New Location! 01/27/2012
For more on the Neapolitan Tweed Cape check out http://jewalldesigns.blogspot.com/ !!! Add Comment Important Announcement! 01/23/2012
First off, exciting news! 
Even more exciting: I'm moving to a new location! I've now got a blogspot domain so you can more easily follow me and I can more easily follow you! Also, you'll find out more about this Neapolitan Tweed over at my new blog http://jewalldesigns.blogspot.com/ (jewall.blogspot was already taken). That is where you'll find all of my future projects and posts! Am I a Crazy Person? 01/14/2012
I may have just designed and knit an entire hat in less than 24 hours... Details later - I've got a birthday party to go to! Edit with details: So a really good friend of mine was having her birthday party yesterday, and since it was the first week of school last week, I didn't really have time to think about a gift. I knew I wanted to knit something, but I never go on it.. until Friday night at around 6ish. I decided to wing it and write what I was doing down as I went. Thus, I have designed my first hat! It's super simple, and I'm sure someone has a pattern like this written down somewhere. It may have been better to follow a pattern actually, because as I got to the decreasing section I didn't really know how to do it. I knew I didn't want it to all of the sudden just become all knit stitches. I wanted smaller cables to come out of the bigger cables and take over the purled section. I have a really great picture of it in my head, I just don't have the skill to make that yet! If I had had time to think it out and whatnot, I may have been able to write it out, but I just winged it (wung?) and I think it turned out just fine. Here's a picture of what it looked like at about 3 Saturday afternoon.. keep in mind the come and go party started at 4, which is when we were planning on leaving.  I think I started the decrease after this point, so I was like, hey, I've got plenty of time, I can just finish this off real quick. ..... I finished at about 3:50. That is the closest I've ever come to the deadline! I'm so glad I finished it though, my friend seemed to love it! Below is one really bad picture of the finished product...and one of me wearing it (yes I try on the things that I make even when they are gifts :) ). All my other really good pictures are over 5 mb so I can't upload them. That is starting to get really old.   On another topic, I decided to finish spinning my purple roving as skinny as I could. When I had done that I decided to try 3-plying it. I decided to use the Navajo method as seen HERE and HERE. I really like how it turned out! I just wish there was more of it.... Then I realized I had some more of the gold batting that I had spun left over from double plying it and wanted to keep trying the Navajo 3-plying method. It turned out pretty good, just a little thick. Below are the pics from that.    Progress 01/10/2012
I have been working on a few things which will be pictured below. First, I started on the next strip of color on the Kaffe throw! I also started making the snake as January's animal. What is pictured is the entire body. It's gonna have a huge head - it will be so cute! One thing I didn't mention about these animals is that they are all crocheted! I actually learned to crochet first, but I stopped doing it for a while, then took up knitting. I loved knitting so much I pretty much forgot about crochet. But I can still remember basic stitches like sc and dc. I'm nearly hopeless reading crochet patterns though! Thankfully the pattern for these animals is really straightforward and simple. I recommend these animals as perhaps the 2nd or 3rd project for beginning crochet-ers after they have learned the basic stitches and how to read patterns. Finally, I couldn't help myself, I had to know what my yarn looked like knitted! So I just whipped up an 8-stitch about 10 rows just to see how the colors work. And they actually work pretty good! There's definitely lines where the colors morph into the next color. I love it! I still have to figure out what to make with it though.. I'm thinking possibly some socks.. my dad said he wants some thick wool socks to keep his feet super warm. His sister brought some back with her from Lithuania and he LOVES them! That would mean I need to make MORE yarn... hmmmm >:) (evil smile full of mystery and plans)    Future Projects 01/09/2012
I've been thinking alot about what I'm going to make next. I have two small balls of yarn I've made myself, but I have no idea what to make with them. It's not a whole lot and it's itchy, so it's not like I can make mittens or a scarf. I'm down to one project at the moment: the Kaffe blanket. I would like to challenge myself with my next project and I've been thinking about maybe making this Neapolitan Belted Cape. (You may need to be logged in to see it.. sorry.) But that would mean I have to buy more yarn. I have recently come into possession of some LOVELY yarns.   I'm really excited to make something with them, I just don't know what yet! I'm going to probably feel swamped by this time tomorrow though, so I'll probably forget all about them until, oh, spring break. But I'd like to be able to have knitting time because it would be a good relaxer. Well, I guess I'll just wait to see what tomorrow will bring... So here's a little extra picture for you while you wait. :) 
Goals for 2012 01/07/2012
Usually I make a reading list for each year, then just transfer the books I didn't read from the last year to the next year. This year I'm going to start doing that with knitting! Here are some of my creative goals for the new year:
I'm gonna stop there to not put too much pressure on myself.. I am a college student after all! :) I could post my reading goal too, anyone want to see that? Distractions 12/31/2011
So I'm not quite posting like I said I would.. but I'd say I've got a pretty good excuse. I've been reading the Hunger Games series. I finished the last one last night at 4 am! Not a good idea. I don't want to give anything away, but I'm still trying to recover, and not from the loss of sleep. I thought I'd treat you to a little art of the painting type. I have an aunt who just loooves crosses, so I thought I'd paint this sort of stylized cross for her. She loved it! 
Double Ply! 12/28/2011
Another exciting thing that's been happening this last week is that I double plyed some yarn I made! I have to say, plying is much easier than spinning straight fiber... And I really loved how it turned out! Right now I'm working on doing this again - but with more yarn this time. I've spun the first batch of singly ply, now I'm working on making about the same amount to ply it with. I don't have a way of measuring the yarn I'm making, so it's kind of hard to gauge how much I need to make to have the same amount of each single ply yarn.. I'm just gonna go with how full the bobbin is. It kind of feels like when I'm baking and I don't feel like measuring out 1/4 cup of milk, so I just pour in a bit. Sometimes it ends up being a little too liquidy, others it's too dry, and still other times it's the perfect amount! But another reason it's bad I can't measure my yarn, is that it's hard to know what I could make with this yarn - it also makes it hard to possibly sell it on etsy.com... people generally want to know how much yarn they're buying when they're buying yarn.... Anywho, here are some pictures of the loveliness:      Neckerchief Complete! 12/26/2011
So one would have thought I would be able to post more when I'm on break.. But I was working all last week then family time, blah blah blah. Anyways, the important thing is I'm blogging NOW! I have a few different things to update whoever reads this on, so I'll try to spread them out so it looks like I'm a better blogger than I am.... >:) First thing is, I finished the neckerchief!! I thought it would stretch out a little more when I was blocking it, but I probably should have forced it to stretch out. which I didn't do. Anyways, another mistake I think I made is I shouldn't have used this yarn for this project. It's alpaca and wool I think, so it's rather itchy when against the skin. Either way, I got some experience making lace! Now I have to try something a little harder... Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. They include the before blocking, during blocking, and after blocking. (Sorry for the weird quality of some of the pics - it wouldn't let me upload some of the better ones since they're over 5 MB.)    Exciting Epicness! 12/16/2011
So I finally got a drive band! :) So I have been madly trying to get my spinning wheel working, but it still won't actually pull the fiber onto the spindle. I had fixed it last time.. before the bobbin broke. I don't know what to do this time. And the drive band keeps tightening the whorl so the bobbin REALLY can't pull the fibers on if it wanted to. ANYWAYS. I've got my purple yarn hanging after I soaked it for a few hours (probably around 3).   Then I got to work on my gold stuff I bought earlier from someone destashing. It has some gold, some light yellow, even some very light pinks.. with a few sparkly pieces here and there. All together it is awesome. :D So I spun it (with some difficulty >:( ), then I wound it into a hank using myself as a niddy-noddy. I then twisted it together into a skein and had myself a party! |
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