ZOMG Adorable

I'm not usually one for internet acronyms but 'zomg' just seems to convey the appropriate amount of extreme excitement for my new stitch markers. I couldn't resist when Stephcuddles showed off her newest stitch marker creations, 'Afternoon Tea'.

I should have put a scale marker on the image, because these things are petite. The tiny detail is beautiful and impressive.  You can check out her Etsy shop here if you're interested.  

Full disclosure: I'm not entirely sure what my tea time treats there in the background are.  I think maybe I requested cookies? Oh crap, cookies are called biscuits in the UK. So what are UK cookies? Thoughts? 

Alpaca extravaganza!

This weekend, Madison, WI hosted the 7th annual (news to me, just learned about it) Great Midwest Alpaca Festival.  My folks were up visiting for the weekend, and what better tourist destination than the GMAF? Well, potentially a lot of things considering we had no clue what it would be like. I was fairly confident that fiber would be involved, so at least one person in our party was sure to be pleased.

The entire coliseum floor was set up for alpaca showing.

As far as actually the competition, it seemed like 4-H exclusively for adults and their alpacas (OK, being from the midwest I naturally assume that everyone knows what 4-H is. Think county/state fair, kids can show off livestock that they helped to raise and various other skills. Oh, you didn't grow up in the sticks? Well bully for you).

In the ring.

They had a silent auction to raise funds for like, orphaned alpacas or something, and I bid on a wool/alpaca felted hat:

And won due to the fact that my dad is possibly the nicest person on earth and went and upped my bid at the last minute. I talked to the guy who makes these hats and he was pretty awesome.

And the alpacas were just cute.

Cute!

Super cute!

Hungry cute!

Suri cute!

Whoa!  Cute only if the service is NOT for the guy in the vest.

Really, the coolest part was hobnobbing with the local folks raising alpacas and/or working with the fiber. There were people from every farming state in the US, but a fair number of them were from Wisconsin and many of them had brought some good looking fiber with them. I tried to go easy on the yarn buying (I wanted IT ALL) and I think I got off pretty easy--Shady Haven's Fiber Designs was selling gorgeous undyed yarn:

And it was an absolute steal. I usually think of buying local and getting a bargain as mutually exclusive goals, but somehow they pulled it off. Maybe they're using child labor or something.*

So I got an invitation to a farm, signed up for a felting class, got some sweet stash, and entertained my visitors for an afternoon.. All in all, worth the $6 for parking (maybe a little more).

*The views and opinions of AC from AC Engineered Knits are for entertainment purposes only. I don't think that Shady Haven's Fiber Designs is actually using child labor.

Under the wire

It was time to cowboy up and do something about the lone sock that was slowly sinking to the bottom of my knitting basket. I can't stand to see a handknit go to waste (unless it's really, really ugly). One of the nice things about the Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn is that the skeins come in amounts suited for one sock. I searched for "possum merino sock yarn" in the "Martha's Vineyard" colorway (the colors do represent MV now that I think about it. Blue like the ocean, green and purple like the grapes, and brown like my sister-in-law's upchuck that time she drank too much on vacation).

Checking through some sites like Yarn Market and Yarndex Knitting, it became clear that the Martha's Vineyard colorway had been discontinued--in 2005. Little late for that one, eh? More troubling was it seemed that the possum-merino sock yarn had been discontinued. I started to internally panic...the sock might linger forever without a mate, going through life desperately lonely.

But BargainYARNS came through for me:

A pretty decent match, if I do say so myself. My anal-retentive half wants to take apart the first sock and mix the two yarns together, but that would be the third time that I've knit this damn sock. MUST RESIST THE PSYCHOSIS.

Breaking the rules

Alexandra over at Wool & Cotton had a post a few days ago putting words to a problem that I didn't even consciously realize I had: a set of self-imposed rules. "Don't buy more yarn, you already have plenty you haven't used." "You can't make that, it's the middle of winter and that's a bikini." "No, not that yarn for that pattern. You won't use all of it, so it's not practical."

Well screw you, brain--I'm paying you to think, not to be a total buzzkill. I saw that Leah from Good Enough published her first pattern recently--it was a pretty cowl and looked soft, and I wanted to make it. I don't care that a) it's not winter any more, b) I'm using the last of my yarn from my NZ honeymoon, or c) it probably won't use the whole ball of yarn.

This is what rebellion looks like:




Soft and wavy, apparently. Viva la resistance!

Letting Go or: Why are there so many tiny balls of yarn rolling around the house?

If cable TV was a proportionally accurate representation of society, you'd think America has a hoarding epidemic--everyone a perilous moment away from becoming trapped under a fallen stack of newspapers from the 1980's or dying of mold related illness from that months old sandwich we were saving 'just in case'. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, I think it's just human nature to treasure and want to hold on to certain things. I know plenty of knitters have massive stashes of yarn, such that they might as well open up their own yarn shop. My stash is pretty small. But I do have a little (heh heh get it?) confession.

My name is AC, and I'm a tiny yarn ball hoarder.


Mmmmm. Wool/alpaca blend. Hand-painted. From Truckee, CA, I love Truckee. But it's not like I don't have two, count 'em, two items made from this yarn if I want to reminisce. I know that there's little chance that I'm going to make anything with this. And yet, I can't seem to get rid of it. I have a whole bucket of these:



And I don't see the supply getting any smaller. Maybe eventually I'll have enough for one of those ball play pits....that would be pretty sweet.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 3: Tidy mind, tidy stitches.

This day's topic made me laugh. Guffaw, even. "How do you keep your yarn organized?" My answer, which I'm assuming will be the consensus from most people, is not at all. Sure, there are going to be a couple of people with an intricate filing system, and we'll smile and nod and say "What a great idea!" whilst secretly rolling our eyes.

I had an idea at one point that I would organize all of my knitting stuff in an antique washstand, because antique furniture rocks and washstands are an entertaining conversation piece--you can casually bring up how chamberpots used to be stored in them. I think my husband is still slightly horrified that a piece of our furniture was possibly used for poop storage.


I do have all of my needles, measuring tape, markers and various knitting flotsam in here--as well as a sewing machine stashed in the commode--but I wanted to display my lovely yarn for the world to see. I have an odds and ends yarn bucket:


But the meat of the yarn goes into a big old pile. My mom ordered the basket online as a gift for me, and was appalled at the size when it arrived. I assured her I could fill it, and it wasn't too difficult (read: I could barely fit everything in there)--but it became clear that I couldn't leave it out when we were gone.

See! It's been out for maybe 30 seconds and he's already thinking about getting his face in it.
Our dog loves yarn. Loves it. Other than peanut butter and dead animals, I think it's his favorite thing. Loves to pick it up and do the 'kill' on it--you know the thing where dogs shake their head back and forth to kill prey? He managed to stalk and nab some prey yesterday.


It's the yarn I just wrote about, the one I carefully placed back into a bag and into the basket. If he learns to open doors, it's game over, man.

A discussion of yarn storage wouldn't be complete without a mention of my portable yarn storage unit:


My relatives got it for me for Christmas last year, and it pretty much rocks. Don't be too jealous.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 1: A tale of two yarns

Knitters, crocheters, cats...who doesn't like a good yarn? On second thought, those categories probably only encompass a small percentage of the population, and yet, yarn still kicks ass. But not all yarn is created equal.

I used to have a real problem picking out yarn for projects. I'd either buy yarn I thought I liked and have nothing to do with it, or buy a pattern without a clue as to what yarn to use. I also used to be a yarn cheapskate--there's a certain amount of sticker shock when you first start knitting. As I recounted in a previous K & C Blog Week post, this resulted in some outright monstrosities.

So when I decided I wanted to make the Sahara sweater, I thought I'd take the easy way out: get exactly the yarn that the pattern recommended, regardless of price. Tilli Tomas Pure and Simple. With a name like Pure and Simple, what could go wrong? Everything, it turns out.

I called that 'stretched sadness'.
The yarn was unplied silk, which was not only unpleasant to work with, but also resulted in uneven and stretched out stitches. HATE. I plowed ahead and ended up with something resembling a sweater - then upon washing, the blue yarn leaked dye and sullied up the cream part.

I learned a couple of things.

1) Choose your yarn colors carefully--you may someday want to wash your garment.

2) Expensive yarn does not necessarily mean good/enjoyable yarn.

I somehow ended up on the Tilli Tomas e-mailing list--and several months after finishing my 'sweater', I received an email advertising a screaming deal on an experimental batch of TT yarn, a wool/silk blend. I still reeked of the stench of failure, but the bargain was too great for me--I bought enough for another sweater. And I loved it:


All that's left of 10 skeins.

My mom enjoys her wool/silk sweater (I think....I hope).
I liked the experimental yarn so much, I am now in possession of a heaping pile of it:

Tilli Tomas 'Elsie' yarn - 33% wool, 33% silk, 33% milk protein - 100% awesome.

So I also learned,

3) Keep trying, and you'll eventually find yarn that you love!

Confession time

Crap. Damn it, crap, crap balls crap!! Effffffff. I love it. I tried to act all dismissive about it; the fact is, after starting the body of the hat, I did kind of pee my pants just a little bit with excitement (metaphorically speaking, of course). This Malabrigo worsted wool is so....something. Droolingly soft is the only descriptor that comes to mind. I'm not even done and I can't wait to wear it:



You know what? This doesn't even begin to express my excitement level. I've gotta Michael Bay-ify it (thank you AV Club):



You know, Michael Bay? The guy who makes increasingly-less-tolerable over-the-top action movies? My enjoyment pretty much stopped after The Rock, buddy, and that was probably because Sean Connery was there to class up the joint. Most recently we've been blessed with the Transformers movies, which I understand are about close-ups of CGI-robot-shit moving and spinning incomprehensibly. Also, Megan Fox's breasts.

But the man does know how to jazz up a knitting photo.

Adventures in Malabrigo and new stash

I can occasionally be a just a teensy bit contrary. Whoa, I just heard my mother snort in derisive laughter from 350 miles away. Whether consciously or not, I tend to be wary of anything that 'everyone' seems to enjoy. Seriously, have you ever seen any of the Twilight movies? NOTHING HAPPENS IT'S SO BORING. Or read a Nicholas Sparks book? Those things read like MadLibs for masochists. "The widow/widower/young teen girl/little brother has cancer/a boating accident/a tour in Iraq/an incident with a mudslide and tragically dies. And yet people eat this shit up. And Oprah? I'm sorry, don't even get me started. Are people still collecting Precious Moments figurines? Or really, figurines of any kind? I don't get it.

The point, and I promise there is one, is that I've been dubious of the heaps of praise thrown at Malabrigo yarns. Ergo, I've never made it a point to acquire any. As fate would have it, I received some in my parcel from the Blog Hub Swap. I started the brim for a hat a couple of nights ago:


The verdict: while I didn't urinate on myself per say, I do like it. I was extremely dubious when I found that it was un-plied (or single-ply, I've heard people use both descriptions). My last experience with un-plied yarn ended with me swearing that I'd never use it again, at least that particular ridiculously overpriced brand, which shall remain nameless (Tilli Tomas Silk - mmmm oops, did I say that aloud??). My fears were baseless in this case; it holds up well when you work with it on the needles and doesn't make the stitches appear sloppy, even though the yarn thickness does vary some. It is very soft and I'm looking forward to wearing the finished product.

On a semi-related note, I'm really enjoying designs right now that, like the aforementioned hat, make use of a brim or collar that is worked sideways (i.e. the stitches are perpendicular to the main body of work). If that doesn't make sense, the finished hat will be an example.

We were out of syrup and I had a feenin'* for some cheese curds over the weekend--where else could we solve both issues but the Madison Farmer's Market? It's fun to go just to see the spectacle every Saturday morning; vendors have booths that stretch all the way around the capitol building. I was feeling perfectly satisfied by a pumpkin crepe when I ran across a vendor that I haven't seen for almost a year. She's a sheep farmer, and spins yarn for a living. I sort of want to be her. The last time I saw her I asked if I could come by and learn how to spin, she said to stop by the farm sometime, and I have since totally chickened out. I did turn a skein of her yarn into the original Cozy Cabled Hat, however:


She was busy this time, no chit-chat, but I snagged a little bit of awesome:


These babies are going to be turned into some two color mitts for a friend.

*Is this a widely accepted term or rural Indiana vernacular? In case from context it isn't clear, feenin' = an extreme craving.

Yarn score

I'm still working on perfecting my swap parcel. I want to give my swap-ee some tastes of Madison, at least my little area of it (read: totally hippie, or crunchy granola if you will). One of my favorite yarn gurus is a local gal who used to sell her yarn, htNEVELE through the now defunct LYS. I used a skein of her sock yarn to construct my very first pair of socks, which also happen to be my favorite pair of socks:


As my swap-ee is a sock yarn lover, I knew I just had to get her some. But how to obtain it, now that the LYS is an S&M boutique or a sausage factory or whatever it was they turned it into? I found her website on her Rav profile, and shot her an email to ask what the lead time is on getting the yarn after ordering. I still have a fair amount of time before the swap deadline, but better safe than sorry.

She kindly offered to meet me, seeing as how we are both Madison-ites and even live in the same crunchy granola area. Where and when to meet? It felt a little like a drug drop. I pictured us meeting in a dark parking lot, pulling up our cars next to each other. However, we (probably wisely) selected a nearby coffeeshop at sunny noon-time. Now, I won't show you what I got for the parcel, just in case, but I couldn't help getting a little goods for myself:



I had to make her trip worth her while, of course. Mmmm, drool worthy.

Please, do feed the animals!

One can't really be sure what to expect when entering a park claiming to have elk, bison, bears, and other various arguably wild animals...where you are free to feed any of them with bread you can buy at the park. When my copilot suggested a trip to the Olympic Game Farm while we were in Seattle this weekend, I was slightly concerned. It seems like a terrible idea to feed a bear, considering it's entirely possible that human flesh is what they really have a hankering for. But I wanted to tour some of Puget Sound, and did I really need both arms? As long as I held on to the right one, I'd probably be OK.

My copilot, a buddy and I set off for the park on Sunday morning. It was gigantor. You pay your entry fee and they give you some bread and basically set you loose to drive around (with the caveat that you should keep moving around the buffalo in case they decide to, I don't know, tip your car over or chew on it or you or something).

There were peafowl just randomly wandering around every part of the park.


I really wanted to take some of these guys home, so that guests would feel like they were in some sort of surreal, Dali-esque dream whenever they came over. Alas, none of them fit in the trunk.

We went through a group of yaks that were very friendly:


They seemed to enjoy petting and a gentle scratch as much as the food.

"Can I keep him?"

The co-pilot made a friend too:


We sallied onward to the bears. My trepidation was in vain--they were safely behind an electric fence, but you could toss bread to them.



That's right--he's catching bread in his mouth.

They seemed to be as entertained as we were. This one would indicate when he was ready for another toss with a wave of his paw.

We moved on to another section--home to a large herd of European Fallow Deer. These guys and gals were aggressive:


They continued to follow us, poking their head through the window and vying for position. Then the car in front of us encountered the big guys:


Uh oh. There was a lot of girly screaming as the bison approached our car, but I reassured my copilot and buddy that I would protect them. I rolled up the window a tad so we wouldn't get the full monty:


Ewwww. It was all slimy, and it's tongue was practically a prehensile hand. It didn't help that we'd watched part of a Star Wars marathon on FX the night before, and an icky Jabba the Hut tongue was fresh in my mind. It slimed the window. Fortunately it's a rental car.

The last group we encountered were some elk, and by comparison they were polite and refined. It was the first time I'd seen an elk and they were impressively HUGE.


They politely popped their head in, retrieved their snack, then withdrew to chomp on it. Definitely a unique experience! Also, some of the largest piles of poo I've ever seen.

On our way home, we decided to check out a psuedo-famous ice cream place on Bainbridge Island--and Google Maps informed me that right next door was Churchmouse Yarns & Teas. Score. A yarn/tea shop is a 'retirement dream' for myself and another good friend, so I owed it to us to check it out. I'm kicking myself for not taking any photos, but this place was AWESOME. So much high quality and hard to find yarn and literature, and teas to boot.

The staff asked me several times if I was on the yarn tour. I was not, I didn't know that such a thing was going on. Apparently it was the 5th Annual 'Destination Yarn' for the Puget Sound area, where 25 LYS were participating. "Why the hell am I not on this tour??" I was thinking, but soon got my answer: my copilot and buddy navigated the store as awkwardly as if they were in Victoria's Secret with their respective moms. Going to twenty-five yarn shops would probably have made me liable for dude-torture (and would have been hell on my wallet), so it's probably for the best. But here's a sample of the goods:


This one actually has a motivation--I'm going to do a psuedo-Knit-A-Long (KAL) with WifeMomKnitter's Stitch n' Bitch group through Ravelry--so this is what I picked. It's virgin wool, so I could dye it any color, but I kind of like it plain...is that weird?

This is just because I've been told Socks That Rock yarn, well, rocks. It's quite tough to find, so I grabbed some while I had the chance. It's a favorite of the gal that taught me to knit my first sock, so there's gotta be something to that.

Shawl inspiration. I'm a sucker for knitting history.

Mental unload

For whatever reason, I can't think of a cohesive theme to today's post (and it'll be a big change because they are usually so plot driven and rich in subtext). What we're going to end up with is a stream of consciousness type thing--a mental dump, if you will.

First of all, a recent engineering feat using 'green energy' for something useful, for once (please don't send me your hate via comments/email--I'm mostly kidding--I'm just bitter that people tend to leave out nuclear energy when they're talking about non-carbon emitting forms of energy). Check it:

Wind Powered Knitting Machine from Frankie Thom on Vimeo.

It's a wind powered knitting machine. Sweet! The article's a few days old, but that doesn't detract from it's awesomeness in any way. Apparently it can only do scarves, but the length of said scarf is only limited by how much yarn you feed into it. I know what I want for my birthday!

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I went to my LYS yesterday and did the deed:


That's right. 300 g of 100% RY Classic Yarn cottony goodness for the sleeveless cowl test. I swatched it up on US9, 10, and 11 sized needles. Then I concluded that I needed size 10 & 1/2 (which of course I didn't own). Went to other LYS to get the needles. I'm trying to spread the love around.

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SO MUCH STOCKINETTE AND GARTER STITCH. I needed to get that off my chest. I feel like I'm a kid on a long car trip--"Are we there yet? How much longer? I NEED TO PEE!!" I can't believe I decided to make a [WORD REDACTED IN CASE FRIEND IS READING] for my friend's wedding. But I have a hard deadline. Blurg.

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I really want to finish a swatch for my still ongoing "which cast-on/bind-off is the stretchiest for ribbing" test, but after my love affair with the tubular cast-on, I can't seem to bring myself to do it's counterpart--the dreaded Kitchener's bind-off. I'm pretty sure that I can't write the tutorial up without a plethora of obscenities. Maybe I'll offer a 'clean' and 'uncensored' version to spare those with delicate sensibilities.

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My copilot made me an awesome new banner. He only had the advice of "something knitting-y, and something engineering-y, like some gears or something". I think he worked quite well with that poor guidance. Thanks luv!

Testing it forward

I'm a little verklempt that Knit & Crochet Blog Week is over--it was quite nice not to have a topic already in place and a huge list of blogs to read instead of working each morning. Alas, all good things must end.

But all is not sadness. My testers are plugging away on the Infinite Cabled Hat with minimal issues; I'm doing some testing of my own, on a sleeveless cowl-necked sweater. This all began two weekends ago, when a message appeared on the Ravelry board for my LYS that said they were having a sale that weekend. The store is changing hands, and the new owner wanted to get rid of some of the old stock. I convinced the copilot to accompany me down there, and came across this:


and this:


and a little bit of this:



They're all Classic Elite Yarns - Provence, an amazing cotton yarn. Previously, the only cotton yarn I've handled has been Peaches and Creme worsted - this is not a knock on P & C, but the stuff is more function than luxury. Ugh, talk about luxurious, I wanted to dump the barrel of the Provence on the floor right there and roll around in the stuff. But I refrained (not entirely sure of the legality of rolling around in someone's yarn), and just bought a few skeins in a couple of colors.

I go up to the cash register and my copilot gives me a scathing look. "What's it for?" he asks. Now granted, we had just talked about how we're moving into a new apartment and paying overlapping rent for a month and a half, so we needed to save money blah blah, but it was on sale. And it was crazy wonderful (crunderful?) yarn.

As I thought it over that evening, though, I started to worry he had a point. What the hell was I going to do with it? In my effort to be frugal, I'd only gotten a handful of skeins, but not all the same color, and not necessarily complementary colors. And behold, the next week there was a posting for a sleeveless cowl sweater needing to be tested. Great! Sleeveless! I could use cotton! It could be a summer thing! Let's not talk about the fact that none of the colors I got are very summery! I signed up right away.

I asked the poster what she thought of the yarn, and she mentioned it might be kind of small for the gauge. Holy Jebus, I didn't check the gauge beforehand, and it was biiiiig. I don't usually knit with large needles, but I thought what the hey. Let's Tim Gunn this thing and 'make it work!' So I swatched it out. I asked the opinion of my copilot and a friend who was visiting us, and the friend said (and I quote) "I think that will end up being a hooker vest." I thought about pressing onward anyway, but all I could hear was "hooker vest...hooker vest....hooker vest..." echoing in my mind. I have now done four swatches, and the only way I can make it less hooker-y is to hold two strands of the yarn at the same time. This puts me at the very lower end of the range of yarn needed (and I'm not making the smallest size)...eeep. Let's hope the knitting gods smile upon me once again.