Well... Crap

I was part way through knitting a hooded blanket for my baby cousin and then I got photos from my grandmother... That little tyke ain't too little anymore! By the time Christmas rolls around she'll be trundling along on her own and that blanket will be far too small for anything she might need it for. I think I need to make a sweater... change of plans then... damn...

ADOS

I have a horribly horrible psychological disorder. I have ADOS. Attention Deficit... OOH SHINY!!

Case: I went out to lunch yesterday with a fellow I just met and we wandered around Berkeley a lot. We had some fantastic conversations and seem to get along splendidly but what really got me excited was a friend of his he introduced me to. He had to drop by one of the grad student housing buildings so he could say goodbye to someone he knew there but before I could stand awkwardly in the background while he said his goodbyes, I noticed that one of the gals was wearing a Swallowtail Shawl!(free pattern under the link) She noticed my handknit hat and we both started squeeing about yarn and knittng and spinning and she took me up to her room to fondle her stash! The fellow I had come with had been forgotten. Oops! >_<

Point: Distractability is bad for dates but good for making crafty friends.

Cheers!

Cat Yarn

So I went back and watched the kid that likes the spinning wheel. Of course I brought the spinning wheel and he watched me spin for a while. He likes to treadle for me while I draft the fiber. I think he is less interested in the fiber than the spinning wheel and all the mechanical parts. He does however have a knitting bag with a loom though, which is adorable.

He had saved a bag of cat hair for me and asked if we could spin it. The short answer is no. We tried. I think it could have been possible given a few parameters: a long haired cat or carders. Halfway through the attempt at spinning the cat hair, I decided that it would be much easier if I mixed in some wool. However, I hadn't brought my carders and we couldn't find the cat brush, so I just sorta did it by hand, which wasn't terribly successful. We managed to get a little spun, but on the whole it was not terribly successful. So now when people ask me if you can spin cat hair, I know the answer: not easily.

Riastiltskin

It is the first day of summer! Happy summer everyone!

Knitting lesson

Freya, the Boy, Warebeast, and I were all watching Bones when the Boy noticed that Warebeast was the only one not knitting. I have showed him a few times how to knit and he has a project at my house. It is just a blue garter stitch random square-ish thing. Now, I knit backwards. Well, backwards is not the right word. Technically, it is called Combination knitting and the main difference is that the every knit stitch is knit through the back loop, which functionally makes the twist backwards and patterns harder to read. I learned how to crochet before I learned how to knit, and knitting through the back loop makes more sense to me in that crossover.

Back to this evening. Of course, when I showed Warebeast how to knit, I showed him my way. I think it is an easier way for him to learn. He is very mechanically inclined and I thought a way that showed what was happening with the yarn would be a preferable method to one that was easier to maneuver.

However, with 3 people all showing him different ways to knit and each expressing strong opinions about which way was best, no one noticed that Warebeast had quietly set down the knitting and gone back to coding. Here is the project of much contention.

Turkish Delights

Following up on Sarah's post, I decided to make my own food post. There isn't too much going on the fiber front. I am still working on Allison's shawl and the commissioned socks but am somewhat lacking in the picture department. I did start spinning for a kid hat. A while ago, I showed WareBeast's brother, Elderbeast, the Etsy site. He loved Fawkes ( an orange base with differnt shades of reds sprinkled on top) and being one of us, got the Harry Potter joke. So I made him a hat of it, which he wears everywhere. Anyways, they have a four year old cousin, who greatly looks up to the Beasts. I started spinning up a thick merino to make into Fawkes for a smaller hat for said cousin. So I guess there is a fair bit happening on the fiber front, but nothing is quite to the picture stage and as we all know, pictures or it didn't happen.

Anyways, back to the food. A dear friend is having a birthday party tonight and going to Japan in a week. Therefore, as he loves turkish delights, I have made him a metric buttload for his birthday. They are of course rose flavored. I used a recipe I found on the internet, but then altered heavily. I took unflavored geletain, rose syrup, and cornstarch and cooked them together. Then I let the whole thing gel for a day and now they are sitting in the fridge cut up, covered in powdered sugar, waiting for me to be ready to go!

On the needles

I finally got to start something that isn't craft faire related or a commission. A friend of mine from high school is getting married and I am working on a shawl. It is the Swallowtail shawl from Interweave Knits. I am making it in a sock yarn that is a wool/ bamboo blend in a green and blue colorway. As soon as I get a good picture I will post it!