Yummy Yarn Prize!

Look what I won! :D I came back from Knit Camp on the Saturday evening and this was waiting for me!





This was from a blog giveaway by Lina at photoknitdog. I was third picked out, and received this gorgeous skein of Sundara Fingering Silky Merino in Cactus Flower! :D

My photography isn't anywhere near as good as hers, she takes amazing photographs! you should head over to her blog and see :) She has two beautiful Havanese dogs, and knits such beautiful things. I love it when a new post pops up over there :)

I was so pleased to win! I've heard of Sundara yarn on Ravelry, and it's just gorgeous in real life!! So soft and lovely cololurs! It's out on display just now till it tells me exactly what it wants to become :) Thank you Lina!!!

Knit Camp Day 1

(apologies in advance for the very long post, and the bajillions of photos!) :D

This week the Knit Camp event was held at Stirling University, which was really exciting as Stirling Uni is only a shot distance from where I live. I didn't go to any of the classes, but I went to the marketplace on Friday and Saturday with Blackmagpie, which was totally awesome!!!

The marketplace was filled with so many amazing stalls, I was totally overwhelmed. We made made a plan to walk around first and see what each booth had, then go back round to buy stuff, instead of spending all our money at the first few booths, which could quite easily have happened :)

We managed to go through two of the three rooms before we caved and started buying :) The first booth I bought from was Wild Fire Fibres. This is what I got from Vikki, who I'd met online, but this was the first time meeting her in person, and she was just as nice and lovely and awesome as she is online. And OMG, her yarn!!! It's not really surprising that her booth was the one that made me start buying! Here's what I got:







WFF Hathor Lace in "Atlantic Blue" and Tempo 4ply in "Shadow". My pics really don't do justice to the awesomeness of these colours. I love these yarns. I'm not sure what they're going to become yet, but I had to have them, they're so pretty!




From Wool For Ewe I got these 2 skeins of Noro Cash Island in colour no 13 (descriptive! :) ) It looks a bit like tartan to me with the black and green and red. Wool For Ewe's stall was amazing, they had so much stuff on sale and it was all so pretty. It was hard not to blow my entire budget here as well! I think I'm going to make this into some sort of triangular neck scarf. Just a simple pattern to show off the colours.




I got this pure wool DK from Freylayn's Hand Dyed Yarns - such pretty shades of yellow! Again, it'll probably become a scarflette of some sort, but I don't really know. I just like the colours!





I got yarn in my goody bag - Supersoft Merino DK from Colourmart and a tiny ball of Opal (so cute!) I have no idea what I'll do with the Opal, and the merino is going to be made into wristmarmers or something glovey.



One of my main goals in going to Knit Camp was to get a lighter spindle to spin thinner yarns. I got this 37g spindle from Scottish Fibres. I got 2 fibres from them as well to experiment with, this Soya Bean Fibre



and this flax.




The Soya Bean Fibre is really quite soft to pet, but quite inelastic and it almost has a squeaky feel when pressed. It'll be interesting to try to spin it! :D





I also got this Bluefaced Leicester fibre from Wingham Wool Work. They had so many interesting and colourful fibres and fibre accessories. I kept going back to pet their merino /silk, but didn't get any of that unfortunately.



Oh, and I got this shawl pin from Textile Garden. Their stall had a lot of buttons, which I managed to resist, and I just loved their pins.

As for patterns, I got the Serpentine Valentine Socks by Katie Weston from the p-hop stall. P-Hop works on the principle of downloading patterns, and then you pay "pennies per hour of pleasure" and they give the money to Médecins Sans Frontières, which I think is awesome. They had samples of these socks and they were just amazing! I've never tried colourwork socks before, but I'm looking forward to trying this pattern!

I also got the MY Baboo Flower Cushion Cover from the MyBaboo stall. I just loved the sample they had of the giant flower.

I got 2 free patterns in my goody bag - the Frilly Filly Scarf by Gryphen Perkin from Stitch and Bitch Advanced, and the Alpaca Love Cabled Chapeau from Stitch Nation, and my goody bag also had a copy of Knit Simple winter 2009/2010, which has some really cute patterns in it.

Phew, longest post ever!!! And that was just day 1! Next up will be what I got on day 2. Yes, there is more. Much, much more :D

Beads!!

A couple of weeks ago (on the 14th of March) I went to the Scottish Bead Fair in Perth.

This was the first time I'd been to anything like this, and it was a bit overwhelming at first. The room wasn't particularly huge, but it was full of beads! There were quite a few exhibitors, and when I walked through the door, it seemed like there was sparkles everywhere!

I went to the bead fair looking for some beads to do some lace knitting with. I want to make the Bandana pattern by Kalinumba (ravelry page), and I've actually had the pattern for ages, but it requires beads. I really don't know anything about beads or beading, so I felt a little uncomfortable buying off the internet. I knew I would end up with the wrong thing, and needing to buy more, then I would have all these beads sitting about. So when I heard about the bead fair, I figured that was the perfect time to go and look at beads in person, to buy something that would work for the pattern.

Like I said, I was totally overwhelmed when I first walked in. Sparkles and bead everywhere! I walked past the first few booths just in a daze. Luckily I'm self-aware enough to realise this though, and managed to stop myself grabbing the first sparkly stuff that I saw and buying it! Bellydance souks (marketplaces) have taught me some lessons at least! :D

So I walked round a few booths, just taking it all in, then I saw some black glass beads that would work for the Bandana pattern. So I bought them (the ones on the string in the pic below), then at the next booth, I saw some that would work even better. So after thinking about it, I bought them too (the ones in the tubes, and loose), to use for the Bandana pattern, and I'll use the other beads for another project, yet to be determined.




Then I walked around the rest of the stalls for about an hour and a half, and bought more beads :D Some of them, I bought just because they were pretty, such as these hematite beads.



I love hematite. It's possibly my favourite stone/crystal/thing. I have no clue what I'll do with these, but for now, I like to just touch and look at them. I like how hematite feels cold to the touch, and so shiny :)

I bought some random charms and pendants. The pendants are going to go on some circular memory wire necklaces in the next couple of days (already ordered them off ebay)



And some random shiny metal things:



I think I might put this one on a bag or something:



This one on a tribal costume item of some sort:



and the heart on a necklace (I don't have a seperate photo of that)

While I was taking photos of all these beads, I took some other photos of other beads I have:




I seem to like black beads :D

Don't worry, I'm not about to take up beading instead of fibre crafts. Beads are pretty and sparkly, and I love all that, but beading itself is far too fiddly for me. I just don't have the patience. I kind of wish I did though, after going to the bead fair and seeing all those fabulous beads. I think knitting requires a whole different sort of patience. Beading requires a whole lot more concentration and stillness to get the fine motor control, I think. Maybe I can just collect beads for the prettiness though ;)

On a side note though, I was thinking if I get so overwhelmed at a bead fair when I'm not so interested in beads, how on earth would I cope at a yarn event, like Stitches or Rhinebeck? I think it's good that I'm on a whole different continent from those events. But I was planning to go to the UK Knit Camp in August... I think I'd better start saving money now.... :D

Purging Evil Yarn

One thing about me, at heart I'm a hoarder. I'll hang onto stuff for ages, years even, after it's become apparent to me (and everyone around me) that it's just clutter, with no use or reason to be in my house. This includes yarn. Yarn such as this:



It's a giant cone of very, very thin yarn that I got off eBay. I saw the colours, and some random numbers which would have told me that it was thinner than sewing thread, had I bothered to find out what they meant. Needless to say, I ignored the numbers, and bid for the yarn.

(Apparently everyone else must have known what the numbers meant, cos I won it and got it quite cheap)

On the cone, the colours are quite nice. The photo on eBay was obviously taken in very bright light which made it look much more autumn-y. So even if you ignore the tiny, thin threadlike yarn that looks loose on 2.25mm needles, it still had something going for it, didn't it?

No. It did not. I tried knitting up a swatch of the yarn (on 2.25mm needles, of course), and aside from the fabric being all loose and holey, the colours looked awful. Seriously, seriously bad. The brown and salmon-pink pooled and mixed together with the white to make it all look . . . dirty. It wasn't dirty, but the colours together just looked like sludge. So, disheartened, I put it on the shelf in the spare room.

It's stayed there for a couple of years now, being studiously ignored by myself, and I swear even the other yarn in the stash gives it a wide berth! Yesterday, I got this fantastic idea that I could cast on double the amount of stitches I would need for a scarf, and knit it in a tube. This would increase the thickness of the terribly thin fabric, and it would look fab, all drapey and wonderful (I'd forgotten about the hellacious colour mixing).

Today, I cast it on. I would have needed 140 sts for a relatively skinny scarf! But I persevered and knit a couple of rows. The stitches caught on the end of the cable as I knit magic loop, and I had to tug at it to get it past. And even though it didn't actually squeak, this was some seriously bad acrylic. It felt . . . slimy, even though it wasn't actually dirty. Shudder. I am by no means a fibre snob, not at all, I love to knit with acrylic and in fact that's mainly what I do knit with. You can get some really wonderful acrylics, I think. This however, was not one of them.

Anyway, have you noticed the past tense all through this post? Yup, I gave up. The scarf has been ripped (actually I couldn't even bring myself to do that, I just broke the yarn and threw the tiny amount of knitting I'd done into the bin). And the yarn, well, it is no longer considered part of my stash. Ordinarily I would put it in the charity shop with no further thoughts, but this yarn is so bad. I'm half tempted to throw it straight in the bin. However, I don't think my Scottish frugality will let me do that, so I guess it'll be going off to the charity shop.

Maybe somebody out there will actually like the yarn. Maybe somebody will be able to find a use for it. Personally, I doubt it, and kind of hope that no-one else gets suckered into buying it, but I guess it's possible, and as long as there's that hope I feel too guilty to just plain chuck it.

Actually, it's kind of a release. In my head, it's now gone, even though it's just in the hallway waiting to vacate the premises. I'm not one for stash purges (too hoard-y), but this one feels goooooooood!!! Now to cast something on, in some nice yarn!!

Catch Up

Blimey, where to begin?! I've been suffering a little lack of motivation recently, which is why I haven't been blogging. I've even not been knitting for a few days! I'm hoping to change that though!

I knit this sweater:



and I haven't knit a stitch since! I don't know what's going on. I've been playing video games (the first Silent Hill for PS and Lego Star Wars on the DS when the bf's using the TV) and browsing my queue, looking for inspiration. I'm sure I'll find it soon though - over 1600 queued items now! It's almost getting to be a game with myself now, seeing just how many patterns there are out there that I would make one day. Lots of people use their queue for things they're going to make soon, but I fill it up with things that I would make theoretically, one day. Then it's easy to look through for inspiration. I also tagged each and every item in there and organised it. That took AGES! But now I have tabs at the top with seperate sections, and it's not so scary to browse any more. I just have to remember to add tags to new items as I add them, I always forget!

Anyway, the sweater. It's using the raglan pattern from Ann Budd's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. I used a broken rib pattern (basically knit one row, then K1, P1 the next row) and James C Brett Aran with Wool. 5.5mm needles. It's absolutely huge! I knit it a size bigger than I would normally because I wanted it to be my slob-around sweater for the winter. As it's bigger it'll go over layers (and layers!) of clothes so I can be super warm.

The raglan pattern from Ann Budd's book is knit from the bottom up, which in some ways I much prefer to top-down. With knitting from the bottom I can see after an inch or so if it's going to be the right size. If I'm knitting from the top down, I always have to wait till it's under the arms before I can really tell, and it never is the right size. I haven't knit any top down sweater that I haven't had to rip back after the arm seperations, and it's really, really annoying! Nobody else seems to have this problem! But this sweater worked out fine. Only trouble is, now my bf's bugging me for one in black. I had a couple of balls of this orangey brown anyway, so I just got the inspiration that it would look good in a broken rib pattern, and knit away. Now I have to go and buy black for him. Oh no, more yarn shopping, whatever will I do!!!! :D

Ooooooh, speaking of yarn, check out what I got in the mail!



It's a present from Moggle for testing her liquorice shrug pattern. It's handspun BFL/angora, and it's lovely! This is the first handspun I've ever seen in person and wow! It's amazing. I can't wait to knit it up, I'm looking for a hat pattern just now for it.

I'm packing just now to go to Jewel of Yorkshire, a belly dance weekend in Yorkshire, surprisingly enough! I'm really looking forward to it. I'm taking four classes. Two with Raqia Hassan (a very famous Egyptian dancer), one with Ozgen Ozgec (Turkish male dancer) and one with Anne Kingstone - a belly burlesque one with two veils! I'm quite looking forward to that one! OK, I have to show you all this video of Ozgen:



Go to 2.25min and you'll see why I posted that one! Lol! I'm not quite sure what the shoe thing is all about. I'm not doing that kind of class with him, I'm doing a turkish oriental class, so I hope there's no shoe shenanigans in that one! He seems like a very good dancer from what I've seen on youtube so shoes aside, I'm really looking forward to learning from him. I couldn't find any vids of Raqia dancing, but people highly recommend her, so I thought I would take the opportunity to take some of her classes.

I'm leaving tomorrow, and coming back on Monday. It'll be nice to get away for a bit! :)

Retail and Pattern Therapy

Wow! Thank you all so much for the lovely comments on my last post! They really help make me feel better, thank you :) I'm seriously thinking about printing them out and making a don't-pay-attention-to-mean-people card to look at whenever I feel them getting to me. :)

I really think it must be a control thing with these people, who feel the need to put others down so they won't get ideas above their station. I've had the exact same experience with other people throughout my past, where they invoke the People Who Will Laugh in order to stop me doing something. They've used exactly the same words as this person last week, and that really shocked me! I think I must have a pattern picking out these sort of people unfortunately. :( At least I recognise their behaviour (only took me 30 years, lol), so I can try to ignore it. My strategy really is to turn it into a sort of battle in my head. Someone says I shouldn't do something, well I'll just have to force myself to try twice as hard. It always seems to surprise me when it happens though, and I start feeling bad about myself regardless of whether I know what they're up to. Stupid emotions ;)

So anyway, let's talk about something nice and ignore the meanies! Yarn!!!!!



I kind of had an expedition to my LYS ;) I bought some Debbie Bliss Rialto 4 ply for a shrug, which I'm knitting up just now. I also stumbled on the sale basket, oops! I bought 6 balls of Debbie Bliss cotton DK, which I'm thinking will also become a shrug.

I've also been buying lots of patterns (emotional purchasing, moi? Never!)



I have queued a lot of patterns from these mags! This is the first interweave knits I've ever liked the patterns enough to buy. A lot of people don't seem to like the newer issues of Interweave Knits, but I really like this one, whereas I didn't like previous ones that other people liked. I'm contrary like that! I really like the Estes Vest in particular.

I bought the Debbie Bliss mag from Web of Wool online, and I must say I'm very impressed with their service. I ordered on Wednesday night and it was here Friday morning! I'll definitely buy from them again. The mag itself is lovely, lots of nice patterns. It has that very definite Debbie Bliss style. And there's a recipe for scones! That made me laugh.

And I bought the pattern for Faux Bois from Twist Collective.



Ever since I first saw that scarf it's been stuck in my head. I wanted to buy it immediately, but then I read that it has steeking as well as colourwork! I got a bit scared and left it for a while, but it won't go out of my head! So even though it's scary, I'll have to give it a go.

Oh, and the fall Knitty came out! Drool! I'm really liking Camden, Retrofit and Baroque. I've queued others, but they're my favourites. My rav queue is getting beyond ridiculous now, over 1500, and they just keep bringing the great patterns out!

So that's my retail and pattern therapy. :) With the length of this post, I think I'd better leave it till the next one to list what I've actually been knitting!

Help! I've become a yarn snob!

I started monkey!

I'm making it from Opal yarn, in the colorway Schlange. The stripes in the yarn might be overpowering the pattern a bit, but that might just be me doing my usual this-isn't-working paranoia bit that I do in the middle of every project. It gets a bit tedious actually. I know it'll probably work out fine, but I spent most of my knitting time wondering if I should frog. With this one, I'm just going to keep knitting, and if it doesn't work out, I'll try it in another yarn. Part of me is thinking that's very exuberant and decadent (frugal Scottish Calvinist heritage rearing it's ugly head there, I think), but I do love this pattern. It's very addictive! I started it last night thinking I'd get a little bit done then go to bed and didn't actually notice the time till it was like 4 in the morning! I had to get up at half eight too! So I think there'll still be enough enthusiasm to try it in another yarn.

One strange thing while I was knitting - I got this really weird feeling/thought thing like, now I'm a real knitter cos I'm using this pattern everyone else is using, and an actual branded type of sock yarn. What's that all about? I've no idea where that sprang from. When I noticed myself thinking it I was really surprised. It was like all my other knitting, sweaters and lace and all, didn't matter unless it was with a real yarn. Of course, when I think about it, that's complete bollocks. All my knitting counts as 'real', even when it's some obscure unbranded acrylic from the 70s rescued from a charity shop. And I certainly don't hold with yarn snobbery, and think oh, the price tag says 7 quid a ball, it must be better than the rest. That, again, is just bollocks. (Sorry for the sweary making, but honestly, that's how I think of it) So why did I suddenly get this feeling of validation? Have I been subconsciously affected by people raving about 'proper' yarns, and if so, why? Am I that weak? I didn't even realise it was happening.

Anyway, the yarn is lovely, and the pattern especially so (and fun, too). I'm just going to have to learn not to take it so seriously, I think :)

LYS Discovery - And An FO . . .

. . . but it's not the mystery stole, unfortunately.



It's . . . a scarf. Well, I've spent so much time on the mystery stole, which I seemed to have made about 3 times more complicated than it actually is, and I wanted something quick and easy. Plus I saw this yarn in a charity shop - 9 balls of Richard Poppleton Giselle, and couldn't resist. It's hot pink, boucle and just a little fluffy, everything I would normally avoid. But it has specks of blue, yellow, orange and white running through it, and I thought it would look good as a scarf. So I bought all 9 balls. Hmm. It took 2 to make the scarf. Lol, I just like to buy stuff is all. So now I'm making a hat to go with it, in the same type of rib. Oh, the pattern for the scarf is here. I spent a bit of time trying to find the right pattern for the yarn, something that would show up all the colours, yet still be visible through them, and this mistake rib was just perfect. It was really quite fun, and fast to make after the mystery stole. And no, that's not finished yet, although I can see the end in sight after all this time.

And, I found like, the best yarn store ever! Well, OK, the best out of the three I've been to, but it's going to take some beating. It's only just up the road in Newburgh - Twist Fibre Craft Studio. I'd heard of it of course, it being nearby, but I'd never actually been. I don't go to Newburgh very often, if at all, and had never been there long enough to go in. But I was looking for a magazine, and saw on the net that they stock Vogue Knitting, and Interweave and all those magazines. So I went yesterday.




I was very restrained actually - I bought 2 magazines, and 2 balls of sock yarn. My first proper sock yarn! Yay! I got a ball of Opal (Schlange, it looks like from the inside of the ball band. I can't read german, but that's what's underneath the photo), and some Trekking, but I don't know what the colourway is called for that. The Opal is going to become some Monkeys, after I've finished drooling over it.

I got Vogue Knitting Winter 2006/07, and Interweave Crochet fall 2006 magazines. It was great! They had all the magazines I'm interested in - newsagents only seem to stock Simply Knitting or Knitting Today or Knitting Magazine, which is all very good, and I like those magazines too, but I like the range of styles you get in the American magazines, especially Vogue. I prefer Vogue to Interweave actually, because the styles are more unique and well, frankly off the wall for some of them. The Interweave knitting designs are nice too, and more wearable perhaps, but I'm at a phase just now where I'm inspired by more experimental designs.

So Twist Fibre is my new favorite yarn store. The guy just got on with what he was doing while I made my selection, and didn't try to bug me into choosing, and the general atmosphere was very relaxing and welcoming. And the yarns! I'll definitely be back there.

Instanst Stash Enhancement Part 2

A basket full of crochet cotton. There's also a couple of balls that are left out of this picture, cos I have a plan for them already.


There were some crochet shapes that she had already made - they're gorgeous! The cotton is so thin, and variegated, and there's more of it in the basket! Yay!


Crochet patterns.


Knitting patterns. I know, the photo is like a bad job lot photo from ebay, but there's so many, and I didn't want to spend too much time arranging them all out. Here's more of them:


Some of the patterns are a bit old and dated, but I'll keep them anyway, cos I'm a hoarder! And my tastes might change someday. After all, I never thought I'd make the blackcurrant/blueberry top. Some of them are fantastic though, and some of them are just so kitsch!


It's a bit blurry but you should be able to see the little cap - isn't it just brilliant!? I might never make it in my life, but I'm so glad just to have seen this picture - it definitely brought a smile to my face.

I was just totally stunned when I opened the bags and found all this loot! She's so generous, and every time I look at it all, I'm just like - wow! yay! I sooo need to get to those sewing classes though, and I also need to tidy it away before the dog lies on it all, and gets his hair all over it - I have a moulty dog, who is lovely, but quite hairy. But I'm having fun just now looking at it all.

Instant Stash Enhancement - Part 1

This post is going to be a bit picture intensive, so I'll split it over two posts, I think.

My bf's mum's friend is moving house soon, and busy packing her stuff, and clearing some of it out. And she gave me some of her craft stuff!!! Yay! I now have an instant fabric stash! Not that I'm confident with sewing yet, but I'm going to a class in August/September, and I now have a bunch of cool fabrics to make stuff from!

Now for the pictures:


Some felt - along with cute bunny ears and feet! She must have been going to make some sort of stuffed toy - wonder what I can incorporate them into?


Shiny fabrics! The top picture has all lilac shades - I don't know if they're properly visible in the picture. I definitely need to improve my camera skills! Neither of these pictures does the fabric justice.


Various net-type fabrics.


And some heavier fabrics, and curtains. I put the black fabrics in this picture too, even though some are heavy and some are shiny. It's hard to photograph black fabrics as it is, so I just lumped them all together.

I can't wait for my sewing class to start now. I just don't have enough confidence in my sewing yet to dive in, I want to get comfortable with the machine first before I cut into any of the lovely fabrics.