Monday, May 25, 2009

Learn a Few More Chords!

A guy down the alley way from us has been doing guitar stuff for the past 15 hours. I kid you not. He started last night at about 8:30.

The issue is, he is only playing about 1/16 of a song. 4 chords. that's all. No real music going on, although you can almost imagine that there is supposed to be the rest of a song to follow.

Okay, when even I know when he's messed up, obviously there is an issue. I've heard the same 4 chords and the same five measures about 400000000000 billion times!!!

Make the pain stop (oh, and by the way, it's too warm to close the window, so I really can't escape....)

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Things I've Done Instead of Knit

1) Laundry
2) Cycling
3) Cooking food
4) Clean the living room
5) THINK about reorganizing my stash according to yarn weight
6) Pull the yarn out, and then stare at it for an hour
7) Put yarn back in assorted storage devices, and pretend it never happened
8) Research recipes for a secret profit making project
9) Nap
10)Look for colors to do the Endpaper Mitts (Eunny Jang) in

Yes, I really do intend to knit, spin and repaint my nails, most likely in that order. It'll happen eventually...

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

7 Days to End Knitting Procrastination

This post is the most important advice to ever be put in the Blog-o-Sphere. Go and read Laylock's Wisdom and also grab the free pdf download for some awesome gift tags! ("Knit Love" on the sidebar)

Derya rocks my world!

Podcasts of Yayness

Found some podcasts while reading through my Google Reader. Check it out. (Yes, my Juice podcast aggregator is working overtime for me!)


Stitch It! Knitting Spinning and Yay
Knitmore Girls Mainly Knitting
High Fiber Diet All things fibery
Knaked Knits
Brass Needles Sci Fi Geek Out and Knitting
She Knits

I have some more stuff to listen to when I walk to work! Yay!

Friday, May 15, 2009

LYS TOUR 2009-The Damage So Far...

Two days have elapsed in Puget Sound. All I have been doing is trying to get to all 23 shops in the Local Yarn Store Tour of 2009. Out of 23, I have 9 left to do, and 2 days to get them done. It shall be!

Okay, so the damage so far. I limited myself to a total of $50 per day on this tour. (Trust me, the allowance was necessary considering how INSANE I went last year...)

Here is what I have so far:









Okay, through the list, I bought:

-Two skeins of Cascade Yarns Kid Seta, one in shade 407 (the black one) and shade 403 (the pale aqua color)....Don't you love shade numbers? How descriptive!
-One skein of Socks that Rock Lightweight in the Tricoter/LYS 2009 colorway, and exclusive shade dyed up for Tricoter.
-One skein of Rio De La Plata kettle dyed sock yarn in Medieval Blue (shade code SS15) for some MAN socks for my dad for father's day.
-2 skeins of SchoppelWolle(german for Wool Shop, in case you didn't guess...) Zauberball in the black, grey, white schema. Probably going to be a scarf.
-The big purple fluffy thing? That 2.27 POUNDS of top done up by Foxglove Fiberarts in the Black Currant colorway (bought from Main Street Yarns. I have to mention it because it's so damn cool!) 20% silk, 80% New Zealand Merino, and oh so pretty. Makes a nice pillow, too. :D
-A Darning Egg by Darn It!
-A bottle of Soak Flora scent (what?! I was out of it!)
-A tee shirt that says "Got Yarn?" on it
-The Spinner's Companion by Bobbie Irwin
-Color in Spinning by Deb Menz

And yes, I did technically stay within budget. Never you mind that poundage of top for spinning...that wasn't my purchase...I just HAPPENED to be in the right place at the right time to benefit from it.

Oh, and apparently Miss Pixel has adopted the darning egg as a toy. I must break her of this habit.

More damage tomorrow! I can almost guarantee it!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

From Last Night

"The new transformers movie can have Optimus Prime reading the phone book for all I care. I'm still gonna see it!"


We went to go see the new Star Trek movie last night (it's fine, don't hold a grudge. The movie was well done, and had a few nods to the original series. I liked it).

Afterwards we were discussing upcoming movies, and Transformers came up. Hence the quote. Yes, these are the type of people I hang out with. :D

Thursday, May 7, 2009

FO: Crazy Mom Monkeys



Crazy Mom Monkeys

Pattern: Los Monos Locos
Made For: Mother, for Mother's Day 2009
Yarn: Yarn Lust All That Glitters sock in Emerald 1 skein (really, I had left overs...) 63% Superwash Merino, 20% Silk, 15% Nylon and 2% Silver
Needles: Addi Turbo Lace 2.5 mm (US 1) 47"
Mods: I used a Turkish Cast on to do these two at a time. For the pattern, I just used the chart from the original Monkeys Pattern by Cookie A. For the ribbing, I required a little more elasticity, so I chose to do 2x2 ribbing, because the twisted rib has less elasticity.

All in all, I am very please with the way this yarn and pattern behaved. Gorgeous color, and also a great and easy to do pattern. Five stars. Buy Yarn Lust's stuff. It's great!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Kindle DX

Okay, two things of note:

1) I love the idea of a native pdf reader (for knitting patterns), but it is too big. The landscape view is a nice addition though.

2) the boy in the park? He's on UW campus. Watch the video and you will see the cherry blossom trees of the Quad. Hooray for college?

That said, if they shrink the size a lil bit, I will buy one.

Sure Am Glad It's Raining

LB got a sad call this morning. His uncle passed away in the night. That was the last link to Father's side of the family. I feel sad. I mean, yes, I am still a relatively newcomer to this family, but still. He was family. Even to me. I hope LB's dad is doing okay.

In other news, CraftyCoug was able to complete one sock for me so far. Just 15 inches left of the first skein of Reynolds Sea Wool. special huh?

And I am 3.5 inches into the cuffs for the Crazy Mom Monkeys. Just a few more repeats of the lace pattern to go! Yay!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Captain Resourceful and the Dirt Demolishers

Okay guys. It only took me about two hours to thoroughly scour the first fleece (Monette's) courtesy of Schoonover Farms, from a Craigslist ad. Here is a before picture.



And here are the after shots. Damn, that's some CLEAN fiber!





It is no longer brown, but a gorgeous silvery gray color. Let me first say that the scouring method used for this first fleece was:

1)Hot water from the tap into the tub, about halfway full. Add Palmolive (green apple scent, just to be cute) until the water turns a shade of green. Swish water around so the dish soap is evenly distributed. Put on rubber gloves (mine happen to be hot pink....don't ask) and lay the fleece on top of the water. Gently smoosh down the fleece until completely submerged. Hang around for 20 minutes. Push the fleece to the back of the tub, and unplug the drain. As the water drained, I squeezed out more water, as gently as possible to avoid felting. Then I gathered up the fleece and tossed it into a dish tub I had from dyeing.

2) Repeat the bath 2 more times. Seriously, until the water is less like mud and more like water (fleeces are dirty, what can I say?)

3) Refill tub with hot tap water (mine was most likely 120 degrees. My barista hands tell me so...) minus the soap. Add the fleece back in. Press under. Let sit for 15 minutes, then gather the fleece and drain the water.

4) In the last rinse bath, I added some Soak to the mix, just to condition the fleece and make it smell like flowers (what? It was Flora scent!)

5) The fleece was then removed from the water after about 15 minutes, and then place on a big bath towel. I then stomped on the towel, just like I do with knitwear. Then I laid out a clean dry towel onto my drying rack, and put up the sweater catch on the other side, and spread the fleece out evenly to dry.

Okay, so what happened? It started to torrentially RAIN! *grrr* Which means the fleece is still not dry, despite being in my 75+ degree apartment for 24 hours. Well, it's at least drying...

Fast forward to today. I had a moment of inspiration while trolling Ravelry looking for fiber prep solutions. Keeping in mind that this is a Shetland fleece, and I am nowhere near deciding what I want the finished product to be, I decided it would be best for me to get both wool combs and wool cards. The issue? Wool combs can run you upwards of $40. Wool combs? Closer to $70 if you're lucky. What did I do? Went to the pet store.

$15.03 later, and one trip to PetSmart, and I have two sets of soft dog slicker brushes (which look strikingly similar to wool carders...) and two sets of dog combs, one which has tines of two heights, and the other with a single row all the same height.



Yes, that brand does say Bargain Hound. What can I say....at 97 cents per comb, I couldn't resist (clearance is a good thing) and the orange carders were $2.99 a pop. Not bad, huh?

For those of you with champagne tastes, I did find a tutorial for making wool combs by hand on the cheap. Go here. Wool Cards on the other hand require carding cloth, which is sold by the inch and is special order. As soon as I figure out how to make it by hand, rest assured I will share the secret. But until then, hit your pet store for some cheaper alternatives for fiber prep. I do warn you. Real wool combs and carders are bigger and are meant to handle larger capacities of fiber at one go, but I am still happy to trade a few minutes of time in exchange for keeping more of my money for actual fiber. :D

I can't wait til that fleece is done so I can test the fiber prep angle and decide which way I would like to process the fleeces. Oh that, and so I can wash the other fleece (which is currently sitting in a plastic bag in the box it was mailed to me in.) I need another drying rack.

In other news, I went to the Container Store and got some more underbed totes to put the rest of the newly acquired yarn into. And also, some lavender scented cedar balls. All of it was on sale for the Spring Sale. I spent $30. Including tax. How cool is that? I will, of course, need to go back to get a few more totes for storing the fleeces. Preferably before the sale ends on Sunday.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Shetland Scour, Super Powers!

Okay, so the Shetland fleeces I bought off of Craigslist Seattle showed up today. Let me tell you, they certainly SMELL like FARM. It's a great and refreshing smell. Granted, I am insane, and do not purport to be anywhere near the level of sanity required to realize that a new spinner with a raw fleece may not be a wise idea.

Okay, so here we go. I'm off to scour some fleeces.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Shop Update

Hey guys, check out the shop! (see the link on the right? --> )

I just put up a couple of books and magazines for sale for a destash. Feel free to check it out!

Friday, May 1, 2009

Sleepy

I have spent most of the week fighting off LB's plague syndrome (he has a cold, lovingly dubbed the Monkey Cough, not the Swine flu or whatever other epidemic the media is harping on). I am exhausted. I do not sleep well. I am actually kind of perturbed.

Wednesdays are the usual day that I can get away with knitting a few rows while on shift. Unfortunately, this past Wednesday was spent doing the inventory audit (making sure all the stuff was on the list for the real inventory). Let me tell you what a waste of time that was! We removed things from the list (despite my dissent) that we subsequently got in stock yesterday when our order came in. For goodness sakes, doesn't that seem freaking counter-intuitive? Again with the system being retarded, and my poor foolish lead following blindly.

Anyways, we finished inventory in record time. Partially due to my forethough of writing numbers of things onto their cases, so we didn't waste time counting them and opening all the boxes, and partially because we had *gasp* STAFFING! It was amazing. We had four student employees come in.

The down side is that I should have gotten overtime because I went in early. The sad part is, we were done so early, I could have LEFT an hour early. No overtime for me. *sigh* I really could use the money. This debt thing isn't going away on its own you know.

At any rate, it's sunny out today, unfortunately, I cannot enjoy it. I went to doctor x yesterday morning to see why the hell I have a jaw infection (yes, my diagnosis was correct) and got put on some super broad spectrum antibiotics. Joy. Trouble is, increased sun sensitivity. And I was already allergic to the sun. *sigh* The good thing is, the infection should be cleared by the time I go in for that root canal and crown thing.

Oh. and I need to find a pair of less-than-$50 handcarders. Any ideas?