bats that I card. I won't get rich doing this, but maybe I can finance some of my hobbies in a way that won't take a big chunk out of the family budget. I have an Etsy shop, but I've never stocked and used it. Why? I don't know. Maybe I haven't had the confidence in my abilities to make and sell things.

I'm sure I'm not the only person out there to realize this stuff, even if it did take me so long. I've put together some more links for those in my situation that are financially challenged and I've done it by category:

Personal finances (general) - these blogs offer some sound financial advice:

Get Rich Slowly
Bargaineering
The Simple Dollar

Sites that help stretch a dollar:

LifeHacker
The Dollar Stretcher - I get a real kick out of digging around in the archives of this site. Some people take frugality to an artform, but I'm not planning on going to that extreme.

Hobby Related (spinning/knitting): I'm planning on using the two spinning links extensively soon, or at least $30 dollars from now.

R.H. Lindsay - wool wholeseller that sells to anyone at wholesale prices. Great prices!
Sheep Shed Studio - Mom and Pop style business with Wonderful service and quality fiber. I'm planning on using them quite a bit when I get my carder. The grab bags and big bags are particular fun and cool. Especially if you enjoy dyeing fiber and carding it all together. Can't say enough about this wonderful company!
KnitPicks - for yarn and their fantastic Options needles. Good quality, inexpensive yarns.

Anyone have any links similar to these, but for jewelry making supplies? I'd like to get some jewelry made and start selling it as well, but I desperately need cheaper supplies than what Hobby Lobby and Michael's charge in order to be more profitable.


I'm sure there's tons of other wonderful links out there. These are just a few to get you started.

I know, I promised pics of the dress that I'm sewing, but this article was just begging to be written today. I still have to hem it and add appliques. I'll have something for you in tomorrow's episode.

New Jewelry!

Blogger and I don't seem to be on good terms today. For some reason, it kept not taking my email and password and I spent about twenty minutes just trying to log in so that I could post. Jeez.

I went out of town this weekend and did a tiny bit of knitting, but not enough to show off. I did, however, make some more jewelry while I was there.

The necklace that I've worn all day:



And two others:





I also made a dragon necklace for the Eldest, but he won't take it off long enough for me to get a good pic of it.

I would like to begin selling some jewelry as a side business, but the only problem is that I keep becoming quite attached to what I've made. The teardrop shaped pendant necklace will probably go in the sell box, but I really like the other two. How do people that sell their wares detach themselves from their products enough to sell them?

I've also not finished my dress. I completed most of it and the lining. Now I just have to get these two to a bar for a nightcap so that they can hookup. Once the kids get to bed and the margaritas do their magic, hopefully things will start to happen and I'll have some progress to show you tomorrow.

Sewing Fear

I wish I wasn't feeling about twelve kinds of stoopid right now. I wish I were a brave and fearless seamstress. Alas, I'm not.

Thank God for the endless source of sewing knowledge that is my Mom. I just avoided a horrible mistake by second guessing myself and calling her up and begging for correct answers.

This is where I was an hour ago in the process:


Not very damned far, I admit. I'm trying to double check everything and it's slowing me up terribly. I now have everything cut out and will begin pinning and sewing. Endora the dress dummy will finally be used as her maker originally intended. I'm going to pin and check the fit before sewing.

I seriously need some "sewing for dummies" lessons, or I at least need to sew more often to get my confidence up. It scares the wits out of me.


With knitting or crochet, if you screw up, you rip and begin again. No harm done, just wasting lots of time, and I'm okay with that. If you screw up in sewing clothing (especially the cutting part) you might as well dump everything in the trash. There's not much room for fudging and no room really for going back. In my past experiences anyway. Now when I've quilted or made bags, yes, I could go back and fudge the heck out of it and make it work. But in sewing clothes, if you want the garment to fit, no fudging.

What is it about this whole sewing thing that makes a college grad gibber in fear?

Sewing!

Once again I have wrecked my dining room/office/craft room. This time, with sewing crap. I have yet to have more than two days of this room being clean. There's always some project scattered everywhere and then the kids come barreling through leaving destruction (toys/shoes/socks/etc) in their wake. Never a dull moment around here, or a clean one for that matter.

I'm performing in a show in two weeks time and it's a medley of different era songs. We're responsible for getting our own costumes. I've got a poodle skirt lined up for one, and I'm making a cute little A-line dress for the sixties one. I'm totally getting some go-go boots too, I've always wanted a pair of those. My mom should be shot for getting rid of hers. I mean, come on now, didn't she think her daughter would want those? :) I don't have a clue what to do for clothing from the 1700s (Les Miserables). Any ideas?

This is what I'm putting together for the 60s costume:

(the one with the flowers)

The dress will be black, but the flowers will be done in the fabrics in the photo.
I'm hoping that this will all work out. A fabulous seamstress, I am not. My mom? yes. Me? Not so much.

Meanwhile, I've wrecked the room again. Everything is spread out all over the place. Fabric, ironing board, flowers, toys, basically everywhere.

Does anybody even use a formal dining room nowadays? We might use this room once a year for dining. Mostly it's my office/crafting area and I swear that this one little room is used more than 90% of the rest of our house. We might as well live in a two room hut. Cause, where Mommy is, that's where two boys, two cats and three dogs all want to be at the same time.

A sleeve

The Sleeve, it groweth:


The long suffering arm model is The Eldest. How scary is it that a sleeve meant for me fits on an 8 year old that's eating us out of house and home (weighs 75lbs) and already comes up to my chin in height? I'm 5'6, about average, so not way tall, but still. Children are not supposed to grow that fast. Are they?

Dino knitting photograpy

To amuse the Youngest, we had a dinosaur photoshoot today to showcase the owls progress.

But I seem to have cut one of them's head off: (I think I was channeling my Mother-In-Law, she cuts everybodys heads off in pics.)
But at least you can see the waist decreases and increases at the back of the sweater fairly well. I like this method of inc/dec at the back. Lately, everything that I've made has had the shaping at the sides. This method gives my tummy a little more room. It's not the size it once was, bless it's heart, but maybe a little weight watchers will help. To the left, under the headless dino is the first sleeve.

I've been working very slowly with this sweater. Last week was packed with school conferences with teachers (one good - The Eldest, one not as good - The Youngest - but what else is new?), there was a basketball award ceremony to attend, boy scouts meeting, a rehearsal for upcoming musical at church and children's consignment sales to both shop, sell and work at, not to mention cooking dinner occasionally and watching my house go to pot in general. So if you were wondering where I disappeared to, there ya go. A bit busy.

Hopefully, and I'm saying this with fingers crossed, this week will be a tiny bit less busy.

Tertiary Yarn

So yesterday I mentioned that I had been spinning. There is a Ravelry "Spin-a-long" that has us spinning tertiary colors.

Here's a mini color theory lessons for you:

Primary colors - red, yellow, blue
Secondary colors - Mix any of two primary colors - ie: green, purple, orange
Tertiary colors - Mix one primary with one secondary - ie: red-violet, yellow-orange, red-orange, blue-green, etc.

In order to get my tertiary colors, I had to mix some scraps of roving(dyed with Kool-aid and Wilton's) that I had left from previous spinning adventures:




Then I got to mix them up, one primary and one secondary. Here's a pretty poor example, poor mainly in the photo quality, but still, it shows the mixing fairly well:


And then here are the singles, looking very unimpressive by themselves on the bobbin:


I opted not to Navajo ply as I had previously decided, mainly because I wanted enough yardage to do something with it. So I decided to spin some black singles and then 2 ply it up with the tertiary mix. I also threw in the primaries in three different places because I didn't like the color combinations without them.

Can I just say that I absolutely loooovvveee the result?


Now I wish I had more. damn.

After I finished, I still felt like playing with the spinning wheel. I had a bunch of different unplied singles just sitting around with no plan for any of them. Some are from a spinning study that I half-heartedly joined and never finished. Some were from when I first started spinning. None of them by themselves were long enough to do anything with. Therefore, I decided, in an artyarny sort of way, to combine them
all in a sloppy 3 ply.

This is what came from it:

Click to enlarge for details

I'm really curious to knit something with this to see how it knits up. Should be interesting.

I only got about 130 yards off of both skeins, but it should be enough for some small fingerless mitts or a hat or something.

bummer

Well, I was going to show you some of the stuff that I've been working on, but my camera battery died. It (the camera) was residing in my purse and I think it got turned on without my knowing it and now the battery is d.o.a.

Which is, I suppose, okay since the knitting project doesn't look much different than it had previously. It's gained a few inches, but that's it. I've got about 2.5 inches to go before I begin the yoke section.

I've also been doing a little spinning. I'm working on blending different colors of roving to get tertiary (where you combine one pimary with one secondary) colors based on the monthly spin-a-long on Ravelry. Should turn out pretty cool (I hope.) All in all, it's been a great experiment with color blending with handcards.

So I can't show you those projects. bummer.

Last night, we had the last Monday night basketball event, yeah! It's really been cramping my blogging on Mondays. Anyway, They lined up a bunch of weight lifters as the entertainment. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they really were entertaining. The kids absolutely loved them. The Eldest (on the far left of the kids) got picked to become weight for this guy in red who holds some kind of record for bench pressing over 600 lbs:



This morning, I came **this** close to getting the drum carder that I've been wanting. Someone beat me to it by a hair, danggitall. I would have saved about $75 bucks too. I'm still trying to sell stuff to get the money for it. I'm so close, it's killing me.

Carrot-A-Rangs

Betcha didn't know that Batman has a Carrot-a-rang did ya?

I'm not sure why he's having an obsession with Carrots right now and I'm not asking. If he's happy, playing quietly and not throwing tantrums, he can have all the carrots he wants to play with. Not one of them is making down his throat, but that's okay with me. Some days you have to pick your fights and this is not one of those days.

Have a great weekend!

The Faux Woven Scarf

Sorry for missing yesterday's post. I got into a major depressive funk and just wasn't feeling up to it. I also didn't pick up my knitting either. I don't knit well when I'm upset or depressed for some reason. But I'm feeling much better today!

This helped. He's been walking around for the past hour with a carrot saying "What's up doc?" over and over and over...


I've got an older project to show you today though. I dug this up a couple of days ago when it was cold:

Click to enlarge for details

It's a Faux Woven Scarf. It's so easy and fun to make. You don't use any knitting needles or crochet hooks to make it either. You use a sewing machine!

I gathered together a bunch of odds and ends of different yarns and ribbons, trying to get a good ratio of color to texture with a base color of black. I know there's some lion brand homespun and some novelty eyelash yarn in there along with some thin black ribbon as well.

The magic ingredient in making one of these is some water soluble stabilizer. Sulky makes a great one. This is commonly used with embroidery machines to stabilize the fabric that is being embroidered.

Now, get out your sewing machine and thread. That's the last of what you need to get started.

Figure out how long and wide you want your scarf to be. Cut your stabilizer to that length and width. Then, cut your pieces of yarn and ribbon to the same length.

Begin sewing the pieces lengthwise onto the stabilizer using a zigzag stitch on your sewing machine. I used black thread to coordinate with the other pieces that I had chosen.

Vary the space in between each of the pieces that you sew on. You want this to look very loosely woven in order to get the look above. Of course, no one says you have to match it exactly. It's your scarf, play with it until you get the look you want!

Once you have filled the stabilizer's entire length all the way across and the yarn and ribbon feel fairly stable on it, you can begin with the horizontal stitching. Change your stitch to a straight stitch. Beginning at the top of the scarf, start stitching across. You are going to stitch all the way down the length of the scarf. Again, vary the length in between your rows and make sure these stitches go on top of every piece of yarn and ribbon.

Don't worry if your stabilizer has bunched up a bit, you're not going to be looking for perfection here and it's going to disappear in the next step anyhow.

Once you have completed the sewing part of the scarf, it's time to get it wet. Run it under warm water and dissolve the stabilizer completely. I used acrylic yarns for this, so I didn't have to be gentle with it. If you use wool, handle it with care in order not to felt it! Although, that could look cool too with this technique. I might have to try it sometime. :)

Spread it out on a towel or other blocking surface to dry completely.

There! Simple huh?

As always, if you have any questions on this technique, let me know. I'll be glad to answer.

Worry about Owls

The Eldest's last basketball practice of the season was last night, and I actually had a pretty good time. While I was sitting there working on the Owls sweater, I looked up and noticed a small crowd of little kids around me, watching me knit.

They started asking questions and before I knew it, I was teaching two four year old little girls the knit stitch. They were so cute. I'm sure once they walked away they forgot what I showed them, but maybe later on they'll remember the strange lady that showed them what knitting was while their brothers played basketball and they'll want to take up the hobby. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

I was working on the sweater this morning while watching the show Treasure Quest on Discovery.com. I'm such a fan of that show. It's a lot of fun to watch. I'm into archaeology and treasure hunting stuff and love shows like that. So there I was knitting and I looked down at my project and started getting worried.

I'm not used to making a bulky sweater and this one looked awfully small. It felt tight and on the needles, looked way too small for me. I'm making the S/M size. I wanted a little ease built into the sweater to accommodate my nice little poochy tummy. Camouflage is your friend. (I'm sure exercise and dieting are too, but unlike Janice, who's an exercise fiend, exercise and dieting and I are just barely slight acquaintances, not really true friends.) Maybe I'm allergic to things that are healthy?

I ran a lifeline through the loops and put it onto my friend Endora. Have I told you how much I'm enjoying having Endora around? Yes, I could try it on my body, but it's nice to put it on her and walk around and get different perspectives on how the sweater is coming along. I even got out the destructions (instructions for most people) and a tape measure to make sure that me and my gauge were going to be happy with the results so far and guess what?


I'm pleased to say that my eyes must have been playing tricks on me. Fits fine and there's still a tiny bit of ease. Phew!

OMG! SNOW!

Yesterday, out of the blue, we got a mini-blizzard. When I left the house to go to church we had rain with a smidge of sleet mixed in. When I left an hour and a half later, there was at least three inches of snow on my car. Talk about weird.

We almost never get snow here. At the most we get one snow a year with about two inches accumulation. We got over three yesterday in an hour! That may not mean much to the people above the Mason Dixon line, but here, it's an event of huge proportions.

The kids bugged the snot out of me until I let them go play in it. It took the Eldest about 10 minutes before he had decided that he had had enough and he came racing into the house. We had to drag the Youngest inside. He could care less about physical discomfort.

Here's what it looked like on my drive back from church. Yes, Mom, I know that I shouldn't have done this, but I did still have two hands on the wheel as I clicked the pic.

I also did something really stupid. When I got home the car looked like this:


I pulled into the garage and went inside, stupidly forgetting that all that snow would melt and that the garage floor would be flooded. The hubby had a primo fit over the small flood. :)

Thanks to the folks who totally vindicated my knitting hatred! The dreaded Zara Cabled Pullover thingy has now been frogged and I've begun my Owls sweater. Details to come tomorrow.

A Knitting Quandary

It's nasty rainy here today in Marietta, GA and we're supposed to get even more. Two of the testosterone members of this household have decided that it would be great to go camping this weekend in it.

I've come to the conclusion that Testosterone = Stoopidity. That leaves me stuck with the last little testosterone filled menace. I'm going to try and pawn him off on his grandmother for a while tomorrow to get a little peace and quiet.

Anyway, the Youngest and I decided to go look for yarn today in that nasty rain. I want to make the owls sweater that is taking the knitting world by storm. It's a bulky yarn and I don't have any of that in my house, so an excursion was called for. We went to Joann's and found nothing. Then it was over to the lys and we found more nothing. Wasted all that gas for what? nuthin'. :sigh:


So I have this sweater that I've been working on for far too long and it has a far way to go before it's finished. Remember yesterday's discussion?

Do I:

a) keep plugging at it, it'll look great on me when I'm 84.
b) burn it. the red color will look lovely in the fireplace.
c) frog it to use in another sweater that's more appealing.

That's the quandary that I have at the moment.

You know, if I frogged the bajillion cable sweater and held two strands together, it would make a lovely owl sweater, wouldn't it?

What does do you think? Please, if you lurk here occasionally, come out and give your opinion. I'm feeling guilty about the hours already put into that damn sweater, but I don't want to keep on working on something I'm beginning to hate and that hurts my wrists.

I think I need help. Perhaps a beverage would help?

The cursed project

So I picked up my long time nemesis, the Zara Cabled Tunic, again. I got about two more measly inches done before my wrists began aching again.

This cable stuff should be easy for me at this point, right? Am I tensing up my wrists? Holding them and my arms at a bad angle? I just can't figure it out.

You have no idea how badly I'm wavering between trying to get this thing finished or frogging the whole damn thing. It's kind of a love/hate relationship we have going at this point.

Anyone got any tips for working on cables without wrist pain?

I'm cabling without a cable needle. I've never learned how to cable with a needle and think this would slow me down worse than I'm going now on this thing. Maybe I'm getting tense everytime I have to pull the needle out of a couple of stitches, leave them loose and cross them before putting them back on the needle.

I did not have this trouble while working on Rogue. This is the only cable project that hurts me. It could be caused by the eleventy bajillion cables on this sweater. Couldn't it?

Is it me? the yarn? the cursed project? the world working against me? what. is. it. ???