Author: kountingsheep

This year for Christmas two dreams came true: 1) I got to have a white Christmas! and 2) My parents bought me a weaving loom! Yes, that’s right, I can now add the title “weaver” to my status as a fiber artist.

My family went up to Williams, AZ on Christmas Eve to ride the “Polar Express.” My 2-year-old niece absolutely loved it! She got so excited to meet Santa at the “North Pole,” and it was fun to watch her reactions. What was even more fun was the fact that there was tons of snow on the ground! It’s been a long time since I’ve been in snow for Christmas, so it was definitely special.

I actually requested that my parents buy me a weaving loom this year instead of other gifts, so it was no surprise. It arrived the end of November, and I was able to assemble it to make sure all the parts were there. However, I wasn’t “allowed” to use it until Christmas, so as soon as we got back into town on Christmas day, I pulled my loom out.

Unfortunately, I spent the next 7 hours trying to get it warped properly, and ended up only making a total mess and throwing away about 800 yards of ruined yarn (I made the same mistake not once, but twice. Ouch!). I went back to YouTube and found this video from Ashford that changed everything! On Monday, I successfully warped my loom and happily started weaving some beautiful fabric on it.
 

This first non-retail Christmas for me has been an absolute blessing! It’s amazing how much more fun the holiday is when you aren’t surrounded by crazy, angry people who hate you because you happen to be wearing a nametag. This week has been one full of blessings, including an office staff lunch, multiple thoughtful gifts, time to hang out with friends, opening gifts with family early, even seeing a great movie. And the best part is that this week I have woken up each day more and more aware that these blessings come from a great Savior, who came to this earth so that I may have the ultimate blessing: eternal life through belief in his sacrifice. Christmas will never lose its wonder as long as I never lose sight of God’s love for me.

 I’ll tell you what’s rare–pictures of me actually wearing the things I make. I have tons and tons of pictures of the things I make, because I’m the one who takes the pictures. But it’s rather awkward to take a picture of oneself, and rather embarrassing to ask others to take pictures of yourself for the sole purpose of just getting the knitted garment in the picture. So here I have not only one but two–count them TWO–pictures of me wearing my hand-knit items.

Last Thursday a group of my friends and I went to an outdoor shopping center where they have a 60 foot tree set up and make it “snow” two times a night. It may seem odd to people who live in snowy climates to think of any event in which they have to make it “snow,” but here in Mesa where snow is rare (yes, it does snow every once in awhile, like last Christmas, for about 5 minutes), an opportunity to play in “snow” is not quickly lost. Unfortunately, the “snow” they were making was only bubbles blown from machines on the roof that looked remarkably like snow but, alas, was not.

It was, however, freezing cold (in the 40s-50s, which is pretty cold by any standard), so I of course had on my newly finished strawberry mittens, my Rose Red beret, and, you can’t tell because I’m wearing a jacket, but I was also wearing my new sweater. My friend in the picture was kind enough to give me a piggy back ride, since I had sprained my ankle the week before and was having a hard time walking.

A day like this…

…requires wearing this: my freshly finished NaKniSweMo sweater.

{Minimalist Cardigan
Patons Classic Merino Wool in color way “Cranberry”
Approx. 1000 yards
Modifications include lengthening sleeves, doing 1×1 rib for front band/collar
Started 2 Nov 2011, finished 26 Nov 2011}

Yes, it’s December 1st, and I’m posting about my November sweater. But hey, I finished it in November and wore it on Sunday, which was still November. Now I’m wearing it today, and it is the perfect sweater for me. No buttons, so I just wear it open. Roomy and comfy, this sweater is my new favorite.

This year for me has been one of epic crafting. I realized the other day that I had yet to post about my Shipwreck shawl that I made the first half of the year. I’ve hinted at it here and here, but never did a full post showing off this beauty.

 

It’s one that I consider a masterpiece in my knitting thus far, partly because of the knitting, and partly because it involved my own handspun yarn.

It took me three months to spin the 7 ounces of a merino top in colorway “Baltic Blue.”

 

I spun it worsted, laceweight, 2-plied, and ended up with 2 beautiful skeins equaling 1490 yards. This had been my most consistent and thinnest yarn to-date (I have since spun even better yarns than this!).

In May, I worked for three months to knit my first ever circular shawl, using the Shipwreck pattern. I decided to omit the beads because I’m not a bead person, and I felt that the handspun was so pretty on its own that I didn’t want to add anything else to it. This project reminds me of my first few months working my new job at the church, because this is the project I would take with me to work on during my lunch breaks.

I finished the shawl in July. Almost exactly 6 months from fiber to shawl! Although the circular shawl is not my favorite shape (I’m rather short, so it’s a lot of shawl for a short person), I’ve been enjoying wearing it to church now that we have entered what we consider our “winter” weather.

My favorite way to wear it is folded in half, draped around my shoulders. Or now that it’s a bit cooler, I wear it fully open, scrunched around my neck and thrown over a shoulder, so it looks like a beautiful poncho. I just might make another circular shawl after all…

November is known for many things, one of which is National Knit a Sweater in a Month aka NaKniSweMo. The origins of this is based off of NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month where people try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. For a knitter, something like a sweater can easily rack up 50,000 stitches.

I’ve had an itch to make several sweaters lately and having the yarn on hand has been torture. I had determined to knit some sweaters this month anyway, so having a National knitting month dedicated to the very thing I want to knit is just icing on the cake. So for November I will be making at least 1 sweater, if not 2. I’ve been wanting to make a Minimalist Cardigan for several years now, and I’ve had the pattern and yarn for just as long. Tonight, I finally cast-on. If all goes well, I’ll have a finished sweater in 2 weeks or less. Then that would leave the other 2 weeks to make a Beatnik pullover.

I’ve been telling myself for years that I live in the wrong state. I love the cool autumn and cold winter months, but those don’t last very long here in Mesa, Arizona. In fact, right now it’s mid-October and we are having a heat wave, with temps still reaching the triple-digits. Sigh. Then one day, bam, the temp will just drop by about 30-40 degrees, and then it will officially be sweater weather.

With summer so hot here, it’s almost as if summer is my winter. Then, when Fall comes, it’s like spring, full of fresh hope and relief from the weather I hate so much. Plus Fall brings so many wonderful new patterns and yarns, that I just can’t help that it’s my favorite time of year. I’m already busy working on Christmas gifts, sweaters, shawls, mittens (oh the mittens! I’m in such a mitten mood!), and hats. I really could use some new socks too, so I think I’ll add them to the list.

To help with all this knitting, I won a bunch of Malabrigo yarn from Mr. Yarn’s anniversary giveaway (pictured above). These 7 skeins of wooly goodness arrived at my house yesterday. After being gone all day at work and Bible study, it was great to come home late last night and open up this package and feel all this glorious yarn. I haven’t made plans for any of it yet, so for now I’m just enjoying looking at it through the giant clear ziploc that it now sits in on my bedroom floor (the stash is overflowing at the moment. Shh, don’t tell anyone).

Happy Fall everyone!

On Tuesday when the new Knitty went live, I spent some time perusing Knittyspin, like I always do. It seems that the past few issues have caught my eye more because of the spinning articles than because of the knitting patterns. And of course, reading about spinning stuff just made me itch to get on my wheel. It’s been over 2 months since I’ve had any time to spin, so finally on Tuesday night I made some time.

My goal recently is to try spinning different fibers. So far I’ve done merino, merino + firestar, alpaca + silk, and domestic wool. I was really excited to acquire some Bluefaced Leicester wool, Cotton + flax, and another type of wool that I can’t remember the name of now. I decided to spin up the Bluefaced Leicester, and this stuff is great! I can see why it’s commonly recommended for beginners, because it is very easy to spin. I don’t have to do any predrafting and it spins beautifully. It’s soft and has a little bit of lustre to it, so I can already tell from the singles that this is going to be a very beautiful yarn.

I’m fractal spinning this fiber (read this post for my first discussion about this technique), so I’m excited to see how the colors mix and match up once I ply. Unfortunately, it’s a Christmas present for someone, so I can’t reveal the colors. But I can say that the colors are deep, rich, vibrant ones that are going to make for a lovely yarn and a lovely knitted item.

I’ve noticed recently that as my social life has gotten more active in the last 2 years, my social knitting has decreased. What I mean by that is I haven’t been knitting/crocheting as much when I’m just hanging out with my friends, or out to a restaurant, or just waiting for something to start. I’m still bringing projects along, but somehow they always get left behind in the car.

It was so good on Sunday, then, to actually bring my knitting INTO the restaurant for lunch after church. My singles group has a tradition of eating Sunday lunch together every Sunday after church, and it’s something I look forward to all week. We usually hang out well into the afternoon, eating and enjoying each other’s company. This past Sunday, I brought along the new sweater project I started, and I was amazed at how much knitting I was able to get done while just enjoying conversation at the table. And I forget how much my friends like to see me doing something I love: playing with yarn.

Especially when I have a variegated skein of yarn, it brings hours of entertainment to both myself and the people watching enthralled as the color changes (“Pink! Oh now it’s Blue! Wait, what’ll be next, oh Yellow! And there’s Orange…”)