Monday, July 19, 2010

Stealthy!

I may need a set of these DPNs just for the awesome geek factor inherent in using carbon fiber stealth needles.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The dog ate my homework

Or... I have a good excuse.

Really.

So, I wanted to have a nice picture of the second 4oz bobbin of Targhee to post today.

Unfortunately I do not have a full bobbin of Targhee to photograph.

I was actually pretty good about spinning. I spun through Monday and decided to take Wednesday as my rest day instead because there was just no way spinning was happening Wednesday if I wanted sleep to happen as well. And that was fine.

Then Thursday I threw my left shoulder out (how is somewhat a mystery - but somewhere between packing up the wheel to take to knitting group and the first half of my chai latte the joint stopped functioning correctly).

Friday I skipped due to the injury.

Saturday I spun, but pretty tentatively.

Sunday the shoulder was better and I resolved to get through at least 2/3rds of what was left...

And then I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle.

Which yeah....

If its throbbing less tomorrow I will persist with only one treadle foot, but I am not holding my breathe (it hurts like hell right now and is all swollen up like a baseball and I'm mostly just praying its not like... broken or anything. It at least doesn't feel like I tore any major ligaments this time but seriously... hurts like hell).

So... maybe next week.

I have been knitting on my Print o' the Wave stole instead.

I would have a picture, but the camera is too far away so it will have to wait until I'm hobbling less.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

This is not the blog you're looking for....

I have this idea in my head that no one reads this blog (except like maybe my Mom and a few close friends that just like to look at the pictures) because if I start to think that Other People are actually looking at my crazy I might have to go have a quiet mortified freakout in a closet or random dark corner somewhere.

Anyway this week I sent my mom the following email (verbatim):

[fangirling] OMG Jasmin from the Knitmore Girls commented on my blog! [/fangirling]

So, point being... you out there - reading this - You are not actually reading this. Its all a figment of your imagination. Everything you think you see me saying? Its all in your head.

There.

I feel better now.

I am kind of informally doing the Tour de Fleece this year.

By which I mean I am trying to spin every day of the tour but I don't have set goals that I am aiming for (considering the hours I am pulling at work just spinning every day is actually a pretty challenging goal). I really wish there was a winter version of this because summer is just never a good time for me to take on big endurance projects.

So anyway, what I am working on to start is 8oz of Targhee from yarnorama. I purchased and started it on the 3rd at the spin in and as of last night I'm finished with the first 4oz braid. I'm tentatively hoping to get through the second braid this week (not unreasonable) and then ply the last few days of the Tour with some merino spun up in between.

I brought home a lb of Ashland Bay Merino in English Garden along with the Targhee so I can finish the sweater yarn that started with the teal merino singles I finished awhile back. It has some of the same shades in it, but I'm hoping that plying a solid with a blended multi gives a bit more interest to the finished yarn. I don't expect to get that done during the Tour, but if I could get through 4 or 8 ounces that would still be pretty satisfying.

Alternately (read - if it gets here before I finish the Targhee) I purchased some Foot Notes pencil roving from Fiber Optic this week in the color "Ultraviolet" which I think (with a bit of firestar drafted in perhaps or plied with some holographic thread) will work out to make a pretty badass demon yarn. *

* For anyone that keeps wondering what the heck the the demon yarn is about - in Supernatural when a demon isn't possessing someone they are visible as this black smoke that often contains flashes of purple lightning. I tried to find a picture or video of this but all I could dig up was this fanvid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsMBlEQyeiM which does have the bonus of being set to a song by Imogen Heap and being generally well done even if the cloud shots are a bit short.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Nom Nom Nom...


I am currently spinning 8oz of Targhee, which is the base for Yarnorama's July 2010 colorway and it is AWESOME.

I feel like kind of a dumbass because I could swear I've spun Targhee before, but either it was not this good of a preparation or I imagined it because this? This is dreamy. *_*

Its got a super high crimp and loftiness that I just haven't encountered before. The closest thing I can recall is the falkland I spun recently but this has a smooth light draft that reminds me of a merino rather than the sticky pull I had with the falkland. The singles are about the diameter I'd usually spin for a light fingering 2-ply but if the ply-back I tried is anything to go by the end yarn will be a sport or DK.

I can't wait to see the finished results, I can just see this becoming one of my favorite fibers to spin.

I also finished my Sushi socks today. They are the blackrose pattern from Knitty in Schoppel-Wolle Crazy Zauberball (in the "Frische Fische" colorway - get it? Yeah, I'm lame). I love these socks.

LOVE.

They may be my favorite handknit socks ever (well... discounting handspun socks, but those are a special case). They are stretchy and squishy and surprisingly light - each sock weighs in at about 30g. There's a lot of yardage in one ball and I've got enough left over for an entire third sock if I wanted. The colors are fun and unpredictable and just generally awesome.

The pattern is great fun. Its got exactly enough going on to keep from getting boring, but because a lot of the sock is in stockinette it made for a fast knit. I got the yarn as a pressie from Mom on the 23rd which puts a pair knit in eleven days.

Horray for (nearly) instant gratification!

Friday, July 2, 2010

Fandom is stalking me again

I have freakishly overlapping and unrelated interests.

I guess its not that weird being a knitter and seeing knitting things everywhere, like in Dragon Age when Wynne jokes about knitting Sten a cloak or when the ads on the Citadel in Mass Effect try to sell me handspun and handwoven robes.

Then a few weeks ago Misha Collins joked on twitter* about knitting (I assume he was being facetious but then again the man seems to be both an evil genius - with minions even - and also quite predictably unpredictable so god only knows) and then this week I was catching up on the Knitmore Girl's podcast finally and they were talking about Supernatural and even knitting supernatural socks! With demon cloud yarn!

Not kidding.

The actual yarn from the podcast has a bit too much pink and white for my tastes (really... almost any pink is too much pink for my tastes) but it did give me an inkling to dye up my own evil type yarn in black and violet, maybe with really really small flecks of an acidy-sorta fuchsia (which is the only tolerable shade of pink-like-ness IMO and even then only in small quantities) and ideally on a Kraemer Sterling base because evil demon yarn should be sparkly.

Alternately, it might be fun to ply some of fiber spun in said colors with some of that trippy hologram thread like I used in the Mardi Gras yarn - but ya know.... in black or red instead of gold.

I am not sure if this means that a lot of knitters like Supernatural or a lot of Supernatural fans are knitters. Or maybe it didn't start that way and fandom is just something that knitters pass on to one another like a virus transmitted through yarn fondling (A Knitterly Transmitted Disease if you will).

More likely I am a crazy obsessed person reading too much into the overlap.

Or else my obessions really are stalking me.

One of the two. **

I have new yarn and a finished cardigan that I should talk about also. I think I'll do that when I'm feeling a little less geeky though.

*We're going to ignore the part where I am actually following someone on twitter in spite of my general opinion that twitter-ers are crazy ego-maniacs and no one wants to hear that much about how some random famous or un-famous person got groped by a guy with a purple mohawk at starbucks or whatever

**If Dean winds up being a closet sock knitter in season 6 or something I'm calling it full circle and the second one clearly true which will turn me even more into the first.