I'm Crafty, For Reals, Plus WIP Wednesday!

So, it's crafty.ninjakitten.net! Thank you for the feedback, and you should see this in any feed readers you use due to my new found love, Feedburner.

Are you bored by that blog business? So am I! Here's my "What I Did On Summer Vacation -- Crafty Edition" essay. Well, as I think I might, or might not, have mentioned, we went to the shore last week. (For those of you who don't live local to Philly, the shore is synonymous with the beach in my area. It normally indicates the Jersey shore, but I visited Ocean City, MD instead.) Thinking that I'd just knit knit knit all night, I brought along the nub's blanket and a lot of yarn. I don't know why I thought I'd knit so much, but mostly I slept every night because I was so darned tired. I did get some knitting done, though.





And, because I love to ask for trouble, I visited Salty Yarns while down at Ocean City. They bill themselves primarily as an embroidery shop, but what right minded person names their store Salty Yarns and doesn't sell any yarn? Not the owner of Salty Yarns, luckily. I wasn't going to go in, because they did have an extremely sparse yarn collection, but I spied something special through the windows. That's right, Lantern Moon needles! They had Sox Stix! The next trip to the boardwalk, I was there to purchase myself a nice set of size 1 needles in rosewood. I know it's extravagant, but they make me so darn happy when I'm knitting and that makes a difference. (As an aside, I got pretty indifferent service at Salty Yarns. Perhaps it was because I came in late just prior to Labor Day, but I was not greeted especially warmly, and the person who was at the register seemed both unaware and uninterested in what Lantern Moon needles they had available.)

Excited by the needles, I came home and wound up some very special yarn for a pair of socks I've been wanting to try from Cookie A. I'll leave the particular pattern nameless to surprise you all later! The super special yarn was Sundara Sock! I've been dying to try either that or my Madelinetosh, but when asked, Paul said he thought the pink of my Cranberry Mousse colorway worked better with the pattern. He helped me wind it and my heart sunk like a stone as we did. It went from being beautifully pink and cream in the skein to being a tiny bit like...




Grape juice vomit. I wanted to cry as I stared it, but I held myself together and decided I needed to use it anyway. I asked myself, somewhat crazily, what drew me to grape juice vomit yarn. I was angry at Sundara who was 'supposedly' a great dyer. I was cranky and tired and mean when I cast on, but what a difference a few rows can do.

Only half an inch later, I was back in love.




The yarn slid easily and beautifully from sharp pretty needle to sharp pretty needle. It knitted up tight, but not too dense. And, best of all, it was knitting up into a pretty petal pink. Some areas are slightly lighter, others darker, but it's as if it was a flower petal, all gentle flows of color. I apologized to whomever Sundara's dyer is, in my head. This is the reason people camped out on the Sundara website to try to get a skein. It was perfection.

So, now I'm knitting two different items for the first time in a while. I've mentally committed myself to working on the blanket half the time to try and crank it out, and working on my other stuff, including some sketching once again, during the rest of the week. We'll see how this all turns out.

Bye-bye, from one crafty ninja kitten!

WIP Wednesday #4 -- More Toast

I'd like to say a big "in your face" to WIP Wednesday which has soundly defeated me for the last several months. While it has kicked my butt several months in a row, and while it sent out a virus to my son to try and take me out of the game, I still managed to beat it about the head by putting up this picture of my Toast.

You will note several things about this picture of a pair of armwarmers in progress which I'll more fully discuss in my finished project post (which will hopefully come soon), but I'd like to point out two of those things here.

One, you'll notice that I'm using a mish-mash of number 2 DPNs for this project. Three of them are Lantern Moon rosewood needles which I love with a passion. The other two are Brittany bamboos which I like but do not love. Both sets have been devastated by my cat Inigo, broken into pieces and splinters. While I love her, she's an evil kitty who's hell on my yarn and knitting implements.




Secondly, that leftover yarn I have to knit the remaining inches of the second armwarmer is pretty lean. Let's hope I can make it to the end, because if I have one and a half of a pair of armwarmers, I might scream in frustration.

WIP Wednesday: Toast

It's been about eighteen billion years, but it's time for another WIP Wednesday. As I'm sure we all agree, the best time to knit a pair of wool/silk armwarmers is in the exact middle of summer when it is sweltering out. Wait. No, that's dumb. Yep, I'm doing it anyway.




It might be the hottest time I can ever remember in my life, but I'm knitting a pair of Toast in Koigu Mori. That's a fancy way of saying, "I'm knitting a tube I plan to put on my arms." Seriously? The fact that this is a pattern is almost sad, but there it is. Knit an eleven inch long tube. I switched out the weight of the yarn, so I could use my fancy sock weight blend of silk and wool. The yarn is beautiful to work with (soft, pretty, and shiny), but I'm not as thrilled with the flecks of colors like I thought I would be. I think I'm a solid or semi-solid kind of girl at heart.

I'd write more about my WIP and how absolutely dumb it is to knit a tube right after I finished knitting a tube scarf, but I'm literally melting in my seat right now. (Normally, I'd beat a person up for using literally in such a non-literal fashion, but I believe my skin has bonded with the leather chair I'm sitting in, so I might have really literally melted. Argh, stupid heat wave!)

As you can see from the East Coast weather reports, this is why I'm writing so much about gardening. What are you all doing? A lot of my favorite bloggers who are also friends seem to have disappeared off the face of the Earth!

WIP Wednesday #2 -- Rose of Sharon

I know -- is there any progress since my last update, you ask! Well, there is, but not much. However, it's several hours worth of progress so I will blog it anyway. I admit, I love this design, but it's probably going to be over a hundred or more hours of my life by the time it's done. That's precious time I could be giving to knitting, blogging, baking, or playing Final Fantasy! However, I'm sure it'll look gorgeous on my craft room wall when done. I mean, it's not going to be done before we finally move and get a bigger house, right?

By the way, love my non-natural lit picture? This is what happens when your husband is working in Massachusetts and if your son gets five minutes to himself, you come back to find him with an uncapped marker in his mouth, while holding onto a watergun. I'm the best parent ever.

Lastly, I'll be taking a small trip next week. Unless Helen blogs her sweater, it's very likely that we'll miss WIP Wednesday! That's right, Helen, I'm calling you out.

WIP Wednesday #1

I'm introducing yet another new feature because they make my blogging life so much simpler. It's stolen, rather shamelessly, from Ms. Knitpicky, though I'm not going so far as to steal her rather awesome title for it (WIP it Wednesday).

I'm hoping that once a month, Helen will jump in here with her WIP, but some people are very busy nowadays planning and rushing around, so if she doesn't, I'll have to understand.



Remember that Slytherin Scarf I've been working on for over a year now? Yes, you do. How can you not? I always mention working on a row or two here or there. Well, I'm on section thirteen out of fifteen, so I'm finally closer to the end than the start. It looks decent, but it doesn't look as nice as Paul's yet. I stupidly picked an acrylic rather than wool yarn, so I'm thinking it'll never be as nice as Paul's scarf! When I'm done knitting this one, I have to get a photo of both of us wearing our scarves. If Paul has to broil in July for that picture, so be it.

The next two sections might go a little faster due to my superstitions. I always try to hurry along when the number thirteen is involved since I always fear it will bring bad luck on my house. Let's hope that I can wear this scarf this winter. The possibility is not nil!

I am a tiny bit afraid I'm going to run out of grey yarn before this whole scarf is done, so let's all keep hoping that if I do, I don't go crazy and try to knit the rest of the grey with scrap yarn from my yarn basket.



Lastly, folks -- you're all crazy hateful of hunger. More than one of you is on an every two or three hour food schedule, and all of you get angry! I really am the only person in the world who doesn't mind hunger. You should all join a club with Paul that meets regularly for food. He can tell you about the times he's basically disallowed me from chatting with him while we wait at restaurants to get seated because he's grumpy and starving. I will not be joining you all since if the food comes late, you might attack!