Excited!

Finally in the home stretch here folks! Only 1 more day of classes on Monday and 1 day of finals on Wens. and I am fin! I am just wrapping up one of my last project which is due tomorrow, ironically enough it's a business plan of my knitting design business...so at least I know my topic. I have one more class to finish some work for tomorrow and that's it.

After that I have a glorious 2.5 weeks off before my summer classes start in which I intend to do a lot of reading, knitting, and spinning...or at least as much as my pirifomis muscle will let me. Since I try not to b*tch on the blog I have not mentioned the white hot pain I've been in for about a month now. I visited my friend Ciara last week who is a Physical therapist and we concluded that it is Piriformis Syndrome, which basically means that the afore mentioned muscle is in some way damaged and pressing on my sciatic nerve, thus causing white hot pain in my hip, thigh and calf and a weird general numbness of my skin. I have been prescribed some stretches and an ice/heat regiment and it has been improving, but some days...like today, are worse than others. All this means it's very hard to sit and do some of those things that I really want to do on my brief break between semesters.

V Junkie  pattern by Alice Yu

The reason I mention this at all is since Ciara is being kind enough to treat me non gratis I making her these! --------->
Pretty sweet for one days super procrastination on homework knitting. The yarn is Stroll Handpainted from KnitPicks, the color way is Make Believe. I'll probably have this one wrapped up by this evening and the second cast on.

Where does this leave my new design? Still working on the second color scheme and I have to write up the pattern for my volunteer test knitters. I'm also still debating what yarn I will do the sample in. I have a few in mind, but any recommendation of a light fingering-fingering weight in a either tonally dyed or a very light variegation?

 In other non knitting news, Stephan Kings new book The Wind Through the Keyhole is on it's way to my house right now. I will be getting it on Wens and will begin reading it as soon as I get it. I started reading the Dark Tower series when I was 13 and have loved every minute of it.

Wee little birds!

One last tidbit, new tattoo done last weekend.

What I did...as opposed to what I should be doing

212 yds of light fingering weight

On the Niddy Noddy

Today started off ok, I got up, finished the laundry, did the dishes, cleaned my studio, spent some time practicing the Mandolin, got a shower, and it was pretty much at this point that I lost all impulse control and sat down at my spinning wheel and spun for the rest of the day. I had most of a bobbin of singles yesterday, i finished that up and got the other bobbin done in no time. Now I know I should have waited until tomorrow to ply them, but I know if I sit down at the wheel tomorrow all hope is lost of getting stuff done that needs to get done.


What stuff needs to get done you ask? Only end of semester craziness. Being an Art major I blessedly have no big finals, mostly just portfolio reviews and a few big projects to wrap up. The one that is giving me agida though is a webpage in html, now I can write simple code, but trying to make my design that I created in Photoshop work in Dreamweaver is enough to make me want to pull my hair out. I really need to get back to work on it...is it really procrastinating when you do other important things on your to do list instead of the thing you dread doing?

The baby sweater designs are coming along swimmingly. So far I have 2 volunteer test knitters, but I still need a few more. Anyone up for a challenging little pattern?

Just a peak

Here is a sneak peak of the yarn I'm using for the baby sweater design. The pattern is turning out beautifully and I really hope the publisher I submit to accepts it. I will need to get it test knit 1st....any volunteers?

Finally getting time to do more of what I love...

Don't get me wrong, I love school. I love what it will do for me once I graduate, but I'm ready for it to be over. No hope of that any time soon thought since I have one more year for my BFA and then another 2 years for my Masters. I just started looking at all the options for a Masters in Fiber Arts and my pickings are pretty slim. 6 schools so far and one is already pretty much out of the running since it has bombarded me with 5 emails in less than a day. Requesting information and having your email account assault are two entirely different things.

But now on to more fun topics. I have a couple FOs to share.

First up is Dan's Christmas sweater, Durrow.

The yarn is my hand-spun, the roving was from The Painted Tiger, very nice lady and she makes some fabulous colors! This sweater practically gave me fits because I had to re-knit the yoke 4 times to get it right. First the saddle style yoke wasn't working for me so I ripped it and went raglan, then the neck was too wide, then it wasn't high enough, finally I got it as close as it was gonna get to right because I ran down to the last 2 yards of yarn. Still the sweater works and Dan loves the color.

Next up is a baby sweater that my Mom asked me to make for a friend of hers. The pattern is Tadpole and is very cute. On the same day my mom asked me to make it Barb handed me a bag of sock yarn in the perfect colors. I took it to Austria with me and finished the sweater on the drive between Vienna and Salzburg. I whipped up a little matching hat, which will hopefully be big enough, in the same stitch pattern. I hope the recipient gets lots of use out of it. A picture with the hat can be seen on my Ravelry notebook

Then there is a lovely pair of socks, these were going to be for Dan, but he decided they were too colorful for him. I spun the yarn out of 4oz of merino from Dancing Leaf Farm. The Colorway is carnival and it was my first attempt to get a self stripping yarn. I divided the roving in half length wise and got a pretty great result.

My 1st cousin once removed is currently pregnant and at that particular age (early 20's) where that glaringly neon pink is very popular. I found a cone of fingering weight yarn in Barb's stash and quickly churned out this pattern. The color is not accurate, but you get the idea. It's a really cute pattern, but I do advise casting off a couple stitches under the arm when joining the sleeves. I made a matching set of booties to complete the set. The baby shower is next month so all I need to do is wash them and box them up and they'll be ready to go. My Mom and I are going together and I have a feeling she'll ask me to make a sweater for her to give too.

So with this slue of baby sweaters you think I wouldn't want to see another one, but no, there are 2 more babies coming into the family in August. Dan's cousin's fiance is pregnant with twins and since we don't know the sex of the wee one's yet I picked up some gender neutral colors and am going to be designing a pair of sweaters for them. I have some great plans and hopefully I'll submit this pattern for publication so I'll have to keep the rest under wraps for now.