So many hobbies!

Some spinning

 

That's about 450-475 yards of 2-ply Corriedale plied from 6 bobbins of singles.  It's pretty much all I have to show for the weekend.  I've still got a bit more roving to spin but I was running out of bobbins so I needed to ply. 

That's it.  That's all I've got.  I read a book, saw "Up" with some friends and cooked in the crockpot but the spinning is all I have to show.  Not terribly exciting.  I know.  Hope your weekend had more action.

Update

 The socks have grown some:

 

They're growing a bit faster than I'd expected.   And I now have three bobbins full of Corriedale:

 

While messing around with t-shirt designs, I've managed to change some of the settings in Photoshop Elements and now my photos are coming out smaller and the crop tool only crops at a pre-set rectangle instead of before when it would crop to any size I wanted.  I can't find the damn manual to see what I did or how to put it back the way it was before.  I'm finding the whole thing very frustrating.  Pictures are important in a blog and mine are coming out alot smaller than I want.  If anyone knows how to fix it, I'd be eternally grateful.

Cafepress store

I opened a new Cafepress store for my t-shirt designs:  Middle Kingdom T's.  There should be four designs but I can't tell if all four are appearing.  Their store set-up is kind of confusing.  I'll try a bit more but I'm tired and I may have to bail for the night and try again tomorrow.

Shirts and book stuff

My second bookbinding class was this weekend:  Tools and Tricks of the Bookbinding Trade.  We learned things that will make bookbinding easier and made tools that are easily portable.

 

The contraption on the right is a collapsible punching cradle for punching holes to sew a book together.  We also made a sleeve to carry the cradle when not in use.  The punching cradle I have at home is made of wood and is not something I can take with me if I need to travel for whatever reason.  On the far left, I made a brush rest out of polymer clay - very handy when you have a gluey brush and don't want glue all over your work surface.  From the middle top down:  a soft weight, two polymer clay punches, a solid weight and lastly, a bamboo paper knife.  With the exception of the bamboo paper knife, I'll use all of these tools.  I'd use the bamboo knife if I could get it sharp enough but my sanding just seemed to dull it.  I've got a metal paper knife so I'm not very motivated to spend more time sanding.

 

We put together this little 3-section book during the course of the two days.  The last two sections are blank but the first section holds all of the nice tips and tricks that the instructor had come up with since she started bookbinding.  She taught us four ways to miter corners on paper covers.  I know the paper is dark, but I think you can still see how the corners in the picture are mitered.  The corners were lots of fun.  Apparently, I'm good at what we were learning because I was always the first one done.  It was kind of nice.

Saturday night I created some t-shirt designs to sell on Cafepress.  They're not up yet - I'll do it tomorrow - but I've ordered shirts for myself.  I've got ideas for a couple more but they're still in the idea stage.  Here's the first one:

 

And the second one:

 

These have meaning for me and I hope they'll have meaning for others.

Monday's need a laugh

Seriously, people, when you have a few free minutes, go here.  I was looking at the pictures at work and trying to keep my cackles of laughter to a minimum.  Wait until you see the Mullet Madness pic.

Seven on Sunday

 

1. Although I worked on both the new socks and spinning this weekend, I didn't make any blog-worthy progress.
2. Hey, guess what?  You don't need campfires to make S'mores.  You can toast the 'shmallows on your gas stove.  I suppose you can do the same with an electric but I don't have one so I haven't tried it.
3. OMG, go see "Star Trek!"  It was SO good, and this is coming from an original Trekkie.  I remember watching the original series with my Dad the first time it was ever on.  The movie is wonderful, hilarious and the actors playing the characters are perfect.  Karl Urban was a fantastic Bones!
4. I went shopping for work shirts Saturday.  Normally, I'd much rather buy books or fiber stuff but since I'd literally worn out my clothes, I really needed to buy more.  I hate clothes shopping, partly because I don't know how to do it, so I took a shopping buddy with me.  She loves to shop.  Upon entering the mall, I'm pretty sure her heartrate increased.  We got me six shirts, in case you were wondering.
5. I don't know how much fun creative stuff I'll be doing this week.  They're coming to appraise my unit in preparation for the conversion from cooperative to condos and I need to deal with all the stuff in my place and then clean.  I have a lot of stuff.
6. My tomato seedlings have put out their third set of leaves and it's past time to transplant them into bigger pots before planting them outside in a couple of weeks.  I hope I have time this week to do that.
7. Spinning long-draw, I'm getting singles that are thinner and more even.  Of course this means it takes longer to fill a bobbin so progress is a lot slower.  I'd like to have some finished yarn by the end of next weekend... if I get the time to spin.

So many new things!

 

First is a new pair of socks from the Socks that Rock mill end I bought in Maryland.  I'm knitting them magic loop using my generic sock pattern and getting 8 stitches to the inch on 2.25mm needles.  I cast on 32 stitches and I'll increase until I have 64 stitches.  Don't expect these to go very fast.  It's fingering-weight yarn and as I've said before, I don't knit very fast.

 

I taught myself to spin long-draw tonight.  Yay, me!  I filled this bobbin in a little over two hours.  I'm not spinning very even yet but it's coming.  This will end up as a shawl I think so uneven singles aren't really a concern.  Hey, aren't you proud of me, Elizabeth?  I picked it up almost immediately.  You're right, it's not very hard to learn.

 

Finally, I found and purchased on ebay a button that I saw at Maryland.  I didn't buy it when I saw it and then I couldn't find it again the next day.  Important lesson:  if you like it, buy it!  This one is definitely me.  I'm hoping for a t-shirt in the future.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Hey, I figured it out!

I learn by seeing and then doing.  It makes learning how to do something from 2-D pictures and written instructions difficult for me.  I cast on the stitches correctly, after lots of trial and error, but I didn't pay close enough attention to the pictures and the last couple of attempts, I started knitting on the wrong needle.  I finally figured it out tonight but, after a couple of rounds, I decided to switch from 2.5mm needles to 2.25mm needles.  It made a firmer fabric that I hope will longer wearing socks.  So, starting over.  Again.

 

Two ounces of Cormo singles.  Half of the crappy roving I bought in Maryland.

Random Monday musings

1. No matter how many times I hear "Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel, it still gives me chills.
2. I got stung by a bee yesterday when I was deadheading the pansies.  Little bastard!  It hurt like hell!  On the plus side, my throat didn't close up so that part was good.  I drove to my parents' place with my finger stuck in a glass of ice water.  The damn thing hurt all day.
3. I've now been stung twice, but by two different stinging bugs, with no reaction.  Does that mean I'm not allergic to stings or do I have to be stung twice by the same kind of bug in order for my body to have an allergic rection?  Anybody know?
4. I can't seem to do Judy's Magic Cast-on correctly and I can't figure out why.  I get the initial stitches right but when I start knitting, it seems like I get something that looks like garter instead of stockinette.  I have no clue what I'm doing wrong because as far as I can tell, I'm following the directions correctly.  I'm clueless!
5. I think I may have freaked out the Yarn Zombie.  I left her a couple of comments saying I'd love to visit and dye yarn and wool.  She lives in Ohio... I live in Michigan... we're not too terribly far from each other.  She didn't comment either time and now she doesn't reply to my comments at all.  Looking at it from her perspective, I suppose someone who's pretty much a stranger asking to come visit might be a concern.  I'm sorry if I freaked you out Jacki.  I promise you I'm not a weird blog stalker person.  I just thought keggle dyeing looked like oodles of fun and we had enough common interests that we'd get a long.  Oops!  My bad! 

More carding

The Cormo yarn I entered into the skein contest got third place and I have to agree it wasn't the best yarn which means I need to practice spinning from rolags.  In Maryland I bought some camel down:

 

When I got home, I thought I'd card it together with more of the Cormo hogget fleece.  I loaded up the cards with the Cormo on the bottom and the camel above it:

 

Then I blended the two together by carding from one card to the other... several passes until it was blended:

 

I've gotten much better at making rolags.  All the camel has been blended and I've got quite a pile of rolags:

 

Once I start spinning, I'll elongate the rolags into roving.  I found I could spin more evenly with roving instead of rolags.  Hey, maybe this time I'll move up from third place.