Long Island Fleece and Fiber Fair

Yesterday was a truly fantastic day, and a much needed departure from the standard weekend activities. Maria had organized a bus to ship a bunch of us out to the Hallockville Museum in Long Island, which was hosting the Long Island Fleece and Fiber Fair. The morning started out for me when I woke up at 5:30am as the sun rose and then proceeded to sleep through my alarm at 7. In order to avoid being late, I took a cab and arrived early, giving me plenty of time to grab some coffee before the day started, fortunately, that was the end of the trouble for the day.

We arrived at the Hallockville Museum and as we got off the bus we all received goodies from Vogue Knitting, which included two of their recent magazines, and a very useful bag for holding squishy yarn shaped things. Even though it was a small fair as far as many fiber festivals go, there was more to do than we had time for. Maria and I took a first look through all of the vendors before catching Tabbethia, from the Long Island Livestock Company, doing the first shearing of the day. Tabbethia explained to us about shearing sheep, and her particular specialty, sheering llamas. She spent significantly more time explaining how she does it and how she got into her business than it actually took her to shear the sheep, she’s quick!

We met so many adorable animals, including angora bunnies, softest velvety rabbit, sheep, llamas, alpacas.

Baby bunny

Angora rabbit

Rex rabbit – softest in all the land

If they say they don’t like chin rubs, they’re lying.

If Maria and I hadn’t been on a budget, we probably would have found a way to smuggle one of the alpacas that was for sale back onto the bus with us.

Stylin’ haircuts

Baby twins

We also got to see Tabbethia’s husband Christopher, a farrier, shape and finnish a horseshoe  from a standard iron bar. He travels to the farms that he shoes horses at, so his truck was set up to do everything he needed, complete with a propane oven that could reach exceedingly hot temperatures.

I managed to limit myself to two skeins, a gorgeous BFL sock yarn from Hampton Artistic Yarns, and the squishiest of Alpaca/Cormo yarns from Flatland Alpacas. I also got the Knit Notes designers notebook, which I saw on Sweatshop of Love a few weeks ago and fell in love with. I nearly got a braid of roving, because there were some truly gorgeous ones there, but I decided that I would save myself from falling down that slippery slope until after Maria teaches me how to spin, which she has promised to do this summer.

I hear that there’s going to be another bus next year, so I hope some of you decide to come with us, it was such a great trip!

Finishing

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a normal blog post and I miss it. It’s been very busy for me, and though I have no delusions that it will get less busy, I’m hoping that with the end of classes (one down, one to go) I’ll be able to focus more on each individual thing I am doing. I’m going to be working full time in the lab, without having to work around class schedules, which, if you know science, often makes experiments imposible to accomplish. I even have to/get to present lab meeting in two weeks (eek!), so let’s hope I can actually get some data to show everyone by then! Although this morning was the first time I was able to go to lab meeting for this rotation (see aforementioned classes) and I discovered that they come with donuts! And not just any donuts either, but Dough donuts. I’m not sure if this is a weekly treat, but I wasn’t going to say no to a passion fruit donut.

Tangent aside, I’m also looking forward to focusing more on designing. I’m in the process of revitalizing some of my previously published patterns, and I’ve been sketching new ideas as quickly as they come. I even submitted for the Holla Knits Fall/Winter 2013 collection, and though I didn’t get chosen, it means that I’ve overcome the barrier of submitting a design for the first time. Now, the more I do it, the better I’ll get, and the more chances I’ll have to be chosen for publication.

Huh, I started out this post planning on just showing you some pictures of the newly completed socks and making a few comments about them. I guess I really did miss blogging!

I started these socks in January, and I listed them (rebelliously) in ravelry as “Not January Socks” after completing the year of the sock. They’ve mostly sat in their cute project bag, being taken out only when I wanted that project bag for something else. I should probably get more project bags, or make some. Anyone have a sewing machine they don’t want?

The moral of this sock story is this: Things get completed faster when you actually work on them. These simple ribbed socks were the perfect thing to study with, and as I can’t seem to focus on studying without knitting in my hands, I finished the second sock in no time.

I think there’s a bigger point here, about working hard, finishing what you start, and that there are no magic elves that will work on your projects, knitting or otherwise, in the middle of the night while you sleep, but my head’s too much of a mess to write it out in eloquent terms. Is it Thursday or Friday today?

Happy Knitting!

P.S. I meant to mention this a week ago, but if you’ve been going through withdrawal from the details of my life due to less than frequent blogging, go ahead and follow me on twitter, you’ll get more than your fill of the goings on in my life, including pictures of food and cats, tweets about weather, random things in my day, and occasionally knitting related stuff. You can also follow me on Instagram for just the pictures.

Not Yet

Hey all, I just wanted to let you know that I’m still alive. I have a final for one of my classes on Tuesday, and I hope that once that’s over with I’ll be able to get back to my regular blogging.

I hope your weekend is full of sunshine and happy things, and not studying, like mine.

However I am quite excited to block my newly finished Vitamin D sweater, so I guess that will take place of my sunshine this weekend!

In need of some Happy

It’s be a while since I blogged, and I think it’s felt longer for me than it has for you. There are a lot of reasons I’ve been away, but I won’t go into them right now, maybe later. Today I’m just going to show you some things that make me happy. If you also need some happy in your life, I hope this helps.

Spring blossoms saying hello

Our view of a spectacular sunset

A very strange cat

The lettuce growing on our windowsill

Books

About a month ago I went  a little wild on Amazon and ordered a few things I’ve had my eye on for quite a while. Well, let’s just say I ordered 5 books at midnight one night when Ty was on a business trip. I think the word “impulse” covers it adequately. Now, I don’t own that many knitting books, at least in comparison to how much yarn I have, and several of the more traditional pattern books I own were either very early purchases from when I was just learning, or gifts. As of a month ago, this was my entire knitting book library.

I’d say for the last four years or so, my knitting book purchases have been of a single mind, which is just further demonstrated by the ones I recently bought.

Most of my knitting books have been purchased with the idea of becoming a knitwear designer in mind. And even when I was just learning to knit I was designing more than following patterns. The most used books in my library have definitely been the Harmony stitch dictionaries. You might not be able to see it, but they each have at least 20 sticky notes in them.

I haven’t read them all, but I know that part of doing anything well is having good resources. The new books are some of the books I’ve seen recommended for designers over and over again. I know that my library will continue to grow, but I think I’ve got a pretty good foundation to start on. I hope that with these books at my back, I’ll have the knowledge, motivation, and inspiration to do what I love: design.

Now excuse me, but I’ve got some reading to do.

On the Needles

With this great parade of FOs I’ve hardly shown you what’s happening on my needles. I bought some Valley Yarns sock weight yarn to make a Vertex cardigan in January and it’s been sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get to it. As I finished  up the last few knits I’ve been thinking about it and it hasn’t really snagged my heart like I want, even though I’d really like a light weight everyday cardi to wear for spring. Now I’m not sure where I was (ok, probably Pinterest) when I saw a pattern that made my heart sing. It’s the Vitamin D cardigan by Heidi Kirrmaier, which is hugely popular on ravelry, and it just seemed like the perfect thing. Although it calls for sportweight, I figured that my fingering weight yarn would result in a perfectly light cardi and I cast on a swatch, just in case.

I cast on the sweater last Tuesday, and although the first several rows were a little confusing, once I had the foundation rows everything made sense. The eyelets come every 8 rows, which means that it’s a great project for multitasking, like when I’m on the subway or in class. (ETA: the gorgeous stitch markers are the ones I won from Knitty or Nice!)

It seems like this spring is being a little finicky, so I have hope that I’ll be able to wear this when it’s done. And even if I can’t wear it outside, pretty much everywhere you go in the summer is over air-condition so I’ll get use of it then!

To help me get through the ever increasing rows, I’ve decided that I’m going to set a goal of finishing this cardigan before May 18th. Maria of Subway Knits is hosting a bus out to the Long Island Fleece and Fiber Festival and I’m going! If you’re in the NYC area you should definitely come along, even Vogue Knitting is getting in on the action.

I really hope that by the end of May I’ll no longer need a sweater, but what’s a knitter to do?

The Little Lanesplitter That Could

It’s been a while since you’ve seen my lanesplitter skirt on the blog, and that’s because it sat 95% finished since June, when all it needed was the bit of knitting that holds the elastic in. Clearly I’m a lazy knitter, although honestly I think some of my reluctance to finish this was because I was worried how I would look wearing a rainbow wool skirt.

All of my fears have been assuaged, because I look kick-ass in this skirt.

Unfortunately by the time I actually got around to doing the finishing and taking these photos, the wool-skirt weather is pretty much behind us. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to wear it on the colder days, I need to make up for lost time!

I’m really glad I read through the project comments on Ravelry and discovered Laura Nelkin’s tutorial on how to turn this pattern into a seamless skirt. My skirt looks so phenomenal and I wouldn’t want the colors interrupted by a seam. And because of the bias construction (diagonal instead of vertical/horizontal), there’s no “saggy-butt” issue than I’ve heard about knit skirts having.

I’ve never worked with Noro before, and while I probably wouldn’t want it directly against my skin, as many people say about it, it’s still a really nice yarn with gorgeous colors and it works well for a skirt worn over tights.

It was the lanesplitter craze last summer that got me into knitting this, but if following the masses gets me something like this? I think I’ll trust their judgement more often.

(All these were photos were taken around the Union St. bridge over the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Great place for a photo shoot!)