bam.

I don't know why I always get the urge to blog when I have tons of homework to do. Grr. Will keep it short.

Things I've done lately:

• unraveled a pretty red angora sweater ($5 @ thirft store!) and navajo plied the resulting yarn to make a beautiful worsted weight (look for a hat made with it soon).

• bought 4, 5, and 6 pyrometric cones so I can do high-firing and have some finished pieces to show you soon.

• got excited when I met a lady at work today who roasts her own coffee beans and decided I'm going to start doing that too (she says to check out sweetmarias.com for resources) - apparently you can use popcorn poppers??

• NOT cleaned my room.

okay, folks. tune in next time for more non-stop bulleted-list action.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer Hat Attack

I just got my assignment for HA2... I'm ridiculously excited. I have actually been swatching to prepare for this thing because I didn't order Therapi in time (it'll probably show up tomorrow afternoon, but I'm hoping to be halfway done by then - knitting alllll night), and have to rely on my respectably-sized stash for a yarn substitute. I'm going with some Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Worsted I bought ages ago.

And all this swatching combined with the slightly cooler weather (thanks, Ike) has started my fingers itching to knit, spin, and crank out a few million hats/mittens/scarves. I found some random wool single I spun up forever ago and plied it...



...and that inspired me to buy some more roving. Etsy is down right now, or I'd steal a picture of it - it's some amazingly-fluffy looking black and white merino from WhimzyPinzy. Yayy for self-bought early birthday presents!

Unfortunately, that, along with the Therapi ($10 a 50 gram ball... but it's made from jade. that's just too awesome to pass up) has completely depleted my knitting-related budget for a while. I'm only working two or three hours a week at the moment, but I've applied at a few places that I'm still waiting to hear back from. My savings are getting dangerously non-existent. I may stoop to serving fast food soon. It's really that bad.

Yarrrrn.

The sun finally came out tomorrow, and I snapped a few quick shots of my recent yarnapalooza.






I'm not terribly sure of the fiber content, because most of this was very graciously donated by the ladies of The Texas Twisters (aww :]), but I think L to R:

Black alpaca fingering weight, rose quartz alpaca/wool worsted, pink corrisdale wool DK/sport, gray alpaca/ wool worsted.

yayy, I'm a spinner!


Oh, and chalk up two new knitters: a random friend of my sister's learned to knit and purl purfectly in about a half hour (hate. hate.), and my dad's been knitting for a few weeks now, and got hit on by a stewardess when he pulled out his garter stitch dishcloth on the plane. Hehe.

Etsy!

Hey, Kids.

I've been a bad blogger. I have literally TONS of new projects and other various extracurricular activities to report on, and I haven't posted in weeks. And as it is now rapidly nearing midnight, it's unlikely that I'll cover it all in this post. But I'll see what I can do before I get tired.

First, spinning has grabbed me pretty hard and doesn't show signs of letting go. My knitting has had to compete for a place in my packed free-time schedule. Damn it, I have too many hobbies. How is one expected to save money for college, apartments, cars, or even food and clothes when there are so many other things to buy (like roving, yarn, spinning wheels, paints, brushes, dyes, canvases, easels, silk screens, light boxes, ceramics wheels, kilns, sewing machines, fabric, and so on and on...)?

The only solution is to find a means of profiting from one's creative ventures. Which I am in the process of doing, with my brand new etsy store! I had a lot of trouble at first figuring out what I could sell, because up until now most of my knitting had been from copyrighted patterns. So I've had to dig deep within the dark reaches of my creativity to find a pinch of originality. I'm not in love with some of the things I've come up with, but it's exciting to do something that no one else has done, even if it's not the most drastically unique thing ever.

Something I'm really struggling with now is pricing. All my work is worth a lot to me, but I want to be reasonable so I have a slight chance of actually selling something now and then. My materials cost is usually pretty good, but if I want to charge based on how many hours I spend working on a piece, I'd be charging $100 for a neckwarmer. I'd love to get some suggestions from a few seasoned sellers and buyers of handmade items.

That's all I can do for now. Copious amounts of pictures next post, I promise.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round Like a Record

Hello, Blog.

I dropped (or am in the process of dropping - I just skipped today) my Art History class, so I finally have a little free time and can sleep in on M/W/F until 9. This has increased my quality of life by like 96%.

I really thought I would enjoy Art History; that it'd be a fun, blow-off class for my blow-off senior year. But no. Looking at the syllabus, it'd be more work than Anatomy. Besides that, I'm not really into spending 15 minutes of class doing "art news," which seems to me to be the college equivalent of the dreaded current events reports I had to do for a whole year in 9th grade Social Studies.

Plus, the professor is partially deaf, repeats everything you say twice, and acts like she's scared to death of all her students. Not how I think an art teacher should be.

So as soon as I hear back from an adviser, I'm out of there. I'm keeping the book, though. I'll probably take the class again when my boss's friend starts teaching it at my campus.


So... fiberwise.

I'm spinning! It's pretty much the coolest thing I've ever done in my entire life. My darling mother found the wonderful Miss Cindy in our city's little directory, living less than 10 minutes away, and we went over to her house before Christmas to see her sheep and alpacas.



Annnd we signed ourselves up for spinning lessons immediately. Two lessons later, and I've gotten pretty comfortable with both the drop spindle and the wheel. I think we'll be plying next lesson. Yarn pictures to come!


Weather has been rather freezing lately, so I've been pretty prolific in my knitting.

First, the rather disappointing Headline News.



I used Wool Ease, just because I had it on hand, but I think it was a mistake. With the huge needles the pattern calls for, it makes a really holey fabric that's kind of disgusting after knitting worsted weight socks on size 2 needles.


Next, a commissioned (yay!) space invaders beanie for my friend Josiah. Inspired, of course, by my amazing space invaders tea cozy.



This uses black Simply Soft, and - get this - GLOW IN THE DARK NYLON. I know. It blows my mind. I've been trying really hard to get a glowing picture of it, but I think I'm going to need a tripod and a really long exposure camera. It's not the softest, and it's splitty as hell, but HELLO. It glows in the freaking dark. Unfortunately, my fair isle is not quite up to par yet, and I didn't make it stretchy enough to fit its intended owner. So I'm knitting another one!


Next, a little something I call Roxy Hart, because it reminds me of the kind of cloche Renee Zellweger wore in Chicago.



This was basically me practicing granny squares (my first!), and when I found myself with an alarming amount of them, I slip stitched em together and picked up stitches around the top to make a hat!


I've got a few other projects to post later, but this post has already sucked up an hour of my morning languidity (not a real word?), they'll have to wait while do more important things. Like play Guitar Hero III.