Swift

swift
Originally uploaded by isis1207

The mess is nicely on its way to becoming a sock. Because I’d rather not do something like that again I went searching for a yarn swift. There are some real nice ones with even nicer prices (from the seller’s point of view). On the Ravelry forum I found this manual, looks easy enough.
At first I wanted to send the link to the males in the family with ‘Christmas present’ in the subject line. That would mean that I’d have to wait 2 months before owning it. That’s pretty long. So I’m going to try it myself.
First I checked to see what I had lying around in the shed, which wasn’t much. Up to the hardware store and I bought a bolt, a small beam and a dowel. Measure, mark, saw and sand. After 2 hours I had everything finished, except for the holes. Asked dad for help on this one since I lacked the necessary drill bits. Dad made some holes for me and look, it works.
It’s not completely straight, the bottom is made of a board that was already warped and sawing straight isn’t my strong suit. But . . . it works like a charm. A skein of 1460 yards became a ball within 30 minutes.
Those spiders are not real, they came with the yarn. My cats love them, I’m not so sure about it.

Fun with yarn

tangled mess
Originally uploaded by isis1207

Last night I frogged a couple of socks and sat down with my woolwinder. One soch was too small around the ankle, the other one was simply too big. I couldn’t find anyone with bigger feet that wanted to wear purple, red and green striped socks so I had no other option than to frog the poor thing. I’ll use the yarn for another sock.
I also had a skein of sockyarn that needed winding. Working a bit fast, not all too secure, a bit of pulling and yanking and I ended up with a gorgeous mass of tangeld yarn. I spend the whole night trying to get it untangled. Who says you can’t have hours fo fun with a single strand of yarn? And I plan to make socks from it, more fun with yarn.

Minus two, plus one

fetching
Originally uploaded by isis1207

I had the fullest intentions to finish some projects and then to start on my cardigan. I still don’t have any yarn, so you’d think I’d keep up with finishing things. I’m planning on buying the yarn on the SnB-day so I have until November 3rd to finish stuff.
You’d think that what I’d do.I finish two WIP’s, the gloves form the MittensKal and the Clapotis. Especially the last one went faster than expected, I ran out of yarn right before the end. So what do I do next? I start knitting a test pair of Fetching. Yes, a test pair. I want to give these away for Christmas, but I don’t have the right colors for the intended recipient. Actually, this is just a good excuse to make them for myself.

Knitting break

No, I’m not taking a break from knitting. I started knitting during my lunch break at work. I took my knitting to work for the first time this week. During lunch I found a quiet place and sat down to knit. At first I felt really awkward, what will people say? Will they look at me?
At the moment I feel a lot less awkward. I have some quiet music on my I-pod and focus myself on knitting for at least 30 minutes. This is really a work break.
Another good thing about it is that I have some progress on my WIP’s. The downside of Ravelry is that there are too many things to be seen that I want to make and I end up starting project after project. At some point I have to start finishing things. I really want to make the Tilted Duster from Interweave, but I have to finish at least one thing before I start.
Besides, I don’t have the yarn for it yet.