WiP Wednesday

It was a busy day, but it’s still Wednesday, so you get a WiP post!

Last Friday, I needed a knitting project to take with me to my Friday night group. The “last in first out” policy was suggested, and since the last yarn I bought in Maryland was this…


I decided that Shawl That Jazz would be a good next project. I was off to the races! Most of my Sunday was spent knitting and watching sports, so I got a really good chunk of knitting done. And, believe it or not, I finished the entire 540-yard first skein last night.

One thing I learned the last time I knit this is that there’s no good way to get a good WiP shot of this shawl. So you get a picture of a big blob.


I’ll join the second skein as soon as I’m done typing at you (and posting), and I’ll be back off to the races.

Because of the high yardage of these skeins, I’ve been using my Strauch winder. It makes a more vertical cake, and I loved how the core looked on the Twisted. So I threw it in the light box and took a few pictures.


See? Very cool!

Maryland Sheep & Wool 2013

Well, hello there.

My epic gauntlet of travel has been completed, and I have no reason to leave Allegheny County again until I go to Oklahoma City at the end of the month. It’s WiP Wednesday, but I actually do not have any WiPs to show you, since I finished my Love Actually cowl last night!

So, in order to feed the blog for the first time in way too long, I shall show you my Maryland Sheep and Wool purchases from last weekend.


From left to right, this photo includes: Three flavors of honey from The Bee Folks (Queen Anne, Bamboo and Radish), my 40th Anniversary Festival mug, a Melissa Jean hair pin, a pair of US 5/stiletto/33” Signature circs, a 2014 Sheep Incognito calendar, a new drive band for my Schacht ball winder hanging off the calendar, two skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted in Pussy Broadway, three necklaces and two small beads from my latest addiction: Kris Schaible Glass Studio, a Miss Babs Color Affection kit, two skeins of Into the Whirled sock yarn, a new belt, and a Lion Potter mug.

 Not much yarn, but I do feel like I got a lot of stuff. Now for show-and-tell with the non-fiber stuff.


In the last couple months, I’ve gotten to know the wonderful and talented Melissa Jean thanks to my work with SpaceCadet and a pair of shows. I was intrigued by this cool hair pin, and it came home with me.

And now, for the largest rabbit-hole of the entire weekend. One of my running buddies, CelticQueen, was headed for the Noni tent to get a zipper for an upcoming project. I wandered around the upper tent farm in the opposite direction and stumbled upon a completely dangerous vendor. To the tune of three purchases in two days.


Kris Schaible makes some amazing beads. Throw them on a cable or a cord, and you have a beautiful necklace.


This purple bead was my first purchase. Then I dragged CQ and my friend Dianne to the booth later in the afternoon. And this one caught my eye.


I felt like this one looked best with a ribbon instead of a cable.


And then we stopped by again on Sunday and this happened.


Oops.

Of course Kris’ husband had discovered her “junk drawer” overnight and threw a bunch of those beads into a bowl. And I found two that Kris turned into pendants for me. (for scale, they’re propped up against the Twisted in the top picture. They’re pretty small, but very pretty)


Yeah. I love her stuff. A lot.

The other stuff is pretty self-explanatory. I adore the two Lion Potter mugs I already had, so getting the green mug (far right in top picture) was a no-brainer. It’s so hard to find good belts that buying one from the vendor at MDSW was also a simple decision. Drive bands and calendars are boring but helpful. I also got two Festival t-shirts, but I didn’t throw them into the picture. Oops.

It was a great weekend with good friends, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Tying Knots

After my trip to Florida back in January, I remembered why I used to travel with a backpack as my carry-on bag. I did some shopping around and tried out a company I’d heard a bunch about: Tom Bihn bags.

I selected the Brain Bag as my new carry-on bag. And thanks to this post in the Tom Bihn forums, I decided before the bag even arrived that I’d put 550 paracord zipper pulls on the bag.

Oh, yeah. I worked the Frozen Four in Pittsburgh last week. It was fun! 

In the few bits of down time I had during the Frozen Four, I started playing around with knots. I started on the front of the bag with the three small pockets. And since the blog has been quiet for so long, I figured I’d blog about the knots I used (and document the resources I used to find the knots I selected!


On the sides, for the bright green pulls, I chose a Snake Knot, six layers long.


For the top-center, which is perfect for my keys and sunglasses, I found the Pupa Pull Tie. In a day-glo orange.


The most difficult knot to select was the Oysterman’s Stopper Knot, used on the center-back pocket in yellow. I tried many, many different knots to find one that I liked, and this is where I finally landed. (the pictures in the arena showed the yellow paracord with simple overhand knots, which I used until I had time today to figure out something I really liked.)


And finally, my favorite of all the knots that I used, the rainbow paracord on the large center pocket is a Two-Strand Diamond Knot.


If I hadn’t really wanted variety in the knots as well as the colors of paracord, I would have used the Diamond Knot on all of the zipper pulls. Once I found the video I linked above, the knot was totally simple and it looks fabulous!


Now that I have my zipper pulls figured out, I just need to make friends with my bag. I’ve carried it for four days now, just not for its intended purpose. Hopefully, by the time I get back from next week’s adventure (to UCLA for the women’s gymnastics championship!) I’ll have made friends with both this bag and my new work bag.

 Oh, and here’s hoping there will be a fiber-related post at some point this week. I need a couple more pictures and some time to write the post.

WiP Thursday

As usual these days, I’m a day late and a dollar short.

There hasn’t been a ton of free time, but here’s where it has gone:


My Love Actually cowl is marching right along. Got about four rows into the third set of hearts. I’m so ready for this to be finished!


I got my doubleweave blanket sleyed into the reed. Next step is threading heddles. If I’m lucky, I’ll get that done on Sunday.

And, because that cowl is starting to make me twitch, I’ve swatched for my Dublin Tee. Oops.

Festival!

Last weekend was the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival, and I spent Friday and Saturday working at the SpaceCadet Creations booth. Of course, a few additional items had to come home with me.

On Friday, I went and checked out the Knitting Notions booth, and as always, I found a bowl that I loved.


It’s fairly large, and I’m quite certain it will find a place to live somewhere in my house. It’s handmade and beautiful. I love it!

I also snuck across the aisle and brought home a self-striping skein of DK-weight yarn from Fibernymph. I’m gonna have stripey feet to keep warm next winter!


Saturday was spent elsewhere, and I really had no plans to buy anything else. But on a bathroom trip, I walked past the Knitting Notions booth. And the runner-up bowl from my difficult decision-making on Friday? Still there. Oops.


This one is much smaller, and is already in use as a catch-all next to where my phone plugs in overnight. I love it too! For scale:


Working the festival added two items to the top of my queue. A Lintilla (long story, I’ll probably be knitting it this summer!) and a Dublin Tee. I had intended to be very patient and get some SpaceCadet yarn (Lyra!) for this project, but then I spied the precise color that I wanted in the Knitting Notions booth. And it came home with me.


Here’s hoping I can get started on my awesome summer sweater very, very soon!

WiP Wednesday

Ahh, another super-busy stretch with the part-time job. My regular job has re-started too, so there has been very little free time. Zoom!

But, between all of the crazy, there has been a little crafting here and there. I’ve gotten a little bit done on my Love Actually cowl. It’s a little hard to tell, but I’m into the third row of hearts!


The Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival was last weekend, and my cowl got to hang out at the SpaceCadet Creations booth while I was hanging out with the Hubster for his birthday on Saturday. So I busted out my Nittany Lions scarf and did some work on it. I’d say I’m awfully close to halfway through the second skein of each color.


In other news, I’ve been preparing a warp for the loom. I’m lucky to have lots of great extended family, but my Aunt and Uncle in Pasadena, Calif., have been fantastic about letting me crash at their house whenever I visit the left coast. So I’m making them a doubleweave blanket!


A little over a week ago, I caught a destash of a warping mill at a really great price, and I’ve used this project to make friends with it.


The warp is wound, and when I have a little time I can get it on the loom and start weaving. There are two chains, here’s the blue/green chain…


And all four colors together…


If you remember my blog post from my Doubleweave Blanket Class two years ago, this blanket is going to be very similar to the tweedy-looking blanket that Hedy made in class. The cobalt (royal blue) color is going to be the weft. I hope I can get it done quickly and it’s a big hit!

WiP Wednesday

Well, hello there! Sorry I missed last week, I was off to California to run a great big softball tournament. I did virtually no knitting while I was gone (or since I've returned home!), but my Love Actually cowl is through the first repeat.


It should move fairly quickly from here, which is awesome. Then I’ll get back to my EZ slippers, and do a second pair for the Hubster. At least that’s the plan.

Since my return home, I’ve been busy with my part-time job working for SpaceCadet. I had a big pile of yarn to tag and twist. Since it’s for the Interstellar Yarn Alliance I can’t really show it to you, but here’s a little teaser:


I hear my taskmaster has another metric crap-ton of yarn waiting to twist and tag, so it’s a good thing I have lots of TiVo to catch up with. Maybe I’ll even get some knitting time in soon, and be able to start my next weaving project sooner than later.

Let’s face it. What I really need is Hermione’s time turner…