Spinning and Weaving...

Awhile back I bought a drop spindle and some fibers from a great store in Paige, Texas called Yarnorama. I loved spinning and knew that I wanted to get a spinning wheel as soon as possible.

However... in case you've never looked into it, spinning wheels are expensive! Well, I let the idea go due to lack of excess money and lack of room for a new piece of furniture and moved on. But from time to time my mom and I still talk about how much fun it would be to have a spinning wheel and during one such talk I had mentioned seeing a few for sale on Craigslist last summer and that we should start keeping an eye out for some in our area.

AN HOUR LATER she comes to me and says that not only did she find one in our area, but she found a 32" loom as well! Both were for sale by the same woman and she was only asking for both items together what the spinning wheel on its own would have cost. I was very excited but knew that I didn't have the money to spend on it... so.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MEEEEEE from my awesome, wonderful, brilliant parents :-D

I am now the proud owner of an Ashford Traditional Spinning Wheel and a Herald 32" 4 Harness Loom!

Here are a few pictures of my new acquisitions.























































And here's a video of me spinning! A few seconds in I have to restart the wheel (cause I'm a noob and I still stink!) and you can see the bunch of fibers in my right hand that will turn into yarn as I spin!



The video lighting isn't that great and the yarn looks kinda dull, so here's a better picture! I'm spinning a 4 oz bunch of bamboo that I got from Yarnorama. Here are the fibers before spinning...

















And here is a picture of how much I have spun so far!!

Trip to the Yarn Store

A few weeks ago my husband celebrated his 29th birthday and his family drove down to spend the weekend with us in honor of the event. Had a great weekend made even better by the fact that I got to introduce my mother-in-law to the joys of knitting and yarn hording!

My mother-in-law had seen me knitting before and thought that she might want to try it out too. So we headed over to the local yarn store in Spring, Twisted Yarns.

They have SO MUCH YARN there, in all colors, sizes, and fibers you can imagine. I think it was almost too much for Julie to handle. She kept darting from one skein to the next; we had a great time!

At one point she turned to me with a big smile on her face and said "Is this what it's like to be a yarn whore??"

Well, an hour later and with several purchases under her belt, we headed home to play with our new yarn.















This is a skein of handspun/hand dyed yarn which is actually a lot more scarlet than purple in real life. I'll be making a drop-stitch scarf out of this.

Julie got two other skeins of yarn for scarves; one that I used on my new knitting machine and the other I'm knitting in a loose garter stitch.





















This is the knitting machine scarf being blocked. It was made with a superwash wool blend by Berroco which you can buy online here.

The last skein of yarn that Julie purchased for me to make her a scarf from was this beautiful Japanese silk!





















She kindly bought me one in scarlet for my efforts! I can't wait to get to it... in the meantime, here is the progress on her scarf. I'm using size 10 needles and a garter stitch to get the effect.

Cables

Well, since I just learned to knit a few months ago, I figured now would be the perfect time to try out one of the harder stitch types! Cables.

In all honesty, I had been wanting to try them for a month or so but was too chicken to try it and fail. But a few weeks ago I taught my mom how to knit and a trip to the yarn store ensued where many books were purchased, including several books on cable patterns.

Mom was SO excited to try cables, and since I was the one who taught her the basic knit stitches, I was the one in charge of learning cables first so that I could walk her through it.

SHOCKINGLY, it was pretty darn simple and fun! Here is the first cable we tried. The Cable Crossing pattern from 50 Fabulous Knit Aran Stitches















So then I naturally went Cable CRAZY and made a few other pieces. Some of which I can't show you yet because they're Christmas gifts... but here is one item that you can check out!





















This is a free pattern from Ravelry called Elegant Cabled Scarf or you can get the PDF directly from her site here. It took about 12 hours total to finish this scarf and it was well worth it, I love it!

Finally back!

Hello all!

I know it's been QUITE a while... but look! I really have been working on things!
















Actually, there is a lot more than this, but I can't post a lot of it due to the fact that they're all Christmas gifts! It's going to get a little tricky as the year progresses to get projects up for y'all to see. I'll try to be as sneaky as possible, but be prepared for a large batch of posts around the first week in January! :-)

Anyway, on to the new stuff!