One Crazy Fiber Lady

As a warning, this posting will probably be pretty photo heavy.  Makes up for the photo-lite posts of last week.  Actually, I was a little camera happy and thinking like a good blogger as I busily made my way through a crafty type of weekend.  As a change of pace, I think I’ll organize as a project history rather than a day-by-day blow as I did mix up the projects through the weekend.  There was spinning, knitting and sewing.  Lets hit the new kid on the block first: 

Sewing

Saturday morning, after picking up the groceries, which as an aside the resident toddlers HELPED PUT AWAY?!?!?!?, we all piled back into the car for a trip to the fabric store.  Okay, I weaseled out and didn’t go to the fabric store, I needed a few other things that I didn’t get at Shop-Rite so I opted for the fabric department at Wal-Mart.  I picked out some nice fabrics, all pretty colorful and realized that I really had no shirts to wear with them.  So I figured I’d get a couple of coordinating summer tees to go with them.   The pile on the left is the shirts with the matching fabric to the right.  I probably didn’t need to buy a red shirt to go with a blue with flowers fabric, but I was on a roll. Saturday evening I was distracted from doing more than laying out and cutting for two skirts by the necessity of having to clean my living room closet/storage room out.  Unfortunately the water meter and main shut off valve is only accessible through the back of that closet and my landlords were having some work done. Oh well.  I found things I had completely forgotten about and finally trashed some of my ex-husbands old clothes.  Incidentally, he moved out in July of 1996 so it was indeed a long time in coming.  Once the work is complete and I can put things back in the closet, I can store all this year’s fleece acquisition, but I digress. 

After the twins went down for an early nap yesterday (Baron woke the household by breaking into the twins room and climbing into Kat’s crib thereby causing her to scream at 5:30 AM), I got busy with the sewing machine.  I opted to start with both the orange/red/yellow multiprint and the deep peach fabric and sewed the two of them piecemeal.  I finished the multi first, doing the waist casing, threading the elastic and then excitedly trying it on.  That was a mistake.  It felt horrid.  I didn’t like the drape of the fabric, it was too bulky at the waistband and just icky.  Sorry no pictures.  As a result, I piled up all the fabric, shoved it in the bag and buried it in the closet.  I might throw the thing in the wash to see how it feels then and if I still don’t like it… tote bag.  Incidentally, the shirt was a smidge too snug either so I have to return that.  The second skirt is just missing the casing and the hem and living in the closet as well.  I have to check the stash for patterns, but I think this fabric is more suited for a straight skirt (or it has way too much sizing in it ergo the fervent hope the wash will help).  Ugh.  Strike One.

Knitting

I’ve been working pretty diligently on my Mondo Cable sweater.  Friday afternoon on the way home, I ran out of yarn supply while on the train and had to work on the Path Train socks.  Good thing I had another project with me as my train was held in the middle of the Meadowlands for about 40 minutes due to "police activity".  It turned out that this police activity was because someone had been hit by a train.  According to the article, a 28 year old was on the tracks in an area off-limits to pedestrians.  This was one stop from mine and unfortunately, curiosity got the best of me and I was looking out the window as we came upon the sheet covered body.  This is the second time in the last year that I’ve seen a body out the train window.  For some reason, the hands are never under the sheet.  Why is that?  {Shudder}  Seems this line is known for fatalities and there’s a stretch of it that is known as suicide alley.  While loss of life is sad, my heart really goes out to the engineers who are operating these trains who have no chance to avoid it.  There was an interesting article that I found while looking for this accident, here. 

In between other things this weekend, and after the miserable failure of the skirt sewing, I still had time during the nap to go to something I usually had far more luck with:  knitting.  I pulled out Mondo and parked myself in front of the TV.  There was a dirth of anything good on yesterday afternoon so I picked the mindless Bridezillas on WE, unsure of when the twins would be getting up and not wanting to kill something good in the middle.  I guess I could have gone with an episode from the newly acquired box set of the first season of 24, but I forgot all about it.  As it turns out, they napped for 3 hours and I could have watched something far more interesting than psycho brides.  I was able to completely finish Mondo.  Though I did have a problem with it, pretty much the reverse of Stephanie’s.  Instead of the armhole being too short, mine were HUGE.  A 9" arm opening is far too large for this little person.  I thought it looked a little odd when I was assembling it, okay to be honest, while I was knitting it, but in one of those self-delusions that us knitters are famous for, I thought I was just seeing things, or in the alternative, a good blocking would fix it.  Nevermind that it is All Seasons Cotton and that I really wanted to SHRINK it rather than stretch it, that’s just besides the point.  I will have you know that I did the right thing last night, undid the shoulder seams and ripped down each shoulder piece to a much more reasonable length and redid the shoulder bind off.  It was 11:30 by the time I finished that so I didn’t re-sew the shoulders and will do that tonight.  It does need a light blocking/pressing as the pieces are curling a smidge to the inside so I’ll do that before sewing tonight and mondo will finally be done.  It wasn’t looking good for me yesterday afternoon. 

Spinning

I turned to my Lincoln crossX batts and my Hitchhiker on and off over the course of the weekend.  Friday night I finished spinning the rest of the second batt. I then had two pretty well matched bobbins of pretty fine singles. 

As there wasn’t much to finish off and I still had plenty of time before the sandman called me, I popped a disk into the player (Love Actually) and went about plying.  Not a bad movie later and I had this:

Plying for two hours is pretty darn tiring, especially when it is pretty tightly twisted singles and you have a single treadle wheel with a 7.5:1 ratio.  For those who don’t know, the ratio is measured between the number of times the flyer rotates for each turn of the drive wheel.  Higher twist + lower ratio = lots of treadling + tired leg. I pulled out the little wpi tester and came away with 16 wraps per inch, or a nice fingering weight.  I like to let my newly plied yarn age a little on the bobbin before I skein it up.  That’s actually a fancy way of saying I was too damn tired of the stuff to skein it after plying for some two hours and let it sit.  Yesterday after my lack of success with other items, I went back to something that wasn’t turning to sh*t.  As I said earlier, I was a bit camera happy, not to mention a trifle pleased with my 364yds/4oz of newly spun yarn.  I still have two more 2oz batts to spin up.  I think this should be good for a lightweight, smaller FBS.

That’s pretty much it for crafting this weekend.  One out of three ain’t too bad and since one of those is actually improving, I feel much better.  The sock, while giving me some fits on the short row heel, which I do have experience with, is progressing.  I’ll finish the heel this afternoon.  I’ve also pulled Trellis back out of the hold pile and it too is in my bag so that will be my main train knitting again.  Didn’t do it this morning because it was far too crowded, sock was better for that. 

I did some other shopping this weekend and I’ll post that tomorrow.  Don’t want all the goodness today do ya?  If you’ve sent me an email or a comment, I’m a bit behind in answering and I beg your indulgence.  With all my crafting this weekend, I opted for a break from the pile of silicon circuits in the corner of my living room.

Craft on!

I’d like to thank everyone for their very thoughtful comments to my last posting.  I’ll be individually responding to your comment but if I haven’t I just wanted you to know I have read it and I thank you.  I tend to agree that the blog is for whatever I want to use it for.  Like most of you, I do prefer to keep it more of a surface level record of my projects, my family and what’s on my mind.  I am careful when I do post something that it isn’t of too personal and is something that I don’t mind the world knowing.  As a footnote, I’m still amazed that anyone reads and that this would be a problem.  So thank you all!  My dilemma was that I did have something on my mind and if I had posted it in the language I was starting to use I would have hurt people.  Not faceless blog readers who if they disagree with what I write could not read anymore.  That wouldn’t bother me.  This would have involved people that I see FTF (thanks Laurie for that!) almost every day and I didn’t want to do that.  Do I know that it involved regular reader(s)?  No.  But I can take a guess.  While I’m discontent feeling disconnected, I don’t want to inflict it on others.  Sorry for those who got a bit more in response to their comments than they bargained.

Returning to the regularly scheduled light hearted blog that this is…

I’m getting to be a pretty good judge of how much I can get done during my commute.  On Wednesday I predicted that I was going to finish the back during my trip home.  I did just that.  (Thank goodness for timestamps from digital cameras to keep us honest.)  Here’s the back reclining on the middle seat of the three-seater train car on the way home.  I saved casting on for the front until my commute in yesterday.  Nearly forgot to change to the smaller needles, but remembered it at the very last minute.  Read that as being RIGHT before I would have had to tink.  As of this mornings arrival in Hoboken, I had four rows past the initial cable twist done.  I’ve been knitting Mondo on the train and saving the sock for the PATH train rides.  I’m a smidge short of starting the heel on the sock.  Normally this sock would probably be done, but it really has been limited to PATH knitting.

For clarification, the PATH train is akin to the subway, but more limited.  Port Authority Trans-Hudson is a quasi-government agency headed by the Governors of New York and New Jersey.  They operate this little subway like thing between New Jersey and New York.  The Port also operates Newark Airport and were the owners of the World Trade Center.  If you’re curious, here’s a link to their website.

Now that we’ve had a minor mass transit diversion, I honestly haven’t been spinning.  Either I’ve come home too late from my parents house because we opted for swimming:

These were taken on Wednesday before dinner.  Kat is sitting her on the side of the pool with her very favorite person in the whole world.  Pop-pop.  They are loving the water and we haven’t felt the need to torture the monkeys and shove them into bathing suits.  The only problem with this pool, as you can see from the shot of me standing in the shallow end is that it isn’t shallow when you are only 31" tall.  And there are no steps, just that ladder.  Thanks for all the feedback on the municipal pool!  We’ll be joining that this summer and hopefully the kids will enjoy it.  I’ve also arranged with their daycare teacher for her daughter to be a mother’s helper, so I’ll pick up a pool membership for her.  So strange to be arranging for a mother’s helper.  I remember when I spent the summer as a mother’s helper.  That included a three week stint at a rental beach house on Long Beach Island.  That was the summer I turned 17 and I got my driver’s license the day before we left on the trip.  How to torture a teenager right?  It was for a family with one boy, who now that I think about it was about the twins age.  Stephanie, I would have loved to take one of your girls as a mother’s helper!  Maybe next year.

I’ve been music-less, or just about music-less during my commutes recently.  I have an iPod.  The 10gb size that I bought in December of 2003.  It’s worked pretty well though I have noticed that its battery life had been seriously decreasing.  I don’t listen to it all the time and it has been in my bag for a while, unused.  But then I’ll go through a period where I want to listen to it, everywhere.  Now that I’m sitting in a different car on the train and not getting off when all my old traveling buds where, I wanted it again.  I charged it up, dropped it in my bag and then after a day of not using it (yes I put it on hold) the damn thing turned itself off immediately yesterday, bevitzing about its battery.  I hadn’t used it!  I vaguely remembered the news bit that I heard last week about Apple settling an iPod lawsuit so I did some searching.  I turned up this website and actually found the claim form in the mail.  I does pay to register ones purchases.  I even managed to turn up the original sales receipt from my time of purchase.  Thank you Judge Judy for recommending keeping a drawer and just tucking receipts into it.  No I haven’t found the receipt for Purl yet and I’ve given up looking.  I charged the iPod last night so it was fully charged when I left this morning.  When I got to the office, I turned it on, noted the time and waited for it to run down the battery.  Beast only got 1 hour and 37 minutes of playtime before it shut off.  I’m well within the definition of battery failure for the purposes of the lawsuit settlement.  I’ve filled out the claim form and opted for a new iPod or battery replacement.  Their option.  Don’t really care.  I ordered one of these in silver yesterday.  It shipped last night.  Checking the FedEx tracking, while the package arrived in Newark, NJ this morning at 9:37 (which is less than 1/2 hour from my home), delivery is estimated for Monday before 4:30.  Geez.   

Since I haven’t been able to find any good summer skirts in the local stores and 1) fit and 2) aren’t made of some cardboard-like fabric, I think I’m going to sew myself some.  I spent a little time surfing patterns online and came on this one.  (Simplicity 7655).  I made a post-it note and stuffed that in my bag in preparation of hitting a fabric store sometime today.  Somehow this pattern looked very familiar though.  After the twins were asleep last night, I pulled out my box of patterns and lo and behold.  There was 7655 looking at me.  Nice to see my tastes haven’t changed.  Classic is classic.  I had gone through another period of sewing some three years ago and must have picked it up then.  I’m going to make the skirt in the shorter length in something summery.  Probably two.  Maybe event three.  I purged my closet a few months ago and really don’t have much.  Not to mention now that I found my seasonal color scheme I honestly can say I’ve been buying the wrong colors.  I had on a black top yesterday and really looked at myself in the mirror.  Ugh.  Its the wrong color for me to wear by my face.  It brought out those very lovely yellow undertones that squarely put in me Autumn colors.  I think a few new skirts in my new found colors are called for.  Maybe I’ll make myself a nice totebag too, though I have recently been using a backpack as my tote/purse/knitting bag.  Julie’s venture into sewing has me seriously tempted to make one of these as well.  Would matching skirt/totebag be a bit much?  Honestly, I don’t do a helluva lot of sewing though I’ve been sewing for even longer than I’ve been knitting.  My Home EC Sewing teacher didn’t particular like me because by the time I got to take that class, I had already been sewing for years and wore a jumper to class that I had made.  She pretty much ignored me and left me to my own fun while teaching others the basics.  While they were busy making pillows (which I did with my leftover fabric), I made this off the shoulder, long sleeve blousy top. 

This weekend I hope to finish off the rest of the second batt of butterscotch wool and get the two bobbins plied up.  I love that little wheel and I found that with the right diversions, I can actually spin when the monkeys are out of their cages cribs.  I’m going to head to the bookstore this weekend as well, as my employee discount gets an extra boost for the next 3 days and pick up a couple of books.  I think my Secret Pal might be getting herself a book as well. 

To answer Lynne’s question:  who are your two favourite captains?- Kirk and Janeway   Though I can appreciate Picard and Sisko.  Though with Sisko I didn’t really like his mopey brooding demeanor in the early seasons. I found fault in Picard in that he actually relied on Troi.  Useless empath.  "Captain, I sense hostility."  So instead of saying something like "Oh yeah, what gave it away sister, was it the fact that they are FIRING ON US" he would act as if he couldn’t tell this himself.  She certainly didn’t belong the bridge of all places, wearing a cheerleader outfit.  Nothing against cheerleaders…. 

..Sorry rabid trekker took over the keyboard there for a moment.  The crazy fiber person is now back in control.  Before the trekker comes back, I think I’ll close this longish post.  Maybe pictures of spinning/stash this weekend. 

Knit, Live Long and Prosper, Knit on!  (Down trekker)