My First Handspun!

I initially thought it would take me forever to get through those 4 oz. of beautiful fiber that I blogged about yesterday.  But then the obsessive side of me came out and I had it all spun by the end of the night last night!

Before I got too far in, I decided to search on YouTube for a tutorial on drop spinning.  There were several choices, but the one I found most helpful was from Megan LaCore, from The Art of Megan.  I watched it once all the way through (it's about 10 minutes long) and then once more as I was learning how to do everything.  

And that's all it took to get me rolling.  I was so excited to see the yarn taking shape.  I was even more excited that I could do it as I was sitting watching tv.  (I get a little stir crazy when I have to do things without any distractions in the background. Blame it on my ADD.)

I was just spinning along, not paying attention to how much fiber I had used.  When I went to reach for another piece, I couldn't find any.  I didn't even realize I had gone through the entire amount!

I then unwound the yarn from the spindle onto the back of a chair (following the instructions from another one of Megan's videos) and then soaked it to set the twist.  Then I hung it up to dry overnight.

This morning I was so excited to wake up and see how it turned out.  (Not as excited as a child on Christmas morning, but almost...)  I was a little bit disappointed to see that I had waaayyyy overspun it.  It was crimpy and I knew that I would not be able to use it.

So, I set out to see if I could salvage it.  I went through the entire skein and pulled out the extra twist.  I just went along and spread the twist down the yarn.  Luckily, there were some parts that I had underspun, so it worked itself out.  The yarn was still slightly damp, so that helped out a lot too.  I did have to cut the yarn once, as it had become so twisted upon itself that it had gotten really tangled.  But I just tied it together and continued on my merry way.  

After a couple hours, I had gotten all the kinks out and the yarn looked much better.  I was going to soak it again, but the yarn was laying flat on its own with no crimps, so I'm going to forgo that extra step.  It doesn't have to be perfect!  I'll have plenty more chances to get it right.

Okay, enough chit chat.  You're here to see the yarn, right?  Well, here are a couple photos of the finished product.  I couldn't get the light just right, so the color is slightly off, but it's the best I can do with the daylight I'm working with right now.

I stupidly forgot to measure out about how much yardage I had produced, so I have no idea how much is there.  But I love it!  It reminds me a lot of Noro Iro, with the same twist and bulky weight.  Of course, there are sections where it got too thin and other sections where it's too bulky, but overall I think I did fairly well for a first try.  

I think I'll be making a hat for myself out of it.  I hope there'll be enough...otherwise, some lucky person with a smaller noggin than my own will be gifted with a very special FO.

I'm off to get my Maplewing Shawl in order for the Adventures in Lace KAL that begins tomorrow!

Somebody Stop Me

In the spirit of reinvigorating myself in this time of uninspiredness, I have been dreaming of learning to spin. I have been researching spinning wheels but, as you all may know, this is not an everyday purchase. In addition to the higher price, there are so many different types of wheels out there that it can overwhelm a girl. Most of the sites I've been checking out strongly recommend trying out a few different wheels so that you can get a feel for what you want.

However, living way the hell up here in Alaska, I don't really have that option without a spendy trip to Juneau or Anchorage. While for most people a trip to a big city in their state might cost a tank of gas, getting out of my tiny town is quite the process. I'd either have to take an 8 hour ferry ride to Juneau with my car and spend a couple nights in a hotel there until the next ferry back to Skagway; or I would have to drive two solid days (or one VERY long day) to get to the big city of Anchorage and also spend a couple nights in a hotel. And this is even saying that any place in either of those cities even has a LYS that carries spinning wheels, of which I'm not at all sure.

So trying out a wheel is a little out of the question for me. Now you can see why this is such a difficult decision. I have encountered a few people who bought their wheel sight unseen based upon the recommendations of others. It appears I will more than likely have to fall into this category.

And the next big hurdle is the price. Last year I would have thrown the wheel on my credit card and paid for it later. But this year I'm trying really hard to be a little more financially responsible, and teaching myself some patience along the way. So, I'm setting aside a little bit of money each month until I have enough to buy a wheel...hopefully sometime this summer. This is no easy feat for the girl who in childhood used to spend birthday money even before it was in my hot little hand. I need to take a cue from my sister, who would have 5 or 6 years of birthday money saved up and still not want to spend it!

If any of you have any spinning wheel advice, I'm all ears.

In the meantime, I decided to spend about $20 on a spindle and bought some beautiful fiber to try my hand at drop spinning.

The spindle itself is made of wood from the buckeye tree, which will always have a place in this OSU grad's heart. :)

And the fiber I got from Wool Gatherings on etsy. It's absolutely delicious. Here are some gratuitous fiber shots for you.

So, now you know what I'll be working on this weekend!  What about you all?  What knitterly things are you working on?

Oh, and I've also been trying my hand at a little baking lately.  I had a bunch of apples that I needed to get rid of, so I decided to bake a pie for Jeff, since apple is his favorite.  And I added a bit of my own design to the top.  What you do you think?  ;)

Adventures in Lace KAL

Thanks to all the kind notes and comments regarding my uninspiredness.  I think it's just a case of the mid-winter ho-hums.  I took an evening off from knitting last night (it was bowling night) and today I feel much better about things.

One thing I am getting excited about is for the Adventures in Lace KAL, organized by my blogfriend, Kate, of Lazy Kate Creates.  It starts in February and I'm excited at the prospects of what pattern I'll choose.  I've been meaning to write about it before now, but I'm a bit blog-illiterate and couldn't figure out how to add the KAL button to my sidebar.  (I still haven't figured it out, but I'm working on it. ;) )

ETA:  Check out my sidebar. I grew some brain cells and figured it out. Well, it was actually a simple Google search.  Who knew?

I'm currently torn between using my Maplewing Shawl (yipes! I did not realize that I cast on for this way back in September.) and choosing a new and exciting project.

On one hand, having the Maplewing be my KAL project, I'll be sure to steadily work on it and maybe-possibly-there's-a-chance-but-it's-a-shot-in-the-dark it might get finished before I turn 40. (um, that's in 9 years for all of you keeping track.)

OR, I could choose something that's not in my pile of UFOs!  Before cold-sheeping it beginning the first of the year, I put in a last order at Webs and got a delicious hank of Madeline Tosh Prairie in the Clematis colorway.  I'm dying to use it and so I think this just might be the perfect situation.

I am in lurve with Haruni by Emily Ross (Rav it) or one of Anne Hanson's amazing designs, such as the Twinings Stole, the Autumn Arbor Stole, or the Birnam Wood Wrap?

Decisions, decisions....which would you choose?

Uninspired

*sigh*  I've been feeling a little uninspired lately.  Or, possibly, a little overinspired.  So much so that I can't seem to focus on any one project for longer than 30 minutes.  I so wanted to have something to show everyone by the end of the weekend, but that is just not going to happen.

I've also lost any mojo I once had for writing about what I'm doing.  This is a knitting blog, right?  There should be knitting on it, not just talking about knitting.  I've got a basketful of pretty darn cool UFOs (*ahem* in my opinion) but I just can't seem to muster the energy to finish them and then write about it.  Mid-winter blues, perhaps?  I dunno...

Anyone have any cures for overinspiredness...aka knitting ADD?

On days like this...

...it's completely necessary to get out of my windowless office and go for a drive!   At least once a week, my friend Trish and I forgo our lunch/coffee breaks for one of our 'spindrives'.  This means that I text Trish when I absolutely can't take being in my office one more second and she readily agrees that it's time to get out.

So, I swing on over to pick her up at her office (or she picks me up at mine...we take turns) and we spend the next 30 minutes catching up on what's been going on since our last spindrive.  Sometimes we get coffee and sometimes we don't.  Most of the time we vent about stuff that we just can't vent to anyone else, all while cruising around town.  It's therapeutic and relaxing and something that helps me make it through the week.

Well, today was one of those days, and for good reason.  It was absolutely beautiful outside.  A blue bird day, one might say.  Just a few hundred feet up, the trees were frosted with fresh snow and it was all glistening in the sunlight.  The peaks had a bit of mist surrounding them and it was just breathtaking.

Here is the view from Long Bay on the Dyea Road looking down the Lynn Canal towards Haines.

And here is a shot of the Denver Valley just up the highway a piece.  It's one of my favorite places to park and just look out at the scenery.

Isn't it just lovely?  Days like these make me remember why I live here.

On the knitting front, I've cast on for (among many things) a Lucha Libre (Rav it) by Kelli Ludwig, a knitted Mexican wrestling mask.  This is something that I normally would not knit, however I think that's why I'm so intrigued by it.

I have been bugging Jeff for years to let me knit him something, but he has always politely refused.  A sweater?  No.  A hat?  No.  And I understood, because I knew he was sparing my feelings and saving me gobs of time, because he truly wouldn't wear it.  But when I showed him this mask, he was all about it.

I agreed to make him one under one condition:  He has to model it for the blog.  He reluctantly agreed, and this is no small feat.  He absolutely hates getting his picture taken.  I mean, some people are simply annoyed by it, but he really gets angry if I try to take his picture.  So, since he agreed to something he normally forbids, I figured I owe him one.

All I've gotten done is a few k2,p2 rounds, so I won't bore you with any photos at this stage of the game.  But I'll hopefully get more finished this week and post some photos then.

Stash Organization

Do you ever have a task that stands in your way and you spend all of this mental energy on it but just never quite accomplish it?  And when you finally do decide to tackle it head on, once you're finished you feel like you can move on with life?  Well, not that it's a world-ending, significant thing, but organizing the stash this weekend was exactly that for me.  And I feel a huge weight off my shoulders having accomplished it.

If anyone would have told me last week that organizing my yarn stash was going to take nearly the entire weekend, I would have thought they were exaggerating.  But, as it turns out, that's pretty much what it took to get it all in order.

Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I have a yarn problem.  I hoard yarn like it's going out of style, but I really wasn't prepared for the sense of being completely overwhelmed when I was in the thick of the organizational process.

Here is a photo of the before picture.  If you count you'll see 11 plastic tubs plus a random assortment of yarn out of the box, yarn in the box, yarn in baskets, and yarn in Ziploc bags.  I found out a little later that I had forgotten to bring one more tub into the photo, so that would bring the total to 12.

Yikes.  There's a part of me that thinks that it's really not as bad as I thought it would be.  But then there's the bigger part of me that realizes that I indeed have a yarn addiction.

Initially I thought that I would just dump all the yarn into one big pile to get the gratuitous 'flash my stash' shot.  But I quickly realized that I just didn't have the floor space for that.

So, I began by labeling a few different containers 'Bulky', 'Worsted', and 'Sock', the three main weights of yarn that I knew I had.  Then I began the process of separating it all out by weight.  Once I had emptied out a tub, I christened it 'Lace' and began adding yarn to that one too.  Eventually I outgrew the first Worsted bin and moved on to the next. And the next...and the next.  Four bins in all for the Worsted!  I ended up separating it even further into Superwash and Feltable.  Two bins each!

Here I am mid-organization.  I convinced Jeff to come upstairs and take this photo, although I thought better of it once he told me that he was immediately going to call the tv show "Hoarders" and see if they had any need for a new storyline.

(Sorry for the grainy photo...it was really dark and I tried lightening it up but it didn't work very well...)

So, after about 6 hours of sifting through the stash, I finally could breathe a sigh of relief when it all looked like this:

You'll notice that each bin has either just a letter or a letter and a number.  The ones that have just a letter mean I have only one tub of that weight.  For example:  Sock is C because there's only one bin.  And the bins that have a letter and a number mean I have more than one tub of that weight.  For example, in the category 'Worsted - Feltable', I have bins B1 and B2, which means there are two bins of that particular weight.

In going through all the yarn, I did manage to weed out some of it.  Two trash bags full to be exact!

This yarn had been segregated for awhile and I knew in my heart I was not ever going to use it.  But I kept hanging on to all of it just in case I changed my mind.  But I finally made the decision on Saturday to cut the cord and get rid of it.  I'm not exactly sure what to do with it yet.  I'll probably end up donating it.

So this was my progress on Saturday.  And I was pretty happy with myself, although I had initially thought I would be finished sorting and cataloging all in one day.

On Sunday I began the undertaking of lugging each bin one by one down our tiny spiral staircase so that I could sit at the computer and enter everything into Ravelry, and then lug it back upstairs when I was finished.  I was dreading this part, but it was actually pretty fun, as I was spurred on by the little tally count at the top of the page as it kept getting higher and higher.  When I entered yarn from a specific bin, I put the bin letter/number in the Notes section of the yarn, so that I can always know where each skein of yarn is in my stash.  If I ever need to know where that skein of Noro Kureyon in colorway 226 is, I'll know I can look in my Rav Stash, check its location, and head on over to bin B1 and fish it out.

And, 7 hours later, it was all entered and accounted for.  Go ahead, check out my Rav Stash.  The stats:  280 skeins/hanks of yarn!  Nearly 165,000 yards!  Holy moly, I was really not ready for that last number.

So, um, yeah, this only reinforces my need to go Cold Sheep in 2010.  And maybe 2011 too.  But I DID get organized and my mind feels so much less cluttered knowing my stash is now all settled.  *contented sigh*  Now, this paves the way for more time for bloggable knitting!

Help for Haiti

Yesterday the Yarn Harlot threw up the knit signal for knitters everywhere to unite in the cause of helping Haiti.  I pledged $100 and I encourage each and every one of you to give what you can to help the dire situation there.

If you are so inclined, consider donating to Knitters Without Borders, which is a fundraising arm for Doctors Without Borders.  For more information, click here.  Or donate in your own way.  If positive thoughts are all you can afford, I'm sure those are appreciated as well.

Also, I have joined the Ravelry group Hugs for Haiti which has a goal of knitting and/or crocheting squares that will be sent off and assembled and eventually sent to Haiti.  Read more about it here.  If you've got scraps of superwash wool lying around, knit or crochet it into a square (or several squares) and contact the moderator of this group to see where you should send them.

In addition to my stash organization this weekend, I'll be working on cranking out a few squares to send soon.  Please consider doing the same.  If everyone on Ravelry sent a square, there would be a lot of blankets assembled to send love to Haiti from all over the world.

Big project this weekend

So, after my Cold Sheep post last week, I've decided that I am going to have to take more drastic measures to not accumulate more yarn.  As in, I'm going to have to do some de-stashing.

First things first, I'm going to have to organize the stash.  As you probably read, it's a little bit of everywhere and this weekend I'm going to go through it all, catalog it and pack it into bins where I'll know right where to find it.

I started this half-heartedly back in the early fall, but only got about halfway through the stash and writing it all down on paper with the goal of getting it all input into my Ravelry stash.  But, as always, I got distracted so now I have a half-catalogged stash and no idea which half I catalogged!

So, this weekend I'll be sifting through all my bins, which will be the perfect opportunity to take some photos so I can flash my stash!  I'll be sure to take a before and after photo so that you can grasp the full extent of the chaos.

I know that it's a big task, but it's got to happen. And I know it's going to get worse before it gets better.

So be on the lookout for stash organization photos this weekend.  Feel free to cheer me on, as I'll need all the motivation I can get!

A winner!

Well, I'll have to admit that I am completely blown away with the number of entries in my yarn giveaway.  I would have seriously been happy with 10 entrants and, to be honest, I didn't even expect that many.  I was quite prepared for the low blow to the self-esteem when only a couple people entered.

But you all blew me away!  I mean, I know it's free yarn so of course I'm going to get more comments than normal, but I am so glad that I did this, as I feel I've made a lot of great contacts and been exposed to other blogs I wouldn't have found out about otherwise.  So, thank you!

And a drumroll please.....dddddddddd.....dddddddddd.......dddddddd....

JuliaA, you're the lucky winner!

Send me an email at alaskanpurl@live.com with your address and I'll get this yummy yarn in the mail right away.

It was so fun perusing all the comments and seeing what you all will be working on this year.  I wish everyone the best of luck in working towards whatever goals you may have set for yourselves.  Here's to a great 2010!

Flu thoughts...and a giveaway reminder...

Thanks to all of you for the get well wishes this week.  I'm on day 4 of staying home from work with this ridiculous flu.  I've got watery, weepy eyes, a head full of congestion, a nice cough that I think may have cracked a rib (no lie!) and my voice is slowly deteriorating.  In short, I feel gross.

But I happened to look at the calendar today and realized that it's my 1 year blogiversary!  A year ago today I began this journey and, if I do say so myself, I've come a long way.

Now, if I had my wits about me I would have done a giveaway in honor of this special moment, but I didn't realize how quickly this day was coming up and I am still in the midst of my new year giveaway.

So, to celebrate my 1 year of bloghood, remember to enter my new year's giveaway.  Today is the last day!  I'll announce the winner tomorrow morning.

Now, if you'll please excuse me, I'm headed back to the couch to hack my lungs up.  Ug.

Too sick to knit...

Wow, I never thought I would utter those words.  But, yes, that day has come.  I was feeling a little bit under the weather yesterday, but it was nothing compared to the freight train that hit my head this morning. I've got the crud, and it's no fun.

Any other day that I would get to stay home from work might be cause for celebration.  But not today.  Only in the last fifteen minutes have I been able to lift my head off the couch.  Ug.

So, without out any bloggable knitting content produced today, I'm just going to remind everyone to enter my YARN GIVEAWAY!    Follow the link and enter before midnight Friday.

For those of you who have already entered, remember you can enter a second time by posting a link to my giveaway on your blog and then letting me know that you did it in a separate comment.

Well, I'm going to go rustle up some toast for dinner, crash back onto the couch and hopefully muster some energy to knit something at some point this evening.  Here's to hoping I'll feel better in the morning.

You know you want to...

Hey, all!  Did you wake up this morning thinking that you needed to break your new year's resolution to save money by buying some new earrings?  I thought so.

Remember my lovely new earrings I bought way back in the fall?  Well, Ann from Dream Spiral Art is having a January sale at her etsy shop, so you can now own a pair at a price that will fit into your newly inked budgets.

Hmmm....maybe I'll sneak on over and pick up yet another pair.  A girl can never have enough enamel on copper jewelry.  If I'm not buying yarn, then I have to buy something...

Pretty Little Thing....Gifted!

Remember Pretty Little Thing?  Well, I absolutely loved how it turned out and the yarn is so buttery soft I want to knit a duvet cover out of it (not really).  BUT, even though I added in a couple extra repeats so that it would fit around my huge cranium, it was still a bit to snug for my taste.

So, I decided to gift it to my sister for Christmas!  The entire time I was knitting it I was thinking about her anyway and thought it would suit her, so it's only fitting that it actually end up in her possession.

I so carefully packed for my trip to Ohio that I nearly forgot that I had stashed it in a small dark corner of my carry-on.  But, after being brushed off a bit, it rebounded just fine and I gave it to her on my last day there.

Doesn't she look thrilled?  (I would be if I had been gifted a cashmere cowl, but maybe that's just me...)

And a close up...

Today I'm dreading my first day back at work in over three weeks.  On one hand, I feel refreshed and ready to tackle a new year with a new attitude.  But it's going to be a fight to not slip back into old grooves.  Hmmmm, I think I'll knit a little more to take my mind off it.  ;)

Cold Sheep in 2010

I'd be lying if I said that recently I began to realize the immense size of my stash.  I've actually known about the enormity for quite some time, but only in the last month or so did I finally make myself face the fact that I have more yarn than is humanly possible to knit in a lifetime.  Some of you may think I'm exaggerating, but it's absolutely true.

When I read about knitters who say that their stash has gotten out of control when it's overflowing the basket sitting beside their knitting chair, I want to laugh/cry/hang my head in sheepish embarrassment.  Because I only wish that that was the extent of my stash.

Truth is, the once small basket beside my knitting chair has turned into two large overflowing baskets, a three drawer container for my needles/notions, and a bookshelf for my most-perused knitting books.  I also have yarn stuffed into a couple baskets on a shelf in my dining room; yarn hiding in my car; yarn randomly laying around kitchen/bathroom/pantry;  6 large rubbermaid containers in our spare room;  and 5 large rubbermaid containers in our bedroom.  Oh, and I have 3 boxes of yarn in my office at work, because I'm just too darned scared to walk through the door with it in fear of being committed to an insane asylum.

So....yeah....you could say I have a yarn problem.  I've always enjoyed buying new yarn, but until the last year I felt my stash was manageable.  But over the last year I've really become unhappy with certain aspects of my life and have used yarn and knitting as a crutch.  Work pisses me off?  Buy some yarn.  Someone makes me so angry I want to scream?  Buy some yarn.  You get the idea.  Some people turn to drinking or drugs to cope with things that they just can't handle.  I buy yarn and knit.  To some that may be a harmless hobby.  But I know myself too well to know that I'm only using it to cover up things I haven't wanted to deal with.

So, in 2010 I will not be buying any new yarn*.  Going cold sheep, as the phrase may be.  I have more than enough amazing yarn to last throughout the year.  And I might even be putting some up for sale, so that I can cut my stash down even more.  I even joined the Stash Knit Down group on Ravelry to help me stay the course.

Now, you may have noticed the * above.  That asterisk denotes the fact that there might at some point be new yarn coming into my stash.  I have set up an incentive plan for myself to achieve some of the goals I have set for the new year.  Each day I will get so many points for doing certain tasks I have created for myself.  At the end of the month I will add up the points I have received and that corresponds to a certain incentive level and amount of money.  I have decided that I can spend that money however I want, which includes buying yarn.

So, you see, I might actually be buying some yarn in 2010, but I'm going to have to work hard to do it.  If anyone is interested in my incentive plan, just email me and I'd be happy to share more info.

Okay, so, I have publicly declared my intentions.  That makes it official, right?  Wish me luck...I'm going to need it!

Let's go stash diving...Who's with me?  

Happy New Year...and a contest!

Greetings from windy (and cold!) Skagway!

To ring in a new year and a new decade, I thought I would start things off on the right foot by having a little giveaway!

Like me, I'm sure many of you have thought of things that you'd like to accomplish this year, things you'd like to do more of, things you'd like to do less of.  Basically, a new year means a clean slate to many of us and it's a great time to better oneself in whatever way seems fit.

Something I'm going to be concentrating on this year is designing.  I've got about 6 or 7 partially finished designs that I hope to have done within the next couple months.  My goal this year to is be published either in print or online.  I know that I don't have a lot of control as to whether or not a publication chooses my designs, but what I can control is focusing on finishing something.  Anything, really.  I have confidence that my ideas are on the right track.  I just need a little sticktoitiveness to see my design through to a finished product.

Okay, so that's what I'll be working on.  What will your focus be in 2010?

Leave me a comment regarding your #1 new year's resolution and you'll be entered to win a 250 gram hank of Kangaroo Dyer's Merino/Alpaca/Silk yarn in the Caliph's Sunset colorway.  That's 620 yards of yummy goodness!

I LOVE this yarn and had grand dreams of making a shawlette or large cowl out of it, but I seem to have accumulated a lot of yarn in 2009 with very similar color schemes and there's no possibly way I will ever use it all.  So, I thought I would share it with one of you!

If you'd like to enter more than once, just post a link to my contest on your blog and you'll be entered twice!  Just leave a separate comment with a link to the post letting me know that you did so.

ETA:  Thanks to those who let me know I did not post a deadline!  Contest will close January 8th at midnight Alaska Time.  I'll notify the winner on January 9th.

Good luck and here's to a prosperous 2010!

ETA:  JuliaA, you're the lucky winner!  Thanks to everyone for entering!