Charlotte's Web update

Since the last postings on Charlotte's Web, I've made progress and have gotten back to where I had begun ripping out. It moves along so much faster on the smooth Knit Picks needles! So, with Charlotte's web, you are using 5 colorways: A, B, C, D, and E. You start the first 26 rows with color A. Then you alternate 2 rows A, 2 rows B for 16 rows. Now you're done with A. Then knit 16 rows in all color B. Then the next 16 rows are alternating B and C. then 16 rows of C. So on... I'm in the middle of the 16 rows of color C.

New fiber and what not to do

For my birthday, Amber had gotten me Spunky Eclectic's Almost Solid Series Fiber. While in need of something to spin up between larger spinning projects, I decided to spin up an ounce of this stuff. I'd spin up 2 bobbins, ply it, and then knit up a swatch. I plan on making a small blanket or wall hanging of the fibers here.




The Redwood colorway is the one outside the pack. So I divided the fiber in half and started spinning up the first bobbin. Note to all out there with long hair, you want to avoid spinning your hair into the fiber, as I have done:


Um, oops! Well, I managed to untangle myself and finished up the first bobbing for:


I couldn't really get a good picture to represent the color.

Other obsessions

A couple of years ago, I started the Charlotte's Web shawl from Koigu. I got to somewhere in the middle and stopped because this was early in my lace knitting experience and I had done something wrong on a row and now I have to tink back and I don't remember where I had to tink back to. Recently, I've been itching to get my hands on this shawl again and work on it. So this morning, while I logged in from home I pulled it out and started tinking back. Then, I realized that I had a life line and I might as well rip back to the life line since I knew that I was good up to the life line. Well, as I started picking up stitches, I looked at the balls of yarn in my bag and realized that I had enough yarn to start over...again. I think I might just do that. The other reason for me to do that was that I had started this on size 6 bamboo needles which, as I looked at it were actually 6.25mm needles and not the 6mm needles the pattern calls for. I can't stand those needles. The join is not smooth at all and was another reason why when I had knit this the first time, I'd pick it up and put it down soon after wards. If I have enough yarn, I might as well switch to the Knit Picks needles and start over. I'm not sure if I have Addis in 6 and if I did, I'm not sure where they are.

This would be another pairing:
Charlotte's web

Tubey

Obsessions

Recently (or, since Nov 2006), I've found myself with this slight obsession with tubular ndebele, otherwise known as the tubular herringbone stitch. What you produce is so simple, but pretty. All the instructions I had seen said to start it with the ladder stitch and after the okay from Patricia, I started. And then, like the Energizer bunny, I kept going and going and going. I've finished one strap and started another and I don't even have the stones set yet! I know which ones I plan on using, but this is the reverse of what I normally do! Usually, it's set the stone first, then see how it speaks to me and do the strap! So, we'll be seeing a couple of simple, basic necklaces coming in the future. I had to get the stitching in before I went to sleep and it's quite late for me on a Monday night!




And no, neither of the tubular ndebele straps will be attached to the stone in the picture.

In other news, I've begun ripping up the carpet in my basement. This is in preparation for the recarpetting job. They'll be putting down a tack strip with a layer of padding and carpet. No more of this glueing the carpet down crap. My goal is to have a lounging area in the house where I can keep it cold so I can knit my wooly stuff this summer.

Another year, another birthday...

And another marathon of hockey games. Yup, it's regionals time. Sorry if I'm only half paying attention while looking at the score updates coming to my phone. I had a short day at work yesterday, a visit to the doctor's for a physical and a slip for a blood panel (cholesterol check) which I couldn't use that day cuz I've had way too much cake. The week started off with the Tomato Soup Cake which was really good. I also want a piOne of my coworkers made me a Tres Leches cake which reminds me of tiramisu and it's REALLY good. Then it of was off to Bead Obsessions for a carrot cake made by Patricia which was the most moist carrot cake I've ever eaten. I hope there's more left when I'm back for the afternoon tomorrow :-)

I got a Dale of Norway kit for the Lake Placid sweater. I was debating swatching for the sweater last night, but was kinda brain dead with the cake and the wine and all the hockey on tv. I also got more fiber with which to spin with. It was a sampler pack from Spunky Eclectic. And a Bead Obsessions gift certificate. Cake and fiber...happy girl.

And now back to hocky. Still games to be watched. Teams I'm cheering for are not doing well. Of course, my team isn't even playing. And I'm so glad I can knit stitches without looking and that I'm doing miles of stockinette...let's me actually watch the game!

Some eye candy

I thought I'd share with everyone a couple of pieces of eye candy:





These were made by my coworker Svitlana. She recently had a baby and is home on maternity leave. She'd always liked jewelry and after Bead Obsessions opened, I had gotten her interested in making her own. Some people call me her dealer/pusher. But she does beautiful work too. I'm sure her husband thinks of me as "That evil person who got his wife hooked on this hobby." It's actually amazing that the amethyst sage one looks so blue. I had seen the stone on its own and it looked quite purple. So, hope you all enjoy the pictures!

Oh yeah,

And happy birthday to me :-)

Um, stuff

I got out and did the 4 mile loop between Key and Memorial bridges today. It was nice. Breathing was hard since I haven't exercised in 3 weeks and the cold is finishing up and my throat was dry but I finished and I feel good. This is good news cuz I'm signed up to do the Cherry Blossom 10 miler in a couple of weeks.

In some etsy surfings, can we say, "WAY UNDERPRICED"? Does that even pay for the yarn?

My brain is ouchy. I think it's the running that did me in. I put away the beads and yarn tonight cuz my brain was too tired. So instead, I was trying to learn the blogger tag lingo and adding new widgets in. Ya, my brain is weird. It's tired and you'd think it'd prefer to knit or bead since it requires less effort than coding, but no...brain wants to sort through xml tags and widgets. I'm trying to duplicate the Blog Archive widget for the Sweet Life Knitters KAL blog to be more specific but it was not liking me and brain was having a hard time figuring out what part of my xhtml it did not like. And then I just noticed that instead of the br tags to separate these paragraphs, i was using the closing /a tags. Ya, I hand code my html, and ya, I'm tired. I think I'm headed to bead and I hope this means I can actually get up in the morning.

Weekend Activities

Not so much knitting this weekend, instead, lots of beading:



I'm working on a peony for Bead Obsessions. If I can finish this, then I can move on to other things.

Announcement

Next weekend, there is a mini flower show at Bead Obsessions and guess whose flowers will be on display! A lot of items in my house will be moved over there. I wish I had some more time to plan for this and work on flowers but for short notice...I guess it'll be okay. There will also be a seed bead event that weekend. Gotta love the seed beads. And it all coincides with my birthday next Friday. Yay!

More free coffee!

Coming on Wednesday, to help celebrate the first day of spring, Dunkin Donuts is giving away a free iced coffee...all day long. It's for 24 hours! Press release here.

IPO

Well, this is an Initial Public Offering, just not of the stocks and securities variety.




This is an astrophyllite stone set in seed beads. The spiral rope is made with size 8 round core and size 8 triangles. The total length of the necklace, including the clasp measures just over 20 inches. Around the edge of the stone are Swarovski bicones. Listing price is $138.00.

Anyone who is interested is welcome to email me to lay claim to this piece before I put it on etsy (Saturday morning). It will be first come first serve. In the mean time, I will enjoy wearing this out and about.

Email: judyyiudesigns (at) gmail (dot) com

Replace with approprate symbols. I've set up a separate email address for this so that hopefully, emails don't get lost in my inbox.

I Home Depot

I walked in to buy some light bulbs. I wandered over to flooring to see what they had to offer for carpeting since I wanted to redo the carpeting in my basement that was ruined from the flood. I found out some interesting things. Many of the vinyl tiles used in the late 70s contain asbestos. Lovely. For the Home Depot installers to install carpeting, I'll probably have to remove the edge row of tiles. They'd nail a tack strip to the basement floor and then put down adding and carpet. So it turns out that even in the basement, one should have a pad under the carpet. And the woman kinda went "What?" when I told her the carpet was glued down. She was also in shock when I told her about the matching vinyl tiles that were glued down to the hardwood floors. So I have an appointment with the installers to get a measurement done of the basement and get an estimate. I happened to walk in on the last day of the free measurements promo. Whoo!

I also made an appointment with a doctor. It was this afternoon. He walked in and my first thought was, "Oh my god! Cute doctor!" Cute doctor told me that I don't have strep or pneumonia and that it looked like it was just a viral cold and those can last for a while. If I didn't feel any better or got worse, I'm supposed to go back to see him cuz it might be mono. Now, does he mean him specifically, or just a doctor? ;-)

I filed my taxes last night! Whee! Federal forms accepted this morning. VA forms accepted this afternoon.

It turned out I had LOTS of light bulbs...

Starbucks coffee break!

Get a free coffee at Starbucks on Thursday, March 15, 2007 between 10am and noon. Details here.f

Weekend, Taxes, being kept up later than I wanted

So, the weekend was fun. I got stuff done like:

which has a pretty long strap and the stone actually falls below my chest. But that is apparently because I don't have a thick neck. I also achieved my goal of putting the sleeves onto holders and joining the front and back of the top down raglan:


Other pictures from the farm can be found: here. Check out the pictures of Amber in the small cottage. It is REALLY small. The only complaint I had about the farm was all the lady bugs. There were so many of them!

So, we arrived late Friday night. From the highways to the country roads, to dirt roads. For a while on the last stretch, there was this truck following us. I started getting a little paranoid for a while there because of Mighty Oracle and Spousal Unit's talk of the mental institution and the now closed state prison in the area. But the truck turned off and we were safe. Otherwise, it was a very relaxing weekend spent crafting and eating and in the company of friends. I'm not big into nature so I think that was about as much nature as I could take. Monday's drive back included a stop at Cestari farms where I bought more yarn, and lunch in Staunton, VA where Amber and Anne and I went antiquing which was quite fun. We didn't get back til late. I had wanted to avoid DC rush hour and we did!

I didn't get to spin as much as I'd wanted to. I have the sleeves sewn onto the the back of the Flower Meadow Shrug. I still need to finish the lacework for the body edgin and attach that. I may try to do that this weekend since I really prefer to do some seaming when there's daylight out.

As of tonight, my taxes are done and filed, both state and federal. I got about 10 rows knitted at the homeowner's association meeting which was about as exciting as I had expected. My pictures are in flickr and the blog has been updated. That's about all I wanted to do tonight!

Taxes! and quick blabberings

Taxes

I love taxes and I hate taxes. As my taxes get more complicated, I get more annoyed at doing them. So while I had wanted to blog about my weekend in the country, I spent most of the evening doing my federal taxes and now I'm brain dead. But, at least I've gotten somewhere. I tried the efile trials at H&R Block and double checked it against numbers I crunched and it looks about right. They actually picked up stuff that I had forgotten. Normally, I manually do my taxes, but this year came the addition of classes at Bead Obsessions and bizarro self employment taxes. Ya...that was fun. But I need a night to recover and then I think I can send them in. Can anyone recommend me a good tax accountant for next year? Following that, a good financial planner?

My plan is kaput

Oh crap, I just remembered that tomorrow evening will be spent sitting in the annual homeowner's association meeting. This is like 3 hours of my life down the drain and only 3 because in the past, the building caretakers kicked us out at 10pm. These things can take forever and nothing ever gets done. Actually, I'm wrong. I'm the only one who gets things done because I sit and knit. Tomorrow night, I'll be working on the top down raglan

Weekend

Was very relaxing. Hopefully, I won't be so brain dead that I can put some pictures up. I did manage to pull out the sleeve stitches and joined the body front and back. I've tried it on and it fits quite well.

Jewelry

I've been toying with this idea and I think I will go ahead with it. All pieces that I'm willing to part with will be previewed on the blog for 2 days. Then if it's still available, it goes to etsy. I did finish another piece but I need to wear it out first. Part of the pictures I need to post tomorrow. It's green. With fringe.

Weekend fun

While I should really be packing up my clothes, I'm here attached to the laptop :-) So, goals for the weekend:

• Finish border to the shrug, seam everything up, have new piece of clothing


• Work enough of the top down raglan to separate out the sleeves


• Finish a green cab necklace that has not yet made its debut on this blog


• Work on the parts of a peony


• Work on widdershins


• Remember how to relax


• Hope that Cornell lives to play another week

Have a good weekend everybody!

Sometimes, unexpected things happen, eh?

So we all remember this, right?



Well, the day after I took this picture, I picked up the necklace and the glass piece fell out. Ya. That sucked. If this goes into someone else's possession, it would suck to be told, "The red glass piece fell out." Tonight, I went back in to add another layer to the bezel and it's not going to fall out now. Now it looks like this:



I think at some point, I'll have to put up examples of different ways of doing the bezels on the main website. I need better pictures and some time.

I think I'll wear this out tomorrow.

Flower Meadow Shrug update - Sleeves are blocked. Back is blocking now. Sleeve cuff lacy portions are blocking. I'm still working on the lacy portion going around the body/sleeve border but I don't think I'll need to worry too much about blocking that one so no fear. I hope to have a new article of clothing before this weekend is over.

Random etsy musings for the day

Some things that caught my eye while I was surfing the etsy forums and various etsy shops:

• For anyone who is thinking of selling their hand knit wares, read this.


• It's surprising how some people do pricing. It makes me wonder if they actually make any money.


• Might as well go for it. I'll start off small...like stitch markers. I'll have some jewelry type things before the end of the month.

Etsy

I had been thinking about how I'd go about this "selling my stuff" business. I decided on etsy. It's high traffic and I wouldn't have to maintain anything. I'm not sure about patterns and such so until I know for sure, I'll still keep them on my site which is horribly maintained (I know). So my etsy shop is here but there is nothing there right now. I'm trying to get things set up like categories and shipping options...admin things, ya know? But don't worry, I've got a few things up my sleeve. I remembered my March 31st deadline and said, "Oh crap, we're in March and time's moving fast!"

While I was reading through the various etsy seller guidelines and forums, I realized that I could knit stockinette in the round continental without looking. whoo hoo! Progress on the top down raglan!

Weekend Fun

Yesterday, Amber and I wandered up to York, PA to visit Uncommon Threads and then off to The Mannings for some spinning fun. I brought home Malabrigo in burgandy and some Lamb's Pride bulky in Limeade:


Both are destined for sweaters. Limeade is probably next with a top down raglan. Malabrigo burgandy is probably going to be a sweater with a mock turtle neck, probably with a yoke and top down.

In other news, I've been spinning and plying some...

Otherwise, around knitting and trying to recover from this horrible cold. I did manage to finish the other sleeve for the Flower Meadow Shrug and one piece of lace edging for a sleeve. I need to block and seam and keep knitting the rest of the edgings.

Answers to yesterday's little quiz

• orange


• the sun


• Canada


• 4


• false - this was the one I got wrong


• 200