Wheel spun!

My alpaca endeavor has finally turned into a wheel.  A Lendrum folding wheel (single treadle) to be exact.  Just in time for shearing so I can actually do something with alpaca come shearing season in May.

And of course you know I've been playing with my new baby.  So now I have 2 projects (well, 1.5 actually) to share:

Wheel Spun #1:

2 colors of "Crumb" (superwash colonial wool) from The Cupcake Factory...cool blue raspberry and acai berry carded together with tinsel from the craft store and spun on my new wheel (squee!!!):

Wheel Spun #2:

Superwash Cake Batter (superwash merino wool) from The Cupcake Factory in the Neapolitan Colourway.  Split in half lengthwise then split in half again and opened up like a book to make 2 balls.  Spun on the lendrum and andean plied (I've only got pics up to the plying part....but I'm hoping to get some spinning done this weekend in my down time while I'm away at a conference so I'll do the 2nd ball and snap some photos).

Quick! Before It's Gone!

I made it into "A Spindler's Dream" treasury on Etsy. Yay! Check it out here.

EDITED March 6th to Add:

I made it into another one!  Yay!!!  I'm feeling the etsy love.  :-)

I'm Phat, I'm Phat, You Know It: Part 1

Who's phat? I am! Ready?

BAM!

The February 2009 Phat Fiber Box:

Romance & Chocolate

Do you hate me yet? This box is chock full of fabulouso stuff.


Exhibit A:
Left: 8 grams of "Lover" Handspun, hand dyed merino blend yarn from Evergreen Creations. It's a 2 ply. I'm guessing it's worsted weight. I think there might be enough to make a little coin purse. I might try felting with it, too.

Center: Happy Hands Goat's Milk & Shea Butter Hand Creme: "Tea & Roses" from Local Gringos. The rose scent is so faint you can barely smell it....which is how I like it. Plus it's got honey in it. I love milk and honey stuff.


Right: A little 4 gram puff of unlabeled fluff from From Ewe to You. I'm guessing it's wool...but I'm not sure what kind. I don't see it in her shop. I'll probably card this together with something else. edit: I've since learned that it is Dorset/Montadale

Exhibit B:
Background: Pattern: "Under the Rose" Fingerless Mitts from Ganiggle Knits.

Big beautiful puff of fluff: A generous 13 gram chunk of 100% merino superwash roving from Kangaroo Dyer. This is definitely one of my top 5 favorite things I got in this box. I'm excited to see what it turns into.

To the right of the big bright puff: You can see the corner of an envelope. The front of the envelope had standard knitting abbreviations on it. Inside were all kinds of coupons from places like Farmgirl chic, Local Gringos, Moonwood Farm, eXtreme Spinning (I'm really sad I didn't get a sample from here. I will probably have to take advantage of 20% off to make myself feel better about it, though) and My Fair Bag Lady. There was also a cute little stich marker from Pedras (the stitch marker didn't make it in the picture. Go check out her stuff, though. Cute. I also got a sock yarn note card from Knit it Up. (no picture of this, either....but please go see her stuff. Definitely worth the time and bandwidth to click).

That gorgeous little pink and grey poof?: It's a 5 gram sinfully soft mini roving ball in the "snuggly" colourway from Moonwood Farm. Check out this description:

This particular blend consists of alpaca blended with a little satin angora bunny fiber - white first shearing from Mickey [an alpaca, picture on the card] blended with a bit of pink glitzy prepared roving, purple hand dyed (koolaid) from Sergeant Major [another alpaca, picture on the card], grey from Dominic (his fiber is blended with 25% black satin angora from Nero [Nero is a bunny]), as well as a sprinkling of silver angelina.

Holy cow! (or is it holy alpacas and bunnies?) Complex with undertones of "wow!" Aside of feeling like I've been entrusted with a little bit of sacred fiber, I think Moonwood wins for the "best tag" competition among the things in my box. Pictures of alpaca and bunny pr0n, a description like this, another description of how she made my roving ball, and directions about spinning and washing the fiber. Roo...you need a Ravelry group for your farm. I'm totally a fan.

To be continued...

Look what I got!

To be continued...

All the good ideas are [usually] already taken

I invented the grapefruit spoon.

When I was about 8, I was eating a grapefruit for breakfast in my grandmother's kitchen.  And as I cut each litte wedge with a knife and scooped it out with a spoon I thought "there has to be an easier way."  I thought if you could make a spoon with a serrated edge that acted like a knife, you could save yourself so much time preparing grapefruit.  I thought "this is revolutionary!"  I ran to tell my grandmother my fabulous idea.

She smiled and walked over to her silverware drawer and pulled out a grapefruit spoon...

I was sad that someone already stolen my great idea.

(now, why I was eating a grapefruit with a knife when my grandmother owned grapefruit spoons, I'm not sure)

Similar situations have played out over my life.  I have a brilliant idea and then find out someone else already had it.

Today was another one of those days.

I was at knitting group and both myself and another knitter were working with our pretty wood needles:

And we were also talking about the new popularity of drop spindles that was experienced at the Madrona fiber arts retreats.  Shelia observed that a lot of knitters must be converting to handspinning.  

Later as Tami was talking about a drop spindle video that she saw on the Knit Picks website, I thought "hmm.  I wonder if Knit Picks is going to start making spinning supplies."  "What would Knit Picks spinning supplies look like, I wonder."

Then like lightening, the idea can to Tami and at almost the same time....wouldn't it be neat if there were drop spindles that had the same pretty rainbow wood patterns like our knitting needles.  "Quick!"  I said, "Call Grafton Fibers so they can start making beautiful drop spindles."

Then, just like my grandmother pulled out her spoon, Shelia casually says "they already do."

Foiled!  Once again someone stole my great idea before I had a chance to think of it.

Speaking of Grafton, have you seen their stuff?  Beautiful!  Check out these crochet hooks. I particularly like the peacock ones:

They also have these amazing shawl pins here.

Stunning!  Pardon me, while I go wipe up my drool.

Jessie, can we figure out a way to get these guys to send Phat Fiber some stuff?

Phat Fiber

Check it out:

I was approached back in December about being a part of something called the Phat Fiber Box. It's a box of sample sized fiber arts goodies (with the occaisional tea and balm) from a variety of independant fiber artists. It's a great opportunity to send samples of my stuff to people who are paying to get them. It's a great opportunity for customers to see and feel a yarn before buying online.

A couple nights ago, my very patient husband stayed up way too late with me wrapping sample skeins of Buttercream yarn and braiding samples of Crumb, a new superwash colonial wool top so we could get them in the mail. Want to see?

What's that? Closer in you say?

Here's the Crumb: (or one color of it, anyway.  I sent some blue, too, but the pics aren't so good)


Here's the Buttercream mini skeins in McIntosh Apple and Strawberry Milkshake:

So, if you haven't yet, get thee hence to www.phatfiber.com. The theme for February's box is "Romance and Chocolate."  I'm excited to be in the box this month as well as excited to see what I get!  There's been talk about having delicious chocolately snacks in the boxes.  Come on, chocolate and yarn?  Does it get better?  (okay...you're right.  It would be better if cupcakes were involved somehow....but maybe another month?)

If you're maybe even just interested in getting a box, make sure you get on the e-mail list on the phat fiber site. The boxes go up for sale at a secret time and the e-mail list is notified of when it is. Last month, the boxes all sold out in 20 minutes! So unless you have extraordinary luck, you're going to need to be on the e-mail list in order to snag one.

In the meantime, you can preview goodies and reviews of the samples that are being sent in and enter giveways on the Phat Fiber blog.

Fall is here

Part of why I have been such a blog slacker lately is because I get guilt for neglecting it.  I feel like I neglected my blog for so long that my next post better be awesome.  But I don't have anything awesome to post about so I don't post anything.  But then I feel guilty for not posting.  So then I feel like my next post needs to be awesome..... and it goes on and on.

So I'm giving up on trying to come up with witty, well-written, clever entries about the happenings of a knitting cupcaker and her family.  Instead, I think we're going to try the "short and sweet" approach.

So this is what I've got for today as a recap for October:

I made this yarn:

It's half fleece artist BFL and half purple corriedale.  In the end, it give me 98 g (about 64 yards) of bulky weight yarn.  I want to do mittens but I don't know if I have enough.

I made most of a sweater:

It's a modified version of Star-Cross'd Love.  Pattern was originally a size small, I'm making it a L/XL.  Looks good so far.  Need some sleeves and to add a bit of length to the collar.  If you're a Raveler, my pattern page lives here.

I dyed some new roving for my shop:

It's a new Cupcake Factory line called "Confection" and it lives here

I made these:

The little ones are chocolate cakes baked in Pampered Chef prep bowls.  The big ones is yellow cake w/ halloween sprinkles (funfetti-syle) and baked in a PC small batter bowl.  Little stems are mint candies.  Large stem is molded lime tootsie rolls.

I went here:

And did this:

Oh!  And because Melody asked so nice, here is a gratuitous dog picture:

What I've been up to

I won this in a blog contest a while ago.



I spun it up and turned it into this:

(it's the green fiber from above and is a soy/sari silk blend)


And I decided to mix with some of this:

(this is purple corridale I got from Northwest Wools in Portland yesterday. The spindle is from my Etsy shop, The Cupcake Factory)


And I got this:

(spindle, again, from The Cupcake Factory)



Which, when skeined, looks like that:



Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. I'm not sure how much is there but I ordered a little scale earlier this week so soon I will know, which will make it easier to figure out how much I've got.

More Spindleicious Fun

Pink Tiger Stripe Spindle

















Cupcake Spindle

Both are designed to be able to be used as either a top or bottom whorl spindle. While I love them both, I think the pink tiger stripe one has displaced the zebra as being my favorite.

Spinning Extravaganza!

Once again, I have been negligent of the blog. Not to make excuses, but I really think Ravelry is to blame. Several times, I'll come sit down at my computer to do some blog-like things and go over to see what's happening on Ravlery and I get sucked in. It's like a big black hole of knitting bliss. But now that I've sat down, I'm not to going to go look at Ravelry until I've finished this post. Nope. I'm not going to do it....I'm going to stay focused.

So, back to spinning...

Remember this?















This was my first attempt at my self-taught spinning. I made a drop spindle from directions online and tired (unsuccessfully) to spin dryer lint. I gave up with dryer lint and moved on to cotton balls. Cotton balls are much easier to spin than dryer lint. It was slow and tedious, but I thought that was because I was a newbie. That was until a very generous local raveler saw I was learning to spin and gave me a bag of corridale. Oh, friends....that changed everything. Soon I had this:
the wool was flying (relative to cotton balls, that is) and I was enjoying spinning SO much more than those blasted cotton balls. So I unwound the wool to get the cotton off the spindle (it was living under the wool) and made this:



with this:


A wee little baby skein of cotton yarn plied with my new, funky zebra striped drop spindle. The Zebra spindle is way better than the first one and is much more fun to use. It was also really fun to make, so the next thing you know, I ended up with this:

(a black and red kanji spindle with the Japanese symbols for Wool, Sheep, Yarn and Spin/Make Yarn around the outside)

AND

(A purple drop spindle with sparkles. This one has a thicker shaft and a hook, too)

And then I ended up with an Etsy shop:

It just kind of happened. So if you dig my drop spindles, please come check them out....


Anyway, back to the wool. I spun until my spindle was full and then plied the yarn using the purple spindle and whala! Yarn!


It's about 16 WPI, which this tells me is fingering weight, however, there are some parts that look a little bigger, like almost worsted size, so I think I'll call it DK, which is a nice middle ground. The scale at the post office says it's 1.3 oz. so I think that will be enough to make some mary jane-type socks with. I guess we'll find out!

Also in the spinning department, I'm a winner! I won one of the contests I told you about in the previous post, so Trampled by Geese sent me a fun little soy blend fiber sample:

They are small amounts of fiber, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. It sure is pretty, though!

Wow. This post has certainly gotten long, hasn't it? Well, I best be going. Got to get stuff done still. Have a fab weekend all!