Eww!

Went for some scrap yarn in the older section of the stash the other day. Suddenly, MOTHS!!!

I was horrified! They were all over one skein in particular. Some alpaca silk from a local ranch. (To be fair, it did look dirty when I pulled it off the clearance shelf, and I probably should have washed it as soon as I got it home.) I pulled it out and shook all the disgusting little bugs off outside. I checked the rest of the stash, and except for one ball of novelty acrylic, all seemed well.

I washed the alpaca, letting it soak over night. Once it was dry I wound it up so I could survey the damage. A few breaks, but not nearly as bad as expected. If I can get over the ick factor, I can totally knit with it.

Over a year or two I gathered about 1000 yards of matching yarn from the ranch, including some roving that I hand spun to match it. Now I’m just wondering what I should knit with it.

Living in Southern California, I really don’t need super warm shawls or sweaters. The yarn is really to delicate for a blanket though. Anyone have suggestions?

Happy Anniversary to ME!!!

Today is my blog’s second anniversary!  Woot! And to celebrate, I’m avoiding sewing in ends! 😀

I have a finished blanket and a finished shawl just sitting around waiting for their ends to be sewn in, and to have a good wash. The power of procrastination is strong with me, so not only am I avoiding the ends, I’m creating more! I stared the summer scarf!

I decided to make it an infinity scarf by adding an additional 12 stitches and joining in the round. We’ll see if that turns out to be a good decision or not.

So for now I have my project bag full. Two “finished” projects, and a WIP. I feel kind of spoiled getting this much knitting done 🙂

What I’m Not Knitting

The chevron baby blanket plugs along (as blankets usually do), and I’m starting to day dream about other projects I’d like to start.  My sister is expecting a little boy in early November, so there is another blanket waiting in the wings, not to mention a few unfinished objects that got tossed aside during the move.  We’re going to pretend those aren’t there right now.

What I really want is something in linen!

Living in Southern California, and having the total lack of winter we had last year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to knit with things other than 100% wool sometimes.  As much as I love my wool, and all things wolly, there just aren’t enough cold days in our year to add more wool accessories to the mix.  (I know those of you in colder climates are just crying for me.)

I’ve had my eye on the Summer Scarf ever since spying it at Two Sisters and Ewe during the San Diego yarn crawl last year.

Summer Scarf by Janet Avila

I’m also contemplating my first knit top, and the Silken Straw Summer Sweater looks perfectly summery, and not at all deceptive!  I’m just sure I’ll look perfectly fit and flattered in it.  (Just let me hang onto my delusions until I’ve knit it.)

Silken Straw Summer Sweater by Purl Soho

For now, it’s all the chevron I can handle.  ON TO THE BLANKET!!!

 

 

Blanket In Progress

There is a baby. He showed up before his blanket was finished. This is mostly due to the fact that I was busy moving and remodeling and had forgotten al about it until said baby was about to arrive.

In a very interesting coincidence I seemed to have started the blanket just as soon as mama was going into labor. Like, within minutes of each other!

Little baby boy is currently waiting for his parents to discover his name, and his blanket is currently waiting for its last 3 stripes (never mind the ends that will need to be woven in). Perhaps he is waiting for his blanket to be done, not to show up (obviously!), but to receive his name. Maybe I’m getting a little all out in the universe about it. Only time will tell. In the mean time, I shall knit on, and hopefully he will have his name and blanket soon.

New Blanks!

My shipment of new blanks showed up! It’s a bulky washable merino wool, and it’s made in the USA! I’m super excited!

The new company I’m ordering from is also supplying the wool/yarn for the 2014 USA Winter Olympic team!  How cool is that?!

There’s also a sampling of some merino wool which I will hopefully be adding to my Etsy shop as well.  I’m going to start dying it up ASAP (with dye made in the USA as well!), as I will probably make a few quick Christmas gifts with it.

I’m also finally on Instagram!  Follow LazerSheepYarns for lots of yarny goodness!

What’s on your last-minute holiday knitting list this year?

My Morning

This is what my morning is looking like. How are you handling the time change?

Deadline Swiftly Approaching!

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween last night!  I’ve been neglecting the blog again to play with yarn (but who could blame me really?).

There’s a baby coming!  That means there’s a blanket in the works.  The shower for said baby is next weekend.  The parents-to-be don’t live super far from us, but it’s far enough that I want to make sure they have their blanket for when he arrives, so I’m knitting my little heart out every chance I get.  The only reason I have a minute to blog now is because I left my knitting at my parents’ house after all the Halloween festivities last night.  I am not a fast knitter, and I need to be working on this blanket every spare minute I have, so a retrieval mission is set for this afternoon.

I’m using the OpArt blanket pattern, which I’m LOVING so far.  I had a few others in mind, but when my husband saw OpArt he said it looked just like a tattoo that the daddy-to-be had, and that it was the one!  I think that’s as good a reason as any 🙂

I’ve also been playing with NEW yarn!  I want to expand my line of hand dyed yarns to include some different weights.  This is my heap of trial yarn to see what I like.  And bonus, all of it is made in the USA!!!

So much wooly goodness!

I’ve been in love with hand dyed single ply yarn lately, and in this heap there’s a very nice one in a lace weight.  There’s also a squishy soft superwash Marino bulky that I can’t wait to knit something up with!

What is your favorite type of yarn to knit with?

It was a Fiesta!

Wow, sorry I’ve been kind of MIA lately.  Turns out preparing for my first fiber event (not to mention entertaining a busy 1-year-old) is exhausting!

I’m happy to report that for my first event, it was great!  I met a lot of awesome people, and some of them even liked and bought my yarn! 😀  Big shout out to Candy Skien and Oink Pigments, who were not only lovely neighbors, but really awesome ladies with lots of tips for this newbie!

I had another bout of camnesia, and only snagged a few pictures all weekend… regrettably all of my own booth haha.

The booth, day one!

Those awesome stuffed Lazer Sheep are courtesy of my mom’s awesome sewing skills!

And here’s a little sneak peak of what will be coming to the Etsy shop, as soon as I get a chance to properly photograph them…

Buttons!!!

New colorways plus BUTTONS!!!  Each skein of yarn will now be coming with a button of their colorway namesake!  I’m super excited about them, and I’ve loved drawing them all up, so I hope you all enjoy them too 😀

Now, I’m having a little break, knitting on my Aloha Sheep hat (using my new knitting bag from Slipped Stitch Studios), and ordering more blank yarn so I can fill some custom orders.  Hope you all had a nice weekend.  What have you been working on?

Eeee!!!

I have brought her to the woolly side! This, is my sister’s first knitting! I couldn’t even wait until I had decent light to post it!

She has already said that knitters should be selling their stuff for way more because of all the work and love put in, and when her husband went to bed, she said, “Just one more row.”  !!!  One of us!  One of us!  Haha I couldn’t be more proud!

Tomorrow night we have another date to sit and knit, and then she wants to go to a yarn shop to pick out her own yarn for a project (this was something I had sitting in the stash).

Please send her luck, and lots of good knitting juju 🙂

 

A Very Full Weekend

We are all moved into my sister’s place, if not at all unpacked.  And, lucky me, I have a hubby who let me run off to a yarn crawl that spanned the whole weekend and then some!

The SD Yarn Crawl went Thursday through Sunday and covered nearly all of San Diego!   I missed Thursday since that was the day we moved the bulk of our stuff.  Friday, after another full day of moving I managed to grab my husband, Little, and my grandparents to go check out A Simpler Time Alpacas & Mill, which was conveniently close to my grandparents’ house!  Did I remember to bring my camera, yes.  Did I remember to get it out and take any pictures once I was there, no 😦

Either way, it was really interesting, and probably my favorite stop of the crawl!  They showed us all the machines they use to clean and process the fiber, and, we got to pet and feed some super cute alpacas!!!  I never knew they made the cutest little noises!  I don’t even know what to compare it to haha, but it was a lot of fun, and I got a pretty little hank of alpaca yarn.

Saturday morning (still with camnesia), while Little napped, my sister came with me to Two Sisters and Ewe and Yarn and Thread Expressions.  They are my closest yarn shops, and I always really like their selections.  Super nice ladies that work at both.

It was supposed to be hot that afternoon, so I convinced Josh to go to a few more locations on the crawl with me before heading to the old apartment to grab some of the left over stuff.  We hit up Yarns at Border Leather, The Grove, and The Needlecraft Cottage.

Border Leather had floor to ceiling yarn in one room, and bolts of leather in another!  Lots of pretty things, and very good prices.  One lady, sadly two steps ahead of me, found a whole package of angora yarn on clearance for $5!  $5!!!!!

The Grove was also a super cute book store in a neighborhood called South Park.  It’s a great part of town, and it even had an ice cream shop next door.

The Needlecraft Cottage is in Pacific Beach, a great little beach neighborhood with lots of restaurants and bars.  They had all kinds of needle crafts (no kidding!) including cross stitch and embroidery.  I ended up with a super cute pair of sheep earrings from them.  In their parking lot was The Yarnover Truck too!

I fell on my credit card a little bit and splurged on a pretty hank of Indigo Dragonfly Merino Single Lace in Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock.  I LOVE IT!  Can’t wait to find a pattern for it 😀

Sunday Little, my sister, and our grandparents met up again to cover the last shops on our list, and I even managed to take a few pictures this time!

First stop of the day, La Dolce Vida Alpacas.

A nice little ranch way out in the middle of nothing and dirt roads.  If you venture there, check their websites directions first!   It became well-known that GPS lies when trying to get there.  Their alpacas were a little flighty, but we did get to pet some BIG pups (I think they are great pyrenees, but I didn’t actually ask).

Yarning for You had some beautiful shawls and scarfs all over their shop, showing off their yarn selection.  They even had a whole section of baby knits that were to die for!

 

We maybe had a little too much fun there 😉

We kind of rushed through the last two shops, to get home in time for Little to have dinner.  Common Threads and The Black Sheep I could have stayed in for DAYS!  There was so much yarn!!!  They just had bookshelves of yarn that kept going and going!  I can’t wait to have some extra fiber funds to go back there.

It was a great weekend, and my first ever crawl!  I hope I get a chance to do more!

How was your weekend?