Not just yarn (but mostly yarn)

Yes, we've already started to decorate for Christmas! It's the best time of the year. First there's Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then nothing until Halloween rolls around again! We didn't do much for Halloween, carved some pumpkins (can you guess which one is mine? I bet you can't), had some decorations up, but mostly ate too much candy. I'm determined to enjoy the holiday season for as long as I can. We also picked up a new bookshelf for our books and movies the cat. There's a tree right in front of the window with lots of birds, and it overlooks the neighbor's yard where all the street cats hang out. He's been pretty happy with his new spot.

I finished knitting a pair of socks just for myself as part of a Halloween knit-a-long. I dyed the yarn myself with food coloring and I'm so in love with them. I've been wearing them around the house for the past few days. I was going to try to wear them out but the only shoes I have are bright orange flats and it looked kind of ridiculous. Regardless, I love them. I picked up some professional acid dyes to experiment a bit more with dyeing yarn. Most of what I have come up with has been extremely ugly, but some of it looks nice. It's definitely a work in progress. I'm currently making a pair of Endpaper Mitts for myself with the teal yarn I dyed and some glittery mint yarn and I am thoroughly impressed with my progress so far. It's my first time doing any kind of color work. A month ago I had never knit anything more than a simple scarf and now I'm doing fair isle. Look at me go. My advice for anyone who wants to knit something scary looking is to just go for it, it looks much scarier than it actually is.

Sean took me up to Julian a couple weeks ago to get me out of the city. I get frustrated with driving, dealing with crowds, and never having any real peace and quiet. I'm not much of city girl. He got the most adorable little cabin. I'm obsessed with tiny houses so I was so excited to stay in an (almost) tiny house. It was just so precious. I can't wait to go back for a weekend, I would get so much knitting done!

Fiber Fiesta

Socks!

I signed up for my first ever Ravelry knit-a-long earlier this month. I have admittedly become just a little obsessed with socks since I knit my first pair last month and will jump on anything sock-related. It was great to have the pattern designer in the KAL so I could ask questions about the pattern, because really I still know very little about knitting. I'm starting to become more familiar with the terms/construction and I'm so proud of myself to have finished a pair of "real"socks. Knitting is a lot more terrifying than crochet, I think. I'm scared of dropping stitches (how will I pick them up!?), having to rip out rows (it's so fiddly!), and doing anything wrong in general. Crochet is much more forgiving, if you make a mistake you just pull on the yarn and undo it and there aren't any weird loopy bits to have to worry about. I was originally going to crochet socks, but apparently it takes twice the amount of yarn to crochet than knit! I'm so cheap that I just learned to knit, instead.

The little pouch is a Needle Nook I picked up from the Vista Fiber Fiesta. It's the neatest thing. It holds your sock project on double pointed needles or circular needles in a snap pouch so you can throw it in your bag and not worry about the needles getting messed up, but the thing that really sold me was the zippered pouch built into it to hold your extra needles/findings. It's handmade in Southern California, and since I sew I hardly ever buy anything I think I can make myself, but it's so well made I didn't have any qualms shelling out for it. I'm just tickled with it.

Fiber festival // alpacas!!

Fiesta haul

I meant to update about the second day of the San Diego Yarn Crawl but I lost motivation trying to edit the photos. I went to another alpaca farm and two yarn shops with some friends and it was a lot of fun. We went to A Simpler Time alpaca farm and mill and they gave us a little tour of the mill so we could see how fiber is processed. It's basically just a barn full of a bunch of spikes that move, it's a little scary. They clean the fiber and turn it either into roving or yarn in a bunch of different weights. They also dye some skeins for their gift shop and I couldn't resist this gorgeous orange alpaca. I picked up a few small accessories I needed (gauge ruler, boring stuff) at Two Sisters and Ewe and my friend won a skein of yarn (!!!). I kind of expected the raffle and gift bag stuff Two Sisters was doing at more of the stops on the yarn crawl, but the most other stores did was a little pinback button. Ah, oh well. Our second stop at Yarn & Thread Expressions I bought hand painted sock yarn with the intent to make socks just for myself, since everything else will be used for gifts. And guess what? They will most likely be turned into a gift. I already started on a pair for Christmas but I had to frog them completely because they are comically large. Merry Christmas, have some clown socks.

You'd think they'd never seen a girl and a cat on a broomstick before.

Kiki's Delivery Service is one of my favorite movies. It has a talking cat in it, so of course I'm going to love it! For those who don't know, in the movie Kiki is supposed to deliver a stuffed cat that looks just like her cat, Jiji. I found a pattern on Ravelry for Jiji and I knew I had to make it. I added the red bow so it would look like the stuffed toy, using this tutorial I found on Pinterest. Most of my Pinterest finds come out nothing like how it's supposed to (I don't even want to talk about the mess I made trying to use mason jars for a blender) but this one actually worked out great! I started the project when Artoo first got sick. I needed something to do to keep me busy for all the long waits at the vets, and then when we got him back from the hospital I would work on it at night with him at my feet. Now that he's all better I keep trying to get him to pose with it. There were a bunch of treats involved so I only ended up getting pictures of him licking his lips and making funny faces, but oh well, I'm just happy to have my kitty back to normal.

Spooky fall yummies

1 oz of squishy merino

The spinning madness continues! I bought 4 oz of deliciously soft and squishy merino from Kitty Mine Crafts on Etsy. I'm wicked excited about Fall/Halloween, so I was looking for something in that color scheme to keep me busy while I'm waiting for the lingering heatwave to pass. I have spun up about one ounce so far and it has taken about a week. I got just a smidge over 68 yards out of it in about aran weight. I was hoping to make a scarf, but a this rate it'll be Christmas time before I finish spinning enough yarn for one! I still really enjoy my drop spindle, but I feel like I will quickly outgrow it.

I reskein my yarn on the back of our dining room chairs. It makes for small skeins but it's free!

The internet has so many excellent resources for new spinners. I did navajo ply on the fly with this yarn, but I'm not sure that was the best route to go. It's a 3 ply yarn, which means I have to spin 3x the amount of yarn to ply it to the length I want. It also preserves the color variations, but as I was spinning it I really liked the barber pole effect I was getting as one color blended into another, and I feel like this plying method kind of muddled that. I already washed the hank and it's currently hanging up to dry. There are some over spun twisty bits, but I'm planning on snapping the yarn to try to get rid of those. We'll see what happens. And I totally painted my nails to match the yarn, I'm THAT excited about it.

.

Daily dose of fiber

I got my drop spindle kit from Queen Bee Fibers on Etsy in the mail today! The owner, Lexi, went out of her way to make sure I was happy. I didn't see any kits in her shop that I really loved, so she took some color requests for when she dyed her next batch. I liked the colors so much that I bought an extra braid, but I'm really wishing I was able to buy one of each because they were all so gorgeous. I'm teaching myself from YouTube videos so it's a bit of a disaster, but not as bad as I was expecting! I wanted to learn to spin for a couple years but I always thought it looked hard and frustrating so I never went for it. It's actually REALLY relaxing. I went to the park today and brought along my spindle and it was such a nice time. I'm doing navajo ply on the fly from this tutorial and it's alright. I keep getting weird knotty bits where I chained the yarn, but otherwise it has been mostly successful. I have also finished as much of the capelet as I can. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn! I'll have to dye some more before I can continue, here's a sneak peek at it so far.

The past couple weeks have been tough. Our cat got sick and then required a two day hospital stay. (For those who are interested, I provided daily updates here.) He's much better now, just fighting off a bit of a virus he got from his stay, but caring for a sick cat was very stressful and as a result I spent the past few weeks being a bit of a hermit. But a productive hermit. The truth is, I really enjoy being alone and having time to work on my various projects. Going out is nice, but having to constantly socialize gets a bit exhausting. All of this made me remember why I created this blog in the first place. I wanted a place to share all the things in my life that I loved and made me happy. It started off as sending blog posts out into space, but then I got a response! I didn't know what to do. My baby started talking back to me and I suddenly found myself at a loss for words. It made posting a bit awkward, I didn't know what to say or how to say it, and it just wasn't as enjoyable. Anyway, the point is I want to bring the blog back to what it originally was for me, so here's some yarn I made that makes me happy.

I dyed two skeins of white Patons Worsted Wool with Wilton's gel color and Kool-Aid following these instructions. I originally wanted the yarn to be light grey and rich pumpkin, with little speckles of blue. As you can see, that did not happen. I couldn't find blue Kool-Aid anywhere, and I couldn't figure out how to mix a grey dye (black food coloring is actually blue + purple + red  so it wouldn't have worked). To make matters worse, I mixed up my brown and violet dye! I kept wondering why it was turning purple in the pot! I didn't realize it until I was almost halfway done. I'm still using the yarn for my Ravelry project and I'm excited to show the ladies in my knitting/crochet group what I made. I also picked up some sock yarn for SOCKS!! I'm very excited, I haven't knitted in forever. On top of that, I also ordered a drop spindle kit from Queen Bee Fibers on Etsy so soon I can be spinning my own yarn.

Adventures in beading

patterns from Peyote Bead Art on Etsy

ring design by me!

Every time I go to a craft store I end up in the bead aisle staring at all the pretty beads and crystals. I figured it was about time I started doing something that involved beads. Now I can hoard all the shiny and not just stare longingly at it. I bought a few patterns off Etsy a week ago and I've been beading like a manwoman ever since. I'm especially proud of the ring I made. I used the techniques I learned from the bracelet pattern to make the ring and did a daisy chain for the band. It's so sparkly and pretty. I can't wait to make more.

Instagram- Week in Review

1. I had an awesome mail week! I recently won a giveaway from Pink Sith for two Butter London nail polishes and she sent an extra Hard Candy polish in addition. The nail polishes are high end and I feel so fancy. I've been wearing the taupe one all week long, it's gorgeous.
2. More felt embroidery. I made a little strawberry embroidery for a recipe book I'll put together eventually.
3. The rest of my awesome mail week. I treated myself to two yards of Japanese import fabric and this is what I got.
4. We bought 2 bags of Halloween candy "for trick or treaters". I'm sure they'll be gone long before they get here.
5. Some Halloween crafting. Making some bunting for above the window.
6. Kitty snuggles are always the best part of my week.

Vintage inspired felt embroidery

I've been a little crafting machine lately! On the trip to pick up book supplies I also picked up some felt and seed beads for embroidering. It's become popular to mix printed fabric and felt with embroidery and I wanted to give it a go, but instead I stumbled across this lovely post about vintage felt embroidery and fell in love! It was a lot of fun and actually very easy. I found this handy DIY tutorial for the dahlia, used the same petal shape just sewn on differently for the yellow flowers, and used small circles  for the small purple and blue flowers. Everything is hand sewn and took about 4 hours. I'm thinking I might combine bookbinding and embroidery and make this into a nice little cover for a book.

First time bookbinding

Ever since a bookbinding tutorial came across my Pinterest feed  (link here)I have been obsessed with it. I watched a few YouTube videos and read a couple blogs on it until it got to the point where I felt like I just NEEDED to try it. Last night I went to a craft store to pick up the paper I needed, a bone folder, and some endpaper, and that was really all I needed. I improvised the rest of the supplies based on what I had at home. All together I think this cost me around $6 or 7 in supplies, not too shabby! Instead of PVA glue I used a combination of glue stick, Mod Podge, and E-6000. I used heavy books instead of clips or clamps to keep things together, waxed embroidery thread with a candle(it felt pretty silly but I had no snags so guess it worked. And it smelled nice!), used a sharp polymer clay tool to poke holes in the signatures, and made the cover out of the back board of the sketchpad I used for the paper. It might seem like there are a lot of specialty tools you need for bookbinding, but as you can see it's all easily improvised! It might not be the proper way, but it was a really fun project and I'm pretty happy with the results. 

Friday Favs- DIY tutorials

Bat chandelier from My Paper Crane

DIY print tights from The Pineneedle Collective

DIY record table from The Flourishing Abode

What I've been up to lately

I have done a little bit of crafting lately and I'm especially happy with my cat lady deluxe pouch. For the past week I've been really wanting to make quilted pouches with pieced designs like this and I finally sat down to do it last night. I originally wanted to do a heart, but kitties are way better. I also made some cupcake earrings that have taken me forever to list because I've been too busy wearing my own pair of them. Luckily I have another pair for sale here. 

 

I also have FREE SHIPPING for this weekend only (7/9-7/11) for the Sweet Deers and Retro Patchwork pouches. Free shipping WORLD WIDE! These pouches need a home.

In progress..

These pictures are brought to you by my new camera! I was borrowing my dad's Cannon Rebel T1i for all of my pictures, but I will be going back to Austin soon, where the best available camera is on my phone. :(
So!! My dad and stepmom got me an early birthday present!! I'm excited to use it more and learn how to work all the bells and whistles.

I have all of the supplies I need for pouches laid out on my ironing board so I can make some makeup bags/larger pouches today. I love the weight of the linen blend (it's heavier than 100% cotton) and all of the adorable designs. I'm all out of pink zippers so I am unable to use the rest of my new fabric, but never fear! I have an order of zippers coming in next week.
My earrings have gotten a pretty good reception, too! I think these Russian nesting doll earrings are my favorite so far. I also made them in a slightly larger 7/8" size so that two dolls fit on one earring.

Christmas time!

All you need are candy canes, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, pom poms, and a hot glue gun.

All last night I had dreams about making Christmas decorations with Martha Stewart. It was the best dream ever. I've already made some candy cane reindeer over the weekend. They're so easy and great to stick on the tree, give away to people you know but don't know enough to give them anything for Christmas, and tie on to Christmas presents. I'm currently working on making some stockings today. I was trying to wrap up some Christmas presents yesterday and realized I didn't have any wrapping paper or paper bags, so I thought the only logical thing to do was to make everyone a stocking to put their presents in instead. This makes total sense, right? It's slow going for the first one because I'm still trying to figure out exactly how one goes about making a stocking, but hopefully the next two are faster.

 These mini wallets are also great for small Christmas gifts. You can put all of your gift cards in them so you have them in your purse but they aren't crowding your wallet. How many times have you forgotten your gift card at the house when you were at the store? I do that all the time. I always forget I have gift cards. I will be making a tutorial on how to make these wallets in the next few days, and will make a big post for a bunch of last minute Christmas crafting ideas.

Left to right: homemade marshmallows, caramel corn, almond toffee, chocolate and French sea salt caramels

The post will also contain links to recipes. Having such a big family, I used to just make them cookies or candies for Christmas and put them in nice tins. You can find tins just about everywhere, and they normally don't cost more than two bucks. You could also try your luck at a thrift shop and see if you can find any nice vintage tins. The tins look like a lot of work, but they're great if you have tons of people to give gifts to and not a whole lot of money. Just make a few batches of different candies or cookies and distribute them throughout all the tins. They'll think they're getting spoiled with all the different goodies. Christmas is coming up fast, and if you're like me you've left everything to the last minute. Hopefully my next post will help out just in time.