One Crazy Fiber Lady

While I have plenty to blog, I feel like crud (stupid trees are budding already) and highly incensed that my spring allergies have kicked in even though it is still COLD out there.¬†¬† My sister just sent me this super email that I just had to post and I hope it will distract you all from the fact I owe you a real post…

EVE : “I’ve got a problem.”

GOD: “What’s the problem, Eve?”

EVE : “I know that you created me and provided this
beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals as
well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I’m just not
happy.”

GOD: “And why is that Eve?”

EVE : “I am lonely, and I’m sick to death of apples.”

GOD: “Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I
shall create a man for you.”

EVE : “Man? What is that?”

GOD: “A flawed creature, with many bad traits. He’ll
lie, cheat and be vain; all in all, he’ll give you a
hard time. But he’ll be bigger, faster and will like
to hunt and kill things. I’ll create him in such a way
that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be
witless and will revel in childish things like
fighting and kicking a ball about. He won’t be as
smart as you, so he will also need your advice to
think properly.”

EVE : “Sounds great,” but what’s the catch?”

GOD: “Well. .. you can have him on one condition.”

EVE : “And what’s that, dear God?”

GOD: “As I said, he’ll be proud, arrogant and
self-admiring… so you’ll have to let him believe
that I made him first. And it will have to be our
little secret… you know, woman to woman.”

Craft on!

milestones

Originally uploaded by CrazyFiberLady

We’ve hit another milestone somewhat later than some and earlier than others. Kat had her ears pierced today. She was very brave and gave the merest of and “ouch” during the two at once piercing. Very smart that is just in case they freak, both ears are done. My little girl isn’t so little.

Craft on!

Now that the secret is out, I can finally talk about the secret project. It involved this big box of goodness that arrived from New Zealand…

What was inside you ask?¬† This bubble wrapped goodness…

After a bit of unwrapping, well alot of unwrapping and some assembly later, there was this..

Before I get oodles of comments about now having a third CSM, I have to say, it isn’t mine!¬† It has already moved to a new home. ¬† The serious keeper of a guy, HWJF, bought it for his gal’s big birthday.¬† I had the honor and distinct pleasure to join them for dinner last night.

Go wish Jessica a happy birthday!

Craft on!

Can you say “startitis”? It seriously seems like each week brings a new sweater project. This week’s is another Hanne Falkenberg, Ballerina in the thunder blue/ white combo. I like Dacapo but realized a couple of weeks ago that it wasn’t going to grow up into a sweater that I would ever wear. I pulled the needle out and have listed the kit for sale on Ravelry.

I think Ballerina is more “me”. I cast her on last night before working on a stealth project. I will be able to talk about that somewhat soon. Good as keeping secrets kills me.

This also serves to test my remote blogging abilities from the new phone. (HTC Mogul for those who care.) The QWERTY slideout keyboard make it less painfully.

Tonight is the beloved SnB and I am having a knitting lunch with my crafty coworker. Today is one of them great knitting days!

Craft on!

I’ve been making progress on my Not-so-blue Boatneck Bluebell. It has made for decent train knitting as it is still small and not particularly brain intensive at the moment. I’ve found I can read while I’m knitting it. What am I reading now?: Screamfree Parenting: The Revolutionary Approach to Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool. The SMC multiple mom’s group that I belong to formed a book club of sorts to discuss various parenting books. This is the current one and is actually a pretty decent book. But I digress, here’s the sweater as of this morning’s commute.

In this picture you can finally see the heathery-ness of the yarn with the bits of pink tossed in with the orange.

I’m one round short of finishing the first “clue” in the Orkney Pi KAL with the second clue published today. As promised I have a picture of it for you. I couldn’t quite get the real color in this photo, but for those who have ridden on the newer burgundy NJ Transit train cars, I noticed that the yarn is a dead on match for the seats. Nice. Gave my eye some tricky bits this evening while I was working on it 🙂 Anyway, you won’t be seeing too many pictures of the growing blob as blob pictures are pretty boring. If I can get sections spread out and good shots, I will.

This weekend’s super fast fiber to yarn to hat project reminded me of how much I like to knit with my own handspun. I don’t do it very often and I’m not entirely sure why. Possibly because I go through phases with spinning where I either do a lot or very little. Another problem is that I tend to buy fiber in bulk which then takes me forever to finish up so that I can knit it. The final factor that I can see is that the yarn itself is a finished product in my mind. A lot of what I spin isn’t destined to be anything but yarn. I rarely spin with an item in mind (this last project was an exception as I intended that from the outset). I really do have to do it more often. Towards that end, I’ve taken to spinning on an almost nightly basis and am a couple of hours away from completing the singles for the vest project I started shortly after Rhinebeck. More on that one another night.

Interestingly enough, the last items I made from my own handspun is this pair of socks from some Spunky Club fibers that I did most of at the June gathering of the Jersey Spinners! I guess I need to get together with these gals more often!

Craft on!

The last couple of days have just been superb. In no particular order:

1. Alex is better, thank you everyone for your well wishes. His fever seemed to have broken sometime Thursday night. He was fine for the weekend (typical) and even went to school today. He was beat by the end of the day though and went to bed without an argument.

2. Work is going fabulous. I have a totally cool project that is just flowing along. I even figured out the hardest bit that had been giving me trouble for the last couple of days and got it all working. Its all cool.

3. Saturday, as you probably all know already, I spent the afternoon amongst friends and fiber (and as usually goes with those two, excellent food). Jessica hosted a marvelous fiber gathering at her house (I plead camnesia again which is why I don’t have a picture of the gathering). I spun the lovely dyed fiber that she gave me two weeks ago. About 4oz of cheviot wool dyed in my favorite pink/brown/cream colorway! Amazingly enough, I finished the singles (2 bobbins worth) at Jessica’s and then plyed them Saturday night. I even washed the resulting 256yds Saturday night, setting the skein to dry in front of the heat. Forced hot air is good for something besides dry skin 😉



4. Sunday after breakfast I pulled out a pattern and needles and went to work. Shortly before dinner, I had a new hat. This is the Utopia hat. Full project details here. I even wet blocked the darn thing yesterday and wore it to work this morning. Love love love it.

5. My old cell phone number was FINALLY ported over to Sprint on Saturday after a conference call between Sprint, T-Mobile and myself. Now what to do with my old T-Mobile Razr. The downside of new tech means I have old tech laying about.

6. After an email discussion with a fellow CSM’er (Thank you again Tori!!!), I was able to finally get a tight enough gauge to knit a sock to fit my wee narrow foot. I changed back to the 72 stitch cylinder, tightened the tension after adding ALOT of weight until the point where it started skipping needles and then backed it down one crank. Using the heel spring to add tension, I got 10st/in using the Felici from Knitpicks. I did a practice, proof of concept tube, followed by a heel, and then another tube until I ran out of yarn. IT FIT! I’m a happy camper and no longer ready to post the thing on eBay. Yay.

7. I started yet another project. The EZasPi yahoo group is doing another Pi KAL. This time it is the Orkney Pi, designed by Liz Lovick. I’m a few rounds shy of finishing the 160st section. I’m using Misti Alpaca Laceweight in that yummy burgundy color that I do love so much on US3’s. No pictures yet, but I’ll take one tomorrow.

Craft on!