A Very Happy Handspun Monday :)

A very happy indeed. My Ravens broke their losing streak, finally, with the last game of the season. SQUEE!!!! *happy dance* I generally hate to gloat, but I think a little celebration is fair. They looked great today. I'm a happy little Ravens fan.

Two other happy things: a Christmas present and a handspun FO! Present first. FO further down the post.

My brother wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas. I sent him an email full of possibilities, with several Etsy links and a few fiber suggestions. He and my sister-in-law chose well. They chose:


Baby Camel down! A full pound of it. Eeee!

It's washed but not prepared into roving or batts or anything, as you can see. Doesn't matter. I wanted to spin it right away anyway. Gimme...


Before Christmas dinner, I brought Ford down to the family room and started spinning. Just let it flow. Long draw, not much drafting, just taking a handful and drawing it back and letting it spin into an uneven, somewhat slubby singles.




I think I'm going to Navajo ply it, but I'm not sure. I'm just having fun with it. I like to spin random slubby yarns like this; of course I want to do smooth yarns too, but it's fun to just let it spin itself sometimes. Plus, imperfect yarns have character and texture.

Speaking of imperfect yarns, I have finally made something with my own handspun. Ok technically I've done that once already, but that was just a little neckwarmer to pin on for Easter. This is a real project. It's Calorimetry!


The galaxy yarn I spun on Ford (first yarn I spun on him!) is considerably bulkier than the yarn called for in the pattern. So I had to recalculate the size based on the gauge of my yarn. I calculated a bit off, so I had to overlap it more and add two buttons instead of one.

I actually kinda like the two-button look. Kinda like a double-breasted coat. Which I've always loved.

I also stitched around the buttonholes with some leftover Manos cotton that my mom had lying about, which just happens to match the pink silk noils in the yarn. It just kinda bugged me to leave the buttonholes unfinished. Besides, now I'll be able to find them more easily behind my head.


The buttons I found are really cool, too. Found them in Mom's stash, of course.


I'm pleased. I will definitely make another of these. I just need to see now whether I need to line it. I don't like the wind cutting through my headgear.

And btw, one more happy: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Tribe Pride, yo!

My quest is at an end. I finally found a perfect lace pattern for a William and Mary scarf. It's Feather Lace from Vogue Stitchionary Vol. 1. Oh is it perfect.

See, I wanted something that would look like feathers. Because the NCAA had a problem with Willliam and Mary being the "Tribe" because that's apparently offensive to Native American Indians. Nevermind the validity given to the name because W&M was the first Indian school in the colonies. Whatever, that's only, ya know, historical legacy or somesuch. And don't even get me started on the fact that "Tribe" does not indicate what kind of tribe. Anyway, W&M challenged the NCAA's opinion, and so we get to keep being the Tribe. Not to be completely shut down, however, the NCAA decided that W&M has to change their logo. No more feathers. Having feathers in the logo is "hateful and offensive." Yeah, I don't buy it either. They should look at the really old logo, from when W&M was "the Indians." But President Gene Nichol decided it would be too much hassle and expense for the College to fight it when it's just an athletic logo, and so he just accepted it (the one reasonable decision I've seen him make so far), despite how ludicrous the ruling is. So now I am very happy to have the stuff that I have with the feather logo. And I will continue to use it on my own stuff. And this is why I insist on my Tribe green and gold quiviut scarf having a feather motif.

Wanna see how it's going so far? Ta-daa!


I know, it doesn't look like much now. But it'll be a lot clearer once it's blocked. It's fuzzy yarn, after all.


When it's stretched, the motif looks just like the W&M feathers. Woohoo!

Tribe Pride, yall! Get some!

Stick out your thumb...

Because here we go, into the galaxy.

I finally spun up enough of my galactic-looking roving that I felt confident in starting a project. THE project. The one I had in mind for this yarn. Which yarn? This yarn:







Can't you just hear "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in the background?

So the project for this Hubble-esque yarn is Calorimetry. I had to change the gauge and recalculate the number of stitches it would need, because my yarn is considerably more bulky. And I got about halfway through when I realized that somewhere along the way I had gotten my short rows all uneven (I have NO idea how, don't ask me) so I ripped back all the way to the cast-on and started over. So at the moment, I have this:



I'm being a lot more careful about my short rows now. It's working up really quickly cos it's so bulky, which makes me happy. I need this headband. My ears get really cold on the way to work on mornings when I wear my hair up. This will make my ears much happier.

And do you notice the needles it's being worked on? Mom and I got each other a set of the Harmony Needles from Knitpicks. OMG. Amazing. I love them. The only slight issue I have is that with this project they keep coming unscrewed, so I have to tighten them every once in a while. I'm sure that's just because the size I'm using is a little tight for the yarn, so the stitches are uber tight. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Sorry I've been so absent. It's not nice to you, my few readers. To be fair, I haven't been taking pictures and I haven't been downloading pictures, because I got my new laptop. And oh such problems with the wireless network at home. But I want to take my new laptop for a field trip to somewhere else with wifi so that I can make sure that the problem is our network and not the laptop. Don't wanna put anything on the new laptop until I'm sure it's fine. So, no new pics. Yet.

BUT

Soon there will be LOTS of pics! I have FOs to show, new WiPs to be excited about (I've started like four things in the past two days or so), yarn to brag about, and presents to show off! And I promise I will!

Yay?

Last night was a night fraught with emotions. Most of them negative. I will explain.

First off, Mom and I went to the fabric mecca yesterday. I got some of the stuff I was looking for (rayon velvet so I can try embossing it), but the main thing I wanted just wasn't there. I'm more than a little frustrated.

Then there was the evening. My computer was just not responding to anything I tried to do to fix it. Even advice from Roxy's hubby was in vain. But finally, last night as I reached the breaking point and gave up in a fit of rage, my dad stepped in again. Seems he had turned on a security feature that was blocking my laptop. So he turned that off, and now I'm connected! Woohoo!!!

That, however, could not help my Ravens. As a Ravens fan, I am depressed and more than a little embarrassed over last night's sorry excuse for a game. I don't even know what that was. I had to turn it off after the Colts' third touchdown. Did turn it back on in time to see the last two minutes of the game, though, and saw Troy Smith play with some guts. Granted, it was against the Colts' second-string defense, but still. He didn't dither. He didn't cower in the pocket. He played. OMG! I hope we get to see more of what he can do. In the meantime, I am not making any Ravens gear. I had plans. Those plans will be on hold until the Ravens come back and play in Baltimore. I'm a loyal fan, and I still love them, but if they're not gonna put in the effort to play the game, I'm not gonna spend my crafting time making Ravens gear.

And now, since it is still Handspun Monday for another few hours, a spinning update! I don't have pics (bad Carrie! no cookie!) but fear not! I have spun in the past two weeks! Last Sunday, I tried spinning some of the silk/merino I got from Lisa Souza. It was such a frustrating exercise that I had to walk away from it. I'm not one to give up on things, but at some point I do have to acknowledge that I'm not having fun and shouldn't waste my time. On the other hand, yesterday I pulled out some of the alpaca I got at MDS&W and started spinning it on my square spindle. Yum. I'm in love with that alpaca fleece. Being alpaca, it's a little tricky to spin. A little bit slippery. But if I'm paying attention it works just fine. Woohoo!!! Pics will come soon, I promise!

I've also started a Christmas present. Remember Charmed? I'm developing a crocheted version, this time using the cashmere I got from Habu Textiles. Having never worked with cashmere before, let me say: YUM.

This present may or may not be aided by a class I took on Saturday with mom. The class we took was on soldering small glass pieces together to make jewelry, ornaments, multimedia art, etc. My pieces ended up a little wonky, but for a first attempt they aren't bad. I'll have to post pics of those too. Mom and I now have a little soldering kit and plenty of little glass bits to encase pictures or fabric or whatever we want. Whee! I really wanna play with it right now. But I can't. Have to make an hors d'ouvre for the office Holiday Party tomorrow. Ah well. Soon. I will be making charms, and pendants, and such things. After all, the only way my soldering is going to get better is by practicing!

OMFGsplosion

*WARNING: Mild profanity ahead, not at all ladylike*

Wow, sorry, haven't posted in a month. Partly this is due to the show EATING MY LIFE. But that's been over since the weekend before Thanksgiving. Thank God and all that is holy, it's over. Biggest freakin' disaster of a show I've ever had the misery of being involved in. And I've seen some train wrecks in my meager experience. The other half of the reason I haven't been posting is my goddamn computer. The FiOS guy came out to fiddle with our connection for some reason, and since then my piece of crap five-year-old laptop has flatly refused to talk to the wireless network. It has now been weeks that my dad and I have been completely unable to figure out this problem. I think that part of the problem is that the computer can't remember the new network password once you hit "OK" thus closing the properties window for the wireless connection. Cos every time I go back to double check it, the damn thing has clearly gone back to the old password. NO, YOU GODDAMN MORON, THAT'S THE WRONG FRIKKING PASSWORD, I JUST GAVE YOU THE NEW ONE, SO HANG ON TO IT YOU SENILE OLD PIECE OF SHIT!!! This is what I say to my computer. My computer, named HAL for a reason, complacently stares back at me as if to say "I'm sorry Carrie, I'm afraid I can't do that." Jackass.

Finally, tonight, my dad reminded me that he's got an ethernet cable just kinda hangin' out, connected to the modem. So here I am. Tied to the modem, completely defeating the purpose of a laptop. Son of a bitch.

End rant.

Some good things have happened since my last post. I started a sock. Woo! I got my Ravelry invite today, so I'm happily dinking around with that a bit on my mom's computer. The problem is I can't post any pictures yet, because my pics are all on Photobucket, not on Flickr, and not having my computer hooked up to the internet, I haven't been able to upload anything to Flickr. Now, I'm of the opinion that a website should not be exclusively compatible with any one particular hosting site, but that's just me, and I'm sure they have their reasons. So now that I'm tied to the modem, I'm going to take the opportunity to upload all that I can to Flickr. Then I can start posting pictures to Ravelry. And I'll probably end up just using Flickr and leaving Photobucket alone. Because really, why have two photo accounts?

Well, now that I have my life back and am not spending much time with the boy due to, erm, complications, I have tons of time to craft. Too bad I've missed Navy football season before getting to make any of my planned Navy gear. But now is a perfect time to start working on it for next year!