Saturday, February 28, 2009

Pink & purple knits


Last weekend I started the irresistible Rapunzel stockings from the latest knit.1 magazine. Picked up four skeins of Maizy yarn from the LYS. It's mostly corn, and I wasn't sure how well it would out for this pattern. Turns out I've got gauge exactely. Woot! And it has a neat feel to it, I think. I taught myself the toe-up technique, which was actually pretty fun. I needed some extra lighting to be sure I was doing what I thought I was doing, but other than that it wasn't too hard. Anyway, it's come along. One at a time, since I've only got one set of size two double pointed needles, but I think I'll be alright. I'm interested in practicing that toe-up thing again.

Last night I took a break from that project and grabbed some scraps I've been meaning to knit up into something. Now chuck claims that the yarn is not pink at all and is more of a hummus color than pumice (the color indicated on the label.) I know it's subtle, but really...it's pink. Anyway, I have very particular color themes in mind for my coats...white with blue accessories, red with tan or white accessories. I have a tan spring coat, which looks nice with green or the rust & earthy colors from the chain scarf I made. I don't know where this subtle pink color fits in with any of that.

But the point was to knit up some scraps. The Rowan Holiday yarn is nice, soft and squishy with the added bonus of being quick and fun to work with. Too bad they discontinued it. Something this bulky is not easy to find in the animal-free yarn world. For now you can still find some of it around the internet, which has me tempted to stash more...but I really have enough on my hands as it is. Well ok, I just did the math, and I have enough stashed for roughly 15 projects where I actually do have something in mind and then various extra yarn that something could be done with. That doesn't sound as bad as I was expecting....but I still feel like there needs to more finishing before more stashing can reasonably occur. unless there's some kind of deal...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Etsy Twitter Team & a new tool

I just found out about byhand.me this morning on the forums over at 1000 Markets. I was planning on doing a post about several different teams I'm involved in all at once, but now I'm distracted by this new toy. So I started with the etsytwitter team, which just seems to be growing and growing! You can still check out the great Valentine's day gift guide posts, even if the holiday has passed, there's some lovely stuff there. And profiles of the members should be showing with regularity. Meanwhile, here's my first "spotlight" on the team using byhand.me.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Making some noise

Just a little peep for now. This post is really more of a note to self to kick start more frequent posting again. I've been up to stuff, just not bloggy-crafty fun stuff. 2009 will be my year of exams for licensing. So I expect that means an ever fluctuating rate of blog post frequency. So, if it gets quiet around here again, you may suspect that is the reason why.
Well, in spite of being too busy with that sort of thing to do anything (like erm...keep the place tidy) I do manage to relax with some knitting in down time. Of course being busy and distracted means that I'm not getting anything really complex done. Poor Chuck is still waiting on his sweater...haven't had a good enough attention span for seaming. But I did finish of a funky tote bag. Nothing too fancy, just garter stitch and will probably mainly see use as a new location for stashing yarn or projects, but it's still a decent F.O. Also stashed some taupe Maizy (corn based) yarn for some stockings and got a false start on a scarf. Really liked the pattern, just not in that particular blue cotton yarn. Oh well. Anyway. Yes I will try to make more noise here on the blog...

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Time Lapse


I'm glad Chuck has been doing something cool I can post to my blog. I certainly haven't been. I've been studying for exams, going to work and suffering from severe crafting withdrawal. Meanwhile Chuck made a couple of cool time lapse videos from our apartment.