Pictures pictures

Christmas was great! I got blocking wires! And a WPI tool! I don't think I've ever gotten anything bead or knitting related until this year. I have some pictures from then and I'll post them later.

I'm off to Florida tomorrow for the "Florida College Classic" to watch Cornell, Maine, UNH, and Western Michigan play each other. It's another 6am flight. Urg. I just took a 6am flight yesterday from Providence to DC. I have with me


the Wing o the Moth shawl in progress. I have about 50 rows to go and then I can break out the new blocking wires.

I've also decided that I'm going to make Monkey using the Mama E sock yarn I bought earlier.

I've also been spinning the Spunky Eclectic. It's amazing how the colors of the fiber lay in the roving and then when you spin it up...it's not quite what you expect. I'm probably at about single ply lace right now...wondering if I should ply. I do have 4 oz of this stuff and I'm thinking about working my way through Victorian Lace Today.

Gift wrapping fun and some other stuff

I finished off the Christmas shopping at Providence Place Mall and came home and started wrapping presents. I forgot how much I enjoy wrapping a present, and making the shape appear all uniform and pretty.



And in other news, I took a picture of an aquarium for a project for next year...the recipients don't read this blog so that's okay.



There's actually a fish in there. Last time I was here, the fishies had all died and they were all lamenting how the fishies kept dying... so of course, after one of Bead Obsessions's needle weaving study groups, I had my bright ideas. If I have trouble keeping plants alive, I might as well bead them. Well, same with the fishies!

Pictures - fiber

This is that blue fiber. It's just "wool". I thought my spinning abilities were crap. And finally, I was able to ply and put in this stuff:



Fiber from Spunky Eclectic in the Leaf Litter colorway. It was drafting pretty easily and spinning up really evenly.

Plying along

I figured out my plying problem. I thought I had the scotch tension on the bobbin...but I didn't, so everything was spinning at the same speed. When I finally realized the scotch tension was just sitting there, I put it on the bobbin and then I was plying! I've got little twisty slubs on my plied yarn...I may have been over twisting the singles. Oh well, better for me to overtwist than under and let the fiber fall apart. 1 lb. of fiber is a hell of a lot of fiber to spin through, but I think this is just going to be my practice yarn for trying out stuff. I have a little bit left of 1 bobbin of singles and I may try out the Navajo plying technique with it. That would be a mess.

I started beading again. I wanted to set a stone in some peyote stitch. Well, first time around, the peyote stitch bezel is a little too big. Blood jasper rock with some Toho cherry amber. Yum.

Spinning thoughts...

• I spun up 2 oz of fiber and tried to ply it. I don't know how much success I'm having with that since the singles were twisting onto themselves and I don't think I've got the tension adjusted correctly so the flyer isn't spinning.


• I went to go spin up some beads for Bead Obsessions's shop pieces of the calla lily and my feet keep thinking they need to treadle. Wrong spinny thing, feet!


• Spinning Wheel Oriface Hook Class at Bead Obsessions! Now I know what I can do with those tubular beads I admire so much but can't figure out what to do with!

Finished - Anna Socks!

I finally finished the Anna socks!




I had actually finished knitting these in Taiwan but I hadn't weaved in ends until today. It's not fun to weave in ends for black socks. Other pictures can be seen here, pictures taken by Amber.

Some Work In Progress Pictures

First up is the next Wing o the Moths shawl that I'm making for my coworker Svitlana who is having a baby in February. I'm hoping to finish this up before the last week of January when she goes on maternity leave. I'm using Doceur et Soie in "Cafe au Lait". It is a mohair/silk blend and it felt good in the ball. But the shawl, my god! If anyone lives near me and you see me with it, you must cop a feel (of the shawl, not me!).




Next up is Pearls in the Coral. I had taken this class at Bead Obsessions a while back. It got put on hold while I was madly working on necklaces and shawls. Now I've got some time and can start it back up again. After the debacle with the Flamin Moth, I thought about trying to finish this yesterday afternoon...but 3 hours wasn't enough time. Oh well.




That's it for pictures for now!

SUI

Spinning under the influence. No one ever said you're not supposed to spin after some alcohol. I forgot how much I enjoy alcohol. And I figured out how to make Spinny go fast before I left this afternoon. And then since I know one is not supposed to knit after drinking, unless you want to hate yourself the next morning, and have not heard anything about spinning and booze, I decided to sit down with Spinny. Spinny is good. more twists! more twists! The only thing you have to be careful of is the long hair flying around that gets caught up in the fiber. That kinda hurts. So, what we learned tonight...

• Booze is good.


• Booze in DC is expensive


• It's okay to s pin while under the influence


• Don't get hair caught in the fiber cuz that hurts

Urg. Right now I smell like a mix of smoke and heavy cologne/perfume. I must go wash this off myself before I choke on this in bed.

Frustration!

I'm within a couple of rows of finishing the Flaming Moth...and I find I don't have neough yarn left. ARGH! I've emailed Lisa Souza to see if there are any scraps she'd be willing to sell me because I really don't feel like having the full skein sitting around the house. Now I wait to hear back, and rest my hands. I must stop knitting for the night so that I can still use them tomorrow. Perhaps I will spin...or play with my beads, or sleep! I think sleep is good. It will make me forget the annoyingness of this. Now begs the question...what the heck do I wear with my little black dress to the company Christmas party?

Just when I thought I was safe...

I went and purchased the Interweave Knits, Spring 2002 issues. Why? Because of this. Blogs and knit alongs are so evil...right after Amber.

In other news, I think the spinning wheel is named Spinny. I'm really not all that original with names :-) Tonight, continuing on with the obsessive knitting of the Flaming Moth. I hope to have a picture of a clump off the needles to show.

Spinny! Spinny!

All righty! The wheel!


And I got down to business

And while shopping for a dress for the company Christmas party at Marshall's, I found something to help with the fiber storage:

A wheel! A wheel!

The wheel has been assembled...I'm just too lazy to get my butt off of the couch to take a picture of it. I can spin again! I think I may need more fluff. I even found more spinning wheel oil. I had stopped by Springwater to sign up for membership, the drafting and plying class (yeah, I'm in) and see if they had any spinning wheel oil. Why yes! They did have spinning wheel oil. It was called "Spinning Wheel Oil." So now that the wheel is assembled, back to the Flaming Moth.

The wheel parts are out of the box.

I ordered an Ashford Traveller at the end of October and it arrived just before I left for Taiwan. It sat in its box in the foyer for a month. Finally this morning, I went to Home Depot and bought the stain. Minwax has Polyshades that's a stain and finish combination so in theory, I only have to do 1 coat. The instructions say that you may need 2 coats for the final color. So I got the Antique Walnut color. The before picture:


And here's the after 1 coat:



I think I like it after 1 coat. I don't think I want it to go any darker.

FINALLY! Doceur et Soie has arrived!

A couple of days ago, I received an email saying that the Doceur et Soie had FINALLY shipped. Today, it arrived at my house. I stopped home tonight to pick it up so that I could give half of it to Helena at tonight's SweetLife Knitter's meeting. Remember, I ordered this way back in October.


I'm also very tempted right now to start another pair of socks out of one of my many skeins of sock yarn. Just a sock, on some dpns.

More yarn?

Just when I didn't think I could buy more yarn, Amber has to go and ask if there was interest in taking a dying class with Mama E. I have no idea who Mama E is so I read the blog and realize that she dyes yarn and has some sock yarn for sale at Knit Happens. So I had to go to Knit Happens and buy a skein to get an opinion and "help" me decide if I should take the class. So while I'm there, I see they're clearing out the Alchemy yarn (50% off!). So while I was making friendly conversation with people there, I see on the back table this nice fuzzy purple stuff. It's 50% silk, 50% mohair. They're $20 a skein but at half price, it's only $20 for the two. I can make a small scarf out of Victorian Lace Today!


Mama E's C*Eye*Ber Fiber sock in the Poppy colorway. Alchemy Haiku in Foxglove colorway

Photos from the Philippines

I finally managed to put more photos from the Philippines into Flickr. They are here. A little bit of food, some city sky lines. Done.

Finished Object

A cameo necklace.


The cameo I had picked up in NYC and the actual necklace is a spiral rope. The core is made up of 3 size 11/0 seed beads and the spiral is made up of 2 size 11/0 cut beads. this was a present.

Last hours in the Philippines

Well, first off:

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Ya. I guess the desciption fits.

Well, I'm checking out between 3:30 and 4 in the morning. This trip has been overly enjoyable (except for the heat). I'd say that it was planned, but at the same time unplanned. I didn't expect that Friday would be a holiday here so I was expecting to work for 5 days instead of 4. And so, I didn't really expect to have free time to do any sight seeing if I so choose. Of course, I also didn't get out much today cuz my head is a bit muddled since I've now moved to the congested stage of my cold. Everytime I headed outside, I wanted to crawl back to my room, shower first cuz I'm all sweaty and sticky again, and go to sleep.

I am glad though that I had a chance to come here and meet the people I work with. I didn't come with any expectations but the trip has helped me understand a little better how the work environment is here.