Off the bobbin and really happy with this first wheel-spun single. I think it's a perfect color for the Boy and already have a wrist band imagined up in my head for it. It's about 95 yds of worsted to light bulky weight.

Next up, really happy with these singles and I had surprisingly little trouble spinning much thinner. As far as the plying, not so much. I really have no idea what I'm doing there, ehh. It's about 195 yards. I also wasn't real sure how the colors would work together but it's what I had and I wanted to try it. More luke warm on this one but the spinning was fun!
I've been saving my "good stuff" as I find myself worried I'm going to screw it up. That is the nice thing about knitting, you can always rip it out- I doubt unspinning would be quit as successful.

So any spinners out there have some good book recommendations?

Posted by Jen at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Finished, and with no down to the wire rushing. I honestly feel like going "Go me!", not very good with the procrastination you see. I've wanted to make this pattern since I saw it and had no one to make it for, so didn't really want to stress while making it. I love it! I used the exact colors in the pattern and the suggested yarn; I thought the colors were perfect as is. I love the bold saturatedness of them (yes I'm making it a word). A benefit of marring into an Indian family is they do not shy away from color. No wimpy pastels here!
Fortuitously it happens to pose rather well with our newly painted bedroom.

Pattern: Anouk, from Knitty.com by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Pima Tencel in 1273 (Orange), 4084 (Green), 2493 (Purple), and 7478 (Red) - This is the yarn specified in the pattern
Needles: Size US 6 Denise's

No real troubles with the pattern other than the early tension issues which seemed to just even themselves out if I stopped trying too hard. Well that and at the last duplicate stitch on the second flower I held it back and realized, aah man- it's suppose to be the reverse image. *sigh, rip rip*

I'm quite pleased with buttons though- little lady bugs to go with the flowers. Mr. Pieknits helped spot them and I think they're a nice touch. Now maybe I'll have time to bang out a hat too.

Posted by Jen at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (26)

I know it's still technically spring, but here in Texas we're already stepping into summer. I thought a little warm-weather treat was in order.

Strawberry Shortcakes (from Everyday Food)

• 1 1/2 pounds (about 6 cups) fresh strawberries
• 1/4 cup + 1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 1/2 cup cold (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• *Whipped cream

Make the sweetened strawberries: Hull and quarter strawberries; toss in a medium bowl with 1/4 cup sugar. Let stand until syrupy, tossing occasionally, at least 20 minutes (and up to 1 day, covered and refrigerated).

Preheat oven to 425°F. Now is a good time to toss a bowl and beaters into the refrigerator to chill if making your own whipped cream.

In a food processor, combine flour, butter, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt; process until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add milk; pulse just until moistened, 4 or 5 times. Do not overprocess.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface; with floured hands, gently pat dough into a 4-by-8-inch rectangle. This dough is quite easy to work with.

Dust a large knife with flour; cut dough into eight squares. Transfer to a baking sheet; sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake until golden, 25 to 30 minutes; cool on baking sheet. (Mine took a little less time, but I think my oven may run hot.) To serve, split biscuits with a serrated knife; layer with berries and whipped cream.

*Whipped Cream: In a large mixing bowl (preferably chilled) whisk 1 cup heavy cream until it begins to thicken and hold shape (soft peaks- about 2-4 minutes). Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons sugar and whisk until soft peaks return, 2-3 minutes.

Sit outside and eat.

Posted by Jen at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Did I mention they were purple too? :-D

Ok, so here's one of the two photos I could find.

This is it still in it's early stages, don't have any later unfortunately. Was back in the days of pre-digital cameras and damn film and developing was expensive (poor college student remember)

Ahhh I miss having fun with my hair. I have some bright red hair color I've been meaning to under dye my hair with for forever, hoping to do it soon. Want to see more crazy hair? I put up a flickr set over here - (Hair as a canvas) because I'm so indulgent like that, or something.

Posted by Jen at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

I've been triple tagged for this one (Suze, Juliana, and pen & purl) so here it goes.

Obligatory Rules
Each person tagged gives seven random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write on their blogs seven facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and need to read your blog.

The list:
1. I'm double jointed in both thumbs. Mostly this is just annoying when trying to do certain things, such as playing musical instruments.

2. I've always had a lot of music in my life and play several instruments- piano, clarinet, guitar, some bass clarinet, drumline in school (cymbal) and dabbled in saxophone. I miss having a piano and now that we have a house have been obsessively checking Craigslist for one.

3. I really really want to take belly dancing and/or fencing classes. I know, seemingly odd combination but have wanted too for a long time. I've looked up places in the area and should really just do it.

4. My family really wasn't that crafty that I can remember. My mom sewed a little and did crochet for a short bit but I never learned. My grandmother seemed to have a traumatic experience with an argyle sock way back when and that was that. I did a lot of crafts in Camp Fire growing up though, although not knitting.

5. Until about 4 years ago I'd lived my entire life within about a one mile radius (that's actually 4 different places too) but really just by chance - had not intended it. I was very happy to Get Out but still feel like I'm "new here".

6. I love language and linguistics, could go on and on about structure (er, I mean ones other than English). Mr. PieKnits speaks 6 languages which apparently I think is a lot cooler than he does. I studied Japanese in school although not as much as I'd have liked. Now I'm working on learning Telugu (Mr. P's native Indian language) and really like it. I can read and write the entire script but learning material is a bit rare unfortunately so it's slow going. Ironically it's spoken by about 75 million people, just not much outside of his home state.

7. In college my roommates and I cut our own hair (poor students) and I have since made a vow to Never Ever cut anyone's hair again. The boy tried to get me to trim a little piece once and I adamantly refused, you do not want to let me near scissors and hair. (Although cutting off my dreadlocks myself had been fun, yep you read right)

Ok, I don't think there's many left who haven't been tagged for this. So let's do it in reverse- if you feel like considering yourself tagged leave me a comment so I can read yours. I think they're bizarrely interesting.

And because pictureless posts are no fun - bobbins two and three (which I'm still working on)

These are some little 1 oz samplers I had, thinnest I've ever spun for sure.

Posted by Jen at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

This should really be an eloquent and poignant post, marking those new steps in the fiber world. However I just keep finding myself thinking nothing higher than-

OMG I got a WHEEL!!!

The wheel of my spinning dreams no less- a new Lendrum Double Treadle Complete. I didn't think I'd really get one, but thought if I did I wanted a wheel that could do just about anything and be all I need. Many thanks to Mr. Pieknits for being such an enabler. ;D

I have to say I feel I got a great deal too- check out the free fibery goodness.

Bountiful Fibers rocks my socks- great bonus package and it was here in 2 days!

Actually one fiber bag is missing from the photo, why? Because it's already spun up. Oooh fun stuff.

Right, ok that's all I got. It's Friday and I'm off to spin for the weekend, weeee!
(Random meme coming soon- random is still a step better than coherent though, so not there yet)

Posted by Jen at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

I hacked up a t-shirt!

I forgot to get a Before picture (bad blogger!) but it was your standard large male tee. I've been looking at shirt reconstructions for ages and have several I've wanted to try. I've also been planning on taking a sewing class because my "skill" extends to knowing how to work my sewing machine and that's about it. However, with tickets in hand for the Tool concert* I wanted to make this one now. Laaa, my spectacularly crappy sewing job!

I don't care, I love the shirt! And hey, it's in black, you can't really see the crap sewing too much.

I pretty much completely winged this, no idea what I was doing. I laid a smaller fitted shirt over top as a guide and cut down the sides and sleeves. I just made up a way for sewing in the eyelet tape but I should have cut the armholes deeper width wise. So I fashioned little pieces at the top of the eyelet strips to hold them together, it appears to have worked. I had originally planned on cap sleeves of some sort but then woke up and realized that was way out of my league. Instead I drew on a neckline, cut and tied the front straps with some ribbon, me likey!

*It was awesome btw - they really put on a great show

Posted by Jen at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Thanks for all your nice comments on the cardigan everyone! I've been woefully behind on email, bit of a busy week. I still managed to cast on for something new however.

It's the back and half the front of Anouk to be exact. Yep, more babies- thanks to my SIL I'm now going to be an Aunt. :)
I’ve been enjoying this quick knit and more seasonable cotton blend yarn after finishing a bigger project. Only thing is it's been awhile since I've worked with cotton and halfway through I noticed some visible "rowing out" going on. So I decided to just work my purl rows firmer and knitted on; when I finally looked down I saw it was even worse. Huh, turns out I actually work my knit rows more relaxed than purls, which I believe it's typically the opposite. So I cast on for the front and thought about it, finally deciding when that piece was done I needed to rip the other one back. Just wouldn't be happy with it otherwise. Plus, it's so small I'd feel embarrassingly lazy not too, I mean come on.

Posted by Jen at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

After numerous days of storms and cloudiness what with Tornado Alley looking more like Tornado Main Street, the weather finally cooperated long enough to get some finished photos.

Circumnavigated Cardigan- she is done and she is cozy. To recap- this pattern was originally published in Knitter's Magazine #10 and is now available for purchase directly from the designer, Medrith Glover (more info here). I also knit this as part of the year long KAL with the Dallas Hand Knitters Guild. This pattern is really more like a very detailed guide. You can use any yarn in any gauge and make any size, it's all calculated by you with your measurements. It gives you lots of room to play with ideas, but when I say detailed I mean it- it's thorough to say the least. Oh and did I mention it was completely seamless, including the side pockets? Yeah, I thought it was a cool pattern. I do love unique construction.

So of course, I had to make some of my own mods. :)

• The pattern calls for 6 inches of ease, while I wanted a comfy sweater that was easy to wear over almost anything- that was a bit much. So I cut mine down to about 2 inches (by pretending my measurements were actually 4 inches smaller, and then followed the pattern as written - easy and mentally indulgent).


• I did add a little bit of waist shaping but this is one thing I didn't do as much as I'd like. I should have started the shaping during the pockets; by the time they were joined I realized it was a little late to do much.


• The colorwork is an obvious change, I added simple stripes and after a few failed attempts decided duplicate stitching on the stars on the front worked the best.


• The pattern calls for binding off then picking up for the start of the top down sleeves but I preferred the more seamless look and didn't want it competing with the stripes. For a provisional cast on I had just knitted several rows in the contrast color then switched to the main color, cutting out the contrast when ready to work in the other direction. While a little more work, this seemed to eliminate any change in tension issues.


• The button band is worked in garter st in the pattern but here I chose to use double knit- much more on that in this post


• I also used double knit for the sleeve hems, here using black for the inside color which allowed me to add another star at each end. So the inside cuff is the contrasting black a la Elizabeth Zimmerman style. On these I joined the two layers with kitchener stitch in the main cherry color.

Sorry for the novel, succinctness was never one of my virtues.

The double knit sleeve detail- unfortunately trying to take a photo of the inside of your sleeve proved difficult. But the cuff inside is the reverse, black with a red star.

I did just notice my hair is covering the other two stars, oops. Oh well, you can see them in previous posts that are all complied here for your back-reading pleasure.
ETA: I've put up a tutorial for the double knit button band here.

Posted by Jen at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)

Wow, so it's been 2 years of this little blog. Sitting here not sure what to write, I find it amusing that the practice has apparently not done much for cultivating easy verse. Two years starts to sound like I actually have some tenure, which is at odds with my feelings of - no no, I so new at this, just starting. Which is really the best thing; it hasn't gotten old. I love getting to "meet" so many cool people and everyone's great comments. I'm constantly inspired by everything I see in blogland. I still have this huge list of all these things I want to start Right. Now. but can't because I already have so many things that I'm already working on and don't want to stop. It's been a good two years.

Thanks for reading guys.

Posted by Jen at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)