Category: Stuff

Siouxsie and A Thermal update

Posted by zyllah – November 14, 2007

Yes I skipped many days but I got actual knitting done so…..it was worth it. The big news is that Siouxsie finally made it. We’re still in our getting aquainted period but so far I really like her. The box was umm huge and I’m not quite sure what to do with all the packing materials. I think I might keep them cause I will need some in the nearish future.

First thing I did was move some singles that were still on the bobbin to another bobbing just to get a feel for how it all worked. Then I practiced some plying. Let me know if anyone wants the handspun. I’ll get a picture tomorrow when hopefully there is better light. In the midst of holiday cleaning I gave Siouxsie a nice oiling since who knows when that was done and its supposed to be done once a year. Anyway… hopefully I’ll someday have not frightful singles to show off:) It is a whole other beast from the spindle though.

Also this weekend I finally finished the body of thermal. I cast on for the sleeve but I think I’m going to do the collar first since I can shorten sleeves if need be. Also I think I’d cry if I had to do that after doing the sleeves.

Vee is sitting there waiting for me to decide what to do and the socks are waiting for SNB tomorrow. So that’s my big WIP update. I did however finally order one of those fancy electronic row counter thingys. I also ordered the yarn for Tangled Yoke out of IK and basic black from magknits (I had a gift cert) I chose ultra alpaca light for both since it was half the cost of the asked for rowan of tangled yoke. Oddly I ordered two different shades of green, fern and peat mix. I must be growing as a uhh color person.

Oh and the contest. I’m giving it till December because of the holiday. I have family coming in and I have to prepare for that. So if you haven’t entered please do so.

A contest!

Posted by zyllah – November 9, 2007

So in an effort to drag me out of my wheel misery, I decided to hold a contest. The other day I was talking with the most fabulous MJ, and we were discussing cashmere sweaters and would we ever knit them. So this led me to thinking… If money was not a consideration how or would it change your knitting. So rules are your answer has to be more than 2 sentences long. I’m going ask that you email them to me at zyllahATgeekdommeDOTcom.  I’ll post my answer at some point in the near future. Now prizes I know we all want to know about the prizes.  Mj offered to donate a sock bag which is very nice of her. Another prize probably be a gift certificate to loopy ewe.  And I’ll pick out some fabulous roving or yarn for the third prize. Winners will be chosen randomly because that’s the only way its fair. However I am really interested to know how money and its lack or its bounty affects how you craft. I know maybe its weird but I did major in anthroplogy at one point.

A vent

Posted by zyllah – November 8, 2007

You know I sort of pictured buying a wheel as this relaxing joyful process. Instead it has been on vexation after another. It’s all because fedex sucks. Sucks big time. So we all know the initial zip code mix up. They were SUPPOSED to slap a new label on it and send it on to me. I was assured it would be here today. Instead they sent it back to the shipper. Now she refused it and its supposed to be here tomorrow. I was much more incensed when I started this but I am calming down now. I just don’t understand why they can’t get it right.  Also considering how they toss stuff around I hope it hasn’t been damaged. In my current mood I really just want to take to the bed and knit.

Is it cheating if I am still awake?

Posted by zyllah – November 6, 2007

Ok so Siouxsie went to the wrong address so no wheel today. Apparently the clerk at kinkos mistyped the zip code so it went to Chattanooga. Fedex in their less than infinite wisdom just sent it on back to IL. Many calls by me and the shipper later they came up with a solution. Not much knitting either as Vee is stalled till I remember to call the lys. I looked at thermal but then Justin came home and we gamed. I also made a big fancy meal so..Ok totally lame excuses but ravelry sucked the rest of my night away.

Saturday Quickie

Posted by zyllah – November 3, 2007

I chose the classic elite and have about an inch done. I had these great knittish plans for the day but sadly (not really) Hellgate London arrived. So I’ve been playing the game with my sweetie. Clearly this is a post so I don’t lose out on my third day. I will have photos and more exciting news (I hope tomorrow). Siouxsie is currently in Chicago according to fed ex. No this does not mean you can hunt her down;)

Swatching and books and oh hey I bought a wheel!

Posted by zyllah – November 2, 2007

So I picked a pattern, Vee. I also went through the stash and came up with two possibilities that wouldn’t wreck a sweaters amount of yarn and I swatched them. We’re going for 4 spi, which we did not get (as usual) but we did come close. Swatch 1 is Classic Elite Renaissance in a color called Plum. Its kind of an odd yarn in that each ply is a different but harmonious color.

It’s not dry yet so I am reserving final judgement till morning. Our next contestant is a discontinued yarn by berroco called Pleasure. It’s mostly angora and has a cabled construction that supposedly minimizes shedding.

At this point I’m leaning towards the classic elite even if its not as squishy.

Today was a good day, my vogue sock book came from zooba. Zooba rocks, how can you beat books for 9.95 including shipping. Sometimes they even have good knitting books, I got SKS and this vogue book through them. It is very similar to sks but with different and perhaps better stitch patterns. I haven’t had as much of a chance to look through it because I was swatching and well buying a wheel. So anyway I forgot while at the fiber fest I picked up No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne Macdonald. I’ve just paged through it but so far it looks really interesting.

Ok now the big big big news. I have been wanting a wheel and I kept putting it off as they are a huge expense. I came close a couple of times with some deals on various babes. However…I’m a big believer in buying something that will last. Which is why I have expensive cookware and sheets since I would rather buy something once. Anyway I considered buying a so-called beginner wheel and I just thought that seemed stupid. None of them are cheap you know? Might as well get something you could conceivably keep forever if you are going to invest that much.  Anyway…so today I happened to glance at an email from the spin sales list and saw this deal.

I am now pricing my Majacraft Suzie plus many accessories at $XXX
with free shipping. It is excellent condition, with the exception of
two scratches on the left peddle. Runs great. It comes with 6 plastic
bobbins, 2 jumbo plying bobbins, a fine fiber flyer with attachments
and a high-speed whorl and belt, a Wild Flyer for funky spinning, and
a non-tensioned Majacraft lazy kate. I’m willing to break up the
accessory package if I don’t get a buyer for the whole thing. The
whole package has a retail value of around $850, so it’s quite a
savings.

So I emailed her and got pictures and decided it was too good a deal to pass up. Siouxsie arrives tuesday.

NA*X*MO

Posted by zyllah – November 1, 2007

Ok so I’ve sort of decided to unofficially blog everyday. I’m just trying to see if I can do it. I mean I sure as hell don’t have enough interesting stuff going on in general but what the hell. So today’s entry will be about the fiber fest I went to this past weekend. I went last year and it seemed like there were more vendors but this year had more people. I took Lady E out for her first public appearance and she was much admired which she enjoyed immensely. We took a big carpool trip all umm 6 of us which was quite fun. Anyway I met some neat people and of course we traded ravelry Id’s. I set up a flickr set for the event but I’m going to bore you with some photos anyway. Once we got to the fiber vending area I didn’t take as many photos since I was too deep in shop mode.

So there were Sheep:

Sheep Getting Nekkid:

Anyway like I said if you want to go look at the set.

So I was pretty decent. I mean I had a budget and I only went a little over. I bought another 4 oz of that gorgeous silver alpaca that I got at the last fair (and in my laziness I am reusing the old picture)

I also got two different colorways of bfl from fiber denn.

I also got two spindles also from Fiber Denn. My spinning is much much improved.

And now to the yarn. I only got two skeins.

This is 550 yrds of sock weight. It wants to be something other than socks.

This 880 yrds of wool lace. It actually is more variegated in real life.

So after the festival we hit the Knaughty Knitter and I *shock* didn’t buy anything. I just felt like I had spent enough. However I did meet the lovely Barb. After that we went to lunch at corky’s this really good BBQ place and then we went to threaded bliss. I hadn’t been since it was sold. I’m really glad they brought in some Rowan and I think the yarn selection is improved somewhat. I will miss David though. He was hilarious. Again I didn’t buy anything. Although at one point I had over a 100 dollars worth of yarn in my hand. I was good I resisted the siren call. So after that we tried to hit Haus of Yarn. Now I hate to complain but we had an SUV full of knitters. We probably all would have bought something and they still had people in the shop but they wouldn’t let us in. Exactly how likely are we to go back and drop mega cash now? In my case not very. The service there has ALWAYS been hit or miss for me. We were all rather peeved.

The sock is still a toe hat but I am in spitting distance of finishing the left front to thermal. I expect to finish that panel tonight. I also (because I am a lemming) feel the pull of knit a sweater naswamo or whatever. However NO SOCK WEIGHT SWEATERS. So I’m thinking the cardi version of wicked or the Vee pullover. If I can pick a yarn. Cause you know with family coming for turkey day its the perfect time to totally stress myself out over other things.

Happy Scary Day

Posted by zyllah – October 31, 2007

Long time no blog. When last we all spoke I was in the midst of pet tragedy…anyway Darcy found a fantastic home that did not have feline terrorists who wanted to drive him away.  So after that I fell deep into martha mode. I redid three rooms of my house. For ‘redid’ read organized and moved stuff around. This entailed building a bookcase so I could have one dedicated just to knitting/crafting and buying lots of pillows so I didn’t have to get a new couch. I also got new tables for the living room. Anyway I think it looks fantastic (or as good as its going to get).

Close up of the knitting/netting/tv spot, the bookcase behind it has my knitting books:

Why yes I do have to fight her for the chair.

I did do some dyeing while all this was going on though. I’m trying to break out of my wine comfort zone so I did some more greens and ventured into rusts/oranges. All of these skeins are Kona by Henry’s attic.  I was playing around with different techniques and I must warn you they are not yet reskeined.

I think I’m getting better. If you want to give any of these a new home let me know. I can’t possibly knit faster than I can dye.  Which brings me to another topic I have a tentative offer for a wholesale situation. I keep going back and forth on it. I like dyeing when its me just futzing around but dyeing for other people to buy? That makes me incredibly nervous.

Anyway all this led to little knitting and thus little blogging. Besides lets be brutally honest, thermal is not a good blogging project.  It’s like oh boy another inch that looks exactly the same! Besides it looks a mess now with all the stitches being held on extra needles. Oh one funny thing did happen, the other day I was working on it and watching tv and completely messed up one of my previously finished back shoulder pieces. So now I’ll have to frog back and refinish it. But the good news is that I am on the front so hopefully before the end of this century I’ll finish it. The thing is I do still enjoy the sweater. Its not like other simple patterns where I’d be gouging my eyes out by this point. I also frogged the scarf I had started because I decided it was too narrow so velvet grapes will have to become something else. I did start a sock just in time for the end of socktober;) I’m using shibui sock on 1′s and I have to say I love this sock yarn. It might be my favorite yarn yet. Like more favorite than STR even. I mean the base. It’s just at the toe hat stage and I’m looking for a stitch pattern to plug into my sock recipe. I did attend a fiber fest this past weekend but I’ll try and blog about that tomorrow since I have loads of pictures and stuff.

Misc. Not much knitting content involved.

Posted by zyllah – October 9, 2007

So still not much knitting but that’s so totally not my fault. I have been attempting to integrate a new pet into the house and it’s going so not very well. Darcy is a very sweet, well behaved lab who shows just too much interest in my cats. Now sometimes that interest means he wants to eat them and sometimes it means he wants to play with them. Either way they object, also they have gone from fear to being pissed off all the time and now are ganging up on him. I know this is going to make me lose my animal lover badge but I’m going to have to find him a new home. It’s not getting any better and in some ways is getting worse. This morning I had to break up a three way fight between Enki, Pandora and Darcy. I have never been so horrified since I saw my golden retriever get hit by a car (he lived and was actually in good shape considering) So making a brief appearence here is Darcy in all his glory.

In slightly more cheerful news I finally have a good place to knit. Some of you have heard me whine about how I don’t have a good place to knit. I hate my couch and my desk chair leads to endlessly time wasting online so last week when I saw the sale sign in the window of the furniture shop I had to go in. I then discovered they had a closeout aisle. Now the chair was a pretty good deal already at 325 but then they made a mistake and marked it down further to 195. This set off my “shop like its big game hunting” gene since originally it was way way way more.  Now I thought the fabric was hideous but I was more than willing to slipcover or something at that price.

So I had an extra chair slipcover that I accidentally got last year but it did not fit. So I was going to use sheets and went out and got some, at the same time I got these things that keep bed skirts in place. When I got home I realized I could just use those to pin the slipcover into place and now I have this.

I still need to get more of the plastic things that hold it in place inside but it’s looking not terrible and I’m just glad to have a comfy place to sit.

Last week when Steve was visiting

I made him go with me to the farmers market and to the international grocery so I could pick up Garam Masala and other stuff for an Indian Feast I was planning on making. The produce was very good considering the season.

I did make him go with me to two lys but I was good and only got some shibui sock (pictures coming on friday) and some soak since I have long wanted to try it. While there we ate at the faux-jewish deli. Now they may have tongue sandwiches but they also have bacon which is just weird. However I did pay homage to my roots and had Matzoh ball soup, latkes, and a knish.

So now for the actual knitting content! When I last posted I had fixed thermal. Well at some point I was not paying attention and screwed up so I had to fix a bit more, but now I am dividing for the armholes. However since I decided that the buttons were more trouble than they were worth and more casual than I typically am; I left them out.  So Sarkasmo and I had to have an emergency IM session on where to go from there.  We also realized it would be easier to do a faux placket and sew on the buttons in finishing, since it’s unlikely you’d actually ever unbutton them.  I’m also thinking of frogging my scarf. I prefer a thicker scarf and its coming out a bit thin for my taste. Plus that way I’d use up ALL the yarn I have which is good destashing. I also need to get some socks going since its socktober.  Also in the planning is a dye session since I have the time and the desire.

Witless Wednesday

Posted by zyllah – September 19, 2007

So not much knitting going on here! Last week my mom came to visit and we spent most of it running around looking at houses and window shopping for her upcoming house update. Much much fun but alas little got done in the way of Thermal. It looks like it did in the previous post just you know longer. I just measured it and it’s at 13″. I hope to get everything done today that I need to and work on it since I know Steve is visiting at some point this week and this weekend has one whole day taken up with more house gunk. I just want to get to where I divide for the arms. The house stuff goes…I narrowed it down to five that I hope we’re going to see this weekend. If we don’t pick one this weekend then we’ll have to wait till November, since Justin will be gone almost all of October. After running some numbers with Justin’s dad I’m not sure we should. Although I very very very much want more house but we’ll see.  I must apologize here to Kraftie and Sarkasmo for yammering endlessly about it. Oh before I talk more about knitting you have to see the horror that is the cabinets they put in these things….

This house is *not* on the list. Horrible cabinets and berber carpet. Berber and cats sounds like a disaster in the making. Anyway….Below is a shot from a brand new house I saw which did make it on the list. At least the model did, I think the lot would be a problem but they could build another.

Anyway yeah knitty is out. I think I’ll make roam but minus the hood. I love Cosmic Pluto’s designs, She really is one of the most interesting of the Indie designers. She’s also sort of built like me so her stuff tends to in theory look good on me. I have some stuff stashed that should work and if not I’ll order some blanks and dye my own. I’m really getting into the idea of dyeing for myself. I think a tonal green or burgundy would be just the thing for me. I also think I have to cast on for something soon before I go into withdrawal. There are so many things I want to knit, just sucks I am such a slow knitter. I shouldn’t be. So I think the goal is more focused knitting. Since speed isn’t the issue so much as how easily the net distracts me.