Why I have not been so crafty and why I might have to start again (or The TV knows me too well)

So I’ve been the third and rather quiet one here, and that’s because I’ve been rather slow on the crafty front for a while. No big projects, just a small stroller blankey for a friend who just had her first baby (modified version of the Sock Monkey from Happy Hooker) and seriously not much else. Instead of craftyness, I’ve been more into cooking recently, but that’s the topic for a different post or even a different blog.and I’ve been in 2 weddings and all the prep for them, all sorts of family stuff from my side and the BF’s and works been cookoo. And miss kitty, Her Highness Spyro Von Mittendorf has been making a royal fool of herself recently in her tiny little cone after getting fixed.

But now I don’t think I can use the excuse of chilling in front of the television to veg out, because, well, I think I’ve spent a little too much time there. It’s now responding to my thoughts.

See last night, I was curled up on the couch, nursing my cold and the BF gets up to go to the bodega next door. I’m reading but he has the Mets game on in the background.

BF: “Do you want anything?”
Me: “I kinda could go for some ice cream”
BF: “Well they have the bars downstairs”
Me: “Nah, I want like a tub of Ben and Jerry’s not the tiny little bar”

Then I SWEAR I hear one of the Mets announcers – pretty sure it was Ron Darling – say “Did I just hear you turn down Ice Cream?!?”

OMG.
The TV is now not only listening to my conversations, it’s commenting. I had to hide from it for the rest of the night because I was freaked out by it.

I think it’s time to pick up the hook again before Keith Hernandez adds his 2 cents in. Because then I’ll REALLY be freaked out.

A slow few days

Things have been quiet on the crafty front. Well, that’s not exactly true.

Remember my Inferno Monster plans.

Well, I got Phase 1 and Phase 3 done. I like phase 1 a lot. Not so happy with Phase 3. It didn’t turn out the way I expected. I wanted solid colors with a hint of accent color. It’s certainly a lesson learned! I can’t wait to see how it knits up.

Phase 2 of the Inferno Monster is by far the easiest. It’s just solid sections of color with blended sections in between. My problem is to figure out how big each section will be. Since I’m Navajo plying, the color sections will shrink to a third of the length of the single. I’m thinking I might do fairly small sections, break it up the way I did for Phase 2 so that I’ll get short color changes and less of a stripy effect. I hope. So far, little has turned out the way I wanted it to. It’s supercool, nonetheless, albeit not how I predicted (Oh how I love words that are actually more than one word mushed together ie., none-the-less) I think am going to have to try and get good pictures of how to Navajo Ply. It’s a very cool technique and I’m sure if I don’t do it for an extended period of time, I’ll forget. Handy thing about blogs, they are like your own personal reference guide!

I’m off to visit the Mamajama for the weekend! I’m bringing the Inferno Monster but I probably won’t work on it. Spinning is kind of a solitary obsessive process for me. I have to figure out something to do with the Spring Mix. I’m just not happy with the scarf. It will probably meet the frog pond for the second time. I’ll show mommy and then decide.

You spin me right round Inferno Monster!

Between Defensive Driving and a Bachelorette party, I got in a ridiculous amount of spinning.

Before I talk about Inferno Monster, I need to dish about the driving course and the party.

$50 an hour.
My eyes teared up and my stomach dropped when I bought my first 6 months of car insurance. I was so excited to learn it was JUST $500 but I didn’t fully understand, that was for a 6 months policy. I had a swift learning curve. It does seem a tad goofy that at 35, this is the first time I’ve bought car insurance, but until 2 years ago, I lived in great cities with great public transportation rendering a car, not only not smart, but completely foolish. I’ve never been a big car person, never really felt that apparently All-America desire to drive whopping gas guzzling vehicles. Then I moved here, the Ex bought me a car (which will shortly be nicknamed POC short for “piece-o-crap”) and I had to buy insurance. Once I figured out how it all works, the buying of the insurance wasn’t a problem. Watching $500+ leave my account was painful however, especially when you consider that in a blink of 6 months, I’ll have to pay that all over again. And basically the only way to lower your insurance is to take a defensive driving class. Now I have heard people lament about the horrors of sitting in a room for 6 hours listening to some guy wax pathetic on the rules of the road, but honestly, 6 hours of my life is totally worth expending in the strenuous activity of sitting in a chair knowing that I’ll get to keep about 100 smackers in my wallet. Nice ROI there don’t ya think?

Bachelorette Parties
I’ve never been to one before. This was an event for a co-worker. I wouldn’t consider us “friends” but we are certainly “friendly” and I was glad to go. There is an odd tradition in these parts that Bachelor/Stag/Bachelorette parties are paid events, meaning that you, as the guest, buy a ticket and pay for the privilege of drinking with the future Bride or Groom and stand witness as their ‘singleton’ days fade into the sunset. This is how most couples raise money for the wedding I’m told. How odd is that? So in essence, it’s like paying to go to the wedding. Very strange. I had a good time regardless and rediscovered my love for Stoli. No, there were wild tales to tell for the nights proceedings, although I did find myself in the peculiar position of molding penises from purple playdo with my co-workers (silly games are apparently required at such events). That was fairly uncomfortable (more for them, less for me).

Back to the spinning!

I’ve mentioned my 3-part-plan to spin Inferno. I started off like gang busters and got the first part done. I divided up the roving into three separate colors and spun each color separately. It was much harder than I anticipated to separate the fiber. And no, I am not quite that anal enough to sit there with tweezers and pull out each fiber individually. I wound up with bunches of little wisps of roving that had two colors in it. So I decided to spin these bits at the beginning and the ending of each of the solid color batch. This fiber was a tad more difficult to work with than other stuff I’ve been using. It’s VERY soft, VERY poofy, VERY silky, and will start to felt just from the pressure of my fingers and the moisture off my palms. This is not a “gnash-teeth-rend-garments” type of problem, but does lead to slubs and mild irritation (that’s mental irritation, not physical). I’ve adjusted the way I hold the fiber a bit to help with this problem. The end yarn doesn’t suffer that much because of it. OH, also, this stuff breaks like mad. I’ll be spinning happily, la la la, twirl draft twirl draft twirl CLUNK - the single will breaks and the spindle will crash to the ground. Clunk. I think I’m going to need a new spindle soon, as this one has bellyflopped quite a bit. This stuff is so poofy that I’ve had to add a lot of twist to it of it just breaks for the weight of the spindle. But I did get to ply it all.
And I’m happy to report that the yarn is delightfully soft and fuzzy. I’ll have to let Claire give it the nuzzle test. But it seems quite nice. I can’t wait to knit with it, but wait I must! I need to find a pattern that I can show off the three different patterned yarns. Well, I HOPE I’ll have three different patterned yarns.

I’m not too sure how this will all work out yet.

A Sock Reincarnated

Spring Mix Handspun Sisters Scarf
Originally uploaded by amynowacoski

So the sock I completed out of my Spring Mix handspun met the frog pond. And i wanted to do something to get a good feel for the color change. I also wanted to get some lace work in. I'm not 100% happy with this patter either but I'm pretty committed to the pattern at this point. I can always gift it I suppose. Its a fairly easy lace pattern. Which mean I can go back to continental style knitting. Its so much faster than throwing your yarn with the right hand.

Robin Update

The babies are growing! Yukkie weather kept the parents in the nest but Ron was able to get a few shots. I think they were napping:


And they don't seem to expect food from the camera:



Stuff is out of focus as it's hard to keep the camera steady when Mom is watching



Ron even served them dinner one night



I think I should get Ron some goggles in case decided they had it with our intrusion.

Houston, We Have A Problem

Exploded Octopus
Originally uploaded by amynowacoski

Meet Octopus. Octopus was a gift to the Princess LeeLuu for Christmas from Auntie Claire. Apparently, great battles were fought in my absence today. LeeLuu told me that there were monsters and stuff and Octopus defended the house with great valor. I don't believe her 100%. The story seems fishy.

Frogged!

Alas, we are gathered here today to wish farewell to a sock. I’m deeply saddened to inform you that the Spring Mix Handspun Rainy Day Sock has retired to the Frog Pond.

I became increasing un-fond of the color changes on the sock. I love the sock pattern, and I love the yarn. But they were just not working together. I’m totally digging lacey stuff right now after successfully completing the Berlin Sock. I’m going to stick this pattern back into my queue and do it another (rainy) day. Here’s the other problem that contributed to the frogging… It didn’t use enough yarn. I have a yarn meter (thanks to the mamajama!) and all the stuff I spun up for the Spring mix totaled about 355 yards. The sock require close to 400 I think. I had finished the sock and didn’t even get a third of the way thru the ball. I hate having leftover yarn! Yes yes, I know, too much is better than not enough. But what the heck was I going to do with 100 yards of handspun. This is HANDSPUN! Meaning I spun it BY HAND! That’s too precious to just sit in a ball somewhere so I can look back and fondly remember spinning.

So to the frog pond it goes!

I balled it back up and divided it (hopefully mostly evenly) into two sections using that handy-dandy meter again. And I found the Sisters pattern for a lacey scarf. The pattern is a little strange in that you knit the scarf in two pieces and then graft them together (oh how I despise the Kitchner’s Stitch! I will get over it however). So I’m knitting the two parts at the same time. Much confusion is already ensuing. But I figure if I knit the two halves at the same time, I can just stop if I run out of yarn. This will give me better yardage usage and hopefully I’ll get more out of the yarn.

More on this later!