Bad Blogger, no cookie.

I've been a bad blogger. I'm sorry, forgive me? Well, I guess if you're here you already forgave me, so I'll go on.

Let's see... what have I been up to... Knitting, spinning, and a gig at Eastlink :D

I finished a Hemlock Ring Blanket as part of Ravelympics 2008. I'm relatively happy with it. I could have made it a bit bigger, and the Cascase 220 is a teeny bit thin, would have liked a thicker blanket, but it's a nice decorative throw.



For my birthday/graduation (they were the same day) I got the new Vogue Knitting magazine with Jarod Flood's Green Autumn (Druid) mittens pattern in it. I cast them on in the Lime Green color I got from Eric at Cables and Lace. I love them so much and am quite a bit farther than this picture, but we haven't had any decent weather to take pictures.

I've been working on a pinwheel blanket since July, it's going slowly, but I'm on my 6th ball of the Handicrafter cotton, so it's getting to be a good size, I think I'll only do a few more rows out of this ball and then do a fancy-ish bind off to make it a little prettier. I'm not sure if I'll give it to Nanny to go with her stuff for the Hospital, or if I'll take it to either one of the nursing homes, or what. I have no pictures of it, and it's nothing special, so believe me, you're not missing anything.

OH! I finished one of the Endpaper mittens, I like it. I should have reversed the colors so that the Black & White was the background color, I'll do such on the other mitten, once I finish one of the druid mittens.

Dr.Who Swap! only....too late. lol. Iko is amazing. She sent me so much great stuff (most of which is gone) Those are two bags of Jelly Babies (I like the strawberry ones, but detest the black currant ones. One bag is completly gone, and the other is only half left), a package of chip nuts (I like chip nuts but these are SPICY, too spicy for me), and a whole bunch of Japanese gummy candies (tasty).
Honey, I got honey!
Roving from Spincerely Yours. (BTW, I had to get a new set of plastic drawers just to put all my spinning fiber into, there's just a little bit of it.)
STR!!!! I need to get more sock dpns so I can have more than one fingering weight project on the go at once, but I need to find a project to go with this yarn first.
A magnet! I love it. Know what will be the first thing on the fridge of whatever place I move into when I leave here. A really nice sewn envelope, and a sweet note.
ZOMGIES, POCKY! I got Pocky for the first time when I was in Montreal with band in grade 11, I fell in love and went back to that little store in China town like 5 times just to buy Pocky. The Red box is gone, and I hid the Men's pocky away from myself so that I might be able to keep it a bit longer.
As you can see, my swap package was awesome! Iko is amazing. :)

On to what I did today.

Crystal (Cousin Ben) and I spent the afternoon dying! It was so much fun. I brought over two bags of roving that I got from Hello Yarn (BFL and Merino) and we dyed it using kool aid. Not too many pictures we taken on the account of both of us having so much fun either laughing at Ben in his Jolly Jumper or too caught up in the dying process, but there were a few good ones.

Youngest Dyer ever? He kept whining while we were soaking the fiber, so Crystal picked him up and put him on the table, he was happy just to be part of it. I didnt include the picture of him bouncing around with a grin from ear to ear because it's super blurry, but he was really cute.

Crystal's pinwheel design. She dyed the BFL, I did the Merino. No pictures of mine with the dye on it, we were too busy laughing at Ben.
This is Crystal's fiber in the loaf pan in the microwave. She was amazed (and so am I every single time) at how clear the water comes out when you cook it. Chemistry amazes me.
After we set the fiber outside to dry, I was working on the pinwheel blanket, and once again, Ben kept whining, apparently all he wanted to do was help.

Well, that's it for my mammoth update, hopefully I'll be doing more regular updates so that I wont have ones this long, and this far apart.

ETA: I forgot to mention, I got my Ravelry shirt! yays! I'm going to wear it tomorrow to the Eastlink gig I'm working, I'm really excited.

-Cheers and happy knitting!

Acquisitions, Photographs, and Castonitis

My name is Gwen, and I have a problem.

I was taking pictures of my stash on Monday and got up to about 200 pictures (more than one picture for each skein) and it only took care of about on third of my stash. It's kinda sad. I was also playing around with different photographing techniques, and came up with some pretty cool effects, I'm also doing a bit of photoshopping to get more than one picture into the pciture. My favorite so far has to be this one:

It's the Merino/Silk I got in the Single's Survival Swap. It's a dream to spin and I can't wait to try my hand at plying it. I haven't gotten many more of the pictures edited yet, seeing as I'm doing all of this on my laptop, and the touchpad can only do so much (my god I want a Wacom so bad) it takes me a while. I will get them all done eventually, but just not yet. Here are some more that I've done.

The left over Midnight Blue fiber that mom & dad brought back from Gatlinberg. I think there's about 2 ounces left.

Spincerely Yours. The roving I got from Iko in my Dr Who survival Swap package. More about that later.

Socks That Rock, from Iko, more later.

On the needles....um, too much. I've got a pinwheel blanket out of Handicrafter Cotton that I had purchased for Brownie Camp that never happened. I'm nearly done with my 4th skein, and it's over 2 feet across. I'm going to try to use up 8 skeins, but I'm also going to try to be done before Friday so that I can use the 5mm Addi it's on now for my Ravelympics project. Also on the needles (and taking another 5mm circ, but it's only a 24 inch and it's bamboo) is my Boob Holder Take 2. It's the exact same as my first green one, except this one is in black 220. It kinda got stalled, I don't have the initiative to work on it very much right now. The Lime Tuxedo Mitts, I love them, I'll put that right out there, and I'm almost done with one so far. I'm not sure if the thumb will be big enough though, kinda scared about that. The Lace Leaf scarf has stalled, it takes far too much concentration to watch DVD's or talk to ADONIS while knitting it.

There is an FO! I almost forgot. I finished it last night, and I think it'll be terribly huge for dear Cousin Ben, but he'll grow into it, or I'll make another one, in fact, I think I will make another and do it with stripes. It's also a testament to how bad a crocheter I am. I managed to figure out my mistakes though, so the next one will be much better. I really want one for myself now too though.

I was really tired when I was taking these pictures. Please excuse my insane behavior.


I think that'll be all for today. I'll try to remember to blog about my Dr.Who swap package later on, and about my ebay acquisition, and about my other internet purchases (which haven't come in yet, but still).

-Cheers and happy knitting!

Update! Update!

Because I'm a bad blogger, here's an update, not sure of what, but yea, update with pictures!

There are three XL blocks for my Lizard Ridge blanket all seamed together. I need to get to Tangled Skeins to get some more Kureyon for more blocks. Each block is two skins and about 10 inches wide and about 24 inches long, so right now I have a block that's 30 by 24 inches. I think maybe 5 more block, making it 40 by 48 will be big enough. Maybe. We'll see, Kureyon isn't cheap eh?

Tuxedo Mitt! I'm not too happy with it. The self striping yarn went kinda funny in the area where I increased for the thumb gusset and it completely hides the cables. I only have the one mitt done so far, I might rip it and make a pair of socks instead.

Detail on my Lace Leaf Scarf. I love how soft the Malabrigo Lace yarn is, but I'm having issues with it being so damned thin, just feels weird to work with. But I love the final product, so light and lofty.

This is how much I have done so far. 8 complete repeats out of....50 maybe?


Pride and joy right now. They're my Lime Tuxedo Mitts made out of Dragon Feet (Lemon and Miss Lime) and Lizard toes (PenGwen) both from Eric at Cables and Lace. It's Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts pattern, and although The detail of the colorwork gets lost because of the striping, it still makes for an amazinf mitt, and warm too. I'm about a third of the way done the thumb gusset right now (so much farther than this picture). I love them.

Also with no pictures, I've cast on for another boobholder, but this one will be in black Cascade 220. I love my green one to death, but find that I don't have many shirts I can wear with it due to the green clashing with just about everything in my closet. I'm pretty stoked to have a new knitted garment to wear.

As to non knitting news, I went on a pubcrawl on Friday night. I was expecting to not know many people, and to kinda feel like an outsider, but it was really awesome. I also met an amazing guy who I hung out with most of the night (after singing The Night Pat Murphy Died with him of course). We went to see Batman last night too. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Can't wait to see him again. :)

-cheers and happy knitting!

I should be in bed, sleeping. But instead...

Instead I decided to post a quickie!

I made an old t-shirt into a cute little bag. It's big enough to hold all my notions that had previously been held in a goggles case from Gravis. I have a few more cut and pretty much ready to sew, I just need time to sew, and wish I didn't have to drag the sewing machine out from under mom's desk each time I wanted to use it. Anywho, pictures!


Vinyl does Rock. That's for damned sure.

The inside fabric is leftovers from an old laptop case that I made. I might rip it (the old laptop case) apart seeing as the old laptop does not work, and is collecting dust.

-cheers and happy knittin!

In which there are pictures

So I took some good pictures on Friday, and also figured out why my camera wasn't focusing. I had turned off the macro function and had forgotten to turn it back on. The majority of my pictures are taken of my knitting, hence macro is usually on all the time, so I didn't even think about. But anywho, pictures!


Cherry Tree Hill. Beautiful.

L&V. Awesome.
Cables and Lace, Lizard Toes, PenGwen. Love it to death.
New WIP bag from Ruddawg
Soap! It is Light Poke Cake and smells good enough to eat. In fact when I brought it home and made dad smell it he thought it was candy and was going to break off a piece to eat. I quickly stopped him by telling him it was soap. Silly Dad.

That's my swag with better pictures. No real knitting news except I finished a nanner sock. Pictures of the completed sock soon, but to tide you over, here's a picture of just after I turned the heel.
I just added one repeat and then 4 rows of 1X1 ribbing then bound off. I like short socks. The only problem is that it's a little long in the foot, not overly, just a little longer than I would have liked. Oh well. I think I'll do the next one in the reverse pattern since it does tend to bias a bit. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

- cheers and happy knitting!