Night Owl

I'm having trouble sleeping tonight and was thinking, "wow its been a really long time since I've posted on my blog..... where did that time go?". The past 8 months or so have just been a whirlwind of ups and downs. But I'm never far from my yarn and needles! . I would love to be more consistent about posting. I was thinking that some of my close family and friends have really gotten more interested in my knitting lately, I bet they might like to read about whats going on with that. Or maybe check in and see if I've started on their Christmas presents yet! So maybe I'll start posting on a certain day every week. I'm thinking Wednesdays, that just seems to be a really good day around here for us. We'll see how it goes.
It has been a sock knitting year for me I'm not sure how many pairs I've done... but I think I've been averaging about two pairs a month! Which is more than I thought possible last year this time. I'll have to upload some pictures tomorrow of some of my favorites I've done. I put a few pictures of my socks up on my FB page not long ago and someone asked me if I was a sock model!!  You would think so from all of the pictures I have of my socked feet!
........ and I just woke the almost three year old with my typing it seems. Better get him back to sleep, maybe I will conk out with him..... goodnight all!!

Yarn, Little Socks, Mitts... I'm tired!

I've been a pretty busy knitter the past week or so. I've started and finished a pair of mitts for Alexa (9), socks for Dylan (2), a shawlette for myself. I'm feeling pretty good about what I've gotten done. I'm still working very slowly right now on my Imobulus Pixie Socks. I'm trying to get them finished by the weekend. Also I started a pair of mitts, I knit on them Saturday night at the movies. DH took me to see Red, it had been recommended by a few friends and I have to say I thought it was really good. I laughed once so hard I snorted (loudly!) and that very rarely happens. So if your looking for something to see I would recommended it.

Dylan has bee sick since yesterday morning. Throwing up about every hour. Poor thing. I'm so tired I feel like I need to keep moving so I don't fall asleep. I love my DH to death but he is NO help when our kids are sick at night at all. He sleeps like the dead. So I'm the one up with them all night. A good nap might be in order soon.

Anyway, here are the picures of my FO.  And a picture of the yarn that I overdyed on Friday.
Dylan's Socks

Alexa's Rainbow Brite Mitts

"Its Too Green" Yarn


I need to get pictures of my Shwlette and the Roving I'm working on spinning up soon.


It would probably be best I get out of this chair before I fall a sleep!


Happy knitting!!
~Amber

Ta Da!

Two posts in one day? Look out for flying pigs!
Its a rainy cloudy day here and I just don't feel like doing the things I should be (laundry). So I took a few pictures of my newly dyed yarn. Like I said before one went pretty well I think and the other bombed bad! So I decided to go with the crock pot method to dye this up. I think it worked really well. Now I probably should have waited to do the first one because my two year old and four year old thought that it would be a good idea to dump half of my green lemon-lime packets on the floor! Grrrr. But I decided to give it a go anyway... this is what it looked like in the crock pot.

and then finished still hung up from drying

So kind of a disappointment there.... but I plan on buying more lemon-lime tomorrow and over dying it. Check back for the results. 

The second one was much more of a success. My DD Alexa had just gotten home from school and helped me on this one... she maybe the key in successful dying. We used Pink Lemonade, Strawberry and Black cherry on this one, four packets of each.
Here it is in the pot not a great picture, it was starting to get dark already. Have I mentioned I loath time change? Well I do.

And the finished skein... Alexa named this Vampire ;)


I think I'm going to knit up a Damson with this.

I have some more base dye coming in the next few days and some acid dye that I can't wait to play with! I'm also trying go get my DH to get me a spinning wheel for Christmas. Like we don't already have yarn and fiber coming out of or ears! I'll have to teach the boys to knit to keep up with all of it.

Now back to my regularly scheduled laundry!
~Am

Busy Kniting!

Once again I'm hiding in my yarn and a bit ashamed how long its taken me to write another update. Last time I promised I'd be back the next day to update and show off my latest projects. Better late than never though, right?  Right now I have a pair of socks and a shawlette on the needles both using gorgeous Sunshine Yarns Harry Potter colorways gearing up for the movie next week. I can't begin to tell you how excited everyone in our house is about seeing the new movie soon! Here are my Cornish Pixie socks, using a pattern from Cookie A's new book Knit.Sock.Love.  The picure shows just the cuff and first bit of the leg of the first sock. I'm hoping to get these done by the end of the weekend.


I'm also working on a shawl using Sunshine Yarns Deathly Hallows colorway. I don't have a picture of the shawl yet but here is a picture of the lovely skein of yarn.
I'm going to get this one finished today. So hopefully there will be pictures of the finished project very soon!

I've got a pair of fingerless mitts for Alexa fresh of the needles, pic coming of those soon.
Last month I knit a pair of Vilai Cookie A socks. I call them my Vi socks not just because of the pattern name but because they remind me of my Granny who's nickname is Vi. Made using Sunshine Yarns Wild Rose.


Alexa also talked me into a pair of socks. These were super quick. I might should have made them just a bit bigger for her ever growing feet but that though didn't enter my mind until much to late. These are done in Sunshine Yarns Cherry Blossom.


Yesterday I Kool Aid dyed my first yarn. One was a success and the other not so much, but that's okay it just means I get to try overdying! Pics to come of that soon also! 

Well, that's about it for now. I'll try to be good and come update again soon! ;)
~Am

Where did summer go?

Wow, where in the heck did the summer go? Our summer went by so quickly after our little week of mishaps summer sped by with incredible speed. Sending the kids back to school we hit a huge bump in the road, no it was more like a black hole in the road. We ended up sending the kids to a different school which caused a bit of a ruckus in the family. It has all settled down quite a bit now thank goodness. I have to say that now the decision is made and the kids are happily going to school I am feeling much better about life in general. They are now at the school I would have chosen if I would have listened to my heart years ago. I think the contentedness has led to more knitting! Or maybe its just that I only have two kids at home with me during the day. Either way I've finished of quite a few projects in the past three months. And many more on the needles! I'm once again hoping to be a better blogger this fall and winter. I'm hoping posting will keep me motivated to finish projects and not just start them! I'm also participating in  HPKCHC on Ravelry witch is a Harry Potter inspired groups if your not familiar go check it out! Its so much fun!

So if any of you are curious exactly what I've been up to this summer here are a few of my finished off projects. =)
These are my Somewhere Socks knit in Sunshine Yarns Over the Rainbow colorway

Sadona Hat knit in Sunshine Yarns Sedona Worsted

Weasly Burrow Sock knit in Sunshine Yarns Harry Potter Sock Club yarn colorway The Burrow

Baby Socks knit with leftover Ella Rae colorway Girls Night Out

Girly Girl Shawl Knit with Ella Rae colorway Girls Night Out

And Stupid Shiny Socks knit with Sunshine Yarns Edward's Volvo.... These socks gave me a bit of trouble on the end of the second one. They also won me a Sunshine Yarns Ecology Kit so it was well worth the trouble! ;) 


As you can see I'm hopelessly in love with Sunshine Yarn's. My stash keeps growing. Someone may need to stage an intervention sometime in the near future! That's all I've got for today. I'll post sometime very soon (no really, I will!) with pictures of my works in progress and maybe a couple of fall pictures of my crazy kids!

Later! ~Amber

FML.... this week has to be better than the last!

Last week was a disaster of epic proportions. It seems to be continuing into this week. I'm putting my foot down now and saying no more crappy week. Wanna know what happened? First off last Monday, my DD who never gets sick got really really sick, she was running a fever around 102 and her tonsils were huge... ugh. So she went on antibiotics Monday evening. Monday night or very early Tuesday morning my 6 yo DS started throwing up and running a fever, never showed signs of the cold my daughter had, not swollen tonsils just throwing up. Tuesday evening all of the kids (minus the 6 yo) climbed in our van to go to wal-mart to get some jello, crackers, sprite and such for DS. By the way wal-mart is about a 30 minute drive for us! Crazy huh? So on the way there DS 22 month old, reaches in his diaper gets poop and smears it on his carseat! Yuck, so we had to pull over and deal with that. When we finally got back on the road we decided that Taco Bell sounded like a good choice for dinner and we would make a quick stop on the way home. About 10 minutes away from wal-mart it started looking pretty stormy. By the time we got to wal-mart's parking lot it looked like a hurricane was about to hit (yes, in the middle of Missouri!) Carts were flying across the lot like crazy, I dodged two then one hit us head on! Lol, its kind of funny now a week later, but at the time I was pretty not happy. Luckily it just hit the license plate holder and dented it pretty badly. We decided that we should go to Taco Bell and then come back to wal-mart because no one wanted to get out in the crazy wind and rain. Then the power went out in town and they closed Taco Bell where they couldn't take orders. We ended up at Sonic on the opposite end of town. Finally got groceries and got home. That night both 6 and 4 yo DS's were throwing up and had fevers. Luckily the 4 yo got over it all pretty quickly. 6 yo DS continued to be sick the rest of the week. On Friday morning I got up and cooked breakfast right after I noticed a burning smell in our house. The fire alarm went off shortly and I told the kids to get out. Good point of all of this is they followed our emergency fire plan to a T, and went to their spot and waited for me to come out to get them. I can't tell you how proud of them I am for doing this. Anyway back to me in the house trying to figure out what is burning..... turns out it was some sort of connection to our ac/furnace motor! Yep it burned out in the middle of July! One of the hottest days we've had all year! On the good side of things, I'm happy the house didn't burn down..... but still it was so hot we felt like we were on fire. We had to wait for my hubby to come home for Lunch and then we went to get parts an hour away. Luckily DH is my hero and had it fixed in time for bed Friday night. So needless to say knitting/spinning was a total no go last week most of the week. I did happen to finish some socks this weekend. I'm posting pictures of those at the end of the post. DS woke up this morning with some pretty extreme pink eye. Oh and this weekend I messed up a pair of colorwork mitts horribly when I went to pick up stitches for the thumb I dropped a bunch of stitches somehow and just kept making a bigger mess of it all the more I tried to make it right. I need a tutorial for the next time I drop stitches while doing colorwork because I can't for the life of me figure out how to get it all back  on and still in the pattern.  :( But I am determined that will be the end of our bad luck... Only good things coming our way for the rest of this year!

I decided before my horrible week that I was going to try to do as many patterns out of Cookie A's Sock Innovation book by the end of the year and I think I'm going to be mainly using Sunshine Yarns for most if not all of it. So here is my start the first pattern in the book Glynis knit using Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock colorway Eclipse. Here's the pictures ;)

 

More to come on the next sock soon! 

Kissing the Mail Man

So, I didn't kiss the mail man but I sure wanted to. He brought me some great stuff today! First of all I got four rovings today so I can keep spinning!!! Each of them are beautiful! I immediately took pictures of one of the rovings and started in on drafting and spinning it. Nothing much has been getting done around here today! So here are a couple of pictures...




I'm still having troubles getting the yarn a consistent size but hopefully that will work itself out soon. I'm at least getting most of it coming out a nice worsted weight.

The other the other thing that came in the mail today was my Three Irish Girls Sock Yarnista club June sock yarn!! Its gorgeous! I can't wait to get the pattern for this month in my e-mail it is a colorwork pattern... I've never done colorwork on socks so I'm anxious to see how that goes!
Here is a picture of the yarn isn't it fabulous?!?!

I'm working on a cotton vest for my 22 month old, I will post pictures of that as soon as its done hopefully by the end of the weekend at the latest. It would have been done this afternoon but my spindle was calling my name after the new rovings got here!

Off to spin more.......

Spun

Wow, this yarn turned out way better than I thought it would!! I can't wait to spin more!

Spinning

I've been MIA again for a few weeks. Two Sundays ago I woke up with a sore throat and everything went downhill fast from there. I actually begged my hubby to come home and take care of the kids Monday afternoon. Tuesday I went to the doctor, you know I was feeling horrible to go to the doctor because I NEVER go, I don't like antibiotics so I just do my best at home. I ended up with a perscription for Levaquin, that stuff is awful! Awful isn't really a strong enough word to describe how it made me feel. I was just off. So no knitting got done at all, I started working on a pair of socks but that didn't last long. So I'm back knitting this week. I got some more new Twilight inspired yarns from Sunshine Yarns..... I am so addicted to Dani's yarn its not even funny! So I've been working on some simple ribbed socks.
Then Monday in the mail I got a drop spindle and some fiber. My first attempt went over like a lead balloon! But I was having fun trying! I got just a bit better and made some yarn that was pink. I was excited because I think that you could actually identify it as yarn even though it was all kinds of sizes all mixed together. DD loved it and got me to make her a coffee cozy for when we go to Starbucks and she gets hot chocolate. Here are a few pictures of the yarn and the cozy.


Sorry that the second picture is a bit fuzzy. My camera isn't cooperating with me today.

So, I started spinning more today and actually something that I think turned out pretty well. There isn't much of it just over 10 yards, but I'm pretty darn proud of it! It is drying right now, pictures to come soon. I ordered more roving today so that I can use my spindle some more! I can see this being majorly addicting. I'm already planning to beg my hubby to get me a spinning wheel for Christmas!

I think that's about it for now. ;) I'll post pictures of my new yarn pretty soon!