I'M SPINNING!!!!!

HOORAAAAY!!!!



Those are the fruits of my very first attempt!!! Rather lumpy, somewhat messy, and most likely unusable, but I DID IT!!! *happy dance*

Then I practiced it a bit more and managed to make it a bit thinner:



(by the way: it's SO hard to take a picture of that yarn while it was off the spindle, since I had to hold the camera with one hand and try to keep tension with the other! My cell phone is holding the yarn in place...sort of)

This is what happens if you don't hold the tension:



It gets all kinked up!

Here's my lovely spindle, with adorable sheep on the top:



And my 1/2 lb of domestic wool top roving:



And Fallen Leaves Afghan (lookin' the same, just a bit bigger. I forgot my measuring tape, so I can't even tell you how big it is, either. *sigh* )



And the totally sweet dog I'm house-sitting with, Brick:



Wish me luck as I attempt to make yarn with constant grist! (Fancy term for thickness of the yarn XD )

Until then, happy knitting (or spinning!),
~YoungKnitter

Fiber Roadtrip!

Today was a busy day! The family and I all got up to cheer on my dad as he finished his first 10k run in the Beach2Beacon! Super proud :D

Then Mom and I went on an epic Fiber Roadtrip!

We headed to Lisbon, ME to visit Spunky Eclectic , which looked like a SUPER cool store on its website! Buuuut it was closed when we got there. D:

SO! We drove to Bath, ME to visit Halcyon Yarn . OMIGOSH most glorious yarn store EVER! A great big retail space, with narrow rows between shelves that go allllll the way up to the ceiling with a zillion types of knitting yarn and a million types of weaving yarn and a billion types of roving for spinning.



(Photocred Novamade on flickr, I found the pic on Google images)

And. I. Bought. A. DROP SPINDLE! GAAAHHHH!!!!! I'm SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED!!!! I got a Louet High-Whorl Drop Spindle and it ROCKS.

And I bought a half a pound of plain ol' cheap ol' wool top to practice on! YAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!

And I bought two 1-lb cones of a gorgeous deep purple cotton weaving yarn that I'm gonna double-strand and use to make my Little Black Dress and I'm SO EXCITED!!

Have I mentioned that I'm excited?!?!? YAAAY!!!

The reason that I'm just posting links instead of uploading pictures is that A) my webcam is on strike, and B) I'm house-sitting for my neighbors, and I managed to leave my camera at home, and its dark and I don't feel like going over and getting it. Yaaay laziness!

So I'll post pictures of my spoils tomorrow. But before then, I'm gonna try my hand at SPINNING! YAY! :D :D :D

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

Twilight: Egad

My brother and I went to see a matinee of Eclipse (3rd movie of the Twilight Series) today! Good gracious that was an awful movie, and I enjoyed every minute of it!

Let's get a few things straight, first of all. I read and enjoyed all the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer, and saw and enjoyed all three movies (out so far) in theaters. The books are GREAT if you're looking for a fun escapist story, and not some serious literature or a realistic love story. The movies are GREAT if you're looking for some gorgeous manly eye-candy or sweet action sequences, and not cinematographic (its a word, i promise!) genius or breathtaking acting skills. And I go into the movie theater and bookstore expecting just those things, so I enjoy them immensely.

Luckily for us, the only other people in the theater with us today were a couple sitting a few rows back, and they seemed to be laughing and enjoying themselves as much as we were, so we didn't feel too guilty about giggling at the lovey-dovey dialogue and re-enacting the more awkward conversations ourselves.

My favorite scene of the whole movie:
Charlie (Bella's dad) "What's going on here?"
Jacob (werewolf/Bella's best friend who wants to steal her from Boyfriend/Vampire Edward) "I kissed Bella. Then she broke her hand. Because she tried to punch my face."

Charlie's face in response to that line was the movie's saving grace. I was laughing so hard I missed a whole minute of (riveting) dialogue afterwards.

But Jacob was so incredibly sexy in all his shirtless glory, and the fight sequences were pretty groovy, and the scenery (Washington rain forests) was breathtaking.

All in all, a rather enjoyable show. :-)

In other (more knitting-related) news: the Fallen Leaves Afghan is now 44" long!



Just 26" to go! YAAAY!!!

Edited to add: Jeez, I can do math. I meant 16"!!

p.s. I need to stop posting at 11.55pm. I'm cutting it pretty close for my blog-once-a-day plan. O.O

Bigger Afghan

Today was a bit cooler, so I sucked it up and pulled out the Autumn Leaves Afghan.

Tada!



Like Virginia said in her blog blog earlier today, it looks just the same as it did before, only bigger.

It's now 40 inches long, and I've decided I want to make it 60 inches long, total. So that means I'm now 66.7% done yaaay!!!

I head to school on the 18th, which is less than 2 weeks away (YAY/yikes!) and I'd reeeaalllyyyy like to get this blanket finished by then so that I don't have to lug it to school with me or wait until Thanksgiving to finish it. Now, lets see if I can actually do this...!

No progress on the Kalajoki sock #2, but here's the pic that wouldn't upload yesterday:



I had another good knitting sesh with the ladies at Paneras tonight. Met a lovely new knitter and talked about earthquakes, care packages, and sock construction :-) One of the ladies ordered the Spring/Summer seasons Shawl Kit from Knitpicks in the Shadow Tonal yarn, and spent the evening winding balls out of hanks, going over the pattern, and passing around her new interchangeable needle set for us all to drool over. The yarn is SO GORGEOUS!!! Beautiful colors, and so lovely and soft, too. It's in a lace weight, so the yarn is super-fine, but its so pretty *squee* Now if only I wore shawls... :-)

I'm starting to include direct links (yay links!) in my posts (in blue font!), so check out all the cool stuff!

More news (and hopefully lots of progress!) on the afghan tomorrow! Also: my dear brother finally consented to go with me to see Twilight: Eclipse. SO EXCITED! More on that tomorrow.

Until then, happy knitting!
~Young Knitter

Well, I made major progress on Kalajoki sock #2 today (in spite of the heat. Yaaay me!) buuuut I went to take pictures of it and A) my iPhoto wouldn't talk to Blogger and upload the pic I'd imported and B) my PhotoBooth decided it didn't have a camera. O.o

So here's a picture of some socks that I didn't make YAAAAAAY!



What I did for a lot of today instead of knitting (super-hot heat, did I mention that?) was researched spinning and roving and spindles and fiber and GOOD SWEET LOVE I WANT TO LEARN HOW TO SPIN!!!!!

D*mn my lack of job and crafting-funds DX

I did some researching, and I've been looking at drop spindles and fiber that would be affordable for a poor, starving college student.

Check some of these out:

Online Fiber sources:

http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Bare_Peruvian_Highland_Wool_Roving__D5420200.html

http://www.yarn.com/webs-spinning-fibers-natural-wool/

http://www.spunkyeclectic.com/shop.php?crn=220

Groovy Shop in Lisbon, ME

http://www.spunkyeclectic.com/shophome.htm

Spindles:

http://www.spunkyeclectic.com/shop.php?crn=236

YUM!

SO! Mom and I are planning a road trip on Saturday to Lisbon to visit that great store and also to Bath to visit a cool yarn store we found in a magazine article. After cheering my dad on in the Beach to Beacon race, of course :-) More pictures soon (once I sweet talk my iPhoto into working again)

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

Baking = perfect excuse for a knitting break

I made banana bread today!



And in the meantime I made good progress on my Kalajoki sock #2!



I'm all set up for gusset decreases. :-)

One hilarious mistake I consistently make in knitting socks is jumping the gun on picking up the gusset stitches before I even turn the heel. So I go straight from the 2.5" heel flap to picking up stitches for the gusset to the gusset decreases. Which means I have WAY TOO MANY stitches around the heel. Now, I did this for my mom's mother's day socks, and the results weren't TOO disastrous. The heels were a tad baggy, but not horribly so.

Luckily, I didn't do that on these socks :-) I almost did, but I caught myself. *so proud*

So I have gusset decreases and banana bread to look forward to tomorrow :D

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

SO MUCH YARN!!!

Today, I went through ALL of my yarn, needles, hooks, and patterns to see what I want to keep and what I don't. And can I say WOW! I have a lot of stuff O.O I ended up tossing quite a bit of stuff out because it was either a puny good-for-nothing ball of yarn or a pattern I'll never make from a skein-band on a yarn I didn't like or whatever. And I took most of the yarn that I don't want but is still good enough to use to the Yankee Yarn Swap with my lovely knitting ladies tonight! They liked what I had to offer (even the legendary rainbow-vomit Red Heart SuperSaver yarn I've had since I first learned to knit) and I came home with quite a few spoils of my own!

(Good news: I found my connector cable! So I can take pics using my camera now! HURRAY! Bad news: I completely forgot about tonight's blog until just now, so I had to take pictures of my new yarn in extremely poor lighting in my room. Sorry!)

First: some scrumptious LionBrand Imagine, 80% Acrylic, 20% Mohair in a nice tan. Could be a good scarf for my mom?



Second: The totally luscious LionBrand Romance, 85% Acrylic, 15% Mohair in a lovely pale lavender. And a good 480 yards of it, too! Another scarf? Some fuzzy mittens?



Third: A skein of Red Heart Collage (100% Acrylic) which is surprisingly soft, and a really pretty red-fading-to-blue color. Maybe a hat for me :-)



Last but not least, this is what Deborah tells me is just plain ol' TLC, but I just couldn't pass up these great colors!



I had a great time with the ladies at Paneras, as I usually do. We gushed over yarn and shared our cool projects and giggled over countless random topics like we do. Getting to know the Harmony Haven Knitters has made me really want to start my own knitting group at Vandy. More on that later :-)

(p.s. Paneras Smoked Turkey sandwich on Country Bread never fails to impress me. Ahhhh the simple joys of life ^^ )

I also made some good progress on my Kalajoki sock #2! :-)