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.

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.

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.