More FO's

Before I start catching up on all of my lastest projects, I'm excited to announce that I will be receiving a spinning wheel in the next couple of days! I don't know what type it is, or what it looks like but a nice lady at the guild meeting offered it to me. It's her 95 year old mother's, and she can't spin, so I get the wheel. I'm bouncing off the walls in anticipation until it gets here. ^-^

So now for the projects. ;)





I did a close up on the blanket so that the lacy-ish pattern can be seen. This blanket took me FOREVER, considering most of my projects are done in no more than a month. I think this was a UFO most of my senior year of high school, and I just finished it in early June. This will be travelling with Victoria to MIT in August. ^-^

The next is an Irish crochet pincushion that I found on the Knitting Daily website and instantly fell in love with. I love the lace doily delicate look and it works wonders for all the pins I need for my first ever quilting project. It is much easier to make than it looks.

An aside about Knitting Daily: I am incredibly frustrated with them right now. I can't watch it in my area and cannot afford to by the DVD's! They show it a mile south of my town and several miles north, but not HERE! I could literally drive to a friends house and watch it there, it shows that close to me but not on my own TV. I think I might just call PBS and give them a piece of my mind....

Anyway, the last project is a fair isle scarf I made with some frogged yarn from a failed design idea. I think the design was pretty, but another lady on ravelry beat me to the finish and her design is prettier. So I just stopped. If your curious, it is a design for the fair isle hermione scarf from the latest released movie. It's gorgeous, you should really look it up. :]

All for now, but be assured there will be a spinning post in the near future...BWHAHAHAHA! Thanks for reading!

Graduation and Summer

I am now officially graduated and am looking forward to a new experience in college. UCLA is my new school and I hope to do well there even though the registrar is giving me a bit of a headache. *sigh*

Anyway, it's summer now and I have THREE MONTHS off. No summer homework and lots of nothing really planned. Orientation and Monteray Bay Aquarium in July, moving in mid-September. So that means lots of time for hobbies!

Since the last time I posted a LOT has happened so there will be several catch-up posts in the next few days.



These are a nice pair of mittens I made for Victoria before she heads off to MIT in August. I also finished her blanket and my fair isle scarf but that is for a different day. (I have yet to take pictures ;])

There has also been some stash enhancement as I couldn't resist a nice sale from Knit Picks affordable luxury yarn.





The blue yarn is in the colorway reef and is a cotton and wood derivative yarn that I have marked for the Ladies Top pattern by Patons. The yellow yarn is in the colorway canary of CotLin and will be used for the Inamorata tank top by Knitty. The last six hankks are of the line Gloss fingering weight in deep jewel tones I couldn't resist and will be socks or scarfs or maybe something else, I have yet to find the just right pattern for them. The yarn is simply to awesome for me to find a project yet.

I also set the twist in all of my handspun yarns the other day and gave my handpainted yarns the wash and light test. I was surprised that they passed the test remarkably! There was NO bleeding of dye whatsoever and they spent at least two or three hours in direct sunlight drying without any fade in color. The last test I have to run my yarn through is the wear test before I would feel comfortable selling it. I have some of my laceweight handspun saved for the Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace Scarf Pattern, even though it isn't alpaca. I'm going to knit it and wear it around, subject it to some roughage, and see how it lasts. I'm very excited considering how well the other tests went!

As far as projects go, I'm about to start the DROPS design halter top and might whip up some circular sachets as gifts for some people that have helped me a lot. These are both crochet projects as I would like some more practice. I might be teaching a crochet or knitting class at Joann's this summer and I'm so happy! That is my dream summer job.
All of the projects I've mentioned can be found toward the bottom of my Ravelry queue or on my projects page.

Thanks for reading! This is all for now.... :)