Wednesday Contest Shoutout

I'm debating about making this a Wednesday feature, where I mention any of the contests I've come across the previous week. What do you think? Is it a good idea, or can you find the contests on your own, and you don't need me to mention them?

Well, until I get your responses, I'm going through with this week. Contests I've come across:

Knitting in the Bellybutton of California has a sock yarn contest for her 100th post. Tell her what you want to make next out of yarn, and/or mention her on your blog.

Beckyknitstoo is having a contest where you tell her about your favorite Halloween costume.

The Knit Witch is having a Halloween Ghost-story telling contest. Tell her about a ghost story of yours and post her contest on your blog.

And of course, My contest is still going on! Writing a comment will get you an entry. Mentioning the contest in your blog will get you TWO entries, just make sure that in your comment you link back to your blog. Thirdly, if you make a halloween-themed object during this month, leave a link on the comments and you get TWO entires. You can comment as much as you want (if you spam my blog, that will get you disqualified), you can make as many halloween themed stuff as you want.

So what do you think? Do you like the Wednesday Contest Post?

I got an amazing package from my SP12 friend!

Look at this lovely stuff I got from my SP 12 pal! You should go check out her blog, radarkaty.blogspot.com.

She sent me sevral books, an adorable Halloween lantern, a crochet case (god, I've been needing one of her's and the one she made me is lovely!) (it's from an line Berroco pattern, kluster), weight watchers stuff (much needed as midterms draw near), and yarn. Georgeous, wonderful yarn. I'm thinking I need some pairs of heavy socks as the cold weather comes on, don't you? *grins*

Thank you so much Kathleen! I'll write more when I have more time, but for now, I'll be in touch.

I haz a spinning wheel!

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Originally uploaded by jenamberautumn

Okay, really it arrived last week, but I've been busy spinning and with my sculpture (which is almost done, and then I will put photos up!) so I haven't been able to do it justice.

As for the spinning wheel, it runs like a dream. It's gorgeous. I purchased it from guinnessfan-tastic on ebay, and they worked well with me when confusions arose (all on my part).

As for the spinning wheel itself, it runs like a dream. I love the whirring sound, and the extra bobbins they sent me were a plus. Really really nice.

So I've been spinning up some yarn, and my best attempts I'm putting up for sale on etsy. (just so I can recoup some of the costs of roving and the spinning wheel itself- check out my store on the left!) I must say myself, I have a pretty smooth draw from my drop spindle, and as a result I think it carries over very well to using a spinning wheel.

I'm thinking about a contest in the next few weeks. What do you think? I'm thinking about offering up some handspun, as well as another treat, perhaps.

Any ideas for another small gift to go along with the handspun in a contest? I'd love some suggestions! Leave them in the comments.

Musings, and what's been going on

Well, I've been amiss in my blog, and various other things, but I'm making it up, I promise!

Things have been active around here. I've moved into a single, and I'm still adjusting to having my own space for the first time in what seems like forever. I've got a shelf entirely devoted to yarn, and I love how it's visually accessible.

See?
The self is right under the bed.

So, I've been able to see my yarn more, and that's quite exciting.

So what have I been working on? I made a shawl, out of some yarn I won, but I'm not quite sure if I like it. It was an experiment, and it's ok, but ended up really long. It's such a disaster that I'm not posting it up, but the one thing that redeems it is the color, a deep deep purple and grey color.

I've been working on my ripple afghan, and it's slowly coming along.



I also bought myself a spinning wheel out of some money I've been saving for that purpose. I'm hoping it is all right, because I bought it sight unseen, but the company has good reviews and I have faith. I've also bought some fiber to start me off, though I don't think it's going to last me that long.



I've got some other exciting thigns going on that I'll talk about later. (hint: see my works in progress!)

Plan to see more of me!

Major Update

So for those of you who have been hanging out with no updates, I apologize. While I do have limited internet at camp, often by the end of the day I'm too tired to go to the one place we have wireless to wait forever for the connection to sign me in so I can post. But I'm on a day off, well rested, and can get time to post a bit.

Working at camp is going a lot better, I've finally settled into my role and have gotten comfortable in it, for the most part.

The other weekend we had a raffle at camp and I won three skeins of brushed mohair. Pictures will come soon, but it is gorgeous. I don't know what to do with it, but I'm sure I'll think of something. The only problem is the dye lots aren't quite the same.

On my night off I went to Northhamption to get more of a yarn that I've fallen in love with only to find that North Hampton Wools was closed an hour and a half early. It made me really sad because now I have to wait to go. *mutters*

I recently got some new crochet books (one of them courtesy of my SP12 pal... and it's amazing) (Thank you PAL! You're doing such a good job pampering me... and I love getting packages at camp!) and I've been fooling around with some of the patterns on some of my more generic yarn to see how the patterns play out. Naturally, it just gets to me using the patterns for inspiration because I can't seem to follow directions without thinking on how I could "improve" a design, but I'm having fun.

So that's the quick update! Write more later.

What yarns would make my stash complete/ what yarns can't I be without?

Wow, tough questions, like last week. I'd have to say that the yarn that would make my stash compete is a yarn I saw a year ago at a small novelty shop. It was this silk yarn that just flowed like water. At the time I could neither afford it, nor would I have been in the mood to make something out of it, so I talked myself out of buying it.

But I still think about what I would make out of it. I suppose it comes close to a yarn I dream about. I'm sitting on the beach, and I grab the water and twist, and it becomes yarn, which I begin to crochet. As I crochet, I make a blanket, which if you look at out of the corner of your eye, contains the ocean- fish, mermaids, sea-wrecks, whales, dolphins, squids, coral, and all manner of other creatures. It is a fey blanket, destined for someone that cannot bear to be without the sea, but must.

The yarn I saw in the store was a very pale approximation of that dream yarn, but it is the closest I've come.

As for what I can't be without? Some cheep acrilic for when I need to make something simple or easy, or I want to test out a pattern I'm working on. Some wool, because I love the feel of it through my fingers. Bright mohair, and some nice alpaca, because again, I love the feel. A solid, affordable cotton for when I'm working on cheep therapy- washcloths.

Missing my boyfriend

I've been feeling kinda low lately because my boyfriend and I are on two timezones apart. He works at Philmot, which is a boyscout camp in New Mexico, and I work at Camp Chimney Corners (an AMAZING camp) in Massachusetts. Days off are normally for 24 hours, and there's no way we can see each other all summer. Then, before we can get together I fly out to North Carolina where I go to school, and he is doing a semester at sea that goes out of Wood's Hole, MA. There's a good chance I might not see him until winter break.

So this summer we are going to be communicating entirely by handwritten letters, and last night was the last night I could talk to him via electronics. To compensate for missing him, I'm making him a pair of socks. As I knit the soft material, it's both soothing and fun to answer questions about him to my friends. Luckily, I'm now at camp working, so I have less time to be missing him. It's nice to watch the socks grow.

Do you use knitting or crochet as therapy?

Contest!

So as I've been getting ready to go to my summer job at camp, I've been going through my stashes, trying to decide which projects I'm going to bring to camp, and what yarns. Since a large part of the first two weeks of camp has evenings free, and there is a bunch of staff training, this is one of the times that I make the most progress on my projects all year. So careful selections are in order.

Which brings me to the point of the post. I'm putting together a bag of yarns that i don't think I'll ever use. These are yarns I bought for some reason or another because I loved them- the color or the texture simply pulled me. Some are novelty yarns, some are leftovers from other porjects, and some are yarns that I've simply moved on from- they just don't appeal to me any more.

I will be frank. Some of these yarns are leftovers. Some of these yarns are in strange colors. But they are also (in my opinion) jewels.

So, after a bit of debate in my mind, I've decided to run my first contest to give away these yarns. During this month any of the comments on any of my posts will count. Then, at the end of the month I will use a random number generator to find which person will win the yarns. You are unlimited in the number of entries you can submit, as long as you leave thoughtful comments. This means that you'll get more chances the more you post on my blog!

I plan to put a photo up, once I get new batteries for my camera.

So tell me, are there any yarns you hold on to for one reason or another?

One of THOSE projects

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Originally uploaded by jenamberautumn

Everyone has one of those projects that goes on and on and on. For me, it's my Christmas and Summer blanket. I started this my junior year of highschool, and now just over four years later it STILL isn't done. It's not that I don't love working on it... I do.

And it's not that I don't think it's beautiful... I do.

It's just that it's gotten so long and so big... it's a problem carting it everywhere.

So today I wanted to take another look at this blanket, and share some of its stories.

This blanket was one of my first big project I ever did. I got the pattern in an old crafting book... the standard crochet ripple afghan pattern, and then proceeded to modify it so that it would be wider, because I love really really big blankets. And I was making it for myself, so I wanted it really really big. It was one of those strikes of fortune... my grandmothers had given me carte blanch at the yarn store, and I went and picked out all my favorite yarns. The original pattern called for nine rows of a color, broken up by three rows of the base color. It was really retro. But very soon into making the blanket I decided I wanted to change it up more. Instead of doing nine rows of one color, I would do nine rows of color, and three rows of white. I like how it turned out. Basically, I do whatever I feel like when it comes to the pattern.

Now, this whatever I feel like doesn't come without problems. You see, I didn't quite measure out the distance right, so on one side the "V" goes down where on the other side it goes up. They're both susposed to go down for pattern reasons, and I find that I need to 'compensate' a little on the pattern. Also, with all the color changes the sides are rather ragged, but I think that's ok because I"m going to edge the whole thing in white when I'm done. So it will look normal, I swear!

In the next few days, I'll be posting on some stories that involve my Chrismas/Summer afghan. But in the meantime I'd like to ask you. Do you have a project that goes on and on and on? Is it one that you enjoy, but for some reason just get to only once and a while? I'd like to know.

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.

Secret Pal 12!

Secret Pal 12!

I saw this before and decided I desperately wanted to join.

Here's the questionnaire:

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
My favorite yarns to knit with tend to be different types of wool: plain sheep wool which I love to felt. I recently got some alpaca by Lavish (www.lavishfibres.com) which I'm making into socks for my boyfriend. I love just running it through my hands. I also like cotton such as Lily's Sugar 'n Cream line or Ty-Dy by... I can't think of the name right now.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
As of right now? An old case for glasses for my crochet hooks, and a plastic bag for my di-point knitting needles. I always intend to make something where I can carry and organize them all in, but I hesitate to buy something at the store because it often has only one place for a size hook, and often I have doubles of my favorite hooks because I want the hook to match the project. Sometimes I want aluminum for a project that I'm churning out, but if I'm doing it more for the pleasure, I might get out one of my beautiful wooden shaped hooks so I can more enjoy the process.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I've been crocheting since I was six or seven (I'm 21 now) and while I prefer to do more simple, clean lined projects, I would consider myself advanced in crochet.

Knitting is another matter. I learned to knit when I was ten, but never enjoyed it as much as I did crochet, probably because by that time I was rather quick at crochet, and awkward with my knitting needles. Recently, in the last six months, I've slowly picked up knitting again. I started with a pair of socks, which turned out well but large, because I do continental style knitting (feeding from my left hand almost like crochet) instead of the throwover method, and I've found that my gauge is a bit looser so I have to choose a smaller needle than the pattern dictates (sometimes I'll even go two sizes down).

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
Yes! I love to read, but oftentimes don't have the money to buy the books I want, so I go on Amazon and pretend to shop by adding things to my wish list. It's like drinking water when you're hungry... eventually I'll eat but I can hold it off until I have some time.

It's located at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1NQLYUYXB2SEJ

5. What's your favorite scent?
I don't wear perfumes, but I do put vanilla bean sachets into my drawers (especially my sock ones). I like vanilla because it's subtle. I also like the Bath and Bodyworks lemon handsoap. A lot.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
I do have a sweet tooth, but I've been on Weight Watchers for the last two years and have lost 55 lbs, so I humbly request that candy be sent in very small quantities because I have very little willpower. Given that, I love sugar free york peppermint patties, Weight Watchers bars and frutties, dried fruit (dried strawberries and kiwi are my favorites)

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I do spin, if badly, but I still enjoy it. I've never had formal instruction on how to spin, which I think might be part of it. I have a single drop spindle which is rather worn and well loved, and occasionally I'll treat myself to some fiber.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
I like country, oldies, musical soundtracks, folk music, irish music and am open to almost anything.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?
I tend to like blues and greens when choosing yarn, though I look better in brighter colors. I wear a lot of pink, light yellow, jewel tones, and bright blues. I'm not fond of muted colors, tans, dark greens, etc.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I'm the oldest of four children. I don't have any pets, except for my youngest brother. *wink* I'm a senior at Davidson College (our basketball team rocks!).

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
I occasionally wear scarves if they're soft and warm. I love mittens, socks and hats (thought I don't always look good wearing hats). I've actually haven't owned a poncho since the winter of ninth grade (it was black and I was trying to be a goth which lasted until the spring) so I think I would wear one if I had one.

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
Well, I haven't been seriously knitting for all that long, so I've been doing simple things- socks for the most part. But I don't normally do socks in sock yarn unless it is on the thicker side of sock yarn (or worsted) because I'm still slower at knitting than crochet and I do like to feel like I'm making progress. Thing sock yarn feels much too SLOW.

13. What are you knitting right now?
Socks for my boyfriend. Thick yarn not made for socks, but they're turning out good.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
I do, mostly because none of my friends are as crafty as I am, so I don't get them.

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic? If it's crochet I like aluminum (Boye- I'm picky), though I already have a large collection. I also love wood for crochet needles, as long as they're well polished.

Knitting needles I have full sets in in 6" and 10" di-point needles (from 0-10.5) I also have lots of plastic circular, but I don't like the feel of them so I don't use them that much. For knitting I prefer bamboo, because I need a little bit more friction. Aluminum tends to just slip too much for me.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
No to both, and god how I'd love them.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?
Four years. It's my christmas/summer ripple crochet blanket, because those are the only times I work on it.

18. What is your favorite holiday?
Halloween and St. Patrick's day. It's a tie, and each of them happens in a different semester so it counts. Why? because for both of them I dress up and go all-out. My father is a Shriners clown by the name of Shamrock, so it's rather necessary that I dress up on St. Patrick's day.

19. Is there anything that you collect?
My Little Ponies... but not in a serious way. More like I'll be in the store and see one I like and buy it. It goes back to when I was a kid.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
I don't have a subscription to any magazines, much to my disappointment. As for patterns, I tend to like to play, or wing-it. Patterns are guidelines. I'm very visual, so I like to look at crochet things at the store so I can copy them. Recently I got a book of different advanced crochet stitches that I love (blanking on the name and it's still in my boxes that I have yet to unpack from college) to just play and experiment with.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
Hairpin lace.

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
Yes, I've knit socks. I also crochet them though it doesn't work as well.

Foot Measurements?: Heel to toe: just short of nine inches. Base of little toe to bottom of my arch, where the heel begins: just shy of four and three quarters inches. Widest part of my foot: four inches.

23. When is your birthday? April 24th

24. Are you on Ravelry? If so, what's your ID?
Yes. jecrowley