Back! February 16, 2009

It’s true, I’m back! I’ve actually been doing a lot lately, both fiber-related and otherwise, but I’ve been too busy to post about any of it! Don’t worry though, because I’m back now, and hopefully I’m here to stay!

I dyed some of the most gorgeous roving ever the other day. Here’s a picture I took of it, even though it looks much much better in real life. The colors are just so rich and deep – gold, royal purple, and navy. I’m planning to start spinning it up tonight – I can’t wait!

I also bought some roasting pans from Target to use for dyeing roving. They were $11 each, but in the long run they are going to be so much cheaper (and more eco-friendly!) than using disposable aluminum pans. Plus, for some reason I find them really cute!

This weekend I celebrated Valentine’s Day, which is one of my very favorite holidays. One of my pet peeves is when people claim that they don’t like Valentine’s Day because it’s a “Hallmark Holiday”. Sure, it commercialized and a little bit silly. But it’s fun, and a perfect day to celebrate love in all of its forms.

As a Valentine’s Day treat for my boyfriend, I whipped up a batch of these White Chocolate Oreo Balls, otherwise known as the easiest and most delicious dessert ever! Here’s the exterior view, which is not particularly impressive:

And the interior view. Mmmmm:

Here’s the super-simple recipe:

White Chocolate Oreo Balls

Ingredients:
1 package of Oreo cookies, crushed
1 8-ounce package of cream cheese, softened
2 bags of white chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Mix Oreos and cream cheese.
2. Form mixture into balls about 1 inch in diameter, chill.
3. Melt white chocolate.
4. Roll Oreo/cream cheese balls in white chocolate.
5. Place finished balls on waxed paper, chill.
6. Eat! Yum.

Busy Busy… October 1, 2008

I’ve been knitting like crazy the past two days! My yarn for the Hooded Baby Blanket arrived on Tuesday, and my cousin’s baby shower is this Sunday. So that gives me five days to knit a whole baby blanket! I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish – so far I’ve got about six inches done.

Here are the colors I picked out. Both blankets are going to be pink, one with green edging and one with white.

I’ve also been tossing around a few ideas for art yarns lately. I found some pretty fake flowers in the clearance aisle the other day, so I bought them and stripped the fabric flowers from the stems. I’m thinking about spinning them into a green yarn with little green felt or ribbon leaves.

And last but not least, here are a few new yarns I’ve listed in my Etsy shop over the past couple of days.

Nice Melons (because it’s got all the colors of melons in it – gosh, get your mind out of the gutter!)

Candy Girl (another bulky single ply)

Keen (this one is my favorite!)

Grapes of Math (I know, it’s a dumb name. If you can think of a better one I’d love to hear it!)

Exciting News! March 25, 2008

Wow, I’ve been away from this blog for quite a while! Now that spring break is over and some computer malfunctions have been resolved, I’m back. Don’t worry, I haven’t been neglecting all things fiber-y while I’ve been gone – in fact, I have super exciting news to share – I GOT A WHEEL!!!! Yep, it’s true, after a year and a half of spinning on a drop spindle, I finally have a spinning wheel, thanks to my parents giving me the best birthday present ever. I ended up with a Majacraft Suzie, after trying out pretty much every wheel at The Fold, a really nice little shop in Marengo, IL, that sells spinning wheels, fiber, yarn, and all kinds of fun stuff. I looove looove looove everything about this wheel – how pretty it looks, the smooth way it treadles, the delta orifice. But what I love most of all is how darn fast it is! The day I bought it, I broke it in while watching Casino Royale and spun a skein of yarn in about 2 hours that probably would have taken me 4 or 5 days on my drop spindle. And that was the first time I used it! Here’s a picture of the wheel – this isn’t mine (I haven’t taken a picture of it) but it looks exactly like this –

Gorgeous, right? The only sad thing is that it isn’t at school with me right now – I have a roommate and a little tiny room, and there just isn’t space. So I won’t have it again till May, which is very depressing – I just can’t wait!
Anyway, on to something happy. Here’s my latest yarn – Holiday Lights. I dyed it with all the colors of the lights on my Christmas tree.


Well, I’m off to spin more yarns! Have a good night!

Angelic February 26, 2008

I listed another yarn in my Etsy shop yesterday – Angelic!

Seriously, this is one of my favorite yarns I’ve ever spun. It’s just so, so nice I can’t even describe it. Undyed superwash merino/viscose mill ends plied with gold thread. Soft and smooth and silky and squishy and just altogether lovely. This roving is just so so nice – I’m going to need to order more!

Also, I sold two yarns in my Etsy shop the other day! Woo-hoo!

Here’s a neat website that I discovered recently – idealbite.com. When you sign up, they send you fun little daily tips on how to live a more eco-friendly life.  I’ve been getting them for a few weeks and they really make you think about how you can act in a way that’s better for the planet.  Cool!

Have a great Wednesday!

Back! January 5, 2008

Wow, it has been a looong time since I last posted here. I apologize, I’ve just been so super busy! Here’s a short list of the things I’ve been dealing with in the last month –

*Getting over mono.
*Finals.
*My 21st birthday! Woo!
*Christmas/New Year’s stuff.
*Moving back to school and starting up with classes again. I’m taking a winter term class that started January 2nd – blech.

Don’t worry though, even though I’ve been gone, I’ve been busy! I’ve got lots of new things to show off and tons of ideas for new content for the blog. To start with, here’s my latest yarn – Lush.

It was originally this roving, even though the colors look kind of different.

Pretty, eh? It’s about 157 yards and I reeeally like it. I love these multi-color single plies, they spin up so fast and they turn out so nice.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Hooray! September 12, 2007

I made my first sale at my Etsy shop this morning! Hooray! I’m so excited I don’t even know what to do with myself. I’ve been on Etsy for just over a month, but somehow it never occurred to me that anyone would ever actually buy anything. I’m glad that it was the Everlasting Gobstopper yarn that sold, since that was one of my favorites. I’m just super happy right now, in case you couldn’t tell…

So I’ve been getting started on spinning up those new rovings I posted a while back. I love dyeing my own roving, but I always have problems deciding how I should spin it – spin a single, ply it with itself, or ply with thread? To make those decisions easier in the future, I decided to do a little experiment. I spun up two yarns from the same batch of roving – one as a single plied with thread, and one as a two-ply.
Sunny Delight

And Strawberry Lemonade

Isn’t that crazy? They look so different for being from the same roving. I think what I learned from doing this is that when I leave a yarn as a single, the colors stay much more intact and the less-dominant colors show up a lot more – the yellow shows up much more in the first yarn. But when I ply it, the colors mix, and the brighter color sort of takes over and dominates the yarn – the second one looks much more pink. I’ve always been a big fan of singles, but this has convinced me to start doing more plied yarns – I love the way the colors blend!

Speaking of colors, here are some paper beads in shades of red and orange hanging up to dry – coming soon to my Etsy shop!

Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday night!

l-o-v-e July 27, 2007

So I feel the need to show off the yarn I’ve been spinning lately. It’s from that rainbow roving that I dyed a month or so ago. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out at first, but as soon as I started spinning it I realized it was going to be gorgeous. I love how it has literally every color you can imagine in it, all blending and swirling together. It’s just so pretty! I want dye some more roving with a bunch of random colors just so I can spin it again. I’m also really glad I chose to spin it as a single. I basically just love everything about it.

Here it is:

And a close-up:

Yum.

I was also amazed at how much brighter some of the colors in this yarn are compared to the colors I normally get from Wilton’s when dyeing. I’m going to have to experiment a little with different dye concentrations next time I dye.

Oh, I also have a finished yarn to show you. This was my first time plying with thread, and I think it worked out well. I like the bumpy, bobbly look it has.

I’m going out of town this weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday, which I am very excited about. Enjoy your weekend!

busy busy July 12, 2007

Wow, I haven’t updated in a while! Oops. The past week or so has just been crazy. Between work and summer school, I’ve hardly had any free time. It should just be one more busy week, and then my summer school class will be over and I’ll be working less, so hopefully then I’ll have gobs of free time to get back to my projects.

Nathan (the boy) turned twenty last week! Exciting. It was a very good day, starting off with birthday cupcakes.

We also went to the zoo, which I haven’t done in years. It ended up being a lot of fun. The butterfly garden and the dolphin show were highlights, but we also saw tigers and penguins and giraffes, and we even got to touch a live stingray. Crazy. It felt kind of like a wet mushroom.

Here’s one of the butterflies from the butterfly garden. It was really amazing, we walked around and the air was just full of butterflies floating around and landing on us. Very surreal, but beautiful.

I was also excited to get a picture of one of the dolphins at the dolphin show. It’s hard to take a picture of a dolphin! I finally got one after the show, when we went down to those underwater window things.

And of course, the requisite self-taken, rather disheveled picture.

On the crafting front, I’ve bought more fabric to make another skirt, despite the fact that I’ve made absolutely no progress on the first skirt I was intending to make. But I really love this fabric, and I can totally see it as a skirt that I would wear all the time. I think the little white polka dots on the black are just so cute.

I’ve also been spinning a little bit. I experimented with plying with thread for the first time and made a little mini-skein. I thought it was pretty successful, the texture of the yarn is really cool. It wasn’t actually supposed to be such a little skein, but I pulled too hard when I was plying and accidentally broke the thread. Oops. I’m going to ply the rest of it soon hopefully. It’s a pink, yellow and orange thick and thin single, dyed with Wilton’s, that I plyed with yellow Sulky thread.

And a close-up.

I’m definitely going to try this again, I think it’s really fun and different. I wonder what it will look like knit up…

Oh, and I had an idea for my very first art-ish yarn! I’m really excited to get started on this, hopefully what I’m thinking of turns out how I picture it.

Enjoy your Thursday!