Skip to content

Public Service Announcments Abound!

First off, have you seen this new threadless design?! I bought myself a hoodie 🙂 Sheep AND yarn!

And I’ve got a PSA from my sister about her friend’s child, Marshall:

Marshall is 2 years old. He has PDD–NOS, an autism spectrum disorder. The only thing that can calm him down when he’s agitated is a special therapy swing like the one at the occupational therapist’s office. These swings are expensive, though. His parents can’t afford one and the government can’t help– but you can!

20% of all Curious Workmanship sales revenue during the month of May will go to help Marshall buy a therapy swing. You can buy online at http://curiousworkmanship.etsy.com ; or in person at the Oh Sweet Sadie! craft show May 4-5 in South Jordan, UT or at the Cache Valley Gardeners’ Market in Logan, UT on May 12.

If you can’t buy something, help spread the word!”

Curious Workmanship has all sorts of great baby stuff (like handmade sneaker and cowboy booties, hand-dyed onesies, organic cotton kitchen and bath products and more.

My nephews (all 3 of this sister’s sons) have Aspergers, another austism specturm disorder. It’s been amazing to see the changes as they find what can calm them when they’re agitated and what a huge difference in makes in the kids’ ability to socialize! Please help if you can. With all the babies being born, save yourself some trouble and buy some baby gifts that someone else has made.

*ETA* If you left a comment make sure to check the comments again. Marshall’s mom responded to some questions and left a note for you all.

Posted 01 May 2007 † Mim § Sale ‡ Comments (11) °

Selbuvotter winners!

I’m a slacker… I did a lot this weekend, and yet I have no pictures for you. It was all progress on this or that, not finishing anything. But I’ll work on getting some pictures tomorrow.

For now, let’s choose the winners for the Selbuvotter books! HOLY CRAP! 98 comments!? Giving away books sure brings knitters out of the woodwork!

So I have 4 books, so the 4 winners according to random.org’s Random number generator are:

Michelle in SE AZ

Susanne

Sarelro and

Joan K

I’ve e-mailed the winners, so please check your spam filters to make sure you don’t miss it. Thanks to everyone who commented! I LOVED hearing your colorwork stories.

And remember that if you didn’t win and want the book, you can find more info and order it here. Remember that Terri self-published it, so help her pay her bills and buy a copy 🙂

M

Go see Lisa’s BEAUTIFUL Icarus shawl. She ran out of yarn too and ended up using just a bit of a complementary yarn on the edge of the shawl. It turned out SO beautifully though and looks like she meant it to be that way! Good job Lisa!

Posted 30 April 2007 † Mim § Contest § Others FO's ‡ Comments (3) °

Full Mitten Disclosure

Thank God the post office came through and my package from Terri showed up on my doorstep as promised.

Terri’s book is wonderful! It chornicals the history and evolution of a specific brand of Norwegian knitting that centers around a town called Selbu, who created a glorious and varied culture of mitten knitting. The book also chronicals Terri’s journey with this book including having her laptop stolen mid-manuscript and having to recreate most of the patterns.

When Terri first asked for test knitters, I didn’t realize that she was going to be putting OUR knitted mittens in the book. I don’t think I ever told Terri this, but my first pair of mittens for her (above) were my first real stranded colorwork! I had done a line here or there on a felted bag or something, but it had always turned out badly. I had been doing some research, and so felt that I would have the problems worked out. I’m glad to say that the first pair turned out just fine. A little bit uneven, but fine after blocking.

I knit the second pair some months later, after I had done some more colorwork and was fairly comfortable with it. Terri asked me if I was up for a challenge and I responded in the affirmative. She retaliated by sending me 2 cakes of laceweight yarn and the pattern for mittens that originally were knit at 9.5 spi and fit a large man’s hand and the instruction to try to knit them smaller than that. I swatched with the palm pattern and found that I was getting 10 spi, Terri said it would be good enough and off I went. I knitted gleefully, making the stitches carefully, and enjoying the beautiful fabric that came off my needles.

When I sent them to Terri, she e-mailed me to let me know she got them, but that they were NOT knit at 10 spi. They measured up at 13 STITCHES PER INCH! I was shocked. The most delicate thing I’ve ever knitted and I didn’t even know I was doing it! They are now sized to fit a large girl’s or a small woman’s hand. : )

This book means a lot to me for those reasons (first successful colorwork, most delicate thing I’ve ever knitted…) but the bit that warmed my heart the most about this book was Terri’s inscription.

Along with my copy, Terri also sent me a bunch of others to give away or whatever I wanted to do with them. So if you’d like a copy of this book, leave a comment saying so and I’ll pick some random winners. If you’d like to share your first colorwork experience, I’d love to hear it too : )

M

*edit* Thanks to everyone who left a comment to be entered for the drawing! Comments are now closed on this post.

Posted 27 April 2007 † Mim § Acquisitions § Contest § History § Knitting § My FO's ‡ Comments (98) °

Of Socks and Art and Shawls….

The knitting continues. I’m working on a couple of things right now. The first – which will be discussed in greater detail at a later date – is a pair of socks…welll… actually right now it is ONE sock… or rather… one HALF of one sock.

This is a sock for my friend Joey in trade for art. There have been a few things for Joey around this here blog in trade for art, and actually it’s for the very same piece of art (art is expensive!), so when I’m done with the socks I’ll talk about it some more and show you the painting.

The yarn is Regia that I got from The Loopy Ewe a while back. It’s really interesting, with a gray wool for most of it and what appears to be 2 strands of nylon plied in, but one strand is white and the other is blue. It makes this really interesting marled color, almost like a heathered yarn, but not.

The other thing I’ve been knitting (which has been getting the most attention) is the shawl for The Other Miriam’s* wedding.

I’m using Alpaca with a Twist Fino (70% baby alpaca/30% silk) a) because it is luscious and fabulously soft and lovely to work with and b) because it is one of the only true white laceweight yarns I’ve found. And with 875 yards per skein, it’s a fabulous buy. I bought 2 skeins from Black Sheep Wool Company here in Salt Lake with the knowledge that I could return one if I didn’t use it. It’s being kept safe in a small GoKnit pouch from Scout, which is the only thing keeping it clean and white.

I have to admit though, that right after I took this picture, the whole thing fell off the tree branch and onto the grass. I screamed a little, but it was just fine.

So far the pattern is straight from Victorian Lace Today, but I plan on changing the border to something more interesting. The basic shape is a semi-circle, so I just cast on the requisite number of stitches and then work the ever increasing rows outward. Then pick up stitches on the outside edge and knit on the border. The bird’s eye lace gave me pause at first (it’s not intuitive lace knitting) but after 124 rows of it, I’ve got a pretty good hang of it, even though I have to look at the chart for the beginning of every row and keep track of where I am.

There are some really cool things about this shawl though. Each row is begun with a yarn over. It’s a little tricky to get the hang of at first, but you can sort of see in the picture above that it creates open stitches along the edge that will be VERY easy to pick up when I’m ready to knit the border on.

M

*The Other Miriam is my friend of the same first name. She is the friend I visited in Philadelphia last year. To save on confusion, we’ll call her “The Other Miriam”.

Posted 26 April 2007 † Mim § Designing § Knitting ‡ Comments (13) °

The world spins on!

Thanks for all the well wishes, I am feeling better than before, although still not anywhere near 100%. As promised, I’m showing you some stuff. Today will be the spinning and tomorrow will be the knitting.

I’ve been spinning in my spare time to keep my hands from cramping up and to relax a bit between the knitting projects, but I finished the roving I had been working on during the Easter car trip.

Fiber: Spunky Eclectic Almost Solid Series Merino Roving in the Juniper Berry Color

Method: Spun on an Ashford Traveller in two different weights – the thicker is on the left (2 skeins) and thinner is on the right) using short, forward draw drafting. The singles then chain plied to keep subtle color variegations.

WPI: The larger is averaging 14 wpi (DK/Sport weight) and the smaller is 19 wpi (fingering weight)

Techniques Learned: Chained plying, how to spin merino. I also learned the name of the drafting technique I was using intuitively : )

Verdict: I like it a lot. The merino was a lot of fun to spin and the color was just luscious. The color is truest in the last picture there, and I tried to match the others to it, but they started like this, so it was hard. I had a hard time finishing all 4 oz (didn’t actually get there in the end) which is why I switched weights mid-stream, but it certainly taught me a lot about spinning.

Since I didn’t want to be without any spinning, I started some Corriedale Pencil Roving that I purchased from Teyani at Crown Mountain Farms. The color is called “Chocolate Bar” and it is made up of shifting browns with a hints of red and orange! I love it!

It is soft and lovely! I’m spinning the singles with an eye toward making a worsted weight 2-ply yarn. These 2 bobbins are just under 4 ounces of it and there are 8 ounces total. I am going to spin al the singles and then choose based on their variations which ones to ply together. I’m thinking I may make another wool peddler shawl with them…. perhaps….

M

Take a look at Cathy (rose red)’s finished Icarus shawl! This is a perfect example of what to do if you run out of a hand dyed yarn on a top down shawl! It looks great Cathy!

Posted 25 April 2007 † Mim § Others FO's § Spinning ‡ Comments (12) °

Is that my lung in bloody pieces on the floor?

I am sick, as I was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. I’ve got some nasty upper respiritory crud that is lingering in my chest and makes coughing an accutely painful experience that I wish never to relive again (and yet seem to every few minutes).

So in lieu of showing you any of the things that I’m actually working on (and CAN show you! OMG! die of shock!), here’s a link fest.

Check out Kit’s finished Mountain Peaks Shawl and her lovely mother who is the happy recipient!

Tracey has started a yahoo group specifically for toe-up sock knitting. I see this being a compendium of knowledge on toe up sock knitting, full of different techniques, tricks of the trade, etc… If you feel you might contribute or benefit, go check it out!

I am spinning and knitting a lot, and it’s actually stuff I can show you, but I have much preferred sleeping and staring blankly at the walls to actually photographing things to put them up. My poor camera has become neglected.

M

Posted 24 April 2007 † Mim § Others FO's ‡ Comments (13) °

Woodchipper

There are guys outside my window stuffing trimmed branches into a woodchipper and all I can think about is the scene from Fargo. It makes me giggle… and I think that may be wrong ….

Posted 21 April 2007 † Mim § Totally Random ‡ Comments (10) °

Voicing my disapproval

I am displeased. Displeased to the point of wanting to strangle someone. Not to death, just until their face turns a lovely purple color.

I’ve said it before, but it seems due to be reiterated. The US Postal Service SUCKS.

Aside from all the packages to Kerrie that went astray (and her subsequent packages to ME that STILL haven’t shown up), I have a beef with their service. There are quite a few packages I was expecting and had never recieved. One of them being Terri‘s book. So Terri sent me the tracking info which said that notice had been left on April 9th. Yes, today is the 18th. Did I get notice… no.

So I took the printout to my post office to try to pick it up hoping that they hadn’t sent it back (turns out they don’t send Media Mail back at all and that’s why it is so cheap). And when I get there and explain it to the clerk, she looks at me vaguely and I explain it again, slower and more simply. She gets it and takes my print out with her to the back. I wait a few minutes and she returns with a package that is much too small for the 5 copies Terri sent me. Turns out it is my long awaited package from YesAsia.com. WTF! The package that says it was shipped on the 29th of March.

The YesAsia package was marked with 4-9, so I guess it’s still possible that the guy was having an off day and didn’t actually leave notice. But the clerk has me put my name and phone number on a claim thingy, gives me the # for the carrier supervisor and then I go (after having waiting another 10 minutes for her to look for the missing package.

I gave the carrier supervisor a call just now and I explained again, got put on hold and then VOILA! He magically finds my package. It was on a different SHELF than the other one. The next shelf up. In 10 minutes of looking, the clerk couldn’t have looked on the next SHELF!? WTF AGAIN! So I begged the carrier supervisor to PLEASE just drop it off at my door so I didn’t have to go downtown to the post office AGAIN and he assured me that they would do so tomorrow morning. I asked him to check the shelf again and make sure that there weren’t any other packages for me and he assured me that he had already done it. Thank you Supervisor guy!

So in short, the USPS sucks and incompetent clerks should be summarily strangled until they turn purple and their eyes get all buggy.

M

Posted 19 April 2007 † Mim § Totally Random ‡ Comments (29) °

Messing around

It was time for a theme change, but I’m still messing with it. I want the post column to be wider, but my fumblings in the CSS code didn’t yield results. I’ve got a question in to the theme’s creator, so hopefully can fix that soon.

M

Posted 18 April 2007 † Mim § Knitting ‡ Comments (14) °

Rosewood DPN's for sale

I’ve got something to sell. I bought a set of Colonial Rosewood dpns in US 0 (2.00mm) from The Loopy Ewe, but with the way I hold my needles they were just too flexible to make me comfortable. I think I’ll buy a set in larger sizes that I’ll probably use often, but for the way I knit and how I knit socks especially, they just weren’t a good fit. They were $19.00 retail, but since they were used to knit about 2 inches of a sock (they are still in their original packaging though) I’ll sell them for $15.00. Any takers? Paypal would be best. If you’re interested, drop me an e-mail.

**EDIT** They’re taken, thanks!

M

Posted 17 April 2007 † Mim § Knitting ‡ Comments (3) °