Yarns & More Minis

I have the final pics of the Yak-Merino yarn, it is soooo deliciously soft! I have 292.5 yards of it in lace weight but I'm not sure what I'll make out of it. It came out nicely balanced, no whacking needed. ;^)



Wednesday afternoon at the Westside Spinnerati Bobbie handed out baggies of batting she had gotten from Jo-Ann's. One was a polyester-silk blend and the other is Ingeo (corn). I tried out the polyester-silk and found out that the silk is little noile nubs in the polyester. That's why it was so cheap. It's also incredible rough after plying. I spun up half an ounce and plied it:

It was an interesting spinning experience. Definitely ended up over spinning and didn't soften up with the use of Soak.

Wednesday night at Haggen's I never did get any knitting done. I did get to watch Cindy and Kathleen compare their Phat Fiber boxes. Very cool! We also had fun looking through the book I'd picked up from the library - Knit One Below. There are a number of patterns in the book that would be fun to do.

I scored three skeins of Stitchjones Dyepot Worsted Superwash yarns for February's Scarf/Shawl knit projects towards Christmas 2009. Mine are planned for some men in the family and I think they'll really like their scarfs out of these yarns:


I had made another mini-raglan sweater out of Bobbie's sparkly pink and then today while at Insomnia I finished up a mini-hat. This evening I finished up mini-mittens. So I have a complete set. The mittens I managed to get so they were matched:


I have two days left in the month and still hope to get a couple of the DROPS balls done using the self-patterning leftovers from Bobbie. I'm also going to try to borrow her combs and try them out with Susan's samples and the alpaca locks I got from OFFF. I do need to double check if I still have the cat flicker brushes that I could use too.

ETA: Forgot to say that the photos of the Knit Purl yarn sample mini's made it into their blog.

Cupcake review, Snow, Snowflake Stars

Cupcake reviews:
The mini cupcakes were okay but the Caramel Latte was more frosting than cupcake. Not bad after I picked off the coffee beans and they left their flavor behind, just way too much frosting. Gingerbread cupcake was pretty good, the little man had softened up by the time I ate it on Sunday. Wasn't terribly impressed by the PB&J mini. Peter's Mint Chocolate was minty and I loved the Ande's but the ganache was just a little too much for me. Luckily Brandon loves frosting. Just a little too rich for me. Not a bad experience overall and worth trying out others from their repertoire.

Snow:
When Brandon and I were going out to the cars this morning so I could get the Outback's brakes done at Royal Moore before he went to work it was little ice pelts coming down. Then it switched over to snow:




I was able to get one of the Snowflake Stars out into the beginning snow for a photo. I finished the second one this afternoon but it was already melted by that time. Snowflake Stars:


I then spent a couple of hours plying up the yak-merino. It's a 50-50 blend and deliciously soft. It's still resting on the bobbin before I give it a soak. Not sure if it will need any whacking but don't think it will:


Tomorrow is spinning with the ladies at Panera and then knitting with the ladies at Haggen's. It's a fiberlicious day. I'm trying to wrap up January's theme of ornaments. I just have one mini sweater to do, I think another hat and mitten set and I want to do a couple balls. I have until Saturday night to meet that goal.

Blast from the past

Not trying to steal/copy The Pioneer Woman's similarly titled blog post for today, really. It just fit.

I mentioned that I used to be a software quality assurance engineer - right? I did a four year stint at Intel, Jones Farm starting out in the Software Toolshop group and then being reorg'd (reorganized for those of you who've never had it done multiple times) into the Software Coporate Quality Network (CQN) Group.

Well while going through those many reorgs I worked with some great people, not so great people and truly trying people. I think you have to have a certain personality type to work well within the culture they try to build, or as a friend said, I was cursed with a bunch of bad managers.

So while being an "Intel Involved" person of the year, I had my group manager reorg our group and leave me off the new chart. I happened to be home sick that day and blurry eyed poured over the chart several times before realizing I really wasn't on the chart. Hauled my sick carcass into work the next day so that I could ask my group manager (proper protocol would have been to ask my direct manager but he wasn't in, and since I sat near her) what was going on. She had decided that she was going to put me into redeployment (I have no idea why she never liked me). (At the time I was the Corporate Inspections Moderator teaching Inspections across the corporation and rewriting a manual for them.) She never did follow the proper way of doing that either and would within the year find herself no longer working at Intel either. She was the head bad manager.

Anyway, getting back to the point of this post now that you have a little background. One of the cool guys I worked with was Robb Topolski. He also knew that what the manager did sucked so when a former co-worker called asking him for a heads up on good QA people, Robb came knocking on my cubicle wall to ask if I'd be interested. That's how in January of 2000 I ended up leaving Intel and working for almost four years at Digimarc.

Robb, I unfortunately lost track of, so it was cool to have Brandon call me this morning going - didn't you work with him? Why? Because there's an article in Wired that Brandon says will make it into the print version. Very cool!

All Crawled Out.....

I'm not a morning person and I've had a lot of them lately. ;^) This morning was another one but it had a fun reason so worth hauling myself out of a warm cozy bed.

Arrived at Orenco Station (not the actual stop but the businesses nearby) to find Bobbie, Angela and Karen already there. We added in Noriko before getting on the train. Picked up Sara and baby Connor at the Sunset Transit station. Bobbie and I knit out way into town. She worked on a mini-hat and I worked on the Karma One Row Scarf. I added an inch and a half to what I had cast on last night.

We got off at the China Town stop and walked past the closed Chinese Gardens and zig-zagged our way to Union Station. We had an hour to wait for the Seattle train. We were early because last year they arrived twenty minutes early - that didn't happen this year. I pulled out my yarn event book and had those present sign it. I got Joan Schrouder's and Deb Accuardi's signatures, they're already 'famous'. ;^) Joan tried tempting us with knitting in Hawaii or the Swiss Alps. There's also a spring retreat in Newport that she'll be teaching at.

I had helped Rachel carry one of the two bags of fiber samples that Susan (Abstract Fibers) had sent along to give to the Seattle knitters. I did scoop up a half ounce of merino in Hydrangea that is a pretty pink/red with black. Then after the Seattle Knitters had their chance in the two bags, and to help Rachel combine the bags, I looked through and got two samples of SW Merino in Autumn, two BFL in Shady Grove and another Merino called Crater Lake (they're all in my 'stash' at Ravelry if you have access, if you don't you'll see them soon I'm sure).

From Union Station we headed out to Dublin Bay. My first time in there. It's a nice sized store with lots of lovely yarn. Some in shocking sizes to scare your credit card. ;^) I was doing well at resisting the yarny calls until Bobbie waved around this HUGE bundle of roving at us. There I was with a chocolate finger in my left hand and a ripe juicy strawberry in the right and alternating bites (yes, getting my chocolate covered strawberry experience) and she's waving roving to be fondled. It's from Kerry Woollen Mills in Ireland. It's 100% organic combed wool. Bobbie found the one and only natural available and I was lured into getting a lovely Purple that isn't as shocking at the other Easter Egg colors they had on the shelf. It's a pound of roving that was $17 but we got a lovely 20% discount so that dropped it to under $14. They claim that there's enough to spin into a sweater.



From Dublin Bay we zig-zagged up the streets to head to Cupcake Jones (there was a brief stop at the Tea Zone for bubble tea for a couple members) and some delicious cupcakes. I picked up a mini one for the dogs (oatmeal and apple with a cream cheese frosting): (sorry about the flash glare on the frosting). Then I picked out following minis: Peanut Butter & Jelly, Gingerbread Cookie and Caramel Latte:
The only larger cupcake I bought was the Peter's Chocolate Mint one:
I resisted temptation and didn't start eating them. I wanted to save for later. It's next door to a Ben & Jerry's, how decadent can you get?!

We then found our way to the well hidden Knit Knot. It's a tiny little store that is owned by a dog and looked like it had some nice earrings and scarf pins (from seeing them on some of the Seattle ladies). It was a bit crowded and hard to see all their yarns. Bobbie and Kathleen did get an awesome deal on an acrylic-mohair yarn that has futures as shawls.

There was a call for Cacao and some drinking chocolate, so a lot more zig-zagging finally found us there. We were able to have a shot or a cup (some decided a shot would have been more than enough - I'd already learned that one) and sit and relax for a bit and catch our second wind. We'd lost Camille and Noriko along the way by that time. But found them when we arrived at our next destination - Knit/Purl.

I truly looked for some Malabrigo Worsted or any other worsted that was under $20 for a future as some manly scarfs but was unsuccessful. Sandy B and Sara did oohh and aahhh at my knitted mini-samples. I'm assured that I'll be invited to the next Yarn Sampling. I think the photos will also appear on their blog too since Sara took photos.

Bobbie and I kept Kathleen company while she popped next door to Josephine's Dry Goods store to pick up some material to make some skirts. Isn't it nice that there are people out there that still make their own clothes? Kathleen was wearing one of the lovely skirts that she had made too. We then walked a couple blocks over to meet up with knitters waiting at the Starbuck's (Susan and Michelle). Fondled a Leyburn sock, made a mental note to do the twisted top if I do the sock out of the Doctors Without Borders STR. Then realized that food was needed if not that, then time to head back home.

Our group of eight ended up going in two directions. Bobbie, Sara and I to walk the couple blocks over to catch MAX back home and the rest of the group (Susan, Rachel, Angela, Karen and Michelle) to go to Dublin Bay. Kathleen I think was going to get a ride to get back to her car.

I must say that Connor did really well. He chilled in his chest carrier, nursed when able, napped, and flirted and had a high end diaper change in the hotel. It wasn't until near the end of the day that there was a slight crankiness that was easily distracted into chewing on a toy and flirting with grandparent types on the train. I never would have thought an eight month old could spend the whole day like that without a major blowout. Cool kid. ;^)

I had intended to cop out and just get fast food but since I needed to pick up dog food at Nature's Pet I popped over to the New Season's Market and picked up some olives from their olive bar (very cool!), a mini loaf of sourdough bread and some homemade chicken alfredo. William and I'll eat a much healthier dinner that way. If he's lucky, I'll share halves of the mini-cupcakes. ;^)

My batteries are running low so I'm going to grab dinner and veg in front of the box and try not to fall asleep too early.

Oh! We're talking about doing a Portland to Seattle Yarn Crawl for late spring/early summer. Wonder how many yarn stores they have easily accessible from their train station?

FOs & Spinning, yarn crawl prep

This last week was busy helping grandpa get ready to go to Ardmore, PA. He made it on Thursday. We took care of all his financial planning and organized his paperwork and loaded stuff up on his memory stick. All that work is going to pay for the brake work on the Outback - yea! Brandon finished up with him on the model train set they have been working on. We'll miss him!

Tuesday afternoon I spent time banging my head on the desk trying to get Dreamweaver to ftp my websites back up. I had upgraded my hosting account and the change broke the web site. I spent forty-five minutes trying to make the GoDaddy tech understand what my issue was. I couldn't use their ftp client because I didn't have the right version of Java installed. It was all very frustrating until Brandon was able to spend sometime and figure it all out and we have everything back up the way it was.

Next week I need to spend time creating a new look and feel for our home web site - Scockercrew. Named for the dogs. Brandon has his woodwork there and I have albums with my different crafts. Crap, that means I need to find a new album software (no I'm not going to pay for a Flickr account, that would defeat the reason of having all that space on the hosting account wouldn't it?).

Wednesday afternoon was the first meeting of the Westside Spinnerati at Panera Bread. Tiggywinkleknits, Trtlgrl and Sheilaknits all made it. We spun for two hours and answered questions of kids and couples alike. I started the second 2 ounces of the yak-merino. It's so heavenly soft! (Sorry for the bad shot of the single!)
I still have a bit of it to spin up before I'm plying. Sunday I hope to spend some time spinning.

Wednesday night at Haggen's I finished up mini-sock:


In preparation of going back to Knit/Purl I thought I'd finish using up the yarn samples from the Fall Yarn Sampling class. So I pulled out the Spectrum Shibuiknits Merino Worsted and the Bambino Hat pattern they gave to go along with it and started working on it. I started it Thursday and finished it up Friday morning while watching ER on Hulu.

Here's the Spectrum Bambino Hat, pattern by Sara Morris:

This left me with the worsted Handmaiden Silk Maiden yarn sample. So I pulled out my pattern pages from The Knitting Bee for their Naked Bear Project. I modified the hat and scarf pattern, see previous post and pictures.

Here's all the yarn samples all knitted up:

Saturday is the Yarn Crawl with the Seattle knitters. I have my All Day Pass for MAX purchased. I just need to validate it tomorrow morning. Picked up a dozen mini blueberry muffins for the trip into town and to share with the ladies. I have a nice simple project planned for the event - the Yarn Harlot's One Row Scarf using the Karma Chameleon handpsun. I have cash for food (a few cupcakes from Cupcake Jones, maybe a little drinking chocolate at Cacao's), one or two books from Powell's, possibly a sandwich from Whole Foods and possibly some "Honest Tea Product Sampling" if we're there around noon.

Brandon has a D&D game planned for the afternoon, so I need to reschedule the brake work for Monday on the Outback. William's schedule is in flux but he might enjoy a day of playing Fable 2 on the Xbox 360 in between working on homework.

Teddy Bear Accessories

Namely a hat and scarf. Inspired by the "Erin's Bears Sweater Patterns" given out by Knitting Bee. These are fitting my 14 inch and under bears. For larger bears, adjust needle size up and try out. [Erin's bear hat was knit flat, so I had to adapt to work on dpns and I also added an extra decrease at the end; she also changed needle sizes after the ribbing. I also increased the cast on amount and the number of rows on the scarf and decreased the needle size. If these changes aren't enough to make them my own design, someone let me know! Thus far the only place I've found these 'published' is as a handout.]



Teddy Bear Hat with ear holes

Materials:
Worsted weight yarn (I used ~ 12 grams or .4 ozs using up a shop sample and some sock yarn doubled for the ribbing)
Needles: US 6 dpns
Stitch marker or row marker

You can play with the size of needles/yarn to vary your size of hat. This seems to have worked for some medium to small bears adequately. I haven't tried it with a larger bear, but would attempt with larger needles first.

Gauge: not really needed, this is a teddy bear hat!

Cast on 52 sts and join in the round being careful not to twist stitches. Work in K1, P1 ribbing for 1 inch.

Row 1 & 2: K
Ear hole placement:
Row 3: K3, bind off 8 sts, K7, bind off 8 sts, K to end of round (Or do your favorite buttonhole method here.)
Row 4: K3, cast on 8 sts , K8, cast on 8 sts, knit to end of round.
Row 5 - 7 knit
Row 8: *K3, K2tog, repeat from *, ending with a K1.
Row 9: and all odd number rows Knit.
Row 10: *K2, K2tog, repeat from *, ending with a K1.
Row 11: *K2tog, repeat from *, ending with a K1.
Row 12: repeat row 11.
Cut yarn and use a darning needle to pull through remaining six stitches. Weave in ends and try on your favorite teddy bear.

If you're a pom-pom person then make one using your favorite method. Mine are pom-free.



Garter Stitch Bear Scarf

Materials:
Worsted weight yarn
Needles: US 3

Loosely cast on 120 stitches. Knit 6 rows. Bind off all stitches. I cast on using the sock yarn doubled and then switched to the shop sample I had and knit that for 5 rows. Then I switched back to the doubled sock yarn and knit 1 more row and then bound off in the sock yarn. This created a nice frame for the shop sample yarn.

Weave in ends. If you're a fringe person, do your favorite fringe method.

Mine came out to be 12-1/4 inches long x 3/4 inch wide with casting on only 60 stitches. This works for the sample that I had left but in the future I would make it longer.

Catching up Sunday

Wednesday night's dinner didn't settle well, so I ended up staying home on Thursday. I couldn't concentrate much so I used my time feeling awful on the couch to ply the Spicy singles. I ended up with 345 yards of merino-silk lace weight 24 wpi yarn:



I finished the pink sweater from Kathleen's leftovers. I think it came out pretty well, bigger than the other ones, but then I think I used a larger needle size too:


So I tried doing another hat out of what I think was handspun from Bobbie, still had a bit leftover of that and so made up a scarflet. The scarflet really needs to be blocked:


I tried using another unknown leftover light blue yarn for a sock, but there wasn't enough of it do finish. I think I'll try it out as a ribbing on another hat and finish with white for the body. So I pulled out a multi-brown sock yarn and followed the sock pattern that came with the Interweave hat and sock. Found out that I really needed to finish the toe following a different pattern since it came out really pointy:

I'm going to go back and do another one of Michelle's socks with some other fun leftovers. (Not the Leyburn's that she's joined the KAL for this month, hers are looking gorgeous though!)

This afternoon I finished up my Midnight Mitt Envy fingerless gloves. I forgot to check before I cast off the right hand and it's two rows shorter than the left. Which is really weird because I was following the directions....They still work and will keep my hands warm for the rest of the cold season:


I didn't make it to the Gem Faire this weekend, mainly because of budget constraints from the car repair going over. That's life though! Next weekend is the Yarn Crawl with the PDX-Knit-Bloggers and the Seattle knitters. I'm going to see if I can do it on a small to non-existent budget. I'm also going to have some small projects in mind to buy for, so they can be one skein purchases. "Meet the Seattle Group at Union Station and crawl the Portland LYS including Dublin Bay, Knit Knot, and Knit Purl. Also possible stops at Whole Foods, Powell's, Cacao, Josephine's, and Button Emporium."

Now off to make some dinner, then spend the rest of the evening spinning some alpaca from OFFF.

Car in shop = knitting

I had scheduled the car to go into Royal Moore to have the belt that had the burning rubber smell replaced and to get a much needed oil change. This was supposed to cost me ~$130 and be done around 11am (dropped off at 9am). I had finished the second 2 oz braid of Spicy Tuesday night and so I picked up the Midnight Mitt Envy. It had been left at Repeat 4 out of 5. I finished the left mitt and then cast on for the right one and had the ribbing and the first repeat done when the car was finally done around 3:30pm. I was also able to finally take advantage of having a teen with a car and the ability to drive, William brought me home and dropped me off.

Here's what the left Midnight Mitt Envy looks like:


I had also spent five and half hours working with Mac. We made progress but still have a fair bit to go. Due to the car fiasco this afternoon I only put in another forty-five minutes today. So, I'll be going back over tomorrow morning and see how much more we can accomplish before the Insomnia group meeting.

It was great getting to go to Haggen's tonight. Tiggywinkleknits made an awesome driver's hat for Toolman and he was wearing and showing it off. There's going to be a rewrite of the pattern and another one made. Then testing knitting will occur and I've agreed to try my hand at it. Probably happen late spring because there is also hope of entering it into the county and state fairs. Here's hoping a blue ribbon ends up on the hat!

I started another mini-sweater whilst there out of some Noro Silk Garden that Kathleen had in a handful of sock leftovers for Bobbie and I. I admit that I snatched it out of her hand before Bobbie could get a hold of it because of the bright pinkness of it all. Bobbie showed much more restraint and divided the rest of the little balls up. I'd gotten to the point of knitting the body before leaving so will hopefully finish it up tomorrow. I suspect though that it will be another t-shirt style unless I switch out colors.

Side trip down memory lane

My last software quality assurance engineer job was working for a local software company that does digital watermarking. I was part of the anti-counterfeit deterrence group. As such I did a few trips out of the country for them. One of them was to Brussels. We happened to be sent over during the week of Halloween. Over there November 1st is a holiday, so we had a free day for sight-seeing. My business partner had been over a number of times and so he suggested that we do a day trip to Bruges.

It was my second medieval European town I'd been to and a lot of fun to walk around and take pictures. We had lunch and dinner at two local places, then drinks at an Irish Pub.

Why all the nostalgia? Amazon had recommend the movie In Bruges with Colin Farrell and I watched it on Friday as a check out from the library. If you're offended by the 'f word' this movie is not for you. If you can overlook it and see the scenery, it reminded me of my trip. It was filmed supposedly in December. The movie really wasn't that bad, again overlooking the language if it offends. It was also while watching the red carpet event for the Golden Globes that I found out that it had been nominated when they were talking to Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Cool! Don't know if it won anything though.....

Sunday Spinning....Spicy, Bliss

Sunday I sat up the wheel and pre-drafted the Spicy merino/silk 2 oz roving in sections and started spinning while watching the last of Season 10 of Stargate SG-1. I'm not ready for both spinning the second 2oz half on the second bobbin and watching the two SG-1 movies.

Here's the first bobbin of Spicy:

I also have the Stitchjones BFL Lavender Bliss all skeined up. It's another 63 yards of lacy goodness at 21 or 22 wpi (snugging up its 22) but I need to check that I'm doing it right to be 100%. It's ~1.3 ozs:

(The flashed photo shows the true color, but the non-flash has a tendency to come out blurry, thus why the blurry closeup of the wraps. Brandon would say use the tri-pod, but I need a bigger photo area to work in first.)

Spent time also putting in a few more repeats on the Midnight Mitt Envy while watching a bit of the Golden Globes:

I'm scheduled to do some paperwork help tomorrow with Brandon's grandfather, Mac. There's shop time for the Outback Wednesday am. I'm also doing a presentation at one of the local high schools I think on Friday (still deciding on Thursday or Friday). Good news is that William got his tire replaced and once he's all sure that it really is on, I have the use of my car back. I need to spend time on web site design as well as business card design, hmmm sounds like some of this is going to take me away from knitting/spinning - darn it.

Teddy Sweater & Yarn Samples

I've been using the yarn samples from the Yarn Sampling class I took at Knit/Purl this last fall for some of the mini mittens/hats/sweaters. I thought a couple of them would work for a teddy bear sweater so I started that last night. Got started and then realized that I under-estimated how much yarn I had for the project so brought in a third sample. I used the same pattern as the one that I did out of the Malabrigo leftovers.

I'm going to save the Malabrigo set for the Naked Bear Project that The Knitting Bee does. So Toffee has a nice sweater out of the samples:



It was a pretty tight fit over his head compared to the Malabrigo sweater. What a difference yarn makes! The Malabrio sweater I did following the directions for the medium size and for these yarn samples I ended up following the large.

I'm going to try and ply the lavender BFL singles. Sharon says that the roving name is 'Bliss' and it was a bliss to spin.

More tinies and other stuff

Part two....

Yesterday I made up a second mini-sweater using the Happy Feet I'd bought for these projects, full length sleeves too!

I started another mini-mitten set also out of the Happy Feet but only finished one that afternoon and started the second one at Haggen's. With everything that was going on, I had the ribbing and thumb done before leaving. Finished the set up this afternoon:

Speaking of Haggen's....if you'd like a free project bag, check out their wine section. They are giving away this bag and it's perfect for a skein in one section and your project in the other and room for more:

Tiggywinkleknits shared some of her sock yarn leftovers with me since I haven't done a lot of socks yet. This way I can have a little more variety in my mini projects. The white is really going to come in handy!

I was able to make use of the white from Bobbie in this mini-stocking that was designed by PDXKnitterati. I did make some adaptations to it though:


Susan was also handing out the bookmarks that she has as an advertisement. I think they'll also go in a Phat Fiber Box: The back side has the scarf design that Kathleen created for her.

Speaking of the Phat Fiber Box, Stitchjones, has some Black Cherry Glam Sock yarn as samples in the January Box. Check out the YouTube video of all the samples! Not sure how the box works but signed up to be notified for the next one in February.

More spinning

I was going to post last night but I was requested not to stay up late, and to do post I would have been late. So.....

When I was helping Sharon pack up on Sunday there was this lavender roving sample in the basket without a bag and so she told me to take and said that it was BFL (Blue Face Leicester). I love purple so thanked her and added it to the baby alpaca. Here's what it looked like:

It's 1.3 oz and I've again divided it and plan to play with the results to see what kind of design I can come up with. This is how cobwebby it's willing to spin up for me:

I plied the baby alpaca 'Moon in Libra' and it came out as 63 yards of lacy goodness with 20 wpi (wraps per inch):

The Purple Berry yarn is all skeined up too:

Spinning & tinies

This morning I spun up the second half ounce of Stitchjones Baby Alpaca called 'Moon in Libra'. It spins up nicely, but I suspect that I'm allergic to something about this alpaca and the Schaefer Yarns Judith I was working with today. Strangely my tongue has been tingling all day since I've been working with this stuff.

Here's the second single:


I also used the niddy noddy to move the purple tencel (unofficially called purpleberry yarn) off the bobbin so I could soak it. Way cool, it came out really balanced and not a lot of over twisting. I think it soaked in the hot water and cooled down to cold water over a three hour period because I forgot about it in the sink. ;^) Here it is hanging up to dry:
Nothing hanging off the bottom either!

I've started talking to the Streets of Tanasbourne (SoT) about the World Wide Knit in Public day (WWKiP) and using them for our venue again on June 13th. They have a new property manager and he wasn't getting it. There was talk that I might need a 'Certificate of Insurance'. After chatting with my very helpful State Farm agent, I need to have another chat, this time in person with Matthew at SoT. That won't happen until Thursday or Friday though. (Yes, William is still driving my car because of his flat tire and special wheels - PITA!)

I did get done a mitten set and a bitty hat out of another Yarn Sampling sample - the aforementioned Schaefer Yarns Judith. Pretty colors:

The hat pattern came from the Interweave holiday magazine or the free download off their site, however you want to get them. I'm going to try her socks from that set too. The mittens are these.

On tap tomorrow - more minis and I'm pulling out the merino/silk called 'Spicy' that I picked up with my prize from Tour de Fleece 2008. I'm also playing with the 12 days of Spinning(Rav link). Fun thing is I think I'll be able to enter them in a couple of different categories, but haven't looked really close. I'm also going to try to come up with a pattern to go along with the Moon in Libra yarn.

Now off to collect Chore War points for all that knitting!

The start of the tinies

Starting work on the mini ornaments. I have a Tiny Tee Raglan, that really is a 'tee' as in more of shirt style than a sweater.

I was winding up the Happy Feet I got for these projects and I noticed the bag that had my Yarn Samples from the Sampling class at Knit Purl this last fall. I popped each little bit on the ball winder and made mini-cakes. Then on the digital scale to find out how much I had.

It's still guess work for me on if I will have enough since so many of the designers put the yardage of the skein they used and don't include if they used the entire thing or not. Since these mini-ornaments are supposed to use leftover sock yarns, I figured I stood a good chance with my samples.

I had to borrow a foot or so from the Happy Feet to bind off the sweater tee. I still think it looks terribly cute. I need to have Brandon bring be home some paper clips from the office so that I can make a hangar for it too.




Another full sweater tomorrow and mittens, hats and socks - all mini.