I'm moving

I'm moving over to another site. It's mostly Dutch, I will include english at the end of my posts.

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Helpdesk

It’s been quiet here and there is no excuse for it. I’m going pretend that nothing happened (which is exactly what happened) and start again.

This past week I made a lazy kate from a plastic box. Exactly like you can find on the internet where they make one from a shoebox. The knitting needles fit perfectly and once I’m done, I can put a lid on it.



On the bobbins there is a mixture of alpaca and tussah silk, bought in London this past July. The spinning isn't equal, the singles on the second bobbin came out a bit thicker. I’ve finished plying, the skein is drying right now.

I’ve been spinning quite a bit lately. I started on Thursday night. After about 15 minutes the phone rang. The parents had bought an iPad and it wasn’t working. I explained that they had to install iTunes on the computer first. Okay, they were going to do that. Before I got in the rhythm of spinning the phone rang again. They had installed the program and it was asking questions. I spend the next 30 minutes playing helpdesk. I think it’s working, I’m going over to see my parents tonight so I’ll know for sure then.

Not much knitting happened. Only a bit on a KAL.

Back home

We’re back home from London. Knit Nation was great. If I had the money to do this every year I probably would. There is no event next year because of the Olympic Games. Maybe I’ll go again in 2013. This is my loot:



I see that I forgot to include my mug in the picture. And yes, I have started a project there. You can never start too early on Christmas presents.

O, the visit to the SnB at iKnit never happened. With thanks to the manager of the hotel we booked. It didn’t quite go according to plan and we had to go looking for a place to stay. We did visit the store on Saturday.

The suitcase is packed

My suitcase is packed and in a few hours I get on the train and I'm off. On my way to London and Knit Nation. We might even stop by iKnit tonight.

Little sheep (and cows)

Once the computer was finally fixed I ended up being a bit broken. I’m don’t often have a cold but when it hits, it hits me hard. I think I caught it when I took public transport last week. I’m not used to it anymore and I must have lost some of my resistance to creepy things. Thankfully it passed again.

I have something fun to show.



These markers are from WeeOnes on Etsy. They are soo cute. Beside sheep and cows there are pigs and all kind of other barnyard animals.
Now to find a project to use them with.

Just learned the IE9 and Blogger can’t really get along, I can’t post a thing. So I switched to FireFox.

The computer has crashed

Last Sunday I was listening to a podcast on my computer and was knitting for a bit before finally starting on a new update for this place. Suddenly the only thing I heard was dididididididididididididididid. The computer refused to respond to the mouse or the keyboard. My only option was to use the on/off button on the computer. Sadly it didn’t restart. It didn’t blink, hum or burp at me. Absolutely nothing. Late Sunday night it worked again. For a little bit.
Monday I bought an external hard drive, I had absolutely nothing backed up. A crashing computer sure makes a person very nervous.
I think I managed to secure all of my documents and most of my pictures. Seems that I’ve lost everything else. Stupidstupidstupid.
I took the computer to somebody who is very optimistic. He’s going to see if he can fix it or otherwise get my data off the darn thing. I hope that he managed that least that. Keeping my fingers crossed.

No shame

The green yarn from last week is done. And stuffed in the back of a drawer. I have seldom suffered so much frustration from yarn. I quit trying to attach the single when it broke, it broke almost every 5 yards. I have no idea how many knots are in there now. Bleh.

Spinning is really contagious. I spun on Friday, Saturday and yesterday trying to fill a bobbin. This morning I had a small amount to go and it’s done now. As soon as I finish plying my yarn for my Vlinder Shawl, I’m starting on this one. I think I can manage enough yarn for Kvothe. That’s going to be my travel project in July when I go to Knit nation.

I noticed today that it really doesn’t matter what people think of my knitting in public. I had a dentist appointment this morning and had to wait more than 20 minutes. With a sock, which caused comments. Usually I politely answer the person, this time I pulled the first sock out of my bag and showed it to the lady. She played along very politely. I showed a complete stranger my knitted sock. Full pride and without shame.

Tuesday night is spinning night

I’ve had my spinning wheel out a couple of times recently to spin with others. Really great and it’s really fun to do. I don’t know why I don’t get my spinning wheel out at home. I have the same fiber on my bobbin for the last 7 months. This has to change.

I declare Tuesday night spinning night (if I’m home of course).

It worked, I managed to fill my bobbin.



I even started to ply today. It’s not easy to Navajo ply yarn that is either too thin, too underspun or highly overspun. It also doesn’t help when I want to use my electric spinner which decides to overheat after ten minutes and go full force. It would be useful if I was really fast.

I’ll move everything over to my regular spinning wheel.

It’s not fair

I had plans to tell you all how my weekend went. It was great, with good weather and even better company. Before I sat down to start writing I got some horrible news. My brother and sister-in-law’s baby had passed away before it was born.

Last Thursday my niece Lotte was born and today we are saying goodbye to her.

Sick is not fun

Being sick is absolutely not fun when you plan a weekend away. I’ve been telling everybody that I can’t get sick because I’m not missing my fun weekend. It’s going to be a weekend filled with wool, dye, spinning wheels and just lots of fun. So when I suddenly felt really bad yesterday I was far from happy. I called in sick this morning so I could sleep it off.

So what else do you do?



Toss some yarn in a dyebath and hunt around for that one ball of Kid Silk Haze.

I’m feeling much better now.

Cats to borrow

Yesterday when I came home from work I smelled basil. A very nice smell, but I don’t have a basil plant. Once I got to the kitchen I found out where it came from. One of the cats knocked over a bottle of olive oil with basil. The bottom of the bottle had broken spilling oil all over the counter top. Unfortunately for me I had a spindle lying there and half was covered in oil.
They’ve done this before with a bottle with lamp oil. Also managing it to cover my spindle.

Sigh, anybody interested to temporarily take in a few elderly cats? They can be really sweet.

Diet cat

I have 3 cats, a skinny cat, a heavy set cat and a fat cat. Fat cat has to go on a diet. So they’re all on a diet.



I truly believe that the diet kibble tastes as bad as human diet food. It even looks like cardboard. Fat cat isn’t really fond of it. Which I don’t mind.
Skinny cat really can’t lose any weight. It shouldn’t be a problem as long as I keep feeding her extra stuff. Problem is that she doesn’t really like extra stuff, just her dry kibble. She even seems to enjoy the diet stuff. How can I keep her from losing weight? I’ve tried the stuff for kittens (extra nutrients) but she keeps ignoring it.

Black Butterfly

Last year I started spinning silk with merino on my spindle. I did not give an update on my progress. It would have been rather boring. I either spun that week or I didn’t.
I did manage to keep spinning about 10 minutes a day. And even started a shawl.



It’s the Vlinder Shawl from the book Knitting Brioche by Nancy Marchant. Vlinder is the Dutch word for butterfly. I have a while to spindle before I’m done. I did finish a second spindle and I’m plying it. That should give me a bit to knit with.

Cynthia

It’s just like a diet. As soon as I think about finishing more of the projects that I have lying about I start more. This time another mystery, named Cynthia.
I looked for the right yarn right up to the moment the first clue landed in my mailbox. I knew I had 2 skeins of undyed yarn. I wanted to dye that to match the blue beads I had bought. Unfortunately that means I had to find it first.
I tried something with mohair and a lace yarn. Finally I found this.



I bought once because there was a sale. It’s a mixture of wool and silk (with some nylon). Right now I’m working on clue two and I’m really liking the way it’s looking. And the beads match it very nicely. Finally I’m making something that’s completely coming out of my stash.

Too much

Last week I had a SAP course. Five whole days lost of information in English (not my native language) given by somebody from Germany. The worst was sitting still for five days. I always thought I had a job which required a lot of sitting, but this was awful. I consoled myself by starting a sock. Not really helpful towards my goal to reduce the current projects.
The Friday after we were done I walked into the centre of Waalwijk (about a 15 minute walk) to get myself moving around. That’s when the worst thing this whole week happened, a glove left me. Half of the pair of Fetching jumped out of my pocket and disappeared. And it was my favorite pair. Snif.

At least the shawl turned out great.

WIP reduction

Empty cupboards are contagious. Slowly but surely everything is getting cleaned out in this house. Now I need to try and keep it organized so it won’t take the upper hand again.

I’m hoping to achieve the same with my stash. It’ll probably go slower than cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. My second project of the year is also done, a shawl. It’s drying right now, picture will follow.

I’m going to inspect my current UFO’s. I know I have a few which won’t ever get done.

Cleaned up with mittens

I need to do things differently. I really wanted to clean out the front room so I could start painting next month. I did clean out plenty of stuff, just not from the room I wanted. Reminds me of my time in college right around exams. I usually passed them with reasonably high grades and had a spotless living space. Maybe if I decide to disinfect my refrigerator I might clean out a bookcase from that room.

I have finished my first project for 2011. Mittens for my mom. She wanted mittens that would match her brown coat. I bought the yarn in Berlin. I had purchased the pattern a while back.



Unfortunately for me she really likes them. They would have looked just fine with my blue coat.

2011

The new year has begun. New Year’s Eve was great, New Year’s Day was a bit harder. I had gotten up “early” so that I would be able to go to sleep on time the next night. Turned out that I still had plenty of alcohol in my system. The world kept moving more than what I used to in the morning. I’m done with drinking for a while.

A new year usually means new resolutions. I looked up mine from last year.

Finish a 100 balls -> made it, even though because most was donated.
Emptying the project bin -> oh yeah, I had put everything in one bin. Did not empty it (at all)
Finishing my Wolhemel blanket -> does knitting the 2010 square count? Still not done.

So . . . . . I’ll do it differently this year. I have decided not to dye my hair anymore. Let it go silver. Actually I think it would be awesome to have a long silver braid down my back. I already have long hair, so the long braid is no problem.
Second resolution is to finish redoing the upstairs. Last year I did one room, still two to go. This includes having everything organized and cleaned up.

For my knitting and spinning I’m making monthly goals. This month that would be finishing the December goals (a pair of mittens and a shawl), spinning at least 10 minutes a day with the spindle and to have at least a third done of the baby blanket.

What are your resolutions for 2011?