And The Winner Is...

Loredena!! She left a comment on the first post, and I pulled the little slip of paper with her name on it out of the bag just a moment ago. Congratulations, Loredena! You can either email your address to me here (spingirlspins AT gmail DOT com) or PM me on Ravelry.

Thank you to everyone who commented on my new blog. I tried to reply to all the comments, but I may have missed a few, so I apologize--I certainly do read them all!

Onward and upward. I'm going to go play violin for a while, then I think the evening will be spent on girly things. I actually made it out for a haircut today and picked up a bottle of Chardonnay on the way home. I'm going to put on the moisturizing pack my stylist (who is also my sister-in-law) gave me, and do something with my horrible lizardy feet. I went ice skating this morning, and the feet need a nice long soak and some serious balm. While I'm at it, I'll give a plug here for Aubrey's site, Goodies Unlimited. Her "Everything Balm" is terrific stuff, and Aubrey was kind enough to put a little sample in each of the goodie bags we got at Stringtopia in April. My feet will love me for it!

For my readers in the USA, have a safe and cool holiday weekend! To everyone, talk to you later, and thanks for reading!

Under Construction

I've spent the better part of last week setting up this blog, deciding on a name, and creating the format. I'm sure there will be more changes, but I'm ready to get underway!

My old blog, The Big Finish, was supposedly focused on...well...finishing projects. Specifically, the dozens of knitting, spinning, quilting, cross-stitch, and needlework projects. The plan was that posting to the blog would keep me on track with finishing things instead of starting them. I was also determined to Stop Buying Stuff. Do I even need to tell you how well that worked? Here's a hint--this was the first list of projects I swore I would finish. As you can see, some of those things still remain unfinished. Yeah. That's a little embarrassing.

But, hey!! Sometimes projects you once loved just don't do it for you anymore. You fall out of love with the yarn or fiber or pattern. Or maybe the baby outgrows the planned project because you're so busy working on other things that you totally forget that you have supplies for a hat, two dresses, and a skirt for her. I'm not saying that happened to me. Oh, what the heck. Yes, that's exactly what happened to me.

What's really funny ironic stupid about this is that I was bribing myself with some really gorgeous butter-yellow Panda Silk sock yarn. I thought that surely I'd be so anxious to knit with it that I would whip right through my list and happily cast on pretty yellow socks, free from the pressure and angst of all those unfinished things piled around my chair. But no. The yarn languishes in the sock yarn drawer, sadly untouched.*

Obviously, I can't even bribe myself to finish something once I'm no longer feeling the love. So while I still have a list of UnFinished Objects in the notebook beside my chair, which, by the way, is up to something like 72 items, I'm just not going to pressure myself to finish everything before I start something new. There's really no point, and it actually is counter-productive for me. I need to spin up a few ounces of silk or merino or BFL now and then. Or I need to whip out a pair of mitts to give away. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something and lets me go back to the acre of handquilting I've been plodding through with a new spring in my step. Or a new twinkle in my thimble. Or something like that.

Besides the spinning, knitting, needlework, etc. that I love, I'm also a writer and a wanna-be violinist. (I would call myself a just plain violinist, but somehow I can't square that with someone who's just starting Suzuki Book 4. Which is the book that you would be working on when you're about...oh...6 years old if you were a real violinist.) BUT--I am starting a 10,000 Hour Challenge, which gives me a pretty good goal to shoot for. A bit daunting, yes, but what do I have to lose?

To celebrate both the start of my new blog and my new goals, I'm doing a giveaway. Up for grabs is this gorgeous skein of 80/20 merino/silk laceweight yarn (1300 yards) in a soft denim blue from Fearless Fibers on Etsy.

You can enter by leaving a comment on this post by June 30, and on July 1 I'll do the drawing. Even if you're not into knitting lace, you can sell it or trade it or do whatever you want with it.

*Actually, I was going to make the yellow yarn the giveaway prize, until I discovered that I had sold it from my stash on Ravelry. I don't know what has more meaning--the fact that I sold it or the fact that I forgot I sold it.

A Little Cheat

Well, it technically counts as a post. Not much of one, but give me a break, okay? Coming up with a decent post every day is not easy.

Here's a terrific giveaway for stitchers. Pop over there and check it out.

And to make up for the lameness of this post, I'll be doing a giveaway for spinners tomorrow, so check back!

Whew! A Lotta Work!

The etsy shop is up and running! Finally! I'm hoping I didn't leave any details out, but I'm bound to find out if I did sooner or later. There's one tiny problem, though. I don't want to let these go:

The sock yarn is a slightly heavier weight than normal sock yarn, and it has a wonderful pearled look and soft, squishy feel. I reeeeaaaallly want to keep it, but it has to go to a new home. Same with the Pink Sunrise merino top. Sigh. It's not as if I don't have a bunch of sock yarn and roving already. But it's hard to part with what you've made all by your little self!

Now that the worst is over of getting the shop going, it should be easier every time I have to update. So the next thing on the agenda is more dyeing!! And to celebrate the grand opening, I'm giving away a 24-inch size 3 (3.25) Addi lace circular needle. I love the cable and the tips on this needle, but they're plated with something that makes my teeth itch when I hear them rub against each other. It's the fingernails-on-chalkboard effect.

So leave a comment with a suggestion of a color or fiber you'd like to see in the shop, and I'll pick a random number for that commenter to get the needle. I'll keep this open until midnight Eastern time on Tuesday. (EDIT: I forgot what day it was because of the holiday. The giveaway will stay open until midnight Wednesday.)

Well, Lookee What I Found!!

First of all, let me congratulate Daniele, because she's the winner of my first comment bribe giveaway. That's nice, because she's been a faithful commenter for a long time. (Of course, that means she didn't need a bribe, but let's call it a reward or something.) I should mention that the winner was chosen by the scientific method of taking five playing cards, one for each commenter, shuffling, drawing, and awarding the bribe prize to the comment number that corresponded with the number on the card. Obviously this works until you have more than 13 comments, but I'll not worry about that just yet. So thanks to all who commented, and stay tuned. I've been cleaning up the stash, so there will be more bribes giveaways in the future.

So, the stash cleaning. Wow. The original plan was not only to inventory, photograph, and list The Stash on Ravelry, but also to get The Room organized and cleaned up enough to actually walk through, instead of creeping sideways through the narrow path to my computer chair. After much moving, shifting, prying open, and dumping of boxes, the inventory commenced. I say again, WOW. I made a shocking discovery:


Eh, so what? you say. Look at this picture:


This is Missy's lace shawl--the one I mentioned in the last post that we started together because she found this faaaabulous lace yarn at Woolgathering. Compare the photos. Yep, it's the same yarn. And even though I stood there at the booth and helped her pick it out, I had absolutely NO recollection that I had bought exactly the same yarn from exactly the same booth at exactly the same fiber fest the year before! What's even funnier is that she was with me last year too, and she doesn't remember it! Scary, huh?

But wait, there's more. See this?


This is a shawl I started for the Spindlicity handspun shawl contest a while back.  (Wow, I didn't realize just how "a while back" that was until I retrieved the link!)  I loved that roving so much, and spent so much time working with it, both spinning on a drop spindle and knitting it. You'd think I would recognize it instantly if I ever saw it again. Nope. Look what I found in a box on the bottom shelf behind the loom:


Again, exactly the same roving, probably bought from exactly the same vendor. The details of both purchases are a blur, but really. Am I going to have to start carrying smidgins of wool everywhere I go so I don't make multiple purchases? Oh well, at least I'm consistent in my tastes!

That shawl never got finished because I started knitting it before I finished spinning the yarn. As I spun, the yarn got finer and finer, ending up like this: 
(Love that classy yarn bobbin!) Unfortunately, the difference was obvious in the shawl, and I pulled it off the needles because I knew it wasn't going to work out. Here are the detail pictures--you can clearly see how the yarn got progressively finer.  The center starting point:

About a billion million hundred rounds later:

I was terribly disappointed, because I so wanted to win the scholarship to SOAR, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I put it away until I could stand to look at it long enough to frog back to where the yarn started becoming a little more consistent, and of course, I forgot about it. I've got so much of that roving now, I could spin and knit 40 shawls with that weight of yarn!

So far those have been the worst discoveries in the Stash Inventory. I am going to get tough, and get rid of some of the leftover yarns I have rattling around. Somebody somewhere can use them. And to show you just how tough I can be...I THREW AWAY yarn I had spun and plyed on a drop spindle. It was one of those projects that was just not turning out well and I knew it, but I couldn't bear to give up on it. I had spun and plyed so much of this yarn--laceweight again--that I tried to ignore the little voice in my head that was insisting that it was scratchy. Really, really scratchy. It was a mystery roving I got from someone else who was destashing, and yesterday as I fondled the thousands hundreds ten little skeins, I realized that wearing a shawl knit out of this stuff would be like wearing an exquisitely lovely hair shirt. So it went in the trash, roving and all (though I think I spied more of that roving peeking out from under some mohair in a clear box I haven't gotten into yet. Maybe it will make a nice...um, well, it could be spun into a thick yarn for...hmm, maybe I could...) Aha! FELT!!

It's been fun (though eye-opening) to go through all my yarn and fiber, but I don't think it will all get posted on Ravelry any time soon. It's just too much! I have been writing down the bare bones information, so I'll probably do a spreadsheet just so I can see what I have and where I've stored it. Pretty much the same idea as Ravelry, but without all the pictures. Which leads me to wonder: how do you manage your stash, if you have one? (If you don't because you're one of those anal compulsive freakish wonderfully disciplined people who only have yarn for the project you are presently working on, I don't want to know about it.) Do the rest of you just toss your purchases on top of the pile, so to speak, or do you post it on Ravelry or use another organizing method? I really do want to know, because besides yarn I have needlepoint, cross-stitch, weaving, and quilting stash and UFOs, and I'd kind of like to keep track of it all. If for no other reason than that I don't need any more purple silk-blend roving!

WIPs and a Giveaway!

Even though I haven't made a new Project List, and I'm kind of on hold because of the new Secret Project(s), here's a look at what I've been working on.

The Swallowtail Shawl cast-on was my response to months of sock knitting for SOS08. I think I cast on around the first of September, and this is how far I got before relegating it to the bottom of the pile. It's not hard, and it's a wonderful yarn (Suprima by Fila de Crostura)  (Superior by Filatura Di Crosa) but I got distracted. Surprise, surprise.

This next shawl jumped on the needles because Missy bought some laceweight yarn at Woolgathering in September, and we started a KAL on Ravelry so she could learn to knit lace. The plan was for us to work on it together, row by row, but that hasn't worked out so well. She's still learning to "read" her knitting, so when something goes wrong (and you know that with lace it always does) she doesn't understand what happened so she can fix it. She's gotten discouraged and hasn't picked it up in a while, so mine has been languishing as well. But I have been able to help her fix some things when they go awry, so all is not lost. And part of the reason she hasn't been working on the shawl is because she's been making a shrug and can't stand to have more than one project going at once. If I hadn't endured 40 weeks of pregnancy (with the requisite 3 months of morning sickness) and 16 hours of labor to bring her into this world, I would swear she can't be my kid.

This shawl is a bit bigger than the picture shows, because I've had to sneak it out on occasion and do a couple of rows just for the fun of it. Don't tell Missy.

The gray sweater/coat below is a Jo Sharp pattern, and it's being made with Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride. The pattern calls for a tweed yarn, but I don't care for the tweedy flecks with all the cabling this sweater has. The Lamb's Pride is perfect--smooth and glossy, and the cables pop out beautifully. I'll have to make something else from it when I get done with this (stop snickering) because the stockinette on the wrong side is even more beautiful than the cabled side.

This just shows a little of the progress on this particular project. I do have the first sleeve done and the ribbing and a couple inches of the pattern done on the second sleeve. But again, it's languishing because of the SP(s). It's kind of hard to work on for a long stretch anyway, because I have to concentrate and follow the pattern carefully so I don't have drunken cables wandering every which way. An hour of working on this and I'm begging for the mindlessness of a fun fur scarf.


The color in the above picture is true--a lovely silvery gray. I don't know what happened to the second picture. I'm not much of a photographer.

Speaking of scarves, I'm ripping off  stealing  borrowing an idea from Wendy of WendyKnits and giving away a book I no longer need. It's Vogue's "Knitting on the Go: Scarves" in new condition. This is what it looks like:


So leave a comment, and I'll choose a winner at random and send this to you. It's really a nice little book, but I don't need it and I'm trying to downsize a bit. I'd rather have a reader get it than dump it off at Goodwill, and our local libraries are not accepting donations right now. Since I rarely have more than two commments on any post, your chances of winning are fantastic!  (Thanks for the idea, Wendy!!)

I'm off to have another little glass of chilled wine after my hectic day spent searching for the perfect Baby Doll for Rugrat. I've decided that there really is a seventh circle of Hell, and it is called "Toys R Us."