vampy – Page 5

I know I’m fucking awesome, but I can’t change the weather.

I’m sorry littlecat, I know it’s really hot outside and you really want to play but instead you have to lounge around doing nothing, but I promise there is nothing i can do. Howling and looking mournfully at me before flopping down in a huff will not make any difference, I promise. And I can assure you I hate this crazy heat just as much as you. In fact, probably more than you, because I can’t even open my bedroom windows fully at night because you think it’s fun to climb out.

I forgive you though, cos you are super cute.

So, yeah, it’s hot and I hate it. My body hates me anyway for thinking that hooping on and off all last sunday afternoon was a good idea, so I spent a week pretty much constantly in bed recovering from that. And now I’m feeling kinda better, it’s way too hot to do anything. At least my garden is happy with the sun though. I have a gazillion beans and courgettes, and the tomatoes are juuuust starting to ripen…in fact, this pic was a couple of days old, the ripe tomato in the pic was eaten today, and it was lovely. In another couple of weeks I will be overrun with tomatoes.

Sadly the blueberries are no more. To start with I thought that some birds must have somehow avoided Snargle and eaten them, but then I realised the day they disappeared was the day that Rocky escaped. Fucking chicken. She kept jumping on the food storage box then over the fence, so I moved the box. Then she managed to fly from the box over the fence. So I clipped her wings. Then nothing for a week or so, so I thought it was all good. Until yesterday, when I looked out the front window and she was staring at me from the patio. I have no idea how she managed to get out, but it was very irritating, especially as she was desparate to get back in, but hadn’t realised there are plenty of things on this side of the fence to climb on and get back over. I think I might have to grab her again and cut the feathers back even further, or maybe do the other wing too. Or perhaps shoot her in the head. Fucking chicken.

I guess one thing about the hot weather is that it makes me want to eat healthy food. I just don’t fancy eating junk or heavy fatty food. So today I went to the shop and bought a buttload of fruit and veg. Nom nom nom! I’ve spent most of the time feeling hungry, nauseated, or both, so I figured if I get lots of quick and easy food I might actually manage to eat something and hopefully not feel ill afterwards. And I looooove salads and fruit.

Oh, and I finally got round to getting gren to take some pics of stuff I’d knitted recently. My favourites are this vest and hoodie. Unfortunately the sun was too bright and the hoodie pic is rather bleached out, but trust me, it is awesomesauce, sooo comfortable, and has pretty cables on. In case anyone cares, the vest is a slightly modified razor cami, and the hoodie is my own design, there are instructions on my rav project page.

yarn pr0n and computer hate

So I got a ravelry account and nik lent me his pop up light tent. Clearly yarn pr0n was going to ensue. Here’s a few pics, there’s tons more in my ravelry stash…and i’ve only photographed a very small proportion of my old crappy acrylic yarn so far…though most of my nice squishy wooly yarn has been done. I’m loving the light tent, I’ve got one bare light set up at the back left, and one with a softbox just in front to the right. I should probably take a photo of my setup and write down the settings so i can recreate it after it’s been packed up, cos i’m liking the results.

The red yarn at the top left is my latest handspun…laceweight, 550m+ for 50g, and its 100% merino, super soft and lovely. No idea what i’m going to do with it, but it’s been added to the collection and will be regularly squished.

Generated by Flickr Album MakerÂ (with a few tweaks from me)

My computer had been getting increasingly crashy recently, so i finally decided to try and fix it, and realised one of my ram modules was broken. So I’ve been running on 512mb, which is ‘okay’ for general browsing and stuff, but just kills the machine when using photoshop. I ran round the house looking in my other machine, and in the old machine dad gave me, and in my stash of random computer bits, but couldn’t find any ddr ram. Then i had a brainwave and stole some out of the machine nik left here. No doubt i will be in trouble when he finds out, but i figured it’ll get more use in this one, seeing as the other only gets used at meets…and it will help me keep my sanity. Oh, and in one of my diagnostic messing around with ram moments, i was trying to put some back in, and it wasn’t aligned properly and my finger slipped and i managed to gouge a hole in my fingertip. Given how very un-sharp ram is, i was pretty impressed at the damage caused. It’s been highly annoying when spinning, as the fine fibres want to catch on the healing wound and mess up my nice smooth yarn.

I added a progress bar thingy over there ->> and it worked first time, so that made me happy. Here’s the socks i’m working on for dad:
dad socks
I’m using Online supersocke I think it’s called…its merino/silk/nylon. Beautifully soft, but horrible and splitty to knit with, and certainly not designed for cables, I did the first couple of cable rounds without a cable needle, but it was too hard, so i’ve reverted to using one. If I’d have had any other sock yarn suitable for man socks, i’d have switched and used this for something plainer, but all my other sock yarns are distinctly girly…I was pushing it enough making socks with cables, trying to use a bright coloured wool would have been too much I think.

I’ve got balls!!!

Today was a very knitty day indeed. I spent this afternoon at my parents’ house with my mum and 3 other knitters at our first ever knitting group meeting. I worked on my sock and taught mum how to turn a heel, and we talked about sheep and pigs and all sorts of things. Then I made a yarn swift out of meccano.

I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with the time it takes to wind balls from skeins. I got a ball winder with my spinning wheel, though it didnt have a bobbin with it…so i discovered a place that sold just the bobbins on ebay, and that made my ball-winding life considerably easier. Unfortunately it either needs two people to do, one of whom gets achy arms, or I need to contort myself into strange positions with the skein wrapped around my knees or neck or something. After stumbling across a blog showing a homemade swift made out of some kids building toy that i’ve never heard of (i’ll add a link to it if i find it again), I realised i could easily make one from meccano…which i knew dad has a case of in the cupboard. It only took about 10 minutes to assemble, and it works wonderfully. So I’ve just spent half an hour or so winding some of my stash into balls.

Â left to right, top to bottom: Angels and Elehants Sock yarn, shetland wool, colourways candyfloss (1 ball), holly berry (2 balls). Handspun from rovings: red and green laceweight, blue and grey laceweight, pink and purple DK (two balls). Handspun from norfolk horn fleece, green DK, pinky aran, and pink chunky.

And as if that wasn’t exciting enough, I finished the socks for my brother. I found this awesomely orange corriedale roving in my LYS, and decided i would spin it and make some socks for him, as orange is his favourite colour. It was the first time i’d spun anything finer than DK, but it turned out pretty even, and the socks feel nice and soft…though I was cursing his size 9 feet by the end, i’ve never made socks any bigger than a 6 before, and this seemed to take aaaages.

Oh, and here’s a couple of other (clicky) pics of the swift (one with monkey’s head in, as she’s found the whole process fascinating). If anyone reading wants any more info as to how it’s made, just give me a shout, though really it’s pretty self explanatory.

more front garden yarn photographs

Here’s my latest creation. The green is merino from the alpaca spinner selection pack mentioned below, I saw it and thought of apples. Of course the best apples are red AND green, so I dug out a chunk of red I’d dyed in the past and had left over from whatever I needed it for. To make the final yarn more interesting I added small amounts of oatmeal and brown BFL, and white corriedale. Like the last yarn it’s a 2-ply, as close to laceweight as I can get. Length is about 330m, weight somewhere shy of 50g (I don’t have digital scales, so accurate weighing is done when i visit my parents). It’s beautifully soft, and I kinda like it, which is a surprise as I dont really like green.

Here’s a pic of the fibres I started with:

And here’s a closeup of the finished product (click to enlarge)

i LOVE this yarn

love LOVE LOVE it. It is the grey shetland, plied with a blue (merino) and white (corriedale) single, so it will knit up a little bit stripey. Its awesomely soft, and given my relative inexperience with spinning, i am very happy with how fine and even it is…..53g and 370m. I have been squshing it and rubbing it on my cheek and hugging it LOTS.

[click to enlarge]

mmmm, fibres

I recently won an ebay auction for a package of various fibres from the alpaca spinner, consisting of Grey shetland, corriedale, swaledale, oatmeal and brown BFL, and coloured merino rovings, and a big bag of baby alpaca fleece. They are all soooo soft and i love them all. So I decided to try and spin a laceweight yarn…you can see the first single here, in the grey shetland, with a strand of normal DK weight yarn hung over the bobbin for scale purposes. There’s a few fluffy bits on the yarn, and the odd bit that is too thick, but in general i’m pretty happy with it….I’m not sure what i am going to ply with it though, i’m thinking maybe a white/blue strand of merino, to ensure it’s just as soft, and so it knits up stripey.

Lace scarf – finished

[click to enlarge]

woohoo, i finished it, and it only took me 8 days. it was blocked overnight last night, and I just took it into the garden to photograph. Sadly early morning sun on a breezy day doesnt lead to the best silk lace photographs, but i don’t care cos it still looks pretty.

felting – first attempt

Yesterday i found this book for Â£3 in a shop in cambridge, i’ve been wanting to make felt for a while, so it was too good a deal to pass up. After reading it, and one failed attempt (well, not exactly failed…i now have a hat with a hole in), I managed to make this bag, from merino with balwen trim. It looks a lot nicer in real life than in pics…photographing white things is so difficult, i shall attempt to do it properly with my real camera and studio lighting at some point, but for now, the dodgy point and shoot pic at least gives you an idea. Once it’s dry i shall line it, and then decide what to do about a fastening and a handle.

scarf update

I’ve been knitting away at my new lace scarf, only allowing myself to knit 10 rows at a time, and fastidiously using markers and counting out loud, so i’ve only had to unpick 20 stitches so far…and the hard bit is done for this end, now it’s on to the relatively easy straight part. The pic is rather dodgy due to silk being very shiny, and the light in here being terrible…and of course it’ll look much nicer when blocked, but i am happy with progress so far.

it’s been a long time…

I decided i should blog more about what i’ve been up to…so here goes. This of course is all knitting/spinning related so i can include lovely pictures of pretty things. The first picture is some wool i’ve spun lately. The orange and pink/purple are spun from corriedale tops, the green is from the big pile of Norfolk horn fleeces in my garage which i am slowly managing to wash and card.

I’ve also spun a lot of beautiful merino, and also a merino/alpaca/silk mix. Unfortunately I knitted them into hats which i gave away without photographing, so a pic of the pile of lovely fibres will have to do for now.

Knitting-wise i’ve been very busy making hats, jumpers, and all sorts of other things, but don’t have photos yet, so here are pics of what i’m working on at the moment…an almost finished sock from a lovely hand dyed yarn from http://www.araucaniayarns.com/Â and the very start of a lace scarf based on the knitty pattern Juno ReginaÂ in a silk yarn from http://www.fyberspates.co.uk/. Its the first time i’ve knitted proper lace (anything with more than a 4 row repeat) so i am a little scared i’ll make a mistake..so i’m forcing myself to take plenty of breaks and won’t let myself work on it when i’m tired.

WIP sock

lace scarf - just started

In the pic above you can see the pretty stitch markers i made last week out of silver wire and some beads from my stash…much prettier than using loops of waste yarn as i normally do.

Â I think i shall try and update this blog regularly with details of what i’m working on…if anything else it will stop me boring my friends with constant knitting talk!