this is called stained glass. it's 4oz of a mohair, superwash wool, and nylon blend (i think. i'm too lazy to check). pumpkin mama made it and i bought it from her shop. i think you need to check her stuff out.
**************************
day 210 -- to hoard or to spin, that is the question.
so i have to say, the dyeing, is loads of fun. it's a little like cooking without having to watch the pan. (i'm not a fan of watching the pan.) or spending time in the lab and having the experiment work. and i can see myself becoming a bit addicted to the process. this wasn't my first dyeing experiment. i've done some kool-aid dyeing in a crockpot and in the microwave. and at last year's fiber revival i took a class in dyeing using just three primary colors, yellow, red and blue. but this was my first time working with acid dyes on my own.
and i'm hooked.
look what happened using only red, yellow and blue!!!
isn't that fun?
in fact, i was so excited that i had to wind the yarn into a cake right away.
of course i'm going to have to order more dye colors. i'll take one of each please!
**************************
day 85 -- i hope it was worth the wait
courtesy of spunky eclectic, shot at mass sheep and woolcraft. i did pick up some for myself, but not nearly as much as shown here.
**************************
day 43 -- i want to live in amy's shop.
sometimes i'm a little bit embarrassed by the amount of fiber i've accumulated in the almost 2 years since i've learned how to spin. just a little. it certainly helps that i know i'm not alone.
but most of the time, it makes me really happy, especially when it comes in the mail. i currently belong to three fiber clubs (well 2, adrian is going on a bit of a hiatus) and this is what i received in the past couple of weeks.
1. 4oz of rambouillet in Hyacinth from Funky Carolina. mmm buttery.
2. 4oz of wennsyldale in Perfect Storm from Amy of Spunky Eclectic.
and finally,
3. 4oz. of faulklands in Hive by Hello Yarn.
i love belonging to clubs because i get fun packages every month but i also get to try fibers that i wouldn't normally think of trying (well if i didn't hoard so much) and i get exposed to colors that i don't naturally gravitate towards, which is my favorite reason for being surprised every month. i mean really, how pretty is this stuff?
**************************
day 23 -- don't even think of getting your hands on any of it.
i'm sure you've all been waiting with anticipation. but your wait is no longer. i've updated the shop. heh.
if you recall, i donated a set of 10 cards as a ravelraiser prize. not everyone can win though, so i've put some of these cards up for sale. i'll put more up tomorrow. AND IF PEOPLE WOULD BUY SOME I MIGHT EVEN MAKE MORE!! not that i'm begging or anything.
**************************
day 8 -- good for shameless self-promotion
about 3 weeks ago, i was working at the shop and my co-volunteer, M, suggested i go check out the big bags of "giant yarn balls" in the office.
giant yarn balls indeed. they were huge, styrofoam balls, wrapped in a fiber of some sort, made to look like massive balls of yarn. and in the bags were a couple of pairs of 2 foot long knitting "needles." hmmmm.
the story behind these balls was this. a fancy store at the local mall had been using these balls and needles as part of their store display. rather than throw them out, the kind folks at "very fancy store" donated everything to the shop. a couple of the balls and needles were used in our own shop displays, and what was left to get pitched were these two giant bags.
giant bags of CASHMERE! or so i've been told. (i do know it's animal in origin and amazingly soft but i'm finding it hard to believe that people would just so casually throw the stuff out like that).
after sorting and removing pins and styrofoam there is close to 10lbs of the stuff. 10lbs of cashmere!
...that kind of just fell from the sky so that i could save it from the trash.
i spun this up before i knew what i had.
so i'm not one to do christmas knitting because i think that's just craziness. but i will birthday knit and this year i decided to knit my mother-in-law a scarf. i know, brave. i had some pretty deep burgundy alpaca in the stash and initially planned on knitting her the quivet webs scarf (without the quivet) from the interweave holiday 2007 issue. yeah that wasn't going to work. (and it wasn't a yarn issue). so after wasting a day knitting and frogging and knitting and frogging, i punted and came up with something new. in the end, i really am a simple girl. if it's successful, i'll write up the pattern.
i've also been working on a sock.
yeah, the excitement never ends here.
*****************************
i've added some new cards to my shop. remember, even if a card has sold, i can always make more.
and yet, i got presents.
i love presents.
first, from cathy, i received this gorgeous sock and enough yarn to make myself it's mate.
i'm a little afraid.
and this awesome cube/pouch thing that she makes. you can buy yourself one at her etsy shop here.
thank you cathy!!!
and then from amy i received 8 oz of BFL in her Grand Opening 2007 colors, a prize she donated to stitchy's blogger bingo drawing ... which i won. yay me. thanks stitchy and amy!
i love it when my blog posts are color coordinated.
ETA: I've gotten a few requests for the pattern to the honeybee sock above. cathy's provided all of the info in her flickr photo of the same sock here.
by the way, i used to think "ETA" only meant "estimated time of arrival" so i couldn't figure out why bloggers kept using it.
1. look what came to live with me.
it's "bog" by adrian at hello yarn. yeah i like pretty much everything she creates. i also scored some lovely yarn too in spite of the circling fiber vultures waiting for me to flinch so that they could swoop in and steal from me what is rightfully mine. ha!
2. i love (yes love) the new iphoto 8.0. i had been using iphoto 5.0 that came with my laptop to manage my photo files, but my 8,500 pictures had pretty much rendered 5.0 insanely slow and basically a pain in the ass. last night, i loaded 8.0 and whoosh! my pictures load like a dream. i know it does other fun things but even without knowing what those are, i can safely say that i love 8.0. iphoto 8.0, will you marry me? j won't mind.
3. it's been very fall-like these past couple of days and cool enough at night that i had to pull out the blankets (not cool enough for the duvet though). i love sleeping under blankets.
4. something i wasn't liking: my dishrag sock. in theory it worked, but i wasn't having fun knitting it and i thought it looked kind of like ass especially around the heel area.
so i frogged it and started another one. i like the new one much better (no photo yet).
one of the things i like best about spinning is watching a big pile of prepared wool ...
get transformed through spinning ....
into yarn ....
that i then knit up ...
into a lacy scarf. i still need to block.
the wool is coopworth sliver in nightshade by spunky eclectic. it's a gorgeous mix of dark grays, rust, burgundy and lavender.
the scarf pattern is branching out from knitty.
![](http://<a href="http://twistcollective.com/ "><img border="0" src="http://morici.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/01/twistcollective.jpg" title="Twistcollective" alt="Twistcollective" /></a>){kind=link}