Actual Knitting Content

There is so much knitting content that I'm dreading typing up this entry, believe it or not. First off, my yarn came from the Loopy Ewe. As you might not be aware, the Loopy Ewe promises small gifts with your first five purchases, and then you become a "Loopy Groupie". What came in that first package with my single $11 skein of yarn? Two samples of yarn -- Mountain Colors Bearfoot and Fiesta Boomerang.



I also received some cards for helping me to track my needles. Eh -- I threw them out as I didn't need them since I have Ravelry. I never impulse buy knitting needles of any type. This was still a pretty nice little set of gifts for one skein of Lorna's Laces.

I was extremely happy that I got the yarn, as I managed to finish Helen's Socks (ravel it)!! I met Helen on Saturday, and gifted them to her, and she allowed me to take some quick shots of them.



I was so amazed by my ability to do a sock in a pattern that I immediately cast on for a pair of Pomatomus with my Socks that Rock yarn that I bought at Rhinebeck. I have only just finished the ribbing on the first sock, and the pattern is looking a tiny bit wonky now which is making me nervous.



In much, much, much more exciting news, Sophy is visiting Philadelphia this week! We got together, along with Helen, and Sophy's sister Sophea. Sophea was awesome to meet, too, but I wish I knew her Ravelry name.



As you can clearly see, we also took a trip to Loop! I didn't purchase much, just one skein of Malabrigo's Silky Merino and one skein of Koigu Mori.



After we went shopping, we went to Helen's place to knit, which is where I started my socks and worked a bit on my Slytherin Scarf.



All in all, it was a great day, but the best part of it was actually getting to meet Sophy! I'm glad that Bryan directed me to her blog while I was sick this year.

This was a photo-intense blog entry, and I'm not even finished. I have so much more to add this week, including some adventures in sewing, and another package I got in the mail!

Podcasts, Sewing, and Knitting Projects

This is certainly a hodgepodge post coming up. First up, podcasts -- had to give up on Cast On. I had been listening to it and I found it acceptable, if not great. Then, in one of the early episodes, the podcaster starts to rant about someone who gave her podcast a negative review on their blog, stating that that person should do their own podcast and how she, the podcaster, was being brave putting herself out there. Blah. It is tough to put yourself out there. I agree. But, I feel this is the same argument authors make when they get a bad review on Amazon. They feel perfectly justified in arguing that bad review.

Listen, a bad review is not the worst thing in the world to happen to you, folks. If someone hates my blog, they hate my blog. If someone hates me, they hate me. It's an opinion. Listening to another person's opinion does not make it fact. For instance, I'm giving up on Cast On because I feel the podcaster is too thin-skinned and she intersperses too much music with her podcast and her knitting content does not thrill me. Does this make her a bad podcaster? No. Does this mean you shouldn't listen to her podcast? Not unless you dislike thin-skinned podcasters, too much music, and we have the exact same knitting tastes. If this is true, don't listen to her. Otherwise, give her a try. She's popular. I might be wrong.

Next up, knitting. Okay, it's boring. Again, I ordered the third skein, and I await it to complete those socks. Secondly, I'm knitting on my Slytherin Scarf again. I know! I forgot it existed too!

Lastly, the exciting stuff! Around a week before Thanksgiving, Paul said that I should sew some nice napkins for the dinner for six people we were having. Slightly intimidated by the idea, I decided to try it. Looking around, it appeared I would need a rotary cutter, self-healing pad, ruler, a yard and a half of fabric, another yard and a half of fabric, bias tape maker, and two yards of fabric for the tape.

After putting that all, plus some fabric bolts, into my cart at Joann's Fabric, I realized I had roughly one hundred dollars worth of goods for six napkins. That's ridiculous, especially considering the pure number of sales that Joann's has! I put everything back but the fabric bolts and the ruler. I went and got some tailor's chalk. Then, I asked for one and a half yards of two of the fabrics and asked for the third to be taken back. I was sadly surprised to learn that my first print choice (a set of leaves and pumpkins on a neutral background) only had one yard left, so I bought a half of a yard of my third fabric choice. After this, I went to the bias tape section and looked through the paltry selection for some matches to my fabric.

I was right to do all this, because now I have a coupon for 50% off of a single item to Joann's which takes my self-healing mat from $50.00 to $25.00! A $25.00 savings for patience. I like!

Anyway, I got home, and started chalking up some squares and cutting 'em out. This was hard for two of the fabrics which had enough stretch that the squares are more square like than perfectly square. The third, nearly thrown away, fabric had no stretch and was lovely.

The next night, I pinned everything together and started to sew! I'm fairly happy with how things came out, and now I want to do way more of these. I want a Christmas set, a winter set, a birthday set, a Halloween set, and more! I want Easter sets, summery beach sets, spring flower sets. I love them. I also want to make them for everyone I know.



Seriously, I am going to use these until I make more. And now I want all those expensive tools!



♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Doing Much of Nothing

I've been very fake busy lately, with the holidays and all sneaking up on me out of nowhere. I've not been crafting a lot. I've done some stuff, which I'll be posting about later, after I've taken pictures, but nothing horribly exciting.

My knitting has been sort of tossed to the wayside. Poor Helen's poor socks. I should have known it would happen. I've... run out of yarn. An inch before the toe. The bad part? I'll have nine/tenths of a skein left after I finish these socks. The good part? This calls for a purchase at ♥the Loopy Ewe♥. I'll be honest and say I was so tempted to buy more lovely sock yarn, but I limited myself to the skein I needed and a gift certificate for someone else. I'll get the sock yarn I want next time when I've worked through the yarn I've currently got stashed. Plus, this way, I can become a loopy groupie faster.

I've been really slow with this second sock. As most sock knitters know, once you know you're going to run out of yarn, you do one of two things. You either knit so quickly that it hurts, hoping that the pure speed of your knitting will prevent you from running out of yarn. Alternatively, you stall. You never knit on the project because you know what's coming.

What have I been doing then, you ask? Caring for a baby and reading blogs mostly. The baby has the sniffles and the blogs have a lot of posts. I've also been up and about, which is better, visiting people, lunching, whatnot. I've done a bit of sewing.

Here's some cute little 0-3 month booties for my eldest cousin's soon-to-be-arriving baby.



As the little girl will be arriving in April, I thought that some nice cool cotton booties might look sharp. My mom has asked for several more sewn items for the baby such as bibs and/or burp cloths.

Anyway, that's it for today. This is just meant to be a quick update. I'll update my next post with more pics of what I've been doing, hopefully, and include some of my future crafting plans!