Olympic Sports I Could Do

Disclaimer:  After reading my friend Rhonda's blog, I've decided that I need to have more funny posts in my blog and also write about some of the things that cross my mind instead of purely fibery endeavors.  This is a first attempt.  I can't promise that it's funny, but I do promise that it's some thoughts ;)

So, I've been enjoying watching the Winter Olympics and all, but after watching them several times over the last week or so, I've decided that there are other things that should be considered Olympic sports. Since I'm not the most sports-oriented person, these are (I'm convinced) the only things I could win a gold medal in.  Here is my list:

1. Knitting - How would one judge this?  How fast?  Most finished objects?  Or my personal favorite...most Cast on objects :)  Most cast on objects...I'm pretty sure I could win at that ;)
2. Vacuuming - I hate doing it, but if someone were to offer to give me a gold medal for fastest vacuum time, I could be convinced that it's a lovely thing to do and do it faster.
3. Hauling Crap While Climbing Stairs - hands down, I would have the gold medal here.  Our TV is located in our loft upstairs.  We are non-traditional and don't usually sit down at the dining room table for meals...we prefer in front of the TV.  Therefore, we must haul plates of food, drinks, knitting bag, etc. upstairs.  I usually only want to make one trip.  Therefore, I haul all of the above-stated items at one time.  My husband and cat are usually awestruck by this feat of trying not to spill the drink or food or lose my fork.  Personally, I think it helps me burn off whatever calories I'm about to ingest by hauling more ;)
4. Hauling Groceries in the House - Right along with #3, I only want to make one trip from the car.  So...whenever I've gone grocery shopping, I try to take the entire load in one trip.  This means about 9 bags on each arm, the package of toilet paper being held only by my index finger in one hand (make a hole in the plastic for this and either a gallon of milk or case of Diet Coke in the other hand.  You think I'm exaggerating....actually, I'm not!

Umm..that's probably about it.  Signing out...your Hauling Crap While Climbing Stairs Gold Medalist...

It's been awhile!

I'm so bad about keeping up with my blog!  Ahhh well...what has happened since April??  I'll give the condensed version with some pics:

Spinning and knitting have over-taken our house, and hubby fed the frenzy by buying me a loom for my birthday in August.  So, I'm learning to weave too!

Here are some knitting/crocheting finished objects (FOs) over the last several months:

Baby Surprise Jacket for my brother and his wife (due Feb 2010), complete with Lego buttons

Beret in hobbledehoy handspun

Handspun socks, fiber from FLUFF Fibers, superwash merino, Tico

Koolhaas hat in Twisted Fiber Art Lotus, Warlock Evolution

Textured Shawl in Twisted Fiber Art Catnip, Netherfield Evolution

Kiila socks in Twisted Fiber Art Kabaam, Valkyrie Lightening

Handspun Mittens, fiber from Southern Cross Fibre, Polwarth, Hay Sunrise

And, of course, the pièce de résistance, a Girasole shawl for my mom for Christmas, made out of my handspun, fiber from Spunky Eclectic, superwash merino/tencel, Sherwood

Other than that, I have several projects on the needles, including a stocking, a sweater (or 2), socks, a scarf, and soon to be another large shawl.  I'm spinning away, as ever....learning new techniques and really enjoying all things fibery.

Life-wise, work is going well, and hubby is doing great.  We bought a new corvette in June and have been having fun with it ever since (well not now with the snow, but you get the point).  It's cyber metallic gray, and it's very fast and powerful!

Vacations in 2009 consisted of going to New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire) in May and Las Vegas in October.  Both were awesome in their own right, and we loved every minute of each vacation.  During the New England trip, I was especially excited about meeting Amy King (of Spunky Eclectic) and Adrian Bizilia (of Hello Yarn), arguably two of the most inspirational spinners/knitters out there.  In Vegas, we lived it up seeing shows and eating well, and I even came away with 2 pairs of Jimmy Choos and a pair of Stuart Weitzmans! :)  Yay shoes!

So, what kinds of resolutions have I made for 2010?

1. I'd like to give all of my lonely 1 sock pairs their mate this year by actually getting over second sock syndrome and finishing those.  I think I have 3-4 that need to be done.
2. I also want to make this afghan of my handspun yarn, which is going to be on its way soon...I already have the fiber!
3. At home, I'd like to get all of the closets in our house organized and simplify things by getting rid of that which we don't need.  I know there are things that we haven't looked at in 5 years in those closets.  No need to keep them!
4. I'm going to get a closet organizer system for our master closet as well.  We went to The Container Store over Christmas, and yeah, I'm pretty sure we need something like this, except a little smaller to fit our walk-in.  This means that I need to get honest with myself about clothing and shoes and what I actually need/wear (see #3).

Anyway, that's it for today.  Maybe I should add #5 to my list of keeping my blog better up-to-date.  Sometimes, I feel like no one is reading it, though! ;)

Off the needles, wheel, and body

This has been a highly productive couple of weeks in terms of knitting & spinning! First, I'll post some knitting projects, since I haven't really done that.


I finally finished the Fetching Mitts and Scarf for Rita at work. They came out beautiful, and she loved them, but I had no motivation for this project after the first couple of weeks. The mitts were easy and fast, but the scarf was slow, slow, slow! It was mostly 4x2 ribbing with a little bit of cabling at the ends. Rita is 6 feet tall, so yeah...that was a LONG scarf, and ribbing is SLOW. Ahh well, it's done! And, I can do my little foray into selfish knitting for the rest of 2009. Yippee!!

I finished these cute and funky socks (Opal Yarn) finally. I have second sock syndrome in the worst way. I make one sock and feel like I'm done with the project. Then, I have to wait until I'm no longer bored with the pattern to start the second one. There was at least 6 months between the 1st and 2nd socks here. Oh well...they're cute and fun!

I wasn't able to really get a great picture of this scarf, but here it is anyway. This is a scarf I made back in January but just got around to blocking this week. It's long and fat with fat yarn, lots of fringe and was made with US Size 19 needles. I felt like I was playing with the big crayons when I knit using those needles. I love how long and big and squishy this scarf is, and I can't wait to wear it this coming winter for some cozy warmth. The yarn is from Tochay's Farm Fibers and Yarn Emporium, but I bought it at a yarn store in Indianapolis after falling madly in love with it. It's a hand-dyed, handspun, super bulky yarn. Normally, I wouldn't pay what I did for 1 skein of yarn to make a scarf, but I just couldn't pass it up. I'm already thinking of getting another skein of this yarn next time I'm in Indianapolis.

And on to what's off the wheel! I have been busy spinning the fibers up for my handspun shawl. These are all Funky Carolina fibers and they are either merino/silk or merino. They are lovely! The first picture shows all of the fibers together, and the next three are the skeins I've already spun. After all of the skeins are spun, I will take another picture of all of them together and post it prior to knitting.
And now onto what's off the body. I have been on a weight loss kick since February. From the start, I had just under 45 lbs. to lose. I am happy to report that this week I hit a new milestone. I have a very large cat named Moose. He weighs 15 lbs. And, I can now officially say that I've lost a Moose! Only 2 Mooses to go! :) When I phrase it like that, it doesn't seem like the goal is that far away. And, it took me about 10 weeks to do it. I seem to be hitting my stride with weight loss though in the last couple of weeks, so I'm hoping the second 2 Mooses go a little faster. Yay! :)

Ok, off to work on dinner and start on some new socks!!

Photography

As I've posted in the past, I've recently gotten into photography. I just love it! A couple weeks ago, I went to visit my best friend, Liz, in Arizona. She has a 7 month old baby named Miles. We set up a little photo shoot with him. I thought I would share my absolute favorite picture from the nearly 100 pictures I took of him (with his mommy of course!). Here it is:

Handspun Crocheted Scarf - More Details

First of all, thank you to everyone for the compliments on my handspun scarf! :) As a new spinner, I'm really proud of the project because it's the first one using one of my handspuns...an early handspun at that. It seems I've gotten several comments asking for more information regarding the scarf. So, here is more info:

It is a crocheted scarf, and no, I didn't come up with the pattern on my own. It is a pattern from M.K. Carroll. If you are on Ravelry, you can purchase the pattern here, and if you aren't on Ravelry, you can find the pattern here for purchase. It comes to you as a PDF.

As far as how the yarn was spun, here are some more details regarding that:

I bought a 4 oz. bag of "Scrappies" from Funky Carolina. The bag contained several little balls of "scrap" roving that was leftover from making braids for her shop or spinning projects or whatever. I didn't choose the colors or anything....just simply decided to use them all in one yarn. To ensure that there was consistency across the entire skein and not just a blob of bright red here and some pastel-ish stuff there, I split each little scrappy ball into 3 pieces and formed 3 separate piles of pieces, trying to maintain the same color order (although, I don't know that I did that perfectly because my cat got into the fiber :-P). Then, I just spun one full pile after the other as a worsted weight single. I blocked the yarn and voila! a useable skein.

Then, it took me about a month to match the pattern to the yarn. I have made this scarf before and enjoyed the pattern as an easy, instant gratification sort of thing, so I thought it would be fun to try it with this yarn. As it turns out, it worked out pretty well! :) I will say that my yarn had several thick/thin sections and some overspun/underspun parts, but the pattern seems to have just taken that all away. Oh, and one other tip with the pattern...I didn't block my first Anne scarf, but this one, I spent the time putting all those pins in the little flowery parts. Blocking was very worth it, and I would highly recommend that if you try this scarf yourself. The other way is pretty too, but the lace truly stands out with blocking.

I hope this has given everyone the info they needed/wanted on the scarf and that it's not too much information! :) Thank you again for the compliments!

First project using my handspun...

The first project using my handspun is now featured in my blog title, but here are a few other pics to show off the details. It's a scarf crocheted from the skein I spun using Funky Carolina "scrappies" (the yarn pictured at the top of my last post). I'm totally in love with this scarf! It goes with everything, it's soft, and it's all mine from start to finish :)

More yarn for my stash...

I haven't posted in awhile, but here are the latest yarns I've spun to add to the stash.

Fiber: Funky Carolina Scrappies
Yardage: 151 yds singles
Weight: Worsted/Aran

Fiber: Funky Carolina Blue-Faced Leicester in colorway, Snap
Yardage: 240 yds, 2 ply
Weight: Fingering
Fiber: Funky Carolina Blue-Faced Leicester in colorway Warm Lips
Yardage: 396 yds, 2-ply
Weight: Light Fingering


Fiber: Spunky Eclectic 100% Organic Merino in colorway Twilight (January 2009 Fiber Club)
Yardage: 161 yds., 2-ply
Weight: Aran

Yeah, so I suppose I should actually start knitting some stuff with my handspun. Right now, I'm just enthralled with it enough that I want to just sit and look at it. Plus, there is a desire to find the perfect project for it. Plus, yeah, knitting has taken a backseat to spinning right now (shhh...don't tell my unfinished projects). This is only because spinning is so new to me.