Knitting Humor

Find more Lola comics HERE. (They crack me up!)

And one more thing....

I mentioned yesterday all the yarn goodies we purchased at the UMA Fall Fiber festival, but I neglected to mention one other little purchase that has been kind of fun. We picked up two felted balls for our cat Izzi. Well guess who keeps running off with them?

Yup. Miss Emma has claimed the cat toys for herself. The cat finds them interesting as well, but the dog has pretty much laid claim to them. Funny. Maybe I will have to bring a new cardboard box home for the cat. She loves it when there is a new box she can bite and jump into. Always cracks me up!

Upper Midwest Alpacas 3rd Annual Fiber Festival

Fate was working for me this year and the Upper Midwest Alpacas 3rd Annual Fall Fiber Festival was held on my B-day! So my hubby and I headed out to Hopkins, MN and spent an hour or two looking over local fibers. This is only the second fiber festival I have been to and it was tiny compared to the Shepherd's Harvest Sheep & Wool Festival I went to in May. This festival was held in a school Gym and there were about 50 vendors set up.

I had an interesting talk with the vendor selling corn yarn about the milling process. He said that they had to change mills because of the road construction crews discovering that a biodegradable corn fiber mesh could be used to stop hillside erosion and now the mills are pumping out this corn based mesh like crazy. So the mill that would spin his fiber bumped him to a different mill, (smaller mill) and the fiber he got from this other mill is WAY softer! Interesting! (I found an article about this here if anyone is interested.)

We also had a nice chat with a lady selling Wassail cider and jelly. We picked up some of her spice packets and jelly for gifting this holiday (shhhhh) and she admired my Lucy Bag. She told me that she wanted to knit a bag and felt it and she went to the yarn store and the yarn cost her $200.00! She was horrified. :) I think I have gotten used to the sticker shock of good wool. Also - I thought it funny that she was horrified about the cost of yarn when every booth around her was selling expensive luxury yarn. Hee hee.

There were a lot of chatty people here who would just walk up and start talking to you. It was pretty welcoming and comfortable. I walked the entire circuit and then went back for the yarn I HAD to have. I ended up with four skeins.

This is 7.50 oz (469 Yards) of Black Alpaca from Enchanted Meadows in Wausau, Wisconsin. I believe this is about a Sport Weight (or DK?) and it's just squishy goodness. I new when I touched it that it was coming home with me. So. Awesome!

This Blue Lusciousness is 300 Yards of 100% Suri in Sport Weight from Riverside Alpacas in Lake City, MN. This yarn is so cool in my hands - it's almost silky to the touch. It is fun to just pet it over and over. I had to have this blue - my picture doesn't show the depth of color here - but it's just wonderful.

This skein is an Angora Rabbit and Wool Blend (60/40), it is worsted weight, and it holds 300 yards. This is from Angora Gardens from Clarks Grove, MN. They had really soft samples knit up at their booth and it made me want Angora Yarn in the worst way! This blend was pretty wonderful to touch and a little closer to my price range than the full angora I found sold at another booth. (Boy is it awesome to squish though!) This is the thickest yarn I purchased - which is funny since I am a bulky weight girl in most of my knitting.

And my final purchase was this lovely hand dyed sock yarn from Knit in Class Fiber Studios. The colors of the yarn were so wonderful! And the yarn is just squishy goodness. I try not to buy to much Superwash yarn, but this is a Superwash Sock yarn - in the colorway Smoke. 460 yards of soft yarn. Very lovely. I think it will make a nice shawlette.

I am quite pleased with my Stash Enhancement and have been having fun feeling the yarn and trying to think about what it wants to be knit into. Ravelry here I come! :)

Wine about Winter Mitts

I do a lot of knitting with Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky yarn. Both of my Tread Mill afghans have been knit from this yarn and I use the left overs from these afghans for lots of fast projects. I recently came across this free pattern Easy Half Mitten 106 on Ravelry.

This is a great pattern! It used up slightly more than a half skein of yarn (under 70 yards) and the mitts fit wonderfully. The yarn is really thick so I know these will keep me warm while I work on the computer this winter.

 I really like the thumb on this pattern. It's worked in pattern so you don't end up having to do some complicated gusset. It's very simple and yet very clever. I really like it!

I am fairly pleased with the length of these. The top ribbing stops just under my knuckles, which is pretty perfect for working on the keyboard. You don't want it going too high or it constricts motion in the pinkie finger.

If I made these for myself again I might be tempted to go down a needle size in the body - but for speed and simplicity of pattern - maybe not. Whipping through the whole thing on one size of double points is pretty easy.

Birthday Girl! Wahooo!

Today is my 40th Birthday.  Naturally I need to start my 40's off with a bang and I woke bright and early at 2:15 this morning and could not get back to sleep. Around 3:30 I got up and came out to my computer and started watching video's on Utube on how to Crochet. I always want to learn how to crochet around my birthday partly because I spent one of my birthdays over at my mom's house and we sat out on the back porch and she tried to teach me how to crochet. It didn't stick. I ended up missing a few steps in the process and the scarf I tried to crochet lost stitches every row (I suspect I forgot to chain one at the end of each row) and I gave up.

This morning I found a really nice tutorial on UTube and started following along. I tried first on my left over Sheep(ish) yarn from my KAL Cowl, but quickly decided it wasn't working and grabbed a ball of Sugar 'n Cream cotton instead. (Probably not the best choice for a beginner in crochet as the yarn is splitty - but I have knit about a bajillion wash clothes in the last 10 years - so I am pretty comfortable with this yarn.) I chained 21 stitches on my Size H hook and started trucking. A few short hours later and I have my very first finished crochet project!

I discovered a few things when I made this:
1. Crochet is soooooo fast! My knit wash clothes take days for me to make. This was my first one and I finished in hours. Wow!
2. Counting is important. I have a tendency toward confusing where the hook should go in, so I sometimes increase or decrease unintentionally. So I methodically counted every row until I had several inches done and that seemed to help.
3. Using variegated yarn is SUCH a great idea! The yarn I was working was always a different color from the stitch I was attaching too. It really helped me keep things straight in my head and I think I will stick to variegated yarns while I learn.
4. Ripping back is easy. I had to get over my "fear of frogging" but once I found out how easy it was to clean up a mistake I was ripping back all the time. It was great!

I am very pleased with my first crochet and I am going to keep working at it. I really want to be both a crocheter and a knitter. I think the two lend well to each other (crochet edges on knit items are awesome. Crocheting my knit squares together rather than hand stitching??? Um. Heck yeah!) and I would love to wear both crowns with pride.

In other knitting news, I was looking at my Caron.com weekly e-mail and saw that Vickie Howell had posted pictures and info about the Knit A Long  that I participated in. When I went to look at her blog I saw that my picture and one of my comments I made in the Ravelry Forums was posted on her Blog! It was strange seeing a photo of myself on someone else's blog! But admittedly pretty cool and probably the closest I will ever come to FAME so it was kind of neat. :) Sadly I am called "Literary Lady" not LiteraryLadybug - but what cha gonna do? It's still me! ;)

Today is Saturday and Yes, even though I was on vacation all week and even thought today is my 40th Birthday, I weighed in. I don't know what diet God or Goddess was watching over me, but I somehow managed to lose weight again this week! I lost 1.8 lbs this week which puts my Weight Watchers total at -18.3 and my overall at -33.3 lbs. I also got the excitement of buying smaller clothes this week! Smaller underwear, smaller jeans, smaller tops. It's so exciting! I feel so good! And to go into a dressing room with jeans a size smaller than I was wearing into the store and have them fit like a dream? Yeah. I almost got emotional in the dressing room. (Meaning - I had a moment of Holy Shit! and then a moment of proud tears and then I threw open the door and strutted around the area to show off my awesomeness to my husband.)

I am so proud of myself for losing this weight. I am excited to continue on my journey, and I can't wait to see where I end up!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Ribbed - For No Ones Pleasure

Ribbed Cardigan Vest pattern by Plymouth Yarn Company. (Pattern #1662)

 I started knitting this pattern in March of 2010. I thought it looked easy and was probably a great bridge for me into garments. I am about 1/3 of the way through this project and it's about 18 months after I started it. It's not a hard pattern at all, but it commits an even worse sin. It's boring. It's 100% ribbing and it's slow as snot and it's dull dull dull.

 I started off strong. I got through the original ribbing section. I remember thinking the next part would feel so much faster since it is half the stitches as the first section & it's perfect sitting in front of the TV knitting. Yeah. Right.



 I would force myself to work on it occasionally, but really didn't make much progress. The other problem for me with the project is the color. It's pretty, but I prefer to knit with explosions of color rather than a cloudy sky. I picked this color because I really thought a neutral was a better choice for me in terms of actually wearing something I knit. As fun as crazy Kettle died yarn is - it's kind of hard to wear it all the time in anything larger than an accessory for a fairly tame girl such as myself.

So this weekend when we went away on our camping trip I brought this as my only knitting. After many many hours of knitting I am now approaching the half way point on the project. (Not there yet - but I am getting there.) This is so painfully boring to knit. It is just awful.

I have been tempted to get rid of it. I have stuffed it in my closet for months on end and ignored it for new fun knitting. I have fears that when I do finally finish it I will have lost so much weight it will look silly. (I don't mind that thought too much. I mean seriously. Come on.) (And I don't think that is a real fear since this thing is so ribbed it could probably fit anything from a size 2 to a 22.) It wasn't until I added my WIPS to my blog page that I realized how much I had been neglecting this poor thing. So into the light you go WIP of Doom. I will finish you dang nab it. You shall not conquer me!



Camping Trip!

As part of my "Yay I am turning 40! Let's take the week off Vacation Extravaganza" we decided to go on a final camping trip. We have an old camper that we fixed up and that we haul around the state for our adventuring. This is the latest we have ever gone camping and it was a truly unique trip.

We stayed at Jay Cooke State Park which is just south of Duluth, Minnesota and about two and a half hours North of where we live in the Twin Cities. We headed up there on Monday afternoon and when we arrived found the park was pretty close to empty. The water for the park was shut off which translated into Vault Toilets and no showers. I am trying to embrace my rugged outdoor girl more and more. I have to fake it sometimes, but I am working on it. (Truth be told, vault toilets and wood ticks freak me the heck out!) So we picked the spot we wanted and then set up our camper. Then we had to run to town for supplies. This ended up being a run to Duluth since the nearest town to the park is Carlton, MN and the population is around 850 people. They had a grocery store but it was closed by the time we got there. So off to Duluth for some groceries and supplies. Then back to the camper where we had our dinner (Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and goldfish crackers) and then to sleep.

The next day was cold and wet. It ended up raining on us off and on the entire trip. But we were determined to get some hiking in - so off we went!

The trails we followed surrounded the St. Louis River. The leaves were past season, and it was raining off and on, but it was still a really amazing hike. It is also the hardest hike I have ever been on and I am still soar as I write this two days later. I have never been on a hike where I actually paid attention (and had gratitude toward) the trail blazers before. Spotting a hot pink piece of plastic tape tied to a branch on this hike was reassuring.

The rock formations were really interesting here. The trails were littered with rock and all through the town and the camp grounds there were interesting protrusions of rock. Fun to look at.

 In the background you can see the swinging suspension bridge that we had to cross to get over the river. The dog was less than thrilled at the noises the bridge made as we crossed it, but once we got to the other side Emma was all "YAY! Let's go!" and was practically pulling us along the trails for the first leg of our hike.

Tom and Emma climb some big rock formations on the river. These get slippery when it rains. I am just saying. Pretty though.

Emma had a hard time holding still on the hike. I am pretty sure she is telling us to get a move on! in this shot. She was one tired puppy when this was over and slept really well for the next couple days. It was great to get her out on a long hike. You can see the rock and tree roots that were the norm on the trail in this shot. The rock was slippery when it rained and we had to navigate some spots that were pretty much bogs they were so muddy.

There were a lot of tree roots that looked like this as we made out way through the woods. Images of Frodo danced through my head as I admired the lovely hobbit holes the roots made. We talked a little about how I could incorporate this kind of image into my knitting. That was when we had the energy to talk. Did I mention this hike was three hours long? Yeah. We were TIRED when we got back to the camper that afternoon. Just exhausted.

Tom stopped and took my camera and snapped this shot of me as we were heading down another hill. The trail wound up and down and up and down the side of the river. I am wearing Tom's gloves as I forgot to bring any mittens or gloves with! DOH! Emma is still raring to go at this point - and I am starting to get tired.

So the hike lasted about three hours and we took a trail marked "Difficult" on the map. It was challenging, that's for sure! I had to scoot down some rock formations on my butt once or twice. And wow - is a hike in nature a different work out then tread mill and Zumba! I am really glad we did it and I will not forget this camping trip anytime soon. A fitting end to my 39th year and to our 2011 camping season.