Inspiration Saturday: My wheels are spinning (or they will be)

You know how when you first get a new crafty thing you have all of these ideas about what you're going to do with it?  And you think that you'll start first thing tomorrow, you can barely contain your excitement.  Then tomorrow comes and you figure you should really finish what you're working on now.  Then the next day maybe you have to go to work, then the next you just don't have time for anything, until all of the days pile up and before you know it it's been a month.  Or ten.

I really hope it's not just me that has this problem.

I'm trying not to think about how many months I let pass between a Ravelry friend so generously gifting me her spinning wheel to be my first.  Instead, I'm focusing on the fact that I didn't let it become a full year.  And telling myself that I've been busy with other crafty things, like learning to sew and knitting my Twist of Death, another project that I completed less than a year after buying the yarn.

Tomorrow I'm going to the first of three sessions in an introduction to wheel spinning class at Hill Country Weavers.  I probably could have ambled along on my own and figured it out, but this way I'll have some help and a jumpstart to get really spinning by the end of the month.  Huzzah!

That means that soon I shall hopefully transfer some of my fiber stash into handspun stash in Ravelry:

How could I possibly resist this fiber dyed after red velvet cake for Yarnorama's anniversary?

My plan for this braid has always been to spin it into singles and then ply it with a bright pink thread.

Malabrigo makes such gorgeously soft yarn, I can only imagine what their roving will produce.

This was sent to me by someone in New Zealand.  It travelled such a long way, it deserves to fulfill it's destiny.

Speaking of travels, Woolen Diversions is back from her honeymoon and has lots of gorgeous pictures to share for the next few weeks of her Inspiration Saturday posts, so don't forget to check those out.

WIP Wednesday: The end of a Crawl is just the beginning...

As if last weekend wasn't enough, this past weekend brought even more lovelies into my stash:

1. From Nan's Needleworks: Noro King in two colorways with nondescript names
2. From Happy Ewe: Wooly Wonka Arianrhod in Spice; and a pair of 60" cables for my Knit Picks interchangeables
3. From Gauge (yes, I had to come back again for more!): Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Lichen and Nekkid
4. From Yarnorama: Rowan Fine Tweed in Monsal Dale, Beresford, and Leyburn; and a mystery silk noil wool fingering weight yarn on a cone
5. From WC Mercantile: Sport weight alpaca with angelina from Bluebonnet Hills Alpaca Ranch; and two skeins of sport weight sari silk yarn

First of all, I want to apologize for the different look of the numbers in this graphic.  I had to recreate it on another computer to make sure I could post today.  It irks me, especially since my day job is about documentation standards.  But anyway...

What are my plans for these?  Or, to put it another way, how did I rationalize buying them all?  Well, the Noro was just such an intriguing texture, made up of microfiber, silk, mohair, and wool.  And I love projects that stripe alternating colorways of Noro, so I'm thinking a simple triangle shawl switching the yarn every right side row.

The Wooly Wonka I just love, and this store is one of only four I think that has it in stock.  There were so many gorgeous colors, and fibers as well as yarn, but I really liked the chocolate-y-ness of this one.  And then I remembered that I have some really cute cupcake buttons, which seems only right for a yarn from Wooly Wonka.  Oh, and the interchangeables are to aid me in turning the Wonderland mini skeins from last week into a Mini Mania scarf.

For the next few, I have a very good excuse: good deals!  The Hazel Knits and Rowan were the special 25% off featured yarns for their respective stores.  I'm thinking of dyeing the Nekkid colorway of the Hazel Knits at some point, possibly after I've knitted whatever it is going to be.  The Rowan will probably actually be used to make the pattern provided by Susan at the store:

Color work and bobbles!  I wear fingerless mitts every day in my freezing cold office, so these will make me smile as I'm working hard at the keyboard.

WC Mercantile wasn't technically part of the Crawl, but they advertised in the passport, offering a discount for participants, and once we were at Yarnorama we were halfway there anyway.  I love the stuff they bring to Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta every year, so this was my excuse to buy the exact alpaca yarn I coveted there last time.  Plus some sari silk just for the heck of it.

Whew!  Now it's back to real life.  Except that in two weeks we're planning a trip to Houston to meet up with another Raveler at another yarn store, and then after that it's Kid 'N Ewe Fiber Festival.  I just love fall, don't you?  The good news is that while we were driving I made great progress on my Christmas knitting, so I can finish that up soon and get started on some of these new additions to my queue.

For more WIP Wednesdays, go to Tami's Amis.

Inspiration Saturday: Celebrating in spirit

Yarnorama is one of my favorite local yarn stores, despite being just on the other side of 'local' for me, since it's closer to Bastrop then Austin, and just over an hour's drive from home.  It's worth the pilgrimage as often as we can make it, because owner Susan Fricks has so many pretty things.  Plus, with events like the annual holiday party, it's also a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to make the trip today to help Susan celebrate five years of her playground for the fiber obsessed.  But as I nosh on spaghetti squash, I'm wondering what people brought to the potluck this time and who is winning prizes.  So I'm going to share a few of the things I love about the store, as I wish it a happy birthday!

Along with stocking a wide variety of commercial yarns, Susan dyes not only her own yarn, but fiber as well, called FiberObsessions.  I have several skeins of Simply Sock in my stash, like this one:

Photo credit: FiberObsessions

The colorway is 'All Shaped Up', and I love the way the pink and the gray interplay to create some mauve and dusty rose.

Here's another yarn base, Enliven, that comes in 50 gram skeins.  I don't have this colorway, Live Wire, but it looks like something I really should:

Photo credit: FiberObsessions

Okay, to the fiber!  Remember my first ever completed, self-spun yarn?

That started it's life as Blue-Faced Leicester in a colorway called Seeing Pluto:

And the spindle pictured here comes from Jeri Brock, whose gorgeous pieces are sold in the store.  Jeri and Susan have also teamed up for a Spindle and Fiber Club which has me constantly drooling.

While I have yet to plunk down the money for membership to the club, I do occasionally break down and buy a braid.  Especially at the start of a new month, because Susan dyes a special colorway for each month.  Here's March, Random Happiness:

Photo credit: FiberObsessions

Um, yum!  It's an 80/20 Merino/Tussah silk.  This is exactly why my spinning stash is growing, slowly but surely, to match my knitting stash.

I have a feeling I've crossed the line from inspiring to taunting, but for those of you who are also wishing you were in tiny little Paige, Texas right now, you can order a lot of Susan's stuff online, or feel free to call them to find out more at (512) 253-0100.

For more inspiration, check out Alicia's post at Woolen Diversions.  This week she's spotlighting some Malabrigo Madness projects, so it's a tribute to soft and fluffy fiber all around!

Celebrating with Yarnorama, holiday-wise

Some holiday traditions I've had as long as I can remember.  Like the special family recipe for potato salad, which has to be prepared in the largest possible bowl and is eaten not only for Christmas dinner, but also for breakfast, lunch, and dinner again for several days afterwards until it's gone.  Other traditions are a little more new, like making the drive to Yarnorama for their holiday party.  It's only the second year we've made it, but I'm already looking forward to the third, fourth, and so on.

Preparations for this party began, believe it or not, in April this year.  That's when I bought the yarn to knit a pair of dishcloths for the white elephant washcloth exchange.  It's a fun little swap that starts off with everyone bringing a pair of dishcloths they have knit, crocheted, or woven.  Then one at a time people choose which pair they would like, except that they don't just choose from what's available.  Dishcloths can also be 'stolen' and end up being passed back and forth several times before the night is over.

In an effort to have one of the coveted dishcloths which might be stolen at least once, I made my dishcloths part of my Ravelympics/Ravellenics knitting this year.  After successfully completing my first-ever monster, I did a simple heart lace pattern for two matching dishcloths:

I'm happy to report that my efforts were rewarded with several cases of 'theft'.  In a happy coincidence, some of that demand may have been motivated by the fact that this just happened to be the same project a few of the other knitters were working on for a wedding present, so these may become a part of that project.  But I'm just glad to walk into a group of other knitters and get positive feedback for something I made.  Now I have to start plotting for next year...

I also brought with me another finished object that I'm quite proud of with ties to last year's party.  One of my Christmas presents last year was a gorgeously scrolled Turkish drop spindle from Jeri Brock, given to me by my mother to start me off spinning.  And as I reported during the Tour de Fleece, I turned out my first four skeins of yarn with that spindle and a braid of roving purchased that same night at the party.

It took a few more months for me to knit that yarn into something, but eventually it became this cowl, which I proudly wore to this year's party:

It was a completely improvised pattern of knitting, purling, YOs and picots.  It's like a fabulous collar, I love the colors.  Eventually I might be able to spin yarn with some control as to the resulting gauge, but for now I'm happy to just spin and work with whatever the results may be.  And I'm already eyeing the spinning wheels in the store.  Someday...

Being a party, it was also an opportunity to, what else, bake!  There's always a strategy to potlucks, you don't want to fill the table with just cookies, or bring anything that requires too much serving or other efforts.  So instead of regular cupcakes, I decided to switch things up and make some savory muffins.  I started with a recipe I found on Pioneer Woman, doubling that and adding a little garlic and other seasonings.  Then I took it even one step further and decided to 'frost' them with a mixture of cream cheese and seasonings, slightly thinned with a little milk.  Aren't they cute?

Doubling the recipe gave me a dozen full-sized cupcakes and 18 minis.  With one block of cream cheese, I had plenty for little star blobs on all of them, but if you really wanted to frost them, you would likely need a second block.  These are really tasty, but absolutely best when warm.  Also, I put them in paper wrappers just for ease of removal and clean-up, but they would have been fine without them, and the unwrapping isn't the easiest.  We have a few leftover which are going to be really good accompaniments with soup.

We made one more contribution to the party in that I brought the selection of DVDs to choose from to be the movie-viewing part of the evening.  Out of a selection of seven classic choices, the group decided on 'The Apartment'.  If you've already seen it, you may have already spotted the reference in the title of this post.  If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it as a sweet, sometimes sad, romantic comedy set around the holidays.  You can never go wrong with Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, and Shirley MacLaine.

All in all, a great way to start off the holiday season!

How I Crawled: day two

The second day of the Crawl got off to an inauspiciously late start when we hit major traffic on the way to Yarnorama.  We had managed to come up behind some kind of accident, and got to sit there, inching forward for about an hour while it was cleared.  But eventually we made it to the oasis of fiber and yarn on the deserted highway towards Houston.

And thus, day two (again, a slideshow of all pics is attached to my Examiner article):

• Yarnorama: I found a braid of light green roving in a silk blend that I think is destined to be plied with a bright pink thread.  And there was some bulky Araucania on sale, so I had to.
• Hill Country Weavers: This was not my fault.  When you find locally-dyed awesomeness like Alisha Goes Around in the sale section, you have to get it.  The dark forest green is gorgeous, and I think I was influenced by the cloudiness of the day in the amount of gray I bought.  The Alpaca Sox also came from the sale bin.  The roving I have no excuses for, I was just really in the mood for spinning stash.
• Gauge: Not only was Dizzy Lettuce there with her lovelies, but a new dyeing artist, Green Finch, covered a table in the back room.  I ended up with a skein of bamboo in a shiny silver gray.  I think the stitch definition of the yarn demands some sort of cable, probably in mitts.
• Happy Ewe: You have to love a store where the owner's favorite color is hot pink.  Well, I do anyway.  I ended up with another color changing sock yarn, this one from Mille Colori, but it took forever to decide what would come home with me, they had a lot of nice yarns.  Including some possum yarn, which sparked an interesting dilemma for a vegetarian on the Crawl, who apparently was concerned with how humanely the fiber was obtained.

Pit stops were made at the Tea Embassy, because I'm currently in a tea-themed swap and I wanted to get my spoilee a special local blend, and at The Yogurt Spot, because they have the most amazing Taro Tart flavor ever.

And there you have it, two days packed full of broken budget promises and soft, squishy yarn in a variety of colors.  Next month: a fiber festival!