Because Knitting IS Art

Is it.....Spring?

Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!! It looks and feels like Spring out! *calm down* I'm sure we'll get snow tomorrow but nonetheless, I'm busting out the patio furniture in the hopes of knitting outside with a beer in hand. Or on the table (hard to knit with a beer in the hand).

I already busted my "don't buy books" resolution. I got some lovely knitting books at Borders yesterday.

I'm quite excited! I'm really ready to start tackling socks, I think. I'm going to get some cheaper, non-handdyed sock yarn to practice with this weekend and just start tackling. The Cookie A book looks so good, she seems to be the top in socks. Heh.

And the MochiMochi? How can anyone resist these little critters??? You can't.

Mailing off some baby goods today to a friend. Hopefully she likes them well enough. I made 2 newborn hats and an umbilical hat from the Stitch N Bitch book (SUPER easy hat to knit). Plus a pair of seamless booties (with I-cord ribbon) and some little French booties that were cute but I'm not sure of the practicality of them.

The Knit n'Bitch group is meeting up again on the 26th. Really looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll get some knitting done this time since all we did last time was talk. Ha!

Going to the Indianapolis Museum of Art this weekend. Mostly for the Thornton Dial exhibit and the Sun boxes but also to get inspiration. I have lots of color scheme ideas for yarn and several ideas for pillow cases.

Off to enjoy the beautiful day!

Fiber Fest Numero Uno

On Friday, the 11th of March, mom and I traveled to Jay County, Portland Indiana for the Fiber Fest and Spin In. Not a particularly scenic drive (it IS Indiana), it was excellent because of time spent with my momma. Once we arrived, we parked haphazardly as that seemed to be the way to park and entered the 4H barn. After paying our $1 admission, we beelined to the restroom. Turns out we just missed the dog herding demonstration, so we went to look at the petting area. The baby goats were adorable! But the bird guy just freaked us both out and we didn't stay long. I don't do birds.

 Mom was worried the sheepies were cold. It WAS cold out there but I think evolution has probably helped them adapt.

Inside, it was amazing the amount of spinning going on. Little fiber flecks were everywhere. Someone brought some bunnies. I love bunnies and have never seen an angora close up. This little guy was quite hoppy and active. Which is why the photo is pretty blurry.

Amazingly, we found our knitting teacher there. How sad that she is literally down the road from us and we had to travel an hour+ to see her! Susan owns The Trading Post for Fiber Arts and she was actively spinning some pretty purple roving. All of her roving made me drool even though I don't spin. It was all just gorgeous. I found some Mardi Gras sock yarn but resisted buying it since I still haven't started knitting socks yet. It seems wrong to buy sock yarn right now, at least until I start my first sock. I did buy a drop spindle and some roving from Susan. I figure I need to see if I like it before I go whole hog with a spinning wheel.

I also ended up purchasing some wool yarn that looks like it hides a surprise. The outside of the skein is quite festive but if you peer inside, it explodes into an acid trip of color. Susan found this yarn on a trip to Copenhagen. I have no idea what to knit with this but it's now here when I figure it out.

I also found a booth called Paper and Yarn. The girl heading up the booth was super sweet and helpful and I ended up purchasing sock yarn (I KNOW I KNOW!!!). The yarn is gorgeous and I couldn't not get it, right?? Ice cream!!!

Mom and I wandered around and watched demonstrations of a bowl maker. He made bowls out of trees. Very interesting. There were also weavers and basket weavers and such. Something of a sensory overload but I left pretty excited by all the possibilities.

Knitting isn't just making scarves and hats. There is so much more that you can do in the fiber arts if you choose to.

Next fiber fest is in Greencastle, In in April. Another road trip!

Furry...

I actually feel like I have some forward momentum lately. One of the problems of having my thyroid removed and having wonky guts is that my meds don't often work as I think they should, so I've been just exhausted lately. I decided this week that I have too much stuff to do to be tired and am faking the energy it's going to take to power through.

My first attempt at a baby bootie is sketchy at best. My brain isn't seeing how this pattern will make a bootie so I'm continuing to the end to see what happens. And then I can figure out what I've done wrong and correct it for the real set of booties.

I got some homemade stitch markers in the mail today and they can only be described as art. Pictures forthcoming.

Tomorrow is the Jay County Fiber Fest in Portland, Indiana. Is it weird that I wrote down all the yarn I would need for some projects as a just in case?? Because I did. Real, honest-to-goodness day off work tomorrow and mom and I are traveling to Portland! Hopefully the weather is good - unlike right now.

Born Lost Creations is finally getting some "official" things to help advertise the knitted awesomeness. More news soon!

Rain Rain Go AWAY

With our onslaught of rain, my house is showing me new leaks. Very very frustrating, since this means that something might have happened to my roof during our nasty ice storms. Right now, I have fans going constantly trying to dry things out. At least I'm considering it as ambient noise to my knitting....right?

I purchased a Buddha Machine from Luna Records in Broad Ripple. Spillyjane knits was blogging about them recently and turns out, I really like it! It's the 3rd generation and has odd tones that seem to meld together into excellent "noise" in the background. Knitting is already meditative but this takes it to a new level. I completed an entire newborn hat without stopping and listening to the Buddha Machine. Excellent!

I had found some yarn at Stitches and Scones in Westfield that was just unique. It's Knitcol by Adriafil and it just turned out...neat. The ball of yarn is a little wild looking and it's hard to imagine how this will stripe up.

 And it stripes up very cool! I made 2 newborn hats with the same ball of yarn and they look completely different.

Next up, I'm attempting the OpArt baby blanket from Knitty. I think I've torn this out 7 times now because I could NOT get the center right. I ended up changing the pattern a bit and instead of doing pfb, I changed it all to kfb and am letting the front be plain stockinette stitch.  I think it's finally pulling together, but I switched to small circulars ASAP because the DPNs were just causing me all sorts of headaches. I have 32" circs to switch to once this gets bigger but I guess this shows I'm a circular girl and not a DPN girl.

 I chose Knit Picks Swish in Lotus (dark pink) and white. I should have read up on this first, because Ravelry shows that some of the darker Swish colors have bled into the white. *sigh* I have several more months before it's needed so we'll see what happens.

The yarn demands the pattern

It's funny how one thing tends to lead to another which tends to lead  you somewhere else entirely.

I was on Ravelry.com recently and saw a new group dedicated to helping the victims of the New Zealand earthquake. I joined and started reading through the posts. One member said that if you buy yarn from her etsy store she would donate a portion of the sale to Red Cross NZ. I click on over and am just bowled over by the yarn. I ended up buying 2 skeins of sock yarn.

I don't knit socks.

But one colorway was Jayne Cobb. Firefly! I was weak. (Jayne Cobb is on the right). But it's for a good cause!!

Did I mention I've never knitted socks??

So now that I have 2 gorgeous skeins of sock yarn, I'm on a quest for a basic sock pattern to try my hand at socks. Who knew this is where I would have ended up?

Sometimes the yarn really does demand a certain respect and you just have to do what it tells you.