The Thrifty Knitter

As I near the end of my stitch linen purgatory, I’m taking frequent breaks to avoid paralysis/madness.

But I have to admit I like its looks, and I think it will wear beautifully.

My current linen break is trying to organize the closet I destroyed looking for my pipe snake to battle the horrendous clog in our kitchen sink. To be fair, I destroyed the closet ages ago, but today I emptied half of it into the front lobby (I also emptied out two other closets in the fruitless search, but they’re not right outside my office, so I’m ignoring them). And since it’s on my list for the year anyway, I’m chipping away at it a little at a time to give my aching hands a rest. And because there’s nothing really good on the tivo. So far, I’ve found the expensive razor heads I’ve been missing since I moved from Austin, and my good tweezers!

Other craft-related goodies on this year’s list:

1. Make and hang curtain in laundry room

3. Find/fix my shams or make a new duvet set

10. Move top-loading washing machine upstairs to home ec room (felting & water removal)

33. Retally yarn stash and complete 40% yarn destash (use/sell/give) before any new purchases

4. Tally fiber stash and complete 30% fiber destash (use/sell/give) before any new purchases

38. Set up packing area & rig up an old computer/printer or get new one (etsy-related)

42. Organize home ec room (my craft room)

4. Reformat NN site so it’s easier to find shit & looks cuter

45. Add gallery to NN site

46. Add books to Thrifty Knitter

67. Submit a new pattern quarterly

68. Update etsy weekly & post updates to lists

9. Finish and submit fabulous proposal with Adrian

70. Motorize one of my carders

86. Spring Yarn School

87. Fall Yarn School

88. Make a Yarn School 2007 contact page

100. Critters

101. Spinsters’ Club

102. Dirty Needles projects

103. Knit a sweater a month

104. Knit a scarf panel a day!

105. Make a rug

106. Make mom a sweater like she wants

107. Finish or frog all old WIP

For 107, I’m digging out all the UFOs and assessing them. Here’s one I’m definitely finishing, assuming I can get my hands on  more yarn. So far, I’ve had not luck spinning my own. The colors are always just a tad off. I’m afraid I’ll have to add some contrast trim along the sleeves and hem. I really didn’t want to have extra attention drawn to the hipline. I think I’ll go pester Vera again. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Okay, so my mom didn’t just magically guess; I gave her a big list of options. Here’s what she picked out and got me for Christmas!

Funky Caroline tops: soy silk, BFL (got 2 of these) and alpaca! Yum.

Loop batts (2)! Silky.

Mustache Rides wool top! Those blue spots are a lot bluer in real life. Gorgeous.

Crystal Creek batt! Huge and soft!

Yay! I can’t wait to spin these. But wait I must, as I’m still behind and determined to get caught up by the end of the year. Yeah, ha ha, but I do have some urgent commitments. So adieu to you and knit I go!

We were supposed to drive to Austin today, but the weather reports (blowing snow advisory) along the first 5 hrs of the route were very discouraging, so we decided to wait until tomorrow. It wasn’t bad this morning, so we thought about going ahead with it, but the snow just hit and man, am I glad we’re not driving in this shit. It is CRAZY.

Here’s the view from the back after 20 minutes of snow. So much snow and wind you can barely see the water tower.

For reference, here’s how it looks on a normal, overcast day (droob’s pic):

In the meantime: Snow Day! It’s so exciting to finally have a day that’s not already planned out from beginning to end. I’m going to TCB and clean and play!

One of the things I’m spinning now. It’s some natural brown heathery stuff that was packing material for some wheels I got from Holland. There were both raw fleece and grease batts, but they were sealed in bags & I think pretty much meant just fo packing. I washed it all up & I’m kinda loving the fiber. It’s not soft, but it is very bouncy and sturdy & I think will make great, rugged outerwear.

From the November Spinsters’ Club meeting, Biggie mill ends. For what? Something for Ron, but who knows.

Noro Kujaku & Kureyon poncho for mom.

Finished up a final batch of ’07 batts last night. Now, back to knitting!  I should have some FOs soon!  I’d better. Yikes. It’s getting late…

It’s been a hell of a week!

Last Sunday was a tiny Harveyville Spinsters Club meeting, just me, Marta & Laura, thanks to the weekend’s first run of ice. Laura brought cookies and Marta brought tea, and I made soup, and we had much fun. Then I got my datebook printing back late Monday afternoon, just in time for an ice-storm and 3-day power outage Monday night. We did most of the hand-finishing for the first batch by the paltry, gloomy daylight, or by candles and the light of a little lamp we sneaked onto the fridge’s cut of the generator’s power (by Wednesday, I was disconnecting the sump pump and getting online in my 46 degree office; thank you, generator, for enablign my pathetic internet addiction, unhindered by the freezing room).

They calendars are great this year, bound on the short side and with a better layout to make them a less clunky, but still with sturdy cardstock pages and fold-out monthly calendars. I’ll get some pictures tomorrow, when the light comes back. I hate how cheated you get on daylight in the winter, and my pictures always look off indoors.

I also took advantage of the outage to do some baking (we have a gas oven), which helped keep me warm. I made a pumpkin pie for Ed & Marta (turns out Ed loves pumpkin pie & he didn’t get any this year); a sugar-free apple for Dick & Rita; and another special treat that we mailed off Thursday & I don’t want to mention and spoil the surprise, eh. And then another pumpkin that was supposed to be a present but ended up being for me & Ron.

The power came back on Thursday (though some of our neighbors were still without on Friday), which was about as pretty a day as you could ask for, and I got a ton of pictures of the melting ice against crazy blue skies:

(click for more ice)

Happily, Friday’s big storm didn’t amount to much, just nice powdery snow and plenty of electricity. And for the last couple days, I’ve been catching up on my shipping, working on a linen (first time knitting 100% linen) project for Shannon’s alt fiber book, and making batts galore! I’ve also added more Cuckoo for Cuckoobatts subscription options to the etsy site, and come up with some cute new cards/packaging for the gift subscriptions. Yay!

But aside from the momcho, I haven’t even started my Christmas knitting. Whoops. Or any Christmas shopping, really. I’m trying to go with as much handmade and Wabaunsee county stuff as possible, but with the storm and Ron having the car most days, I haven’t gotten very far. Maybe tomorrow we’ll drive around Wabaunsee and pick up some goodies.

What I have not done in the last 2 days is shower. And when I say 2 days, I think I actually mean three. Um, yeah. Yikes. I’d better go scrub up.

But first, new batts:

(New item, the Sock Sack, coordinated batts for plying or striping sock yarn. Or, you know, anything else you wanna do with ’em.)

(Been loving on the greens & purples. I’m trying to stick with one color family at a time so I have enough scraps to card into my dregs batt for my future art club sweater.)

And the new gift subscription stuff:

Okay, off to Cleansville!

I cut off the top of my thumbnail working on The Year of the Spitfire datebook. I got a little sloppy with my paper cutter. If the blade were sharper, I might have lost more than just the nail. On the other hand, if the blade were sharper, I wouldn’t have been putting so much force into cutting the pressboard, so…

On the bright side, while the datebooks were delayed a little (as usual), they’ll all ship Monday. Wheeeeee! I’ll post some pictures then.

They’re selling like hotcakes, so if you want one, order asap: http://www.disgruntledhousewife.com/merch/2008.shtml

As you can see, I’m definitely lacking the necessary yarn to finish this sweater. I’m hoping Vera can spin me up some more. Otherwise, I’ll need to spin something suitable for contrasty trim. I’ve got several rovings that might be good candidates, but a 2-ply sport isn’t my typical yarn. I’m more a 2-ply worsted-to-bulky gal, so this would be a challenge. I’ve already sampled some Beaverslide roving (too blue/too heathery). I’ve also got some options from the Art Club rovings I sell. I’m going to try this (Chocolate Froth rambouillet roving) in hopes that it will match the main color:

Or if that’s too far off, maybe one or both of these (Montana Silk, cormo/polwarth/silk combed top; and Malt Balls, ramboilletXcorriedaleXcormo combed top) for contrast edging:

In other spinning news, I’ve decided to make a dregs sweater. The idea is that after every color batch of cuckoobatts, I card blend in either the leftover scraps, or the stuff in the licker-in or the main drum in with some natural dark brown sliver, and reblend for a dark brown heather. Then I spin it up and knit it into a top-down raglan, adding another chunk after each batch of batts. I’m annoyed this didn’t occur to me after the big round of blues and greens I just finished, but I did make one with the red dregs. Here’s my first dregs batt:

There’s a chance I have a handful of blue dregs set side that I can card into some brown stuff to represent the blue batts. It won’t be the softest sweater ever, but luckily,  Sierra Trading had some half off silk long underwear. Hm. I probably should have bought more than one.

And here are the rest of the newest Art Club batts &  little yarn:

 

 

 

OLD VINE laceweight merino yarn 

Okay, I don’t know if that’s our official name, but it’s the one I’m using. Year’s ago, I got a “Spinsters’ Club 1932” mug at an estate sale (and later kept coming across them, but for some reason never bought more, very unlike me), and I just loved the name. And now I’m two kinds of spinster, yay me!

Yesterday was fiber-licious! First off, the Jennifers (S. and M., ha ha), Cathy, and Marilyn all came by yesterday for copious amounts of chocolate (damn you, Cathy!) and spinning joy. The weather was dreamy–warm, sunny, and uncharacteristically un-windy–so we set up our wheels out front and spun al fresco. Jennifer S. taught Marilyn, who caught on right away, and I got to try Cathy’s Lendrum (I love the looks–and the bulky setup is crazy huge–but I think it’s a bit too big a wheel for someone my height) and my new Fricke double treadle, which is AWESOME. I love it. But I forgot to try Jennifer’s big Kromski. Next time.

(BTW, I’m a Fricke dealer. I do $10 shipping and a free big box o’ fiber with purchase, so if you want one, lemme know! Hopefully, I’ll get a little shop up soon. I’m also a Strauch dealer, same deal. The fabulous Strauch carders are on our etsy site, if you wanna look.)

Afterwards, I went to Marilyn’s for crochet club, more chocolate, and 7-layer dip. It was great fun, and they didn’t shun me for knitting (I do go both ways, but I’m anxious to hurry up on my new Skinny Cat sweater, after frogging the first try).

And: new batts! And I’m about to go card until my arm falls off, so more later. (I need to motorize one of those puppies…)

Mermaid (these have a lot more green than my camera would get):

Cartoon Tiger: