4! Ounce! Challenge!

Have you heard of the 4! Ounce! Challenge!? Adrian of Hello Yarn, David from Southern Cross Fibre and Amy of Spunky Eclectic joined together for a cool contest. Spin up 4 ounces of fiber from any of the three, design & knit something using the 4 oz, submit it to them and get in a drawing for a crap ton of fibery goodness. Guess when the last day was to submit a design? Anyone? Sept 30th. Um, TODAY. Anyone want to guess when good old, organized, well planned out Christine submitted her design? Um, 5 minutes ago. Awesome!

Go check the ravelry group for a bunch of cool ideas and patterns for ideas for what to do with just 4 oz of fiber/yarn.

Here's my pattern, (ravelry link) the ZOMG Cowl. I spun up some spunky eclectic fiber, 80/20 merino/cashmere and knit up the softest, squooshiest cowl EVER!

ZOhMyGosh this is the softest, warmest, squooshiest cowl EVER! The ZOMG Cowl is just the thing to keep you warm on a cool autumn afternoon/winter day while zooming around the suburbs on a dune buggy with a rusty old muffler pulled from a wrecked car to keep your neighbors from calling the cops because the thing is SO. FREAKIN. LOUD.

Or, um, just the thing to wear on a cool autumn afternoon/winter day walking through the neighborhood like a normal person. That works too. But seriously, you totally need a dune buggy. PS, I know the ZOMG is the snarkier version of OMG, but I'm a bit snarky that way, so it just seems to fit.

PS, my favorite way to wear a cowl is to plop it on my head and wear it like a uber-trendy earwarmer. I amaze myself with my fashionista awesomeness. I also embarrass my children with that very same fashionista awesomeness. Wonder why the kids don't ride with me?

ZOMG Cowl

More finding goodies while packing

I found this little baby under the bed (in its ziplock bag of course) when I was packing over the weekend. I figured it was a sign to sit down and relax for a while, so sat and knit it up into a Chickadee Cowl by Kristen Kapur. I modify this cowl to fewer stitches (I cast on 59 instead of 79) as linen stitch tends to grow sideways and I like a snug fitting cowl. It was spun from merino wool hand dyed by Nikol at ArtClub, and from Yarn School, which is coming soon! Sure wish I was going this year. *sigh*

We had a wonderful weekend at Chez Weasley, spending time with lots of family, packing, sitting and remembering fun things as we found buried treasures under beds, in backs of closets, etc. AND the KC CHIEFS are 3-0! Can I get a WOO HOO? MAN there's nothing better than football knitting in the fall.

It's amazing what you find when you start packing!

I pulled this little project out of the back of the craft closet. Wow, I used to cross stitch. It's been ages. Probably at least 4 Halloweens ago I started this baby. Found it with the "Boo to You" and the eyes stitched. Finished this up just in time for Halloween! I love quick projects, especially those you tuck into something for NO finishing whatsoever!

Oh, and I'm totally screwed as when I shipped off all the sockyarn, I apparently forgot just how fast it is to knit socks when you knit a few rounds waiting at football practice, a few rounds waiting after choir practice..... Holy crap. One down, one to go and then I'm out of sockyarn. Figured I'd better cast on thread up another cross stitch project. Found this one that was probably also started about 4 autumns ago... This ought to keep me busy once the 2nd sock is completed. Only issue is that you can't really cross stitch those itty bitty beads a few stitches at a time like you can knit socks....ugh. I'll be glad when the move's all done!

That ain't right

**They may not look like much, but those are the LARGE sized space bags all sucked down to blocks of wool. You can fit a king sized comforter in each one of those babies.**

That just ain't right! Look at 'em. Layin'there. TOUCHIN'each other. No protection, just rubbin' all up against each other with nary a sheath of rubber/plastic/ziplock in between. All kinds, all types, all mixed up together. Associatin' with each other. sockyarns with bulky, handspun with commercial, solids, stripes, laceweight, cotton, wool, alpaca......

Boggles my mind. I know NORMAL knitters have yarn all in pretty baskets together. They have them on shelves together. I, myself, had some different types toghether, sort of. BUT they all were in ZIPLOCK freezer gallon bags. Every single colorway, every type, each freakin sockyarn had its own. Yes. It may be overkill, but it keeps me and my yarn bug free and happy.

Even worse than seeing them all sucked into bags together, even worse than the fact that one of the space bags has apparently sprung a leak and isn't even protecting the yarn as a whole while its all mashed in there together, is the fact that it's NO LONGER IN MY HOUSE! I KNOW! Insane, right?

Well, we happened upon the perfect house for the Weasleys. And we happened to buy it. Within 4 hours of finding it, the owners accepted our original offer. And within another 24 hours, our freaky Weasley Burrow split level house CRAMMED with CRAP (and a great deal of yarn) had to be mostly emptied out as people were in here LOOKING at it. Yeah. We do nothing planned out and organized. That would make sense.

Of course, that's not the whole stash. It's just what happened to be in my extra dresser. Each in its individual freezer weight ziplock bag. Husband had to get rid of 2 dressers, so apparently extra yarn that isn't being knit immediately does not earn much respect in the whole taking up space thing as CLOTHING that IS being worn on a daily basis. I know. It doesn't work for me either, but in the spirit of not trying to kill each other through this little upheaval, I caved. I said goodbye to a good part of the stash. It now lives at another knitter's house in her guest room. I couldn't take the risk of sending it to the inlaw's. It had to be somewhere that if the place burns down, a knitter would save it.

I actually helped carry the cedar chest to the garage to be shipped away. The cedar chest is home to all things malabrigo and cascade 220 (also each in its own freezer weight gallon ziplock bag.) Yes, I KNOW it's a cedar chest but you just can't be too careful. No, that's NOT crazy. Just well prepared. For those few non-yarny readers of the blog, that chest is my life-blood of yarn. It completes me. I made it through about half a night. I couldn't take it. It was just SITTING THERE. In my garage. Waiting to be driven away. I woke Jeff (there may or may not have been tears flowing down my face at this point) at about 1am. I couldn't sleep. I wanted my yarn back. We weren't going to be moving for another month. I just couldn't do it. He agreed and in a very non-grumpy manner after I made him promise and sign his name that he would, in fact, help me find a way to put it back into the house, let him go to sleep. Hey, sleepy promises don't mean shxt. A CYG's gotta do what a CYG's gotta do. *CYG=Crazy Yarn Girl A great deal of other crap was moved out of the TOP floor's closet which is now home to the cedar chest of glory. The husband earned extra points for not grumping about the fact that it is down 3 sets of stairs and took some serious finaglin' to fit into the closet and caused a few bumped knuckles. I do love that man.

Though it's sad to leave the Weasley house of many levels and exploding things, I figure the new house will have more room for yarn AND children. Plus all the animal skins, dune buggy, ultra wood stove and the husband with a penchant for exploding things are coming along. It may just feel like home after all.

For those of you not impressed with the level of my moving-crap-out-to-sell-this-house, let me point out that at this very moment I have NO extra sockyarn in my house. The only sockyarn I have is an almost knit first sock and the remaining sockyarn to create its mate.

Yay for Knitting Roundups on One Pretty Thing!

Have you seen One Pretty Thing? She's the queen rounder-upper of all things crafty on the innernets. I *heart* her blog very much. She has crafting roundups, diy roundups, free printable roundups, kids craft roundups, crocheting roundups, crafty reading roundups, KNITTING ROUNDUPS! and roundups I can't even remember. I love this blog because it really goes through the TONS of stuff out there and picks out the cool bits in craftiness for me to check out! Click HERE to go see the newest Knitting Roundup!

Guess who's little twisted drop stitch video is listed in the most recent roundup? YAY! Now get out there and KNIT you a super speedy, cool scarf! You can use any type of yarn, from handspun art yarn to cascade 220 to *shudders* fun fur. I'm just sayin' it COULD be done. Holiday knitting is coming closer and closer. Crank out a few scarves and start putting DONE check marks next to names on your Good List. :)

Know when to walk away...know when to run

I'm running. Running like hell. I can knit this sweater no more. It's a lovely pattern. It's lovely yarn. Who doesn't love Silky Wool? It's just a horrid, horrid combination for me. Bad. Real bad.

In the words of Kenny Rogers, "You've got to know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run." SO, I've knit this sweater almost entirely TWICE. Knit it 2 years ago. Fully un-wove the already woven-in ends. Frogged it. Reskeined the yarn. PUT IT AWAY. Then somehow I decided I'd not given the combo a fair shake and did it again. All of it. Again. I had walked away, but I came back. I knit. Again I wove in ends. Again I sewed down a waist hem. Again I knit the whole damn thing except for the sleeves and realized that I need to run. RUN AWAY FAST.

The yarn has been reskeined yet again. It has been bagged up and will be delivered to another knitter without such a love/hate relationship with it. It will be out of my house and not tempting me that if I just knit it again, THIS TIME it would be different.


You know, looking at that pretty, pretty yarn and the pretty, pretty pictures of models riding bikes home from the farmers market with baskets full of fresh produce, I could almost see that sweater becoming mine. I could ride a bike home from the farmers market if I just had that sweater..... OUT OF THE STASH! BE GONE WITH YOU! NO MORE TEMPTATION!

It just wasn't meant to be.

God bless Labor Day!

I'm so excited to NOT be laboring this weekend! AND an extra day off to boot! WOO HOO!

I'll be working on the crap ton of crocheted roses. All those ends.....the cool thing is since it's gonna be felted anyway and you need to secure the petals etc. I just thread the needles, stab it back & forth in a non-professional and quite messy method and when they're felted, they're fabulous anyway! MAN, I forgot how much I love felting knitted objects! Ok, these are technically crocheted, but you get the idea.

That's no little craft tote either. It's about 12 inches tall, 9 inches wide and 16 inches across. CRAMMED full with noro wool crocheted into flower bits.

I feel a crafty tutorial is in order, so I'll take some photos along the way. Christine's Crocheted Roses...coming soon to a blog near you....

Happy Crafting, everyone!