Introducing Jesse the Wonder Knitter and her Amazing Expanding Stash!

I have been hopping all over the country lately, and doing a lot of knitting. I've also been listening to a lot of podcasts, and knitting while doing that. The Blankie of Wonder and Magic had become my official zoning-out-watching-tv-or-listening-to-limenviolet project, and it shows!
I had to stand on a deck chair to get the whole width in the frame. It's quite wide. I was a little worried back when I first joined up the base row of squares and saw how much it stretched, but I've gotten over that. I want this to be about as large as a twin bed blanket.

I took the Forest Path Stole on both of my big trips, and got a lot of work done on it.
Last time you saw it all I had was the bottom triangles! I must confess that I didn't make all of this progress on my trips, but still the majority of it. I'm going to the beach next week and that would be a wonderful opportunity for some more progress, but I already have my projects planned out. One of those projects is this,
the Seascape Stole from the spring Knitty. The pattern calls for laceweight yarn, but you know how I like to buck the system. I'm using sport weight, Louet Gems in colorway Carribean Blue to be exact. It's perfect for my mom. She loves all things beachy.

I didn't buy any yarn on my Vermont trip, but I did buy this roving. It's 4 oz. of Louet Gems merino/silk, and the color is even more gorgeous in person. I'm going to be spinning this up and selling it on Etsy, because as much as I would love to have this yarn, I want a spinning wheel more.

It is kinda hard being spindle-dependent, but I can make some pretty neat things:

Roving from http://shunklies.etsy.com, colorway Monsters Inc., with some hot pink from another batch of her roving, Raspberry Soda.

The absolute most awesome thing I did in Vermont was to have a private spinning lesson from a friend of a friend who sells her handspun at a local market. I already knew most of the process in theory, so it was just a matter of getting my hands and feet to work together to make it happen. The spinning wheel I used is the exact kind I'm saving for, an Ashford Traveller. It was everything I'd hoped for, though I've decided to get a double-treadle instead of single, which was rather hard to get going and keep going.

Behold, aroundabout 25 yards of 2-ply, shetland/mohair goodness! I'm so happy with this yarn.

I'm really sensetive to fibers on my neck. Even a baby alpaca which feel soft to the hand will prickle and itch a bit on my neck. The only fiber I've found that never does that is angora, which happens to be quite expensive. Mohair sometimes works, but it's really a crapshoot. This yarn? A cloud. Not a single itch. Not one. Sooo happy.

What we have here is a skein of handpainted sock yarn that Tita brought me from Alaska, where she and Mom went while me and the Small Ones went to Washington with our dad.

It's really soft and though I'm not much of a pastel girl, I really like this yarn.

Compared to most knitters, I have a tiny stash. And not by choice, it's just that I have very little money to work with. I make pretty good money at my job, but 90% of that is going into my life savings. The other 10% is going into my spinning wheel fund. That leaves only my $10 per week allowance for all my personal stuff that my mom won't buy. In truth almost all of what I buy is yarn, but still.

I am pleased to say that I am finally starting to acquire a nice little stash, which is divided into 5 main categories:

1: Handspun. Very fulfilling but a rather slow means of stash enhancement.

2: Sock yarn. Doesn't take as long to get but I use this up much faster.

3: Sock yarn leftovers. These are all going to the Blankie of Wonder and Magic.

4: Crap. Stuff that I bought before I developed some taste, that I know I'm never going to use but just never get around to throwing away.

5: Other stuff. Non-sock leftovers, a few balls with a project already attatched, and 6 skeins of undyed wool.

I don't think I'll run out of yarn any time soon, but still, it's nice to have a backup plan.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Can you hear it? It's the sound of the clock, tick-tocking away the seconds until I go see the Yarn Harlot in Charlotte!!! I am so incredibly psyched!!

Remember that mass of wool that I promised would be a bag someday? Well, that day is today!! Well, I actually felted it a couple days ago, but that's not important.
I was a little worried it would turn out really wide and shallow, but It's pretty darn near perfect. I threw it in the wash and hopped on Ravelry, intending to go check on it in about 5 minutes, but you know the hypnotic time-sucking powers of Ravelry, and I completely forgot about it until the end of the wash cycle.
A closeup of the stripes at the botton. Note to self: no more 2-row stripes for felted things.

I finished the waffle rib sock I was working on at Steeplechase, and I'm quite pleased with it.
The waffle rib is incredibly simple; all you do is alternate 2 rows of stockinette and 2 rows of 2x2 rib.
I haven't started the other one yet, it's going to come with me to Charlotte.

After a brief hiatus, I picked up the Forest Path Stole again and finished the lower border and all 5 lower triangles. I found stockinette entrelac quite easy, but seed stitch entrelac can be rather tricky.
I did a lot of spinning this weekend, too (no, that up there is not what I consider "a lot." I've got a whole other single sitting on my swift). This merino is a little tougher to spin than my brown Romney, since it's so slippery. My single keeps breaking, though part of that is the weight of the spindle. I think for yarn this fine and fiber this slippery, I really need a smaller, lighter spindle. Or a wheel, but I'm not getting one of those any time soon.

I am once again forced to face the fact that I live in South Carolina, where it is not uncommon to reach 100 degrees Farenheight in the summer (though on those days, instead of putting on socks, I think I might just lay naked on the floor praying for a lightning strike). I only have one or two pairs of socks with less than 50% wool in them, but this yarn that my mom got me is only 40%. It's Marks & Kattens Clown, 45% cotton, 40% superwash wool, 15% nylon. The colorway is #1908, and I'm just tickled with the way it's striping and speckling. Sorta rough in the skein, but I reckon it'll soften in the wash.
I threw in a 4-stitch cable on either side of the foot, to make it take longer to knit than my usual stockinette. That's one method of stretching a yarn budget: knit slowly.

I added a couple of squares to the Blankie, but nothing worth taking a picture of.

Auntie Em, Auntie Em!

Well we have survived the crazy weather we've had down here in SC and GA this weekend. Saturday night there was a huge storm and a bunch of tornados touched down and did a lot of damage. Our house had zero damage, while many not far from us had trees through their roofs. It's amazing how powerful and how precise wind can be. Gail had a small tornado touch down right next to her house and tore down part of the fence, but didn't even loosen the vinyl siding on the outside walls.

But that's over and done with, moving on to wooly things!

All but one of my awaited packages have arrived, and I've already gotten started on them.
Behold, the wonder that is pure undyed merino top from Hello Yarn. A whole pound of it (with my average-sized spindle thrown in for reference). I actually spread it out on the floor and layed down on it. Well, I was mostly letting it air out, but I really wanted to lay on it.

I started spinning some up for Urchin, a hat from Knitty.com, but I've stalled on that since it turns out that spinning a lumpy yarn on purpose (at least for me) is harder than you'd think. Also, most of my practice yarns have been on the thin side, and I'm not used to letting a lot of fiber in at once. Oh well. Need more practice.

I also got 5 skeins from KnitPicks! The 2 on the right are undyed sock yarn, and the 2 on the left are undyed laceweight.

There's another skein of laceweight that I've already wound up and cast on for the Forest Path Stole. 10 rows of seed stitch take kind of a long time in laceweight.
Last week, Tita and I went to our LYS to cash in our store credit, and I used mine on 7 balls of Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Patine` for Blissful, a halter top from Stitch n Bitch Crochet.

While I was waiting for my packages, I didn't have a whole lot of knitting to do, but one thing I did do was a lot of swatching and experimenting. I decided to knit up the little bit of yarn I spun from the surprise Christmas fiber. I'm really digging the brown/grey/yellow portion, it reminds me of birds. I think I would name a colorway like that "Falcon."

Gail's computer was dead when I went over there today, so I didnt' get my fix of blogs and podcasts. Off to remedy that now!