Feather Lace Shawl Sample

I've finished and blocked out the Feather Lace Shawl (Gardiner Yarn Works) sample I'd been working on for awhile. It's been so humid here, everything has taken longer than usual to dry. Socks took three days, the shawl took a few days, everything has just been moist. Since I'm sending these off, I wanted to be doubly sure that they were dry so they don't mold or anything in transit.


I've gotten some pretty nice yarns from Abstract Fiber to knit store samples out of. I got two skeins, one in Mighty Sock and one in Super Sock. The Super Sock skein went to a pair of non-matching socks, and I'll show those off in a later post. Can't use up all my blog fodder at once, I might not post again for a month! Oh wait...

Pattern: Feather Lace Shawl (Ravelry)
Yarn: Abstract Fiber Mighty Sock in Constellation, just under 1 skein
Needles: US3/3.25 mm
Timeframe: May 4 - June 7 when it finally dried
Mods: None. Store sample, so pattern had to be followed to a T.
Problems: Only drying it with the major humidity we have here.

The Mighty Sock has got to be one of my favorite yarns. It's soft, shiny, and has a lovely play of colors. I got the colorway Constellation, and might just ask for that one for both of my payment skeins. Heck, I might just have to buy another one or two skeins in different colorways! This yarn is lovely and wonderful for wraps and shawls. I don't think I'd knit socks with it, even though it is a sock yarn, because the sheen and drape are just too amazing. I'll probably knit a wrap with mine. I tossed the shawl on for a modeling session and didn't want to take it off again!

Baking!

We had a couple of parties to attend recently, one being a grillfest we threw, so I baked cupcakes and cookies. The first party was a watermelon themed party, and after seeing a few examples of watermelon cupcakes around, I had to make some! I only have one cupcake tin, and stupidly decided to make a full batch of cupcakes. I tried putting some on a cookie tin in the cupcake foils so I could cook more than six at a time, but that didn't work so well. It did, however, give me a good base for a larger watermelon cupcake cake in addition to the little watermelon cupcakes.


The food coloring is powdered not liquid here. Since I've never used powdered and couldn't read any instructions they gave due to the language barrier, I couldn't get very good colors from them. I was going for two greens, but wanted them both to be a bit darker than they came out. Not that big a deal, but somewhat disappointing. I also had a batch of vanilla cupcakes, but we're going to pretend it's because I was concerned about those who didn't like chocolate, not that I forgot to put in the food coloring and chocolate chips. I tried flour coating the chips so they didn't sink, and think that it worked for the first couple of batches. This one was from the last batch, and I think they sank because by that time, sitting around for 6 other batches to go in the oven for 20 minutes then cool so I could use the tin again, the flour got soaked through and they sank. Everyone liked them, and I'd make them again for summer parties.


I also baked cookies when I baked the cupcakes, thinking I'd make cupcakes for the watermelon party and cookies for our grilling party. Of course, with the full batch of cupcakes (I got 44), I needn't have bothered with the cookies too! These cookies are very delicious, soft, interesting sugar cookies that taste amazing with a frosting of 1/4 cup shortening, 2 cups powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp almond, and enough milk to get whatever consistency you're going for, under 2 Tbsp. I ran out of almond after making the cupcake frosting and cookies, so bought some more, but a different brand this time. Upon opening the container, it smelled funny, but I wasn't thinking too well and poured it in anyway. We determined that the strange almond extract was not in fact almond, but coconut. It is labeled almond, but is certainly coconut. Coconut does not taste very good as a frosting for these cookies. I am still very much saddened by that, and am considering getting more almond to make more frosting to frost the rest because they are just that good with the frosting.

So Close I Can Taste It...

I've finished off a bunch of things that were on the needles, and need to get some Tunisian crochet hooks in for the next thing I want to get cracking on, so in my quest to reduce WIPs, I've gone back to my Art of Disney Cinderella's Castle cross stitch. The little ornaments I stitch are usually only 60% cross stitching and 40% back stitching, so I wasn't expecting to be able to finish it in this attempt. I did finish the cross stitches, and now just need to outline and accent.


Of course, I'm posting this later than I should have, so at this point, I've outlined everything in the castle with black thread, finished the red of Tinkerbell's mouth and am mostly done with the black outlining for her, and just need to do the bronze wand and castle accents, as well as the stars around the fairy dust trail in the castle. For some reason I didn't do those when I was doing the stars in the sky. I've also fixed any errors I've found, an uncrossed stitch here, a missed stitch there, an obviously wrong color stitch that shows up because of the outlining, threads that weren't actually secured when I did them the first time (only the shiny slippery fireworks though), things like that. It will definitely need a good wash, block, and maybe iron when it's done. There's a good number of lines from the hoop and a couple of spots that aren't as clean as they should be, but a dunk in a cool bath with some Soak and then being pinned out to dry should fix that!

The back stitching is going very quickly compared to how fast I thought it was going to be. I suppose the major difference between this one and the ornaments is that the ornaments are so small you're outlining most stitches, whereas with this one, you're not really doing so much. It's going much, much faster than I anticipated. I've been working on this thing for years in fits and starts, and figured it would take another couple of months of working on it to finally get it done. Nope, it's been 10 days since I took that picture, and I may just finish it today! Woohooo!

Then the question will be if I can count it as finished before I hang it or if it needs to be framed and hung first, since technically that's part of finishing, but I don't know if I want to get it framed while in Japan, or maybe I should because we'll be framing diplomas as soon as my new ones get in, or.... Either way, I'll be able to go on to the next cross stitch, and for some reason that makes me happier than the fact that I'll have a finished one. As Lee would say, rolling the rock back up the hill....

Tour de Fleece

I blew this one. Three reasons.

1. I didn't open my wheel for a few days after the start, due to life and the couch slipcover that wouldn't cooperate. It finally did, and looks great, though could use some ironing.

2. I decided to take a trip to Bali from the 20 - 31 of July. I decided to look into this on July 2. After signing up for the Tour and WIP Wrestlemania, of course. I did okay with WIP Wrestlemania, should have six of 10 knitting WIPs finished by the end of the month, but failed miserably on the Tour de Fleece.

3. On the Bali vacation, I decided to get SCUBA certified and surf, and maybe do some climbing or other activities. I have recurring knee issues, and the treadling of the wheel, while not causing major problems, was straining the knee a bit more than was recommended for physical activities, so after an initial few hours of excited treadling and then a bit of spinning, I decided not to tempt fate, and was kind of wishing I'd gone with the Mazurka so I could use just the good leg.

The wheel! Yay! I have a spinning wheel! A Kromski Minstrel from Copper Moose in Walnut!

Oh well, I did get the basics of my goal down, which was learn how my wheel works, though I didn't get any sort of consistency yet. The second half of that goal was to spin three bobbins worth of wool and then ply in a DK to WW type yarn, which would hopefully be enough for a vest for work, but that did not happen. I think I'll give my legs a few days to recuperate from the trip, then I'll be spinning and will hopefully (maybe, fingers crossed) have at least the yarn for a vest for work by this fall, if not the vest itself. I have two pounds of the yarn, so if three bobbins doesn't end up as enough, I can always spin up more. Then, I plan to play with dyeing and plying different colors together with the rest of the yarn. I also have some gorgeous dyed fiber from Copper Moose, but that will wait until I've gotten the hang of this wheel and finished the spinning for the vest.

New Hobby!

Letterboxing has interested me for awhile. I'd like to letterbox with my own stamps and geocache in every country I visit. At the stationery story the other day, I found inexpensive stamp making supplies and made me a stamp!


You trace whatever you'd like to make on the tracing paper and color it in nicely with a pencil. I freehanded a letter R in a circle, as R is my last initial. I didn't have anything specific in mind, I just wanted to try out my new supplies. I have a set of six carving implements, so I should be good to go if I really get into carving. If not, it was only $10 for the supplies, and the R and stamp pad have already been worth the expense.

It was pretty quick, only about 15 minutes from start to finish, and a lot of fun. I got a colored stamp blank, which makes it a lot easier to carve. You just carve away the colored surface until it's white where you don't want ink to show up. I got the purple ink because it matched the blank exactly. Lee likes it also, but says we need red to use it on correspondences he's a part of. Oh darn, I have to buy another ink pad? I'm glad he likes it enough to want to use it.


It's not perfect, with the odd edges and divot where the curve of the R rejoins the line, but it's pretty good. I'm very happy with it. It's obviously homemade, but is the rustic kind of homemade some people pay for. I'm not sure how much I'll be getting into stamp making. I want to make a letterboxing stamp for myself, and probably a nice kanji or two from my calligraphy class once I get something worth carving, and then I'd like to make some local letterboxes since there aren't any. I might also make an interesting one to stamp things I make for people, since I would like some sort of label for handmade gifts. I've toyed with the idea of embroidering a symbol on, but stamping might work also. A small symbol that I can carve and switch out colors depending on the yarn I'm using. That might work!

Nearly Mid-Year Goals Update

So, my goals for the year are to read 12 books on the lists over on the right-hand sidebar and at least one in Japanese (I have Harry Potters 1 and 2) and to finish more projects than I did last year. That goal is a bit high, because it's near 50. Last year I finished a lot of UFOs that were languishing and didn't bring that many to Japan with me, so don't have nearly as many that are quick finishes. I do have some smaller projects and a heck of a lot of time in July when I'm on vacation but Lee isn't, but 50 just seems like a lot. Especially since I'm knitting, crocheting, and cross stitching mostly larger things.

Book-wise: I've read 22 books. That's nearly one per week. That's about how many projects I should have finished at this point. However, only four of them have been on lists that I've been reading on. Well, six really, but the fourth is Fellowship of the Ring, and it's listed as part of the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the fifth and sixth are books in the Discworld series which is also listed as just Discworld, so they don't quite count. I should have read five by now, and be halfway through the sixth, instead of having read four and three halves (I'm in the middle of three other books that do count!). Take a look over at the sidebar for my new widget from Goodreads, a site where I keep track of books I read!

Project-wise: I've finished thirteen projects, and will have another three done by this time next week or I don't get to put my new Kromski Minstrel together. Then I'll be working to get all of my currently languishing WIPs done in July for Ravelry's WIP WrestleMania (WWM). It's an attempt to clean out your needles in preparation for the Winter Olympics knitting so you can start fresh projects on empty needles with a clear conscience. I'm also participating in Summer of Socks, so will be glad to empty the needles of the three pairs that are currently ongoing, and probably a fourth (and/or fifth) pair I'll be starting before July to up my WIP count. I think a summer goal will be to come back from break with a week's worth of work socks. I currently have one pair (two on the needles), and yarn for a week's worth, so I should get to it!

As for WIP count, my goal is to have all my open projects down to single digits, and I'm getting a spinning wheel, so that will open up a whole new column of projects on the sidebar. As of right now, I have been failing somewhat miserably, due to getting down to 10 or 11 and casting on 3 or 4 more projects. I think I've done that two or three times this year already. I shall up the number to maybe even 20 for July, and then cut back sharply until I have only three or so things on the needles, a cross stitch or two (that will take forever to get those finished and down to two!), and then some spinning/sewing/crocheting/quick gifts that keep the number under 10.

For July, I'll be pretty much casting something onto all of my open needles. Every single one. This way, not only can I not cast on any more, but I can also work on pretty much whatever I feel like working on and can have two or three quick, simple knits at the ready to jump to if I need a break from the bigger ones. I have summer vacation for most of July, and Lee has to work for a good deal of it, so I'll be hanging about, seeing local sights and knitting a lot.

August will be my month of Christmas knitting, as I've gotten patterns and yarn set for most of my intended recipients. I'm not looking at anything terribly intense, a bunch of laceweight cowls, a pair of gloves, maybe some Pocket Creatures, and a couple of pairs of socks. Okay, so I lied, that is actually kind of a lot. This is why I'm starting in August, so that I can be done early-ish. Also, I will be starting at least the first cowl, pair of socks, and probably the gloves and/or knee socks later this month so I can count them as WIPs for WWM, where I will be working on nothing but WIPs.

Soon, there will be FO posts for my latest conquests, and hopefully in the very near future, this:


will come out of the box! I must finish the slipcover for the couch (that I said I'd have finished in April) in order to assemble the wheel and start the spinning. To the sewing machine I go!

+50 Skill Points!

We wanted to get some tapestries and frame them to liven up the room. After going to check out the store, we found that the one we were given was the only really good one they sold, and the frames were $80 for the $8 - $10 tapestries. Not worth it! So, we decided to get an interesting printed fabric from the craft store and hang it where we wanted to add some color to the room. 1 meter of fabric at $6.40, some hemming and some dowels from the Home Center makes an affordable and very nice wall hanging to liven up the room.

As we're buying fabric instead of something already made, I have to stitch up the hems. The fabric itself is very colorful, with pink, blue, and orange flowers surrounding black fans outlined in shiny gold on a lovely variegated green background. The pattern has no border and we decided not to border it with black or anything else. This gives me a dilemma: How to hem it?

I decided it was time to learn how to do a blind hem. And I did!


I used a dark green that I already had on the bobbin, the one I used to attempt to put the zipper into my Mother in Law's cardigan. This matched the background, but was obviously too dark to have a straight line going across the flowers and lighter green leaves. It took me a couple of tries, but that is a nice even line, completely disappearing into the background areas and not too intruding on the lighter pattern panels. I am inordinately happy with myself!