yarn love - Alaska edition

I loved Alaska. I could have been blogging every day since my return about how incredibly incredible the trip was, but to be honest, a picture's worth a thousand words, so check out my trip pics on Flickr.

One part you won't find in the photos is my visit to a local yarn shop in Juneau - Seaside Yarns. Incredible spot (a 3 minute walk from the dock), with a fantastic yarn selection and an even more fantastic shop owner. By the way, she has her own ETSY shop, because she hand dyes some really gorgeous stuff. The shop is empty now because it's high tourist season, so go and fav it now and revisit it in the Fall/Winter. Or email her with requests and she'll help you out.

The green on the far left is a sock weight, hand-dyed wool blend. The middle skein is also a hand-dyed sock weight, but it also includes flecks of sterling silver. I HAD to buy it because the colorway is "Whale Watching", which is what we were going to be doing that day...and also because it was the most beautiful yarn ever. And as it happens, it was the most amazing whale watching trip ever. The yarn on the far right is a qiviut (muskox wool) blend. SO soft, so amazing.

Can't wait to get started with the knitting...and then probably order more. I love supporting someone so passionate about their work and their product! Seriously, check her out.

Dueling stripes scarf

When I started planning out my 2012 projects, my favorite brother-in-law put in a request for a scarf. Easy enough, right? Surprisingly, picking a pattern and a yarn was much tougher than I thought it would be. If you're giving a handmade gift, there's pressure for it to be right, and doubly so when it was a special request. Triply so when it's for your favorite BIL. 

I finally decided on the famed Noro striped scarf that uses two colorways of Silk Garden. I fell in love with two Chroma colorways, and off I went! It was a fun knit, and I love the way it turned out. It stood up to the Alaskan wilderness, so I'm calling it a success. 

dye night

I've been completely unmotivated to dye yarn lately, but I was very excited about the opportunity to help my friends dye some yarn. It was really exciting to watch them come up with the concept for their color and decide which colors to mix to get there.

The entire process has lost its magic for me because I've done it so many times, but seeing their excitement really renewed my own enthusiasm. The process of dyeing is easy, but it does require all of this separate equipment, which is a huge hassle for someone who only wants to do it every now and then. So I'm glad I could host them (and I hope we can all do it again!) Honestly, I'm scheming for a shawl dye-a-long/knit-a-long.

Melanie took many more pics than anyone else, so check out her commentary on the evening as well.

so slack

I haven't not been blogging because I'm slack, it's because I've been crazy busy...mostly dying yarn! A great deal of it is going to Downtown Knits in Apex, NC, but a bit has been posted to my etsy store (check it out!).

Below are a few of my very favorites...









...more to come!

birthday fun!

I've blogged a lot about gifts this week, and I have to say that gifts are fun, but this birthday was the best ever not because of gifts, but because of my wonderful friends and family. I'm continually amazed at how lucky I am to be surrounded by people who are so thoughtful. From Groupons for my favorite yogurt ever to handmade birthday cards to candy corn, my life is fun and my heart is full.

So after my birthday dinner at Bella Monia (where I had the MOST amazing meal I've had in months), I spent the evening laughing with good friends and relaxing. What more could I want? ...a breakfast the next morning with more friends! SO much fun! I learned two things about my knitting friends: 1) they are serious gift-givers 2) they are super creative and amazing. I mean, I knew the second part, I guess now I have more illustrations of that.

Like, the "yarn ball surprise". I'm not sure if that's the technical name, but that's what I'm calling it. What is it? It's a giant ball of yarn, with a small-medium gift in the middle and many smaller gifts wrapped into the yarn. You have to unravel it to get to your gifts. How fun is that? Here's a pic of Deb's yarn ball, gifted by Melanie:



Any gift that's as much fun for spectators to see unraveled, as it is to receive (and probably to prepare), is a super-fantastic gift!

smells like money

Whenever someone mentions Madeline Tosh yarn, I always say "mmmm, smells like money". Why? Because it's pricey stuff. Pricey, but amazing. I've never bought any, but I saw the Honey Cowl in a magazine and decided that I had to have it. But I didn't seek the yarn out, I just milled the idea around in my head for a few months, until I ran across THE yarn in THE color in a yarn shop. Now that I have it, I can't bring myself to wind it and start the project. Should I make the cowl? Something else?

So I have two skeins, 450 yards (DK)...any alternate pattern suggestions? I want to make sure I do the yarn justice - after all, it does smell like money.

fetching fingerless gloves

I really love fingerless gloves. They are the perfect balance of 80s-tastic and modern sass. I'd been looking for a pattern using sock yarn, when I saw the Fetching Fingerless Gloves as a shop sample at Yarn Tree Studio. It may have taken me a total of 3 hours for the pair. Maybe. And those were mostly mindless hours. I knitted a pair of mittens last year for my niece, and the thumb was such a pain that I had been dreading this pattern. The truth is, from now on, I will try to modify patterns to work the thumb this way. So simple. Now...when will it be cold enough here for me to wear them??

a space of my own

I think the phrase is actually "a room of her own", but this is close enough for me. The dream became reality pretty quickly after the blueprints were drawn up, but this really should have happened a long time ago. I freed up SO much space in the living room and the third bedroom (which is so multi-purposed that it was bursting at the seams), so it's a win-win. Added bonus: my yarn will be locked up and out of Puggie's reach. Double bonus: I have plenty of space for more yarn now...and some fabric as well!

A big shout out to Jose for assembling the furniture and hanging the shelves. And for being supportive of the whole thing. And for not losing patience with Puggie as she walked all over the moving parts during construction. You forget that the "good" part of having a nervous dog is the fact that he never gets in the middle of projects like this. Puggie? She was all over it, every step of the way. Even the photo-taking process at the end - so appropriate.

blueprints of a dream

This may not look like much to you, but it's my craft workspace brainchild, sketched by Jose. I've been craving a dedicated space for all of my knitting supplies, but in the interest of being tidy, my stuff is all tucked in bins that are not-so-strategically scattered about my house. For those of you with any sort of crafty hobby, you completely know what I'm talking about and you feel my pain. Anyway, the result of me trying to be non-intrusive, is that I'm overly-intrusive. There are projects and supplies everywhere. It drives Jose crazy, and it really gets under the skin of the uber-planner/organizer in me. And it tempts Puggie to do bad things - by the way, she doesn't really need me to enable her, she gets into enough on her own.

So my latest kick is that I want a sewing machine. I've sewn a lot of things by hand over the years, and I have a half-finished quilt tucked away in a closet...PLUS, my friends Christy and Tina talked about (and flaunted) their sewn goods until I caved. Well, that was really the straw that broke the craft supply camel's back...I carved out a corner of our guest room, and after much measuring and online browsing, I came up with this configuration. I used painters tape to mark it up and see if it would work and Jose was nice enough to sketch it all out. It works, and I love it. Now comes the hard part: material retrieval and construction. Stay tuned.

the great yarn fiasco of 2011

Oh, Puggie. Why did you do it? Since she can't talk, we can only assume that she did this because I was painting in another room and had locked her out. Because I didn't want her to breathe in the fumes. Because I love her. Jose thinks that she thinks that yarn is a toy. Not me. I think she's just mischievous. And super cute.

Side note for the knitters: this is the cheapest yarn I have in my stash. I told her that she's lucky the Madeline Tosh wasn't the one that struck her fancy.

rasta neckwarmer

I saw the Rasta Neckwarmer shop sample at Yarn Tree Studio last week and fell in love. I sometimes get "crazy eyes" while I'm in a yarn shop and buy buy buy and then end up not making the project, so I left the yarn and gave myself a one week cooling off period. At the end of the week I was even more enthusiastic about the project than I was initially, so I pulled the trigger.

One skein of Malabrigo Rasta yarn in Zarzamora + 3 hours of knitting and button sewing time + my friend Megan's time spent deconstructing and reconstructing the pattern = perfection. All time and money was well spent. Thanks to Katherine for letting me borrow her giant size 17 needles. Big props also to Megan for her work on the pattern! She's the Yoda of knitting and I couldn't have done this without her.

bright summer cowl

This is a summer cowl I made from 2 of the 4 skeins of Katia Colibri that my friend Melissa gifted me. I cast on about 60 stitches with my size 11 needles and knit in garter stitch for what seemed like forever...then I cast off and whipped the ends together to create the circle. Simple, bright, funky. Love it!

And thanks again to Hol for modeling!

wedding cowl

This time last year I took a yarn painting class from Nancy Shroyer at the Carolina FiberFest. I used the colors from my wedding as inspiration for the first skein I painted and I've changed my mind 20 times in the past 12 months about what I should knit with it.



In the end I chose a basic cowl pattern from the 2010 issue of KnitScene Easy. After I finished the project, I realized that Nancy's daugher, Lisa Shroyer, wrote the pattern. So the mom taught me to dye the yarn and her daughter provided the perfect pattern - what a small knitting world we live in!


I think it turned out pretty well. For Christmas last year, Jose gave me a pair of earrings that match the yarn perfectly, so now I just have to wait for some cooler weather and then work up the nerve to wear such vibrant colors! Perhaps I'll debut it publicly on our sixth anniversary this September.

See the 2nd skein I dyed and the final project I knit with it here.