Fiber fair!!

So today my friend Hannah and I drove up to Crystal Lake for the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair and it was amazing! We had never been to any fair, so this was definitely an experience for us. I was on a yarn high for most of the day. There were rooms and rooms of wool all for the buying. At one of the first booths we came to, we were introduced to needle felting. I knew about regular felting, but for some reason, I had completely missed out on having any idea what needle felting was. This booth had a table where you could create your own felt keychains. Mine isn't very good, probably because I was distracted by the hole I put in my finger with those sharp needles. But Hannah was hooked and throughout the day we kept seeing amazing pieces of art done with needle felting, so she ended up buying some supplies for that.

Here are a few shots of yarn that I was able to get. Being outside was excellent for lighting. I should've kept my camera out more, but alas, I needed both hands to touch!



Highlight of the day was definitely seeing this yarn monster. An alpaca! Is it not the cutest thing you've ever seen? They made the most adorable little noises as well. I told Hannah that if she took care of the alpacas, I would spin her yarn for her in our hypothetical yarn farm.

This sign amused me only because Brooks is my last name.

It was a very hard decision to pick something to come home with. At first I was considering some hand painted yarn from Briar Rose Fibers, but then I decided on some alpaca from Enchanted Meadows. This large hank has almost four hundred yards of blueberry colored alpaca and I paid about 30 bucks for it. I have already decided to make Ysolda's Gretel beret with it, and perhaps some mittens. I wanted to make some fair isle Norweigan style mittens, and maybe I still will, but I would like a matching hat/mittens set.

And if all that yarn wasn't tasty enough, I leave you with my first homemade granola bars! Although not as healthy as it could be, it was quite delicious. I pulled off a few recipes from the internet and just ignored the ingredients that I didn't have in the house. The recipe called for a ton of chocolate chips, but instead I substituted most of the chocolate chips for dried cherries, crasins, and peanuts. Quite delicious!

Last post: 10 days ago. Not good.

It is halfway through July. Isn't that insane? I leave for London in 43 days. I've had some homework to do so unfortunately that's been taking up some of my time. Not nearly enough as it should however.

My crafting project lineup looks like this at the moment:

Duck skirt. I bought this skirt a few years ago at Goodwill with every intention of reconning it. Finally getting around to it now. It was originally a very full, very pleated skirt that was too small for me in the waist, unless it was worn directly under the bust. I liked the duck pattern though and I wanted to make it wearable somehow. My plan is to use a skirt that I have from Anthropologie as a model in making a kind of bubble skirt. There's a waistband (which I increased by a third), a middle section, and then a lower section that is ruffled and folded so that the crease forms the bottom. So far, it is going okay... I have no confidence in my clothes constructing abilities so I am basically just winging it. Today I worked until I got stuck trying to make darts by the waist. I really want a skirt that is wintery so I can wear it with my tights and boots, so hopefully this will be it.

However, my main project at the moment is Demi from Rowan's Vintage Knits. I'm working on the back at the moment, almost ready to start the armhole decreased. It took me a while to get a hang of all the cables, but now I know the pattern pretty much by heart. The fact that the chart repeats at two different speeds does not terrify me now.


I made a few mistakes as you can tell by some of the messy cables. I'm not going to worry about it. I am not a perfectionist in knitting at all, I'm not sure why that is. Actually, I'm exactly sure why that is. I hate doing things twice. If I don't catch a mistake for a while, there's no way I'm frogging and fixing it. But at least the bobbles have turned out nicely. I think they're cute!

I also have another tshirt embroidery project that I'm working on for boy. But that's a secret. I leave you with a picture I took in a neighboring town where I went to watch my boy in a parade. Good stuff.

I've been sewing!

Well I've been using the sewing machine quite a bit lately. I'd like to think that I'm getting better, but I don't know if that's accurate. But I used the sewing machine to sew Hannah's bag and I think it looks decent! I basically just sewed a couple of rectangles together so it wasn't very difficult.

I really like the lining though, it's leftover fabric from the curtains in our den. I was a little concerned about the strap matching the bag, but I think it looks okay. Luckily from this photo, you cannot tell that I did not cut or sew a straight line whatsoever in making the strap. And sewing the lining to the bag was a bit difficult, the yarn kept getting caught on the foot of the sewing machine and whatnot.

Now this is a tote bag that I made all by myself. It is the second tote bag that's been made for boy and I's supposed tote bag making business. The dimensions are kind of silly because I didn't know what I was doing. It's probably not good enough to sell, but I think the design is cute. I'm proud of myself anyway.


And here's the cheesecake I made last week! It was a recipe from Cooking Light magazine and it apparently their best cheesecake. I enjoyed it. It was kind of an all night affair though and I don't have that much patience for baking.

At the moment I'm a couple inches into Demi. It's officially become difficult with this insane chart and cables every other stitch. I'm not good with charts, I prefer to have directions written out for me. It's too easy to lose your place when you have like 400 little boxes in one chart. It took me like two hours to knit like 5 rows. But I'm sure I will improve. And besides this is the back, mistakes will be okay.

Pictures!

As promised, I have pictures from my week with my sister's camera. Of course the minute I go to import them, her camera decides it doesn't like my computer or the other way around, so getting these up was a bit of an effort.

Here are all 18 granny squares that I finished crocheting for Hannah's bag.

And here they are blocking.
They look so nice all lined up like that. They would make a nice blanket I think. But in this life they shall be a bag. I am unsure what the strap will look like though. I am thinking about braiding i-cords or something? I was also planning on single crocheting the seams together. Suggestions? This is one of my first completely self-designed projects so I don't really know what I am doing.


Last night, while watching Into the Wild (which was quite excellent) I knitted up this swatch for Demi. Can you tell it isn't four inches? More like 3.5. Which would make sense since I used US7s for this swatch and the pattern called for US8s. My personal tension seems to differ from most others, but I guess not with this yarn. And luckily, using Ravelry, I just found out that I do have US8s circs and I was thinking I might not. I just have to find them... Still the swatch looks very nice in my opinion. It is Cascade 220 if you couldn't tell. I am curious to see what it will look like as most of the projects on Ravelry were done with a tweed and this is more of a heather.


Last thursday was the library book sale of the next town over and I picked up some awesome stuff. I got a bag full of Victoria magazines for free! Cannot beat that for sure. I haven't gone through them thoroughly, but I know I will love them.


I also got 33 books for $39. I live for used book sales okay. Look at all these great titles and most of them are in really good condition. I bought so many that I had to bring up another bookcase to my room bringing the grand total of bookcases in my room to 6. Although to be fair, one bookcase hold my stash.


I've got some more pictures that I will reserve for later posts, perhaps with an "abandoned projects" theme. So happy end-of-June everyone! Summer is halfway over!

Where is summer going?

I'm kind of upset over the fact that it is June 24th already. Summer is going way too quickly and I still have so much to do. So much knitting, reading sewing, preparing for London... It is kind of depressing.

However, expect something (hopefully) good on the blog arena soon. My sister is at a youth group conference this week and we have traded cameras. She didn't want to risk taking her Canon Rebel to a college campus with a thousand other teens, so I gave her mine. In exchange, I have full access to the beauty all week. So hopefully I'll get some good shots of... stuff.

I've been crocheting the granny square bag, but things are not going very quickly. I'm up to 11/18 squares completed. Then I need to find fabric to line it and block the squares and stitch it all together and yeah. Luckily my friend is on a nine day roadtrip so I have plenty of time before she returns.

I've been watching a lot of period movies lately as they are pretty much my favorite genre. I am finding that the knits from the first half of the 20th century are quite stunning. I basically want them all. For examples, see Sons and Lovers, The Heart of Me, and Sylvia. And after typing that sentence, I realized that I am a food for not making screencaps of these movies for future reference. But I guess it can still be done, they are all from the library anyway. Rowan's Vintage Knits has excellent stuff that is in that vein of course. I hope to start work on Demi soon. However, having lost one of my interchangeable needles while knitting the Dollar and a Half cardigan, that may be a problem.

Sorry there are no pictures. I hate reading posts without pictures, but I am sure there will be plenty in the future.

The completely finished Dollar and a Half Cardigan

Here it is folks. All the pieces have been blocked, assembled, the ends sewn in, the buttons attached. It is a real live cardigan!



My sister and I went down to the river walk in my town to take pictures. The water was quite high from all the rain. Thankfully we haven't experienced the flooding like others have.


I could never be an actress/model. Well for obvious reasons, but also because I cannot keep a straight face in a photo. That's when my sister decided to keep my face out of the photo. Focusing on the sweater is the point anyway.




Dollar and a Half Cardigan
Specs are on my Ravelry project page. I'll have you know that I lost two needles in the process of making this thing. I do not know how it happened, perhaps transporting the whole thing between my house and boy's was too chaotic. But the real problem is that I lost one US4 and one US6. I couldn't even lose the same pair so I could easily replace them!

I am quite happy with the results. It is not quite fitted enough for my tastes, perhaps a bit too slouchy. The shoulder seems also hit a bit low on my arms which is kind of a mystery to me. But it is a nice length. The sleeves ended up belling out towards the end which isn't awesome, but bearable. It is definitely something that I will wear and that is what counts.

Here are more pictures from the adventure. Muffin made me take off my shoes and walk across the flooded path even though I am kind of a safety freak.





Goosies!

It's done!

This may be a pictureless post, but my Dollar and a Half Cardigan is completely finished! I went to Hobby Lobby last night and picked out a few buttons and sewed them on while watching Enchanted, which my dad mistakenly called "Charmed." And I also spent Sunday knitting up the ribbed neckband/button band part while watching the Masterpiece Theatre version of Jane Eyre. Not that impressed is my personal opinion. But anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be picture day. It's been so hot that I cannot imagine taking decent photos outside in this thing. Beautiful, but quite toasty. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 70s, so I will have my little sister and her expensive camera go somewhere pretty with me.

Oh and hopefully soon, Boy and I's little Etsy experiment will get underway. We're almost done with one tote bag. Of course next week he starts his summer class so the whole thing may be a waste of money, but let's hope not.

It's coming together!

I'm onto the seaming of the Dollar and a Half cardigan! I was originally excited to start putting it altogether, but then I remembered that seaming is boring. Last night I got through the three needle bindoff on the shoulders and stitched in the sleeves on one side.

Oh wait, first I blocked it.

Blocking was amazing. Some people on Ravelry had complained that the bumps and such did not block out, but mine came out beautifully. The yarn has really softened too. I threw in a little conditioner into the water which helped. I really had no idea what I was doing as far as the blocking goes. I've read a lot of stuff, but I didn't follow any one set of instructions. I basically just dunked in in some warm water, rolled it up in a towel to get some of the water out, and then pinned it out to dry on a towel. But I am happy with the results and that is what counts, right?

Here is the shoulder seam. Once again, kind of just winging it, but I am satisfied with the results. There are a couple places where the horizontal stripes are just misaligned by maybe just one row, but I really don't care at this point. I don't think it is that noticeable. I hate having to do things over. Especially when you leave the house and get almost out of the neighborhood when you realize that you forgot something. I did that three times the other day. I was so frustrated afterwards that I accidentally ran a stop sign. Ugh.

Now this picture is a sampling of the present I am making for my friend Hannah. She is also a knitter so we have a good time sharing patterns and projects and doing knitterly things together. I am going to make a cute little bag with these granny squares. I'm thinking that there will be nine on each side. I have an old pillow case that I think will line it nicely. The yarn was a Christmas present from my aunt. It's all hand spun and hand dyed from somewhere in Ohio that I cannot remember at this moment because the yarn band has disappeared. But it is lovely and has that nice sheepy smell.

Until these projects are finished (and I still need buttons for the cardigan!) I am refusing to think about what might be coming next. But it may just be Demi from Rowan's Vintage Knits. Hint hint. It will be perfect for my time spent in England this fall.

June already?

Time is just slipping away from me here. Last weekend was my brother's graduation from high school. We had relatives over and there was a party as well as much stress and chaos. But now my beautiful sweater is 90% done! I have even blocked parts of it and it is lovely. However, that is all I am going to say on that subject. I will wait until I have pictures uploaded, but trust me it is coming soon.

In the meantime, enjoy some yarn porn, taken by me over spring break when I endeavored to build a lightbox. I have since put the box away, but I was quite happy with the results. The tutorial I used can be found here from the Lolly Knitting Around blog.

The yarn featured is nothing special, but the colors turned out accurate so I was pleased. First is Sugar'n Cream, pretty much all I have left after my dishcloth making frenzy of a few summers ago. Second is Wool of the Andes bulky from Knit Picks, leftover from making my roommate Foliage for Christmas. Click to enlarge!

Excuses, excuses

But I have a good one this time. If my situation wasn't clear, I am home from college for the summer. I live with my parents and my little brother and sister. Last week my mother went out of town to help my grandma so basically I was in charge of everything (my siblings are pretty useless) which meant my time to myself was a bit limited. We also foster kittens and so there were some that required bottle feeding every few hours which is extremely time consuming. And also I started back at work finally. Point being, not a lot of knitting happened.

However, the Dollar and a Half Cardigan is getting there. I have finished both of the front pieces. Here is a picture of the right front relaxing in the windowsill, one of my cat's favorite spots as well.
I realized when I was decreasing for the armhole that I did not exactly do it correctly on the left front. It wasn't a huge deal, so I just decided to duplicate the mistake on the right front. I am currently about a foot into my first sleeve, which seems a little too big. I am knitting the smallest size, but actually it all seems a little too big. We'll see.

I don't believe that I ever shared with you all pictures of my knitting needle case that boy made for me. Although he disagrees, I really like it and it is nice to have everything in one place.

And yes, the boy sews. However, I must clarify that (except for this) he sews very manly things. Check out his blog. He does custom orders for tactical gear and things with webbing and nylon and sometimes he uses a lighter. It's all very ridiculous but he is good and has actually made a lot of money off of it and everything. I am proud of him for breaking gender stereotypes. But anyway, I picked out the fabric and gave him a rough idea of what I wanted and this is how it turned out! An excellent Christmas present, I must say.

As I promised last time, I have pictures from Beastly Knits. I found this book at used book sale and I couldn't resist its tackiness. I am probably breaking all sorts of copyright laws by posting these images, but they're just so awesome!

Look at that guinea pig!

This one cracks me up.

There are a couple more pictures on my flickr if you would like to see them. I am almost tempted to knit one. Maybe not a sweater, but I am sure that the charts would come in handy for something. So hilarious. I mean the title really just says it all.

Next time perhaps I will share my ideas for a friend's birthday present. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. I cannot believe mine is 1/4 over already.

Sunday again?

Has it really been a week since I last posted? Summer is really flying by, it's practically June already. I have been steadily progressing on the Dollar and a Half cardigan. I feel like a serious knitter getting this much accomplished. If only I had this kind of time all year round. But I guess that is what happens when you have no school, no friends, no job, and your boyfriend still hasn't moved back home yet. Those last two things will change soon, but I still will have many, many productive hours.

The back has been finished. Gosh I hope that all blocks out.

I have begun working on the left front which is the regular stripey bit, not the part with the cable. I only have a few inches left on this piece; I've passed the difficult decreasing bits. It's a bit like rubbing your belly and patting your head. You have to decrease on different sides atknit different rates and keep up the pattern all at the same time. I ended up writing it all out so I wouldn't have any mistakes. As it is, I'll probably have enough. See how the reverse stockinette looks all weird? That's because I knit really tight and I purl very loosely and it makes it all quite uneven. I've been trying to knit looser etc., but it's not happening.

I do love this yarn though! Here it is snuggled up with my many piles of books.


Once this cardigan gets done, then perhaps I will work on making call number spine labels for all my new books. There's almost 60 that need them, unfortunately, I do not think there is any room on the shelves.


Next post I will give you all a glimpse into the horrific patterns contained in "Beastly Knits," which I got a book sale. I couldn't pass it up.

Trust me.

The knitting is getting done. I have almost a foot of the Dollar and a Half Cardigan. I am pretty impressed with myself actually. But I am not going to talk about that, I am going to show you pictures of pretty things.

Mom and I went out and picked some flowers from the yard and it resulted in this:

Although we stole some of the lilacs from our neighbor's yard because his smell better.


This is what I am reading or what I'm about to read. For more information about my reading habits, visit my other blog. (I know I have problems with blogs, but this is more of a personal record than anything for the public.)

Although it is cut off in the picture, I checked out Rowan's Vintage Knits. I absolutely love practically every design in this book. I will probably have to buy a copy. It has become my goal to knit through the whole book, although the boundaries of this goal are very, very broad. Also, the one male model in the book is rather dashing.

More knitting next time. Anyone have any ideas about what to do with 500 yards of some Karaoke yarn, 50% wool and 50% soy silk. It's really nice, but the amount is a bit odd. Not enough to make a top, but a lot for an accessory. I'm thinking a vest?