b natural. c sharp.

I can’t get enough of Portal 2 and Wheatley’s character was perfect thanks to Steven Merchant. This is my prototype for a Wheatley amigirumi! He’s mostly crocheted with knit handles and is about 4″ in diameter.

He’s the only one so far but I plan on making more if anyone is interested. Leave a comment or send a message on my etsy shop if you want one!

My knitting world has been turned on it’s head and I’ve been in a very dark place for the past week. After partaking in the craft for about 5 years I was informed that I wrap my yarn the opposite way, consequently twisting my stitches. It’s actually a technique that makes the stitches look more like a pattern of little Vs. The untrained eye probably wouldn’t even notice the difference unless it was pointed out, but the little changes make the overall fabric look better.

Getting into the habit of wrapping my yarn in the correct direction hasn’t been too hard, however it’s thrown a lot of other things off. My rows aren’t as tall so I have to knit more on patterns that I’ve already mastered. Also, my purl rows are looser than my knit rows so I have to adjust the tension so they don’t look all wonky. Relearning how to do something I’ve been doing for so long is really frustrating!

I know twisting the stitches doesn’t look bad and I’ve made lots of beautiful things using that technique, but it makes me sad to think all this time I’ve been knitting “wrong.” I’ll be happy once I finish all my current projects that I’ve started with the twisty stitches so I can move on and put these turbulent times behind me. =P

Last month I decided it was about time I knit something for charity. A great yarn shop in Hampden called Lovelyarns collects and ships off bears for the Mother Bear Project. Each bear goes to a child with HIV/AIDS in Africa and I finally finished mine this evening! It was an easy project and a great way to get rid of some of my extra acrylic yarn. (No matter how many times I use the cheapo yarn in my stash it never seems to go away…)

I used Grad School Knitter’s version of the pattern which eliminated most of the seams by double knitting and knitting in the round. Double knitting is magical… by slipping every other stitch you end up with a seamless tube… brilliant. Just don’t forget to knit/slip the correct stitches or you’re in trouble. I also got some more practice at embroidery with the face. I tried out the spider web stitch and french knot for the eyes, both of which seemed to work out okay.

My beaded lace project is going well, however if I mess up it’s a big pain to go back and fix mistakes. Counting stitches has helped me stay on track but every once and a while I miss something here or drop a stitch there. With this and past lace projects I’ve always had a hard time remembering which way YOs (yarn overs) are supposed to slant when tink-ing (un-knitting stitch by stitch… it’s the word “knit” backwards… knitters are such a clever breed haha).

After taking the time to figure out a mnemonic device, I realized that it looks just a like a back slash on a keyboard. If that isn’t nerdy enough, I came up with this rhyme-ish thing:

Think I can’t up the nerd ante anymore in this post? You are wrong, sir. Here is the rhythmic counting for the rhyme: 1e+a 2 3+ 4. I win. =P

Katie and are I doing our first knit-a-long with this beaded lace scarf. We’re making the scarves with the hand painted alpaca/silk we got at the sheep and wool festival.

This is our first time working with beads, and lace is always a challenge, so it will be a good project. Since we started them together a few weeks ago, we’ve both ripped them out numerous times because of errors, changing needle sizes, and deciding on which beads to use.

Many profanities were exclaimed in the process, but I think I finally got a hold on the pattern and am on a roll! I’ve found the key to catching unseen errors is counting the stitches every 2 rows. This project requires all of my attention, so no working on it when I have to be social or pay attention to something else.

This past Saturday was a day I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. Katie, Adam, and I went to the MD Sheep & Wool Festival (MDS&W). I know most of the people who read my blog don’t knit and probably think that this event isn’t something to be that excited about, but it definitely is!

I missed out on it last year when they went for the first time and have since built up quite the desire to go. After watching podcasts and reading up on message boards this week I could barely contain my excitement. I even bought myself a pair of sweet rain boots in case of a wet and muddy weekend after getting sucked into a MDS&W Tips thread. It ended up being a beautiful weekend but I decided to wear my boots proudly anyway. After all, if I didn’t buy them it would’ve rained and everyone wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the lovely weather, right?

The festival is a great opportunity for the farming and fiber arts communities to connect. It caters to spinners, weavers, knitters, and any other art form you can think of that is related to thread/yarn/wool/etc.. The farming community can buy equipment, show and sell their animals, and (my favorite part) sell the fiber produced buy their livestock.

For knitters like me, going to the yarn store is like being a kid in a candy store. The MD Sheep & Wool Festival = a big, big, BIG candy store. Although my brain was overloaded with pretties, I went with a goal in mind to only buy yarn from farms/hand crafters and avoid the highly commercial stuff. There are lots of fantastic local yarn shops that I can go to at any time, but farm fresh yarn isn’t quite as easy to come by.

The whole “sheep to shawl” process really fascinates me. There are competitions where contestants have three hours and are judged on these very skills. It starts with shearing a sheep, preparing its fleece, spinning the fiber, and weaving it into a shawl.

Seeing all the livestock was fun. There are so many varieties of sheep and goats that produce all kinds of fiber. My favorite animal of them all is the alpaca. They are a member of the camelid family and are sort of a small llama that has incredibly soft fiber. Their cute little faces look like Ewoks and I wanted to hug them all day.

I’ve recently started getting really interested in the possibility of spinning my own yarn. Katie and I both decided to research the craft at the festival but swore not to buy anything spinning related. Well, we did our research and learned quite a bit at one of the booths that make hand carved spindles. Then they pointed us to the Interweave Press booth next to them where a nice lady gave us a crash coarse in using a drop spindle. She gave us each a kit with a spindle made out of a CD and a wooden dowel plus some roving (fiber that is ready to spin). That completely screwed up our not-buying-spinning stuff plan… since we had a makeshift working spindle, we wanted some pretty wool to spin with after we ran out of the sample! We were able to find some pretty hand dyed roving at one of the booths and they helped us pick out the best stuff to start with. I still have yet to try the spindle myself but hope I’ll get some time later this week.

I also bought some pretty hand dyed baby alpaca/silk lace weight yarn, a sock yarn dying kit, and some goats milk soap from a local Maryand farm. The soap is surrounded in wool and shrinks as you use it up - brilliant! I also bought a cute little fizzy bath cupcake for my mom from that same place (Mothers Day is next weekend!).

After stuffing our faces and walking around all day we headed home and rested for a few hours. Alas, the night was still young and there was a Ravelry party at the Columbia Sheraton! Ravelry is an amazing social networking site and organizational tool for knitters. You can keep track of your projects, yarn stash, needles, and get ideas/patterns from other people on the site. There are tons of forums from help tips to fun & nerdy groups like the Big Damn Knitters for us Firefly fans. Katie and I went to the party not knowing anybody but with the goal to be social and meet some new knitting friends.

The party was great - everyone got two drink tickets and a raffle ticket all for free. We met a bunch of people from all over the place and everyone was extremely nice. A bunch of companies donated tons of yarn, books, and other fun things for the raffle… there had to be at least 20 prizes. Katie won a kit with some beautiful yarn and a pattern!

After the raffle most of the older ladies went home but there were tons of extra drink tickets leftover that they needed to use up and lots of socializing to be done. We met the founders, staff members, and volunteers that keep Ravelry going and they were all really awesome. Katie and I eventually got the courage to mention our band and told them that we’d love to play one of their future events. They seemed into the idea so hopefully we’ll get the chance to do that down the road.

We went to the party not knowing what to expect, but we figured worst case we would have some drinks and knit. We were pleasantly surprised at how lovely of a time we had and the time just flew by. We had originally planned to leave around 9:30 but we didn’t hit the road until around midnight.

All in all it was a fabulous day and I look forward to next year!

I haven’t posted a lot of knitting projects lately because I’ve been wrapped up in using Ravelry, which is like Myspace but way cooler (nerdier) because it’s for knitters. It’s fantastic because I can organize all my past/current projects with details and pictures, plus search for new ideas and patterns. Sadly there isn’t a public link to user profiles yet so I can’t share all of my lovelies with you. That being said here are some highlights of my recent projects:

	This iPod Nano sock I made for Amy has the coolest button ever! It’s so awesome and slightly creepy. I found it in a random bag of buttons that I got from the thrift store years ago.
	Here’s a super cute felted bag I made as a Christmas present for my Aunt.
	Nick’s awesome lightbulb hat!
	And a gorgeous hat, gloves, and scarf set I made for a lady at work!

I recently finished this bag and sewed a button on last night. It’s the same pattern as I used for my first felted purse but I used a pretty blue variegated yarn this time.

I finished this simple brown hat this evening, using a design in the middle to spice it up. It came from the book mentioned in the previous post. It has a neat triangle pattern, but again, it’s kind of hard to see in the picture.

I had some yarn leftover from one of my early purses so I decided to attempt a felted ipod sock. I just sort of guessed and hoped it would felt to the proper size and I lucked out! I’m very destructive to my things so it’s perfect to help further protect my ipod, which is already in a hard plastic case. I made it a while ago but I finally sewed a button on it last night.