I mean, it's almost Black Friday and I've been sick all weekend.

I've been living the Gatorade and saltines life due to the stomach flu and then I wake up to see this in my inbox:



This is bad news, of course, because when things are 50% off, I have a hard time looking away.
This is also bad because KnitPicks requires a minimum of $50 for free shipping.

Whoops.

In case you have the same problem that I do, you can do some damage here. Knitpicks has a lot of good quality yarn for cheap, especially this week. No really, my mom made me a hoodie out of some of their acrylic and it feels like wool. Do it.

The things that I bought are fortunately mostly for other people. I've got a lot of work to do before Christmas. So much work, in fact, that the days leading up to the day of will probably be all-nighters. Should be fun.

Anyway, I'll have over $20 of Wool of the Andes Roving at roughly $.70 per ounce, when most wool roving goes for around $2 an ounce (this is what I'm most excited about because it's definitely for me. After I've spun it, maybe it'll go to my mom? Mom don't read that.), sock yarn, scarf yarn, hat yarn, and more scarf yarn. This has been a tough year as far as knitting for Christmas goes.

Patterns are for losers.

I'm almost done with a sweater made from yarn that I spun and dyed myself.

The yarn color at the top left totally matches the rest of the sweater and the sleeves totally match the body, right? Whoops.

 Here's where I'm at now. I haven't used a pattern with the exception of the raglan sleeve holes--I just yanked the basic formula from a pattern on ravelry and tweaked it to fit my measurements. I don't like using patterns much these days. Too much reading, too much time wasted trying to figure out what the author means when I could just figure it out on my own.

 The fiber is Corriedale. Basic sheep hairs, really. Not the softest stuff but it's easy to spin. Two pounds of it came with my wheel, which is plenty for a sweater for me. Actually, I figure I've only used one pound so far, and I have a whole pound left to spin. The yarn is dyed with kool-aid. I'll post about hand dyeing yarn or fiber with kool-aid/food coloring the next time I do it.

Finished yarn--it's not hard to knit with at all. Some sections are thinner weight than others, which is bound to happen with hand spun yarn made by someone who's only been spinning on a wheel since August/September. I'd say I've had quite a bit of success. I also have a friend (you can find her blog here!) whose cousin owns an alpaca farm, which means I'll be able to purchase alpaca fiber to spin in the future.

Things and Stuff...One Year Later...

It's been almost a year since I last posted, and so many things have happened...

I'm in my third year of undergrad and officially no longer a teenager. I'm a senator for my university, I have a part time job as a cashier, I now prefer knitting to crochet (GASP), and also!

Adopted a cat. This is Bagheera, but I'll refer to him as Bags.

I OWN A SPINNING WHEEL.

My first batch of hand-dyed, hand spun yarn made on my wheel!

So I've been busy. Really busy. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to blog about given my current state of crazy, but I'm going to do my best.