Happy Birthday To Me!

Boy, it has been a crazy week here in the Knotty world.

I celebrated my 31st birthday on Thursday. That seems crazy - 31 is a pretty thoroughly grown up age and yet here I am, clearly not a grown up. Despite my total lack of maturity, my (beautiful, talented, wonderful) stepmother sent me a 90 tpi drum carder. Whoa. Just... whoa. I wish I could show you all a picture of it all new and pristine and adorable but, well. I left work early when it arrived and ran all the way home, giggling like a crazy person. I tore open that box, boys and girls, and all but threw alpaca at it.

Ignore my messy desk. Look only at the fluff.

Suffice to say it works. :D

I got myself a pair of wool combs, some needle organizers, and a label maker. Look. Look at this organization:

There's something about label makers that make me feel giddy and powerful. As if labeling everything will turn me into the kind of person who has their life together. You know, someone who dusts and doesn't eat candy for dinner. In reality, it just turns me into the type of person who tries to stick a "Theo" label on her cat. Oh well, at least I'm true to who I am. Meanwhile, my needle organization is on point!

In other news my sock knitting almost suffered a tragedy. You see, I bought a skein of Patons Kroy Sock Fx from the Scrap Exchange, a store that's sort of like a thrift store... but for craft stuff. It's an awesome place and I wander in there periodically to buy  all  some yarn. So I bought this skein in Clay Colors for $1. I felt pretty giddy as it is all in shades of blue and grey but with slow changes to keep things interesting. And it's such a big brand I was sure I'd have no problem buying a second skein so I immediately cast on. I've never used Kroy Sock Fx before and I was immediately enthralled by the colour changes and slow patterning. I raced through the leg of the sock and went to get another skein so it'd arrive in time for the second sock... and discovered it had been discontinued.

WHAT! Why?! I'm pretty sure all you yarn-crafting folks out there can appreciate my hysteria. I went on Ravelry but neither of the people who had it listed for trade responded to my messages. I was staring at my half finished sock, trying to decide between frogging it and hoping to squeeze a pair of ankle socks out of it, doing a pair of mismatched socks (guaranteed to drive me insane, in a less cuddly way), or abandoning it and pretending all this had never happened... When I posted on Ravelry in the ISO yarn forums, asking if anyone had it.

Boys and girls, not only did someone have it but she said she'd send it to me for FREE, even though I offered to pay for it. Oh man, knitters are the best. She said it'd be her good deed for the week and that's just so nice. I'll have to think of something nice to do - maybe I should give away some homespun in her name. Meanwhile, it should arrive Monday. Better hurry up and finish this sock, huh?

Twisted Threads Fiber Arts Guild

Last night I went to my first fiber arts guild meeting and boy did I have fun, even if I accidently volunteered to build them a website. :D

I was a little nervous about going - being in a group of strangers for the first time, sometimes I get shy and react unpredictably. But it turns out once someone has petted your socks, they aren't strangers anymore! I'm fascinated with how many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) women get really into fiber arts. I spent the last 3 years feeling really alone and lost as one of very few women my age in the structural engineering program. But all I needed to do was pick up a pair of needles - at my table alone there was an industrial engineer, an investigative scientist, and a PhD student in textiles engineering. There is a structure and math to knitting, crochet, and weaving that I find both meditative and delightful, so it shouldn't surprise me. But it really, really is lovely to meet more people who are like me.

This evening the main program was needle felting name tags. I've never paid much attention to needle felting and if you'd asked me a week ago I would have ignorantly huffed that it was a waste of perfectly good fiber. But the things Alesia showed us were so, so pretty. I have no pictures of her wonderful creations because I was too busy cuddling a felted lamb to take any. So. Cute.

But, I managed to put the lambykins down and make a name tag. Seen here adorning the awesome field bag Jackie made me:

Of course it is blue.

The Year of Socks

Jackie decided to make a pair of socks every month this year. When I asked how come, she said, "At the end of the year, I'll have twelve pair of socks." That's the sort of ironclad logic I can get behind. A couple days ago she told me she was on her fourth pair of socks... Fourth! It's still February! That kind of raw, unfettered productivity is designed to make the rest of us feel bad about our video game habits, I'm sure of it. It worked too - I cast on a sock.

A very, very basic sock.

Technically this is my second pair of socks of the year as I knit a pair of Rye Socks in January as my first ever pair of socks. I thought they were a great introduction to sock techniques as they use worsted weight yarn on size 3 (3.25 mm) needles and the pattern is really very clear with excellent linked tutorials for anything you're not sure of. I finished the pair really easily and it left me confident to tackle this pair. Unfortunately, those socks are in time out because the left sock needs, perhaps, two or three more rounds of stockinette to be really comfortable. I totally can rip out the toe and make that happen. Totally. No problem. I... just don't want to right now. And why would we want to do all that nasty ripping out when we can look at Jackie gorgeous socks instead?

Look at those socks! Look at the colours! Don't your feet feel sad and cold just looking at them? Tune in tomorrow when we whine at Jackie for patterns and yarn information :D

Peter Piper Picked A Pack of Alpaca...

So a couple weeks ago, I took my trusty Prius down to Atlanta to pick up some alpaca that was selling pretty cheaply. I didn't buy all the alpaca, I showed a lot of restraint. I just bought enough alpaca...

Note the fairly unobstructed view of the side mirrors. Restraint.

... To fill my whoooooole car!

I'm not saying I cackled manically at the fluffy joy the whole way home but I spent about 13 hours on the road and didn't mind it one bit. We're not strong with the sanity, here at Chez Knotty. I know this picture makes it look like I have a problem... but in my defense, I'm splitting that with my stepmother. So I only have half a problem - trying to find a place to hide all that fluffy from my roommate. But that's okay because I'm currently in negotiations to buy a fiber storage facility house! It'll be fine! I'll have a whole room to devote to my intricate yarn shrine.

Meanwhile, all that alpaca is totally raw - that means it's unwashed, uncombed, and totally unready to be spun. That's a lot of work. Fluffy, fluffy, joyful work.

Monochrome Life

I am absolutely terrible with colour.

There, I admitted it. The worst possible trait for someone who once called themselves an artist. Bright colours make me feel slightly sick to my stomach and I'm never totally sure what goes with what. Left to my own devices (and I am), everything I own is in shades of black and blue. The only reason I own any shirts with colour is because I keep buying the random t-shirt packs from Woot.com. So when it comes to yarn I have the same problem awesome collection of blue and black yarn.

So the other day I met up with a woman who was selling bits of her yarn stash for $1 (!!) a skein. Really nice stuff too - Wool and mohair and hand painted pretties. So I bought it all. All of it. Even the stuff that didn't suit me. Even the stuff I didn't actually like. Even the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

Ew. Ew, Ew, Ew!

This stuff is so powerfully unappealing to me. It's well over 960 yards of hand painted yarn, 74% mohair, 13% wool, and 13% nylon. But just.. so.. ugly. It looks like something my cat would puke up after eating all my my fruit loops and half a sheep's fleece. But it was only a dollar! So I bought it, considered over dying it, and then gleefully handed it over to my stepmother. Who immediately began knitting this:

So ridiculously pretty.

What unholy chicanery is this?!

And so it begins...

In November, I started knitting.

It just sort of happened - I wanted to knit some accessories for my larp character so I went to the used craft store and picked up a pair of size 10 straight needles and some fun fur yarn and got to work. Two weeks later I was knitting a bag "just to hold my knitting" and a baby blanket because, after all, my friends were having a baby and babies need blankets. Being a slightly crazed person with a tendency to really focus on my hobbies, I should have been more cautious. Instead I posted on the local freecycle, asking if anyone had some yarn going spare that they'd give me to play with - that's how I met Joan. Joan is a lovely lady who's been knitting her whole life and was in the midst of a destash - a fabled process particularly Zen knitters occasionally go through where they release some of their fluffy possessions into the world to spread warmth and joy.

My lovely and talented stepmother, Jackie, is an award winning fiber artist who was absolutely flummoxed when I showed up for Thanksgiving with a pile of yarn.