Spinning Monday is back!

Yes, I have been spinning again! I’ve decided that with all my new crafty interests, I’d have to make time for all of them, including spinning. So my new plan is that every weekday I’ll work on a different craft and last Friday was spinning day.

I’m not sure what made me chose this as the roving of the day,

Maybe because it’s the last roving I bought, I don’t know. This roving is 70% Shetland, 30% Mohair from the Iron Horse Farm. This roving doesn’t have the colors in sections like other rovings I’ve worked with. Instead, it’s like the 3 main colors were blended together. You can see it a little better in this picture.

As I was spinning this I realized that the ply I was getting was mostly dark green with a few yellow spots here and there. I considered Navajo-plying it but there isn’t enough color definition to make it worth while. So instead I’ll just 2-ply it.

The resulting yarn will be a nice deep green, I’m looking forward to seeing this! And hopefully I’ll be able to take flashless pictures next time.

The theme for today is: Embroidery

I apologize in advance to those who come here only for knitting, I will try to post about my knitting soon!

Since I first talked about embroidery back on Friday, a lot of things have happened.

I embroidered the drawing I showed you.

I used a combination of split and back stitch. The results are very naive but I find it really cute and enough for me to fall in love with embroidery.

The next day I found out that a very good friend used to embroider and had lots of stuff to give me.

She gave me all of her embroidery floss, a hoop and some needles. She also lent me both books.

This

Plus this

Became this

Doesn’t it look pretty?!

A great sale at AC Moore brought about the purchase of about 2 dozen more colors of floss.

Last night I decided to embroider a little something of my own design to practice a few more stitches.

I also purchased a pack of flour sack towels to embroider these beauties by Posie gets cozy.  Those will probably be up next!

Too much stuff to share!

I am not quite sure what I should be blogging about today. Should I blog about my just finished quilt? Or about my new embroidery hobby? Or maybe about what I’ve been sewing lately? Or what I’ve been knitting?

I guess that today I’ll share with you my pride and joy. My first proper quilt.

Oh! You want to see the whole thing! Ok, ok, here it is!

Last Wednesday, in my last beginner’s quilting class we sewed the first side of the binding on. I didn’t want to wait around so I started hand-sewing the back of the binding a couple days later. Many tv shows later I finally finished sewing the binding. It was my first time hand-sewing something this big and I wasn’t sure of what I was doing but I think that by the end my stitches were looking pretty good!

Here’s a shot of the back of the folded quilt

And a shot of the full back. You can see the quilting lines pretty well there if you click on the picture to make it bigger.

I’m really happy with this quilt. It was my first so the piecing is far from perfect and the quilting goes all over the place. But overall, I think it’s quite pretty!

Now I’m ready to sandwich and quilt a (much simpler) quilt top I made a couple years ago!

********

I guess you’ll have to wait until the next posts to find out about the stitching, sewing and knitting!

Uh oh! What’s this?

For the past few months my eyes have been drawn to yet another hobby. I’ve been dreaming about stitching. Stitching beautiful things like those made by Soule Mama, Heather Hales Designs, Wee Wonderfuls, Sublime Stitching and Merwing.

Yesterday I finally got myself to ACMoore and made a few purchases.

I bought a hoop and some embroidery floss. I bought some needles too but I’m not quite sure they’re the right kind for this. I browsed around to find a simple design I could try and found this free pattern on Heather Hales Design flickr account.

I copied it onto some fabric from the stash and now I’m all set to try!

I’ll be using the How-To section of Sublime Stitching to get myself started. I’m hoping to be able to find this Stitch-It kit at the book store soon too as it would be a great help. I really would love to be able to stitch something like this soon!

I’ll let you know how it goes!

If you’re a stitcher and have tips for me, I’d love to hear about them!

The various stages of socks

There are many stages of socks and here are a few:

First there is the completed pair

This is a slightly too large pair of gorgeous Red Dwarf socks in a beautiful color and awesome yarn… Can you tell I’m a bit bitter that these are too big for me? I haven’t quite figured out what to do with them yet. I can give them away to my May Day Sock Swap pal, who has feet about the same as mine. The other pair that I knit for her is a bit snugger than these, at least pre-soak. I could give them to my mom but I’m not sure they’ll fit her quite right… Or I could find someone who wants them!

Stats
The socks were knit between February and April 2008
Yarn: Handmaiden Casbah in Sangria
Pattern: Red Dwarf socks by Turtlegirl
Mods: None either

Then there is the almost 3 quarter completed pair of socks

These are the January pattern for the Sockamania pattern. I just started working on the second sock a few days ago after I finished knitting the last Red Dwarf sock. The first sock striping colorway came out so nice I was thrilled when after starting the second sock I realized it was going to do the same. Until my hopes were dashed and there was a big knot in the skein… tyeing together 2 entirely different dye lots. Lets just say that I am quite bummed about this too. Oh well, I have another pretty sock to distract me for a while.

Then there is the wee beginnings of a sock

This is a sock I just started working on for the Socks-O-Wool KAL. For this KAL I am using O-Wool Classic 2-ply in Robin’s Egg. It’s a very pretty light blue and it goes very well with the Rococo sock pattern by Knitspot. I’m really enjoying the pattern. I’ve knit 4 repeats so far and I’m getting the hang of how the decreases and yarn overs are working out.  This sock seems to fit so far so I shouldn’t be as disappointed with these as I am with the other two.

So you see, I’ve still been knitting!

Tutorial Friday

Since I started sewing box bags I’ve had a lot of questions asking what pattern I was using so I decided to do a special post on what tutorials I’ve been using and some of the improvements I’ve made to them so that you can make your own!

For my first box bag I used Drago[knit]fly’s box bag tutorial and followed the directions exactly. I had some trouble figuring out how to place my fabrics on the second side of the zipper so I did some searching on the internet and found another tutorial on this blog. This tutorial just helped me figuring out the layering although I didn’t use for anything else.

I then sewed my second box bag. I decided to make this one a bit larger as I thought the first one wasn’t quite big enough. I think that I used a 16″ by 14″ rectangle instead of 16″x12″ rectangle. Also, I used a zipper that is much longer and found out that this made my life much, much easier as the zipper pull doesn’t get in the way when your sewing the zipper on.

This box bag ended up being completely wonky as I couldn’t figure out a way to make the 4 corners identical and I resolved to figure that out by my next one. Thankfully, I was reminded of something in the above-mentioned tutorial by Twenty Acres and no Sheep. She cuts off corners which makes them even and straight.

I tried this technique with my third box bag.

This time I started with a totally different size fabric which means that the box bag ended up being more like a pencil case than anything else. But cutting up the corners really helped and I managed to have totally even corners.

On my fourth box bag I put together a bigger size rectangle with the improved corner technique and came up with this.

This box bag came out exactly like I’d hoped, nice and square with straight edges. Now I’ll that’s left for me to figure out is how to make my seams inside tidier, which will involve some interlocking… I still need to figure that part out!

This wasn’t really a tutorial but I’m hoping it will still help those of you who want to make these box bags. The key is to use a longer zipper and to trim the corner! Happy sewing!

Random Wednesday

• I finished knitting my May Day Sock Swap socks.

I used the Red Dwarf sock pattern by Turtlegirl. The pattern was a lot of fun, especially in a dk weight yarn. It went super fast! I love that there’s room for a lot of stretch and that they should fit my pal no matter what.

Stats
The pair was knit between February and April.
Yarn: Schaefer Lola colorway unknown
Pattern:Red Dwarf socks
Mods: none that I can think of

Now that the socks are done I can think about what else to put in my package for my pal. I have to mail it out on May 1st so I still have some time to think about it! I haven’t heard anything from the person knitting me a pair so it will be a nice surprise when I get my pair of socks!

• I started another sock

Almost immediately after binding off the second sock of the above mentioned socks I cast on for the second Red Dwarf of my own pair. You would think that by now I’d know the pattern by heart but I still keep it next to me while I’m knitting… I guess I’m too lazy to make myself remember it.

I’m already halfway down the foot so I have high hopes about finishing them soon.

• I sewed another box bag.

This is version 4 of the box bag series. I think that I’ve almost got all the modifications down and I’m quite pleased with the results.

I’m hoping that I can make a couple last improvements on my next one and then have a finished product I’m entirely pleased with.

**********

My friend Carol is hosting a raffle for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is asking  that you donate for her friend Gayle who is running the Boston Marathon for the fourth time in aid of innovative cancer research for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.  If I’m understanding correctly you can donate yarn and goodies for the raffle and you can donate money here. Make sure to let Carol know by commenting on her blog or messaging her on Ravelry. You can read her post here and you can see some of the prizes that were donated here. 

Spinning Monday

A couple of weeks ago i had the chance to be taught Navajo plying by Debbie from the Iron Horse Farm. One evening, blogless Danielle (Ravelry link) and myself went to her house with our wheels and after about an hour we had it down!

I had a lot of trouble with the single I brought with as it kept on breaking and I couldn’t get going with the plying. Debbie lent me some of her roving that she’d spun so that I could still practice.

At first I didn’t really pay attention to how the colors were working out but after a while I attempted to keep the colors together although without much success.

Debbie suggested I respin my single to add some twist into it and hopefully prevent it from breaking so I did that the next day. As it is best if the single rests for a couple of weeks before Navajo-plying I waited until this weekend to try again.

My single was so full of twist that it was a bit difficult to control and I ended up having little squigglies here and there sticking out of my 3-ply. But I was able to ply it entirely and got a good practice out of it. My single was a solid color so I didn’t get to practice keeping the colors together. But I’ll make sure to pick a multicolor roving next time I do this!

I don’t know when I’ll start spinning regularly again as my eyes and fingers are more attracted to my sewing machine than my spinning wheel but I’m sure the bug will bite me again some day!

Random Wednesday

Reading

Knitting

Sewing

Winning

That would be Carol from Mad for Knit. Congratulations Carol! I’ll have to have a little chat with you about what you’d like. Go check out her blog, she’s got some beautiful sewing projects and some cool socks on the needles.