I'm still here...

School, as always, has taken my time away, and before i knew it, my blog had not been updated since March!!! The end of March mind you, but still. There are so many things that have happened since I last updated, so where to begin!

I have finished a knit cardigan and sweater, the latter of which was for the bf.

I have spun quite a lot of yarn and made some shawls with it.

I finally purchased some yarn I was craving and turned it into my favorite shawl.

I am currently working on another sweater, this one for myself.

I finished school for the year!

I've become obsessed with nail polish and painting my nails, especially if it involves a bottle of Revlon Summer Scented Nail Polish :D

Summer is here!

My hockey team, the Blackhawks, won the Stanley Cup!

For now this is all I can possibly think of. I am so tired and want to sleep so I can get up and knit :D

Good night for now!
Happy Crafting!

M.

P.S. I felt inspired to change my layout, I think it's quite charming!

WHEEL

so my wonderful wheel arrived on Friday and i have spent so much time getting to know her that i havent even posted anything about her yet... spinning is just so much fun! After taking about 2 hours to put together (and a mad rush to Lowes to get some spare screws) i sat down and tried to spin. At first i was awful! I couldnt draft, the fiber wouldnt stay on the started thread, i was freaking out...but i calmed myself down, changed fibers (the corriedale was not working for me :P) and was on my way to spinning my first skein (a wool blend i purchased at reenactorfest).

After ... 5 days of spinning, i have 1 grey skein, 2 chocolate skeins, and 3 white skein spun. so far i have crocheted a shawl out of the white (corriedale) and i have started the clapochet with the brown! i am almost scared to keep spinning because i will run out of fiber too soon and i dont hvae the budget to replenish my stock (or the LYS that stock cheap fiber). however there are a bunch of festivals coming up that i can get fiber at and i am making a trip up to The Fold in Marengo I.L. on Thursday so hopefully i can stock up on some merino while i'm there.

I have also started a bunch of spring cleaning around my house! It feels so nice to be home alone all day while i clean and have trashy tv on in the background :) And i am entertaining the idea of sleeping in... though it hasnt happened yet :( The smell of spring in my room and the sounds and the sun is all so enlightening! i wish it could last forver, but school starts next week so i have to get back to classes :P This term ended much better than i thought it would!

happy crafting!

here are some pics of Rosie and such!

Wheel 2.0

So my last wheel purchase was a dud but now i have purchased a Ashford Kiwi spinning wheel!!!!! it should hopefully be coming in the mail within the next week or two...perfext timing for my spring break!!!! plus i got a free high speed kit, free niddy noddy and a free lb of wool! im sooooo happy...but now i need name ideas for it! I'm thinking coco (as in bret's gf from Flight of the Conchords, but i'll have to see :D)

i'll probably put some pics up when i get it!

happy crafting

Sleep :S

I need sleep! I should have been in bed by 9:30...which i was but i cant fall asleep. So i have occupied myself with other things such as looking at yarn, and patterns, and spinning wheels. sadly my first spinning wheel was not what i was looking for so that got sent back and now i just get to admire wheels since i dont have the money to buy one now. however, when i do have money i would like to get the ashford kiwi! i think its simply wonderful!

in other news, i have finished a five page paper on the geology of Glacier Bay National Park, and i am pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was. This paper marked the last hard thing i have to do for this winter term! i only have one final, even though i'm taking three classes, and we are allowed a note sheet for the final!!! For german we are just having regular class, my professor doesnt believe in tests, and in Latin we are watching "Rome" which is fine by me because i looooove that show! But the best news of all is that i have two finals on monday and one on tuesday which means that i have no school on wednesday and my spring break starts one day early!!!!

I have already kicked off this final extravaganza by taking a Radio final today :P it was easy, as i expected, and now i'm done with the horrible radio meeting for two weeks or so.

In my free time i have been working on my knit sweater and at the moment have about 9 inches of the body done! this is really exciting and it is showing my that knitting isnt as awful as i thought it was...mainly because i'm making something besides scarves! i think i'd like to try a knit shawl next :) speaking of shawls, my sister finally made herself a shawl this past weekend! heres the story:
i took her out to breakfast as an early birthday present then we headed over to hobby lobby for a yarn shopping spree! She deiced she wanted to get a bunch of light airy colors for summer but couldnt figure out what to make with the yarn. i had been begging her for months to let me make her a shawl and she always said no, but all of a sudden she decided..."hey i think i'll make a shawl". a few hours later she was sporting a baby pink south bay shawlette and i was beaming with pride! This upcoming saturday is her acutal birthday so maybe she'll wear it then! she has already started another shawl, this one is with a baby blue cotton. it made me want to make a cotton shawl for summer seeing as i only have awesome heavy winter shawls...sans the mini mochi shawlette and the iceland yarn southbay.

typing this all out has made me a bit more tired, but i still cant bring myself to go to bed :P

OH! i must do a spring cleaning immediately...otherwise known as spring break! my room is so messy and i hate it yet i dont have time to really clean it :( so maybe that wednesday that i am off i will get rid of a bunch of stuff and feel really good about it! then perhaps my dad will take me up on a house cleaning offer :) maybe this wheel is a possibility after all :D

happy crafting!

To knit or not to knit...that is the question

So i recently knit a pair of socks and now it seems i have the knitting bug again. For my three years of knitting all i ever made was scarves scarves and more scarves ugh!!!! but after seeing how easy making my socks was i am tempted to try a sweater pattern...in particular OWLS because it looks easy enough, i can do cables and it seems like a fairly quick project. i want to use fishermans wool, but i'm undecided about the color as of right now...and i think i will knit this on my 10 1/2 needles seeing as i already own them. This weekend i am taking my sister out to a birthday breakfast and yarn trip so if i find better yarn at Hobby Lobby i will get it...if not to michael's for the fishermans wool. I recently made some money crocheting shawls so i think it will go towards yarn and the pattern itself and maybe needles :P

in other news, i finished my Seraphina shawl with the nature's brown fisherman's wool and i must say i loved both the pattern and the yarn. now i'm using natural to make my mom a shawl :D i cant stop crocheting shawls :D

i think i will knit the sweater during my 10 or so day spring break so i have time :) and the boyfriends grandma in case i have a nervous break down...i'm hoping this will go as smoothly as my socks :)

i also need to clean out my room and organize!!!! i want to get rid of some things, but i'm terrible at that so maybe i'll just put somethings away for a few months. although yarn, needles, hooks, heddles, a loom and books are really what is taking over my room...and i just cant get rid of any of that now can i :S

Happy Crafting!

woops forgot one picture :P

Here is the shawl for the boyfriend's mom!

Happy crafting!

Spring? Is that you?

Upon waking up to the successful blocking of my 5th and final RavOlympics shawl, I was delighted to hear a familiar sound, that of cute little birds chirping outside of my window. Now these are not just any birds, these are those birds that start to come around when Spring is near, and the chirp happily and flutter about. Even just hearing the sounds warms me up! Too bad when I look outside the grass is still brown. But these birds make waking up on a Monday reason to celebrate! Even the gray skies seem less gray, like they are about to give way to the sun (I know you are out there!). I can't believe me, lover of winter, is so happy about these little birds chirping.
See my little birds, they just left after I took this picture :( Well Spring is (oh I don't like the sounds of geese honking :P and they just flew by) just around the corner...hahaha. I'd like to think so at least. Then again, I live in Illinois, who am I kidding? Last year it snowed in April, right after I had gotten back from Spring Break. But I always try to hope for spring so maybe this year my wish will be granted!

Thinking about spring has made me daydream of my life. I want to live in a little cottage in the woods in a small town and wake up to this every morning :) I could sit by my window and smile at the little flowers that scatter the ground outside as i sip a cup of tea and do something relating to yarn or read a book. That sounds nice. But I have school today so my dreams of cottages and endless amounts of yarn must hold off. Ich muss deutsch sprechen und spaeter muss ich latein sprechen. Das gefaellt mir, aber ich bin muede und ich muss ins Bett bleiben.

Here are some pics from the RavOlympics!
Now what do I work on? I have now sucessfully completed my 10 shawls in 2010 goal by crocheting five more during the Ravolympics, that brings the total shwl count for 2010 up to 14!

Happy Crafting!

Reenactorfest

This past weekend i attended reenactorfest and it was amazing. Basically it's like walking through a history book, everyone is dressed in period dress, and they all stay in character. i wanted to faint, it was like a dream come true. on top of all that, there was a large selection of yarn and roving since they are both nice compliments to a woman's outfit no matter what era she is from so i went yarn crazy. i got 16 balls of roving (at a very cheap price mind you) and two skeins of yarn, plus another drop spindle (which i love more than the first one but dont tell it i said that).

Hopefully i will actually get into reenacting sometime soon, i dont think i could handle a year away from it. Elizabethan, renaisance or the american civil war are my top three choices, and we already have some good connections with some romans and greeks in case we want to do that route :)

Hopefully i'll remember to post some pictures here in the near future :)

In other news, i finished shawl #7 of 2010 (and #5 of the South Bay Shawlette pattern though mine are hardly shawlettes any more since i've been using worsted or aran weight yarn to make the pattern not fingering weight) which just happened to be the two skeins i purchased at Reenactorfest. it is the most amazing color of lilac-y purple and it is now sitting on my shoulders keeping me toasty while i write this and look outside at the potential blizzard :p and i finally have a shawl pin in which to pin it together, which is awesome because all of my shawls used to fall off unless i used a safty pin which i didnt like the look of.

oh yes, of course, the reenactorfest ball on saturday was fantastic! everyone was in their period ball gowns or suits (or what not) and every song the dj played was from a different era (renaisance, civil war, swing...) so we danced some renaisance dances and watched some civil war dances, it was all great fun and hopefully next year i will have a gown to dance in not just a sun dress.

Thats all for now i suppose. i am going to a hockey game tonight for a friends b-day and i'm going to wear a team shirt but i am so happy with my shawl that i am wearing the shawl over a turtleneck to class then i will change before the game, how could i deny myself the comfort of a huge wool shawl when we might be hit by a blizzard?

Happy Crafting :)

Loom Loom Loom

Yes! It is true! my brand new loom arrived today in the mail. in my addiction to the fiber arts i decided it was high time i tried weaving and i love it. i have already woven a good amount of fabric and the only reason i stopped was because i ran out of warp thread :P Speaking of i am going to warp it again and perhaps try out a scarf...hmmmm

but back to weaving, i love it. it goes so fast and the way the fabric works up is beautiful! i tried out a black and red houndstooth pattern which came out really nice as well. perhaps i will make some place mats or something. either way, weaving is amazing. i figured out the warp pretty easily and everything else was fairly simple. plus the loom is small enough so that i can weave in the car or in front of the tv (though its not something i'd take with me to school to work on during classes). i'm going to show my sister this weekend and see if i can get her hooked.

in other news, i finished a project for rita's birthday and i made myself a shawl today in record time. its huge and took me about two hours, i think i was speed crocheting or somehting. i started and almost finished in an hour, it was amazing.

Now what colors to make my next project?

Happy crafting!

YAY!

I attended a wonderful concert on tuesday at which i saw my favorite band and third favorite band, got recognized by a fan of my radio show, and met the lead singer and bassist of my favorite band.

also, i have officially been added as a designer on Ravelry.com :) now i can post pictures and such when i put up a design. i must get busy! i think the next post will be my winter earflap hat.

in other news i had a very productive crochet day today. i went from being on row 9 to row 17 on the poncho that i am making for my mom for her birthday. it is really pretty homespun yarn, and though u got mad at it as soon as i switched to the second skein (the yarn wasnt as tightly...spun) it all worked out in the end. this has been good work for my sore body (yay concerts).

now i'm looking for a new pattern to start on when i finish my mom's poncho. perhaps a new scarf, or cowl, or pillow. im up for anything. i'd love to work with homespun again but i dont have the money, perhaps i'll just try out some new patterns or write some :) i do have a bunch of Patons Wool that needs crocheting. And i have a small pile of WIPs to finish, a sweater, scarf and cowl.

happy crafting

Just a thought...

Everytime I enter a shop that i know has yarn, i have to stop and look around. It has gotten to the point now that i'll spend endless amounts of time pacing back and forth in front of the yarn trying to decide on somehting that i'd love to buy. of course if i could i'd buy all the yarn there is but i dont have the money to do that so instead i stand and stare dreaming of projects i'd love to make someday.

at the moment my current yarn obsession is Homspun by lion brand. i got a giftcard to michaels for christmas and decided since homespun was on sale i would buy some and make a shawl or somehting with it. instead i got around to making my Martha Stewart's Coming Home Poncho that i'd dreamed of making since before i could crochet. it's glorious, i love it and i want to make more. now usually when i do a large project i need time to relax before diving into the next one but since homespun works up so quickly and the colors are so entertaining i went out to the store and bought three more skeins to make a poncho for my mom for her birthday. she's been going on about how much she loves my poncho and how much she wants one, so i decided what better than to make her one of her own :)

that brings me to another point. i love birthdays and holidays. i can go out and buy yarn without feeling bad about it (even though most of the yarn i buy is cheep, it's still hard to get buy on a college student budget :P). i can get some yarn that i might never have worked with since the colors arent my thing but they work for someone else and make something new and exciting...or make a bunch of scarves like i did for christmas. all in all, i am addicted to yarn, and crochet, and yes even knitting...though i havent knit anything since the two scarves i made in the summer.

i need to find a nice pattern to ease me back into knitting.

i think i'll work on a few more rows before i head off to bed...

Happy Crafting :)

Calorimetry

This is my first posted pattern.

Calorimetry Pattern

Yarn: Worsted Weight (I Love This Yarn Solids)

Size I hook

Stitches: Chain, HDC

Note: Try to do the increases and decreases in the middle of the row.

Chain 3

Row 1: HDC across doing one increase (4 hdc)

Row 2: HDC across doing one increase (5 hdc)

Row 3: HDC across doing one increase (6 hdc)

Row 4: HDC across (6 hdc)

Row 5: HDC across doing one increase (7 hdc)

Row 6: HDC across (7 hdc)

Row 7: HDC across doing one increase (8 hdc)

Row 8: HDC across doing one increase (9 hdc)

Row 9: HDC across (9 hdc)

Row 10: HDC across doing one increase (10 hdc)

Row 11: HDC across doing one increase (11 hdc)

Row 12: HDC across (11 hdc)

Row 13: HDC across (11 hdc)

Row 14: HDC across doing one increase (12 hdc)

Row 15: HDC across (12 hdc)

Row 16: HDC across doing one increase (13 hdc)

Row 17: HDC across (13 hdc)

Row 18: HDC across doing one increase (14 hdc)

Rows 19-30: HDC across (14 hdc)

Row 31: HDC across doing one decrease (13 hdc)

Row 32: HDC across (13 hdc)

Row 33: HDC across doing one decrease (12 hdc)

Row 34: HDC across (12 hdc)

Row 35: HDC across doing one decrease (11 hdc)

Row 36: HDC across (11 hdc)

Row 37: HDC across (11 hdc)

Row 38: HDC across doing one decrease (10 hdc)

Row 39: HDC across doing one decrease (9 hdc)

Row 40: HDC across (9 hdc)

Row 41: HDC across doing one decrease (8 hdc)

Row 42: HDC across doing one decrease (7 hdc)

Row 43: HDC across (7 hdc)

Row 44: HDC across doing one decrease (6 hdc)

Row 45: HDC across (6 hdc)

Row 46: HDC across doing one decrease (5 hdc)

Row 47: HDC across doing one decrease (4hdc)

Row 48: HDC across doing one decrease (3hdc)

Row 49: 1 HDC, Skip 1 Stitch, 1 HDC (This will make the button hole)

Fasten off.

Sew in ends and sew on a button on the starting end.

Pattern by Melanie Matos Designs

Happy Crafting!