I'm running my first swap!

Quite exciting, I'm running my first swap over at Ravelry, called Mix Makers. The focus is on created CD mixes and sending yarn to each other. We're trying to keep the cost fairly cheep, and put the emphasis on made gifts instead of spending a lot of money. There's still time to sign up... until Saturday, so if you're interested, you should come on by.

I'm anticipating this being a lot of fun. I've been in a few swaps that haven't been fiber related, and I participated in Secret Pal12 and am planning on being in Secret Pal 13, but I wanted to do something my way. I hoping it goes well, and I'm looking forward to having people stop by from the Swap (hi y'all if you're already out there!)

In other news, I updated my WIP's, and as you can see on my left sidebar, I have quite a few more going. I actually have to add one more, I'm doing an Alchemy thing on Etsy, where I'm making a squirrel for someone who wants one and in return I get some banners made for my Etsy store. I love bartering. To me it seems like I'm saving money... always a good thing.

Although, I've bought more fiber than I probably should have from Etsy and Ebay in the last few days... I'm afriad I've been feeling a bit down and lonely at college, and my normal two reactions are to eat and to craft. Since I'm trying to get my eating under control, I'm afraid that my crafting, and urge to buy yarn and fiber, has increased. I should really work on that.

What else can I tell you? Oh! Do you remember my post about my Firefly shawl? (I do have to say, for someone who has problems taking pictures {especially pictures of my wholemade yarn- why do they never come out FOCUSED?!?} that's a really good picture of the shawl) I'm working on making it a pattern you can purchase on Etsy and Ravelry. It should be lots of fun if I get it to work. Playing around with crochet graphing software and writing out instructions at least keeps me occupied. *grins*

Have you ever been in any swaps? Would you like to be in one or do they have no interest for you?

Continuing adventures with the boyfriend socks

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Originally uploaded by jenamberautumn

Now, I've only made one other pair of socks before I did these. I had always been told that socks were hard to do, but with the top down socks I worked on first, I found them quite easy. However, for my boyfriend's socks I wanted to try something different so I did some research on different sock patterns and came up with something I think I like. (This might change when I get to turning the heel).

For figuring out what needle size to use and generic information was helpful. However, for turning the heel I think will be helpful. The toe start might be an official pattern, but I "invented" it by casting on ten stitches, knitting the row, purling the next row, then knitting again, and then taking a crochet hook and creating ten stitches on the side I cast on, putting five stitches on four needles. #I knit in the round, for one circle. *The next circle I knit one, made a stitch, and knit the next four (so there were six stitches on the needle). The Next needle I knit four, made a stitch and knit the last. I repeated from the * for the next two needles. Then I repeated from the # so I ended up having ten stitches on my four needles. I then switched to my longer dipoint needles and knit in the round.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my boyfriend's measurements yet (for his foot) so I transfered my first sock onto my connected needles and started the second sock. Now that I have my boyfriend's measurements (as of midnight this morning) I can proceed. We'll see how it works out. It might come out terribly, in which case I'll try again. But so far, so good.