fishie’s aquarium

I haven’t been knitting a whole lot lately. Instead, I’ve been dyeing yarn. I’ve been meaning to post my new colors, and making my first sale today has broken my blogging-block.

Lionfish	Plankton
Iceberg	Giant Squid

The thing I’m proudest about? A couple nights ago, I redid all the photography for my shop. I think I’ve found myself a good item photography theme. And to think, the fish decals were a complete impulse buy. Best $0.69 I’ve ever spent.

Ta-da! Countless hours were spent unraveling, skeining, weighing, removing the elastic strands, reskeining, dyeing, reweighing, reskeining again, and designing labels. Dyeing recycled yarn is officially a success! The colorways, from left to right: Salmon, Sea Anemone, Phyllidia, and Algae. The algae was my test attempt, and since I used scraps to dye it, I don’t have enough for the two 50g skeins. As a result, it’s MINE! The other 6 skeins, two of each colorway, are up for sale in my etsy shop. I rewrote my public profile in celebration and my sleep deprived brain thinks it’s hilarious. You should check it out.

In the midst of my dyeing frenzy, I overdyed some wool I got in my mystery yarn grab bag thing.

Ick. What would I do with THAT color?

This? Infinitely better. I actually want to use this yarn for something now.

In knitting news, I’m working on too many lace scarves. They take forever. I really want to be knitting something like a sweater that I can just finish in a couple days, jeez. I have been itching to knit the Textured Circle Shrug from GlamKnits, but I am absolutely adamant about NOT buying any more new yarn after my 80-skein Tuesday Morning binge. I don’t have enough of any given yarn to knit the shrug. So what did I do?

I unraveled a sweater. It’s 55% Acrylic, 45% Cotton, which is pretty close to Cotton-Ease, the last yarn I used to knit a shrug. Best part: I paid $6 for that sweater. I had every intention to cast on for the shrug as soon as I was done with my yarn dyeing project, but I got a newsletter from Knitpicks in my inbox last night.

Love at first sight. Yes, I don’t like cropped sweaters or elbow sleeves. BUT, I love purple, I love the cable pattern, the model is a cutie, and the pattern was $1.30. How could I say no? I intend to cast on for this as soon as I can. This requires… unraveling another sweater. And since the sweater I’m going to unravel is the same exact color as the yarn for the circle shrug, I’m going to… dye it first.

And on and on and on. This dyeing this is kinda addicting.

I got off my ass and finally started dyeing yarn from that sweater I unraveled a couple months ago.

I decided I absolutely HAD to dye some yarn last night, after drinking half of my vodka/rum/caffeine free coke last night, so I had to walk up to the store and ended up walking home with two gallons of vinegar.

Apparently vinegar is the magic ingredient for getting the color to stick, because after only a couple minutes after I dumped in the color, the water was clear–meaning the yarn had sucked up everything.

I’m using this awesome tutorial from Knitty, and right now I’m doing the hot pour dye method just to test to see if the yarn will dye well.

It will. I’ve already named this color “algae”. Guess what theme I’m going for. If all goes well, I’ll have some yarns up on etsy and MAYBE HOPEFULLY make some money from yarning around.

I just moved from a 5 bedroom house with ample storage to a 2 bedroom apartment with … none. Until the move, my stash was easily hidden in a closet (not joking, that’s where I kept it), and my yarn diet was more of a joke than anything.

Now? It’s serious. In order to prove to myself WHY I don’t need to buy more yarn (and also to organize it better so I can actually put it somewhere), I pulled every ball, skein, hank, and sweater to be recycled out and arranged on my bed.

Somebody, PLEASE tell me why I’m still compelled to buy more yarn.

In the original storage containers

Me in PJs for size reference

That is a double bed. Also, the pile in the back is not propped up by a pillow. That pile is a pure pile of sweaters, Red Heart, and other nameless thrift store atrocities. There are also 11 cones shoved in there.

Close-up

It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but most of the yarn is piled. I guess if my skeins were epithelial cells, they’d be pseudostratified.

Now, time to start re-organizing it. If doing that doesn’t convince me I don’t. need. more. yarn., nothing will.

I wish the reason I haven’t updated in a month was because I was obsessively knitting. Unfortunately, life has been happening so the knitting has been a little stalled. I think getting so emotionally invested in getting accepted for publication, and then having the book canceled has also affected my knitting mojo quite a bit. Spending money on knitting, however, has been going in full force, in spite of my *cough* yarn diet.

Before I gush about all the yarn I bought at The Fiber Gallery’s anniversary sale, or the fact that I just registered for the Make 1 Yarn Studio Fall Fiber Arts Retreat in the Rockies outside of Calgary, I has to show you this hat:

Yarn is Noro Silk Garden, the pattern is Coronet from Knitty, although I modified it a bit. I didn’t feel the need to have a double layer where the brim folded, and I wouldn’t have had enough yarn for it anyway. Instead, I picked up stitches for the crown with the right side of the band facing, and did a row of purls before I dove into stockinette. I did the decreases a little too soon, so I plan to unravel the crown, spit felt the remaining yarn on, and do a few more rows before starting the decreases. I knit the whole hat in two days. Until I fix up my Styrofoam head to be the same size as my head, it will remain unblocked. But I’ll live.

I’ve also been working on a tank inspired by the Drawstring Chemise in the Spring ‘08 issue of Interweave Knits. I really like the look of it, but if I followed the pattern I’d look like a freaking pregnant woman. Instead, I used it as inspiration. I cast on this tank in mid-March, and I’m just now starting the lace bits on the bottom.

Progress a week ago

Made with three skeins of Rowan Calmer, knit from the top down. It fits reasonably well, although I really should have started doing decreases in the back sooner than I did. I’ll throw it in the dryer when I’m done and hope it shrinks a little. In the beginning, I was doing a great job at keeping notes so I could ultimately write up the pattern for what I was doing… but I’ve gotten lazy and bored, so I stopped. It’s not perfect and there are definitely some things I’d change knowing how my choices in decreases affected the direction of the fabric, but it’s really good practice for when I actually start writing patterns (I SWEAR I will actually do the dress that was going to be in the new Sensual Knits before they canceled it).

Now that I have all that boring knitting talk done with: YARN SALE! I got to the Fiber Gallery Saturday morning, right after they opened, so I could get some good sale merchandise before it was all gone. And I spent WAY more than I’d like to admit, but I made sure to only buy yarn that I had projects in mind for. In fact, I have a cheat sheet I bring with me when I go yarn shopping:

The last time I brought this sheet with me, I bought some Cherry Tree Hill Cotton to make the Yoke Pullover. This time, I bought some Cascade Fixation to make the Basic Slip (I’ll be using the Trellis hanging off the bottom of the sheet for the dropped stitch details), and a ton of Manos Cotton Stria to make Road to Golden. I’m really excited about the color combo. Here’s a general idea:

I do buy yarn for projects not on the cheat sheet. For instance, I bought some SWTC Amaizing, which is 100% corn fiber and some SWTC Bamboo:

But I made sure to buy enough of the Amazing to make a shrug (3 skeins) and enough of the Bamboo to make a sweater (4 skeins). I’m really excited to use my new yarns, even if that means finishing my WIPs.

The real reason I’m making this post isn’t because I felt the need to keep it updated with what I’ve been making. Oh, no. Really, it’s because holy carp. I’m going to the Fall Knitting Retreat in the Rockies. I’ve been dealing with massive amounts of stress in the personal life, and nothing erases all of my worries better than travel. The urge to just buy a plane ticket somewhere and be anywhere but here has been phenomenal lately, but the things causing all of my stress are things that make it necessary for me to stay where I am. Just like I spend hours looking at knitting patterns instead of actually knitting, I’ve been looking up places to go and reasons to go to them. I’ve been especially interested in knitting retreats. I don’t remember how I heard about this one. Maybe it was just through a google search. Who knows. But when I first saw it, I thought, “OH! I want to go! I shouldn’t.” My contract at work ends the week after the retreat, and I really shouldn’t take days off then. Also, I maintain my status as a part time college student to keep my massive student loan debt deferred, and I really shouldn’t miss class, whenever that would be in early November. Also, I would be going by myself, and I’ve never flown by myself before (I’ve actually only gone on two round trips in my life). And I won’t know anybody at the retreat. SCARY. But you know what, all those are just excuses. I want to go to this SO bad. Classes by Stefanie Japel, Cookie A, Amy Singer… The first thing I ever knit from a pattern was the One Skein Wonder. And 7 of the 11 garments I’ve knit have been from Stefanie’s patterns. After seeing Stefanie’s post with the map saying it was 1.5 hours from me to Calgary…

The e-ticket is already in my inbox.

Yeah, it’s not until November. BUT I’M GOING!

I’ve been having a stressful week. So today, I said, “I’m going to the thrift store!”

Of course, first I had to stop by Pacific Fabrics and grab a size 7 circular needle because apparently I don’t have any. While I was there, I finally fould the perfect contrasting yarn for the Lotus Sweater I have in my mind. The main body of the sweater is a nice, deep ruby, and the stranded lotus design is going to be in this:

Tahki Tweedy Cotton Classic

Then, off to the thrift store. The truth is, I was looking for pants. I’m always cold, and I need pants that will keep me warm until the summer. I only have two pairs and I’m feeling the need for variety, at least until I can do a load of laundry.

But alas, the sweaters were across the aisle from the pants, and I couldn’t help myself, especially not when I found a size large, 100% Cashmere cardigan

or a wool-viscose-angora-cashmere turtleneck, also size large, in one of my favorite colors

After securing these sweaters, I wandered off to the back corner where the Red Heart is dumped. Sometimes there’s good yarn, and although it’s rare, I couldn’t leave without checking.

Good thing I didn’t. I bought 5 huge cones of yarn, two of which are laceweight mohair in a color I don’t mind. This is a big deal. Even better: each cone was only $2.99. There’s a sweater I really want to make that calls for laceweight mohair, but my current mohair stash is all variegated DK of various colorways. Worry no more, I have enough mohair to last me a couple years now.

The other three cones are some as yet undetermined fiber, two are a seafoam-blue-green, one a powdery-blue-lavendar, and they appear to be a light fingering weight. No idea what I’ll do with them yet, but I’m sure I can think of something.

Now, if only I had time to knit…

I hate doing traditional work, and I’m constantly looking for a way to use my creative brain to earn yarn money. When I got into sweater recycling, I realized that I honestly enjoyed unraveling sweaters more than I’d enjoy using the yarn, and being unwilling to directly support people using animals for money meant that I really couldn’t just dye bare yarn and sell it like a lot of people do. Sweaters come in a lot of colors, and a good number are available from thrift stores in white or cream. These colors are easy to dye over.

I’d toyed with the idea a little, thinking that I could have yarns that stuck to my sea theme (”fire coral” for a red and orange yarn, “kelp forest” for a yellow/green), but I never did anything with it. But thanks to this thread on Ravelry, I’m motivated to do it. Not with the sea theme though: I’ll actually use my psych degree to make money for being creative. Now, what color would “Self-Actualization” be?

Once upon a time, I had just learned to knit, and a boyfriend’s crochetting mom gave me a gift certificate for her favorite yarn store. Not knowing anything about yarn, I went there, browsed for a long time, and managed to find one vegan yarn. I bought two $12 skeins. It was very pretty. I wound it up into balls shortly after buying it, lost the tags, and forgot about it.

Three years later, I was starting to become a serious knitter. I had obtained my first real knitting pattern: Stefani Japel’s One Skein Wonder. Realizing I didn’t have enough of that yarn from my first ever yarn excursion to make anything else, I decided to make the the One Skein Wonder. At this point in time, I had four pairs of needles to my name: the pair of size 7 straights I got for a birthday present from my knitting roommate, size 2 and 19 straights I bought for novelty, and a pair of size 6 circulars I also bought for novelty.

I had no concept of gauge, or swatching, or knitting the next size up to make up for gauge. I used my size 6 circs. I finished the shrug, after running out of my main yarn and having to do all the trimming with a some grey acrylic and black eyelash that amazingly didn’t look horrible. It was slightly too small, and I’ve never worn it, but I love how it looks and it’s my first ever garment, so I’m attached.

I’ve always wondered what this yarn was, but never had any idea. I remembered that it was mostly something like viscose and had a black tag, but looking through the worsted weight viscose in Ravelry didn’t turn it up. So I just assumed it was some really obscure yarn and I’d never find it.

Jump forward to two days ago. I was especially bored one night, and started a quest. I WOULD find this yarn. I knew that Noro used black tags, and looking through all the Noro yarn in Ravelry, I found it.

It’s Noro Hinageshi SS. Apparently it’s bulky weight, with a recommended needle size of 8 to 10. And while it’s discontinued, it’s still available for sale in a few online shops, and for less than I paid for it.

My dilemma: Do I unravel my first ever garment, currently unwearable, and use the yarn with the right size needles and make one that fits? Or do I just buy more yarn and remake it? I’m tempted to buy more, I mean, look at colorways 8 and 11, but I’m not supposed to buy more yarn. Can I make an exception for discontinued yarn? Buying yarn would allow me to make one with long sleeves…

I haven’t posted in a month, but I have a good excuse: I feel guilty making posts with no pictures, and the computer with my uploading software is in a room filled with asthma attacks. I’ve invested in some handy dust masks from my local hardware store, and so now I have no more excuses.

I’ve been buying lots of yarn and knitting a lot. Despite me trying to use up my increasingly large stash, I received a giant package of yarn in the mail yesterday. This is what happens when I find out that an online yarn retailer sells “mystery bags” of leftover dye-lots and extra skeins and sells them at a huge discount, with the catch being you don’t know what you’re getting:

That’s a lot of yarn. The full list of my plunders:

(1) Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted
(2) Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk !!!
(2) Hill Country Yarns Sweet Feet (two different colors, one skein makes a pair of socks)
(2) Lily ‘n Cream Solid, one dark purple, one light purple
(2) Lion Brand Jiffy, one black one red
(1) Lion Brand Wool ease
(1) Noro Silk Garden !!!
(1) Patons Classic Wool Merino
(2) Patons Shetland Chunky
(2) Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran
(2) Southwest Trading Company Karaoke !!!

There were some things that I could have gotten from Joann’s, but some things that I couldn’t have, and since I bought two bags I got doubles on a lot of things (and they’re the same dyelots!). They say each bag has $50 worth of yarn, and I really feel like I got my money’s worth, especially since I’ve been pining over Karaoke for a while and got TWO in a GREAT colorway (it’s purple/blue).

Anyway, I’ve been doing more than just buying yarn, I’ve been knitting too. Remember the Cable Down Raglan I knit for NaKniSweMo? I finally got around to blocking it this week. I had run out of yarn so I had to do half length sleeves, which I hate, and when I tried it on… guess what: It’s too big. Gaaahhhh!

I was gifted some yarn over the holidays, and decided to use the Tahki Taos from Kate for the Cropped Cardigan in Fitted Knits. I had just enough yarn to make it, so I started knitting. Then I kept knitting… and kept knitting… and ended up with a very not cropped sweater coat. Even with some major modifications, it still doesn’t work with the boobs. Ah well. I can always wear it open.

My most recent finished object is my Intolerable Cruelty. I cast on for it on the Yarn Train to Portland (really, I swear I’ll make a post about it!), and I finished it just over a month later. It was stalled in the middle while I was swatching feverously for the dress that was going to be in the sequel to Sensual Knits, but it looks like that book has been moved to the “maybe not” status and so I’m not facing a deadline anymore. So I went ahead and finished the skirt.

I used the recommended yarn (SWTC Bamboo) and only used barely over 3 skeins. The skirt isn’t as form fitting as I was hoping (I have the hip measurements for the small, but apparently my thighs are XSmall), but the drape is amazing. I could flounce around in this all day.

So what am I working on now? This damn scarf:

It’s Liesel, and I love the results, but the process is monotonous but not easily memorizeable. This was going to be my winter scarf, but I think I’ll end up hanging myself with it if I finish it before spring. Last night was the first time I’d touched it in almost two months. I think I’ll cast on for Odessa soon. I’m probably going to try it with the beads, which requires obtaining them. Hmmmm…

No, really, I am. I had an awesome time on the Seattle-to-Portland Yarn Crawl on Saturday (update with pictures coming soon I swear), and among my plunders is some eggplant colored Habu bamboo lace weight. It’s my first laceweight yarn ever, and I’m so excited to use it. I’ve been wanting to knit the Oriel Lace Blouse for a while, and now it seems like a possibility. I’ve also been throwing a couple other ideas around, like the Peacock Feathers Shawl. The Habu has been tumbling in my brain so much that last night, I had a dream that I had knit a bunch of lace-doily-dishcloth things and I was blocking all five of them.

Huh.

I should mention that on the train, I cast on Intolerable Cruelty in hot hot pink SWTC Bamboo. I got through a couple inches of it on the train trip, and as of last night, I have 7 inches knit. Watching a couple of the other knitters on the train made me realize I’m kinda fast.

Huh.

I got an email from the publisher today saying that I need to pick out my top two yarn choices and tell them how many skeins I need. Eep!

In addition to making a post in knitting, which lots of people have answered and helped me out with, I took and extended lunch break LYS hopping with Kate. The only way I’m going to be able to accurately determine how much yarn I’ll need is by swatching, so I’ve picking out my favorite/most likely to succeed yarns from each store I’ve gone to. So far Hilltop East and the Fiber Gallery have been plundered. Alchemy Bamboo (HOLY CARP EXPENSIVE!) from Hilltop, Debbie Bliss Silk from Fiber Gallery.

People in the knitting post have pretty much said no on the bamboo (heavier than I thought, apparently, but I’ll still swatch and make a desicion on my own), and yes on silk, but leaning more towards a merino/silk blend or Euroflax. One of the dresses in Sensual Knits is made with Louisa Harding Grace Silk & Wool, which seems like it would be a good choice but I’d still have to swatch it it or something VERY similar to determine yardage, and I’m not exactly sure where I would find it.

I really want to figure out my yarn choices soon so I can request it and start designing. This whole deadline thing is SCARY!

A design idea I submitted for the sequel to Sensual Knits got selected. It was something that I completely made up on the spot at work and submitted pictures of my sketches that I took with my phone and emailed myself. It got picked! One of my knitting designs is going to be published. *flaps hands*

Problem is, I think I might have designed something a little… advanced for me. Not advanced for me to knit if it was from a pattern, but to design myself, whoo boy. At least I have until March to come up with the pattern and finish knitting it. I’m sure I’m supposed to keep it under cover until the book is announced/published or whatever, so I’m not going to say anymore about it than I think I’m getting paid a pretty penny for it considering it’s my first published design. And it’s 10 million hotdogs awesome.

Building up to the omg jump up and down excitement of this whole “I’m going to be in a book!” deal, I got some yarn from Kate for Fishmas this year. Kate has a tendency to buy me yarn that is much longer than it should be. It’s like her yards are as long as Chris’ minutes. Previously, she bought me three skeins of yarn that was 200 yards a skein, and I used it to make her a total yarn eater project (the Manitou Passage Scarf). Not only did I only use two of them to make the scarf 6 feet, but I also made her a matching hat and I STILL have some left over.

The yarn she got me this year was 6 skeins of super-bulky Tahki Taos, 60 yards a ball, in Jungle. 360 yards of yarn. I looked through Ravelry and the books I owned, and figured that the Carrie Cropped Cardigan from Fitted Knits would use about the amount of yarn I had. I’m not normally a fan of cropped stuff, but I have a couple tank tops that would go with the colors and I figured it’s just a shrug that buttons in the front.

I swatched on Saturday, but I couldn’t get gauge with the right needle. I moved up to a 17, but got the same gauge as with a 15. I decided to just knit a size bigger than I needed and everything would work okay in the end. It did. Not only did it work okay, but Sunday evening, right before midnight, I cast off a full length sweater jacket, going past my bum. I’d added more increases to the front to encompass my bosom, and decided to make it a little longer anyway. I was expecting it to come right above my navel, which would show off the lacy bottoms of my tanks nicely, but no. I’d used two balls on the body, one each on the sleeves, and still had two left when it came to lengthening the bottom. I added some lacy eyelet-vents in the lower back to add shaping and match the eyelets in the bell sleeves.

The finished product is wonderful. I’m going to buy a couple buttons after work and do the finishing touches, and then I’ll add pictures.

And I think I’ll make Kate buy me yarn when we go on the Yarn Train to PDX.

I’m exhausted from so many projects and deadlines and sick rabbits and vet bills that this post won’t be nearly as long as I thought it would be at the beginning of this week.

Around Monday or so, I went to Tuesday Morning with Chris to buy stuff and found lots of close-out yarn. It’s all Queensland Collection, and since it was at a close-out store, I could justify buying wool and mohair since I wasn’t creating a demand by doing so. I spent way more than I should have, but got beauties such as

and

I don’t think I ever posted the second Chakra hat, so here’s a two-for-one:

I finished the armwarmer things for a swap, and they ended up being a REALLY fast knit once I got the hang of them. I re-wrote the pattern so that it’s more organized and fixed up some errata, and I’m sending it to the recipient of them. I’ll probably be posting the improved pattern sometime soon too, but probably just in Craftster. I’ll link to it.

I’ve been working on the reversible ribbed hat too, and I’d post pictures but it looks exactly like the scarf at this point so I won’t bother. It’s coming along, but I’m a little puzzled as to how to do the decreases when the time comes.

Oh well.

My special order Tahki Yarn from California came today:

So beautiful.

I don’t have pictures of the table cloth, but I will once it’s finished. I just have one more triangle to sew on and then I need to stitch around the edges so I can throw it in the wash and have it be functional for the party tomorrow. I want to put a backing on it, but that’s not going to happen overnight.

Chris is gone again, and I found the perfect way to use up time like no tomorrow.

I just spent 8 hours taking pictures of yarn, and adding everything to my stash in Ravelry. I knew I had a lot of yarn, but I never thought I had THAT much. Too bad a good portion of it is carp!

Recently, I found out that my IAM account was made into a permanent free account for being featured in ModBlog warning, NSFW a while back, so I went on there and saw somebody in the Seattle group was asking if any knitters wanted to start a SnB. I responded to her, and once that gets started up I’ll have some other liberal minded tattooed chicks to knit with, since the group at Crossroads scares me a little. I haven’t gone, and I know shame on me for getting impressions before I go, but I don’t really expect there to be people there I can relate to or feel comfortable around at a knitting circle in BELLEVUE.

So. Now that I’ve spent all day fiddling with Ravelry, I should probably start… knitting?

I’m officially broke after spending several hundred dollars on vet bills, so my future knittings are limited to yarns I already have. I’ve got a few sweaters I need to do before winter’s over, and buying yarn for sweaters can add up. So I improvised:

The green yarn is 80% alpaca, 20% nylon, from a sweater bought specifically to unravel. Some of you may recognize the brownish yarn, although not in this form. It’s from a sweater (bought from a thrift store!) I wore for a couple years, but have stopped recently because it’s just not flattering. Apparently it was made from a LOT of yarn. 100% acrylic chenille. I’m not sure if I want to just remake that sweater, or reincarnate it as some hats and scarves. We’ll see.

In other news, HURRY UP AND DRY ALREADY!