A New Podcast!

I decided, like today, that I would make a new podcast and publish it, and see how it turns out. I think that I did alright. I definitely need more practice though. I think that with time it will get much better and it will all turn out.

I showed all my WIPS on the podcast, but here are pictures of a few of them.

The Royals crackerjack scarf that is coming right along and is clearly more blue than white and yellow, so the boys in blue are doing good! I don't know what I'm going to do with all the ends, since I didn't leave them long enough to weave in, they may just stay that way. It'll all be good.

Then this is my speckle dyed sock that I'm really excited to be working on. It's fun to see the colors pop up, even if it is just for a stitch or two, it keeps it interesting to work on. This is my second purse project, I probably shouldn't have cast it on, but I couldn't resist.

Then this is the other blanket for Project Linus. I think this stitch pattern is called the ball band dishcloth pattern. I like working this pattern it is a slip stitch pattern where you alternate the colors every row. It also keeps it interesting. I cast it on yesterday, because I didn't have anything else to work on at Project Linus once I had woven in the ends for the 15 blankets that I turned in!

This is the stack of blankets. 12 of them were just borders around polar fleece that had punched holes in them. Then there was a Ten-stitch tunisian crochet blanket that I did, and two corner-to-corner throw blankets. I was pleased with all of them, and hopefully I have another productive month.

This is the hippy hippy shawl. It is worked in stockinette stripes and it will be a crescent shawl. It's made out of Knitpicks Chroma fingering weight and a mystery acrylic brown that was purchased at Fabric Recycles, which is a consignment store for yarn and fabric.

This is a preemie blanket that I finished that will be given to Children's Mercy once it's blocked. It was worked from the center out, in stripes, with a diamond lace border and then a garter stitch border of six rows or so.This was acrylic yarn that my grandparents got for me at various garage sales. I will probably make another one similar just because this was fun to do and I still have quite a bit of yarn.

This is a diagonal striped blanket that I made from scraps from my most recent Project Linus blankets. This is my fourth or fifth blanket just like this, and I like how it turned out.  I will have to make more blankets to have more scraps to make another blanket or two like this one.

And this is my most recent spinning. I have been spinning it thick and then, so it is like art yarn, and I just have about an ounce and a half left of fiber to spin. This is an art batt that I got at the All MO Spin In. I'm not participating in Tour de Fleece this year, but seeing all the pictures on Instagram are really inspiring and have made me want to spin more.

Spring is Springing!

Sorry for such a long hiatus, but I have been knitting, just so you know. Where I am, spring is springing. I don't know if it has completely sprung yet, but it is definitely getting there. I have finished several projects, and have started a garden out on the solarium so that the baby plants can grow before it is totally warm/hot outside. I planted oregano and cilantro in a strawberry planter.

Then I planted some broccoli and Asian peas in a disassembled three tier planter, and they are sitting on the ground.

And finally, from top left, there is asparagus, onions, and green beans. Then on the bottom left, or front left there is zucchini, sweet peppers, and spinach.

I'm so excited to have fresh veggies to eat this summer. I know that my garden is small, but I am really only feeding me, so I didn't want to have just a ton of food for it to go bad. So that's my garden. Anticipate garden updates as well as knitting updates in the future! 

I finished a preemie blanket for the Children's Mercy Hospital, where the preemie babies are generally taken care of here in Kansas City. So making blankets for sick babies will definitely be a thing for me in the future. I like them, since they are small enough to knit and not get bored or frustrated with, and I can try out different stitch patterns on them. I have plans for others in my head. This one is the kind of basket weave pattern with the slipped stitches that they do on washcloths a lot. I'm not sure who "they" are, but I think you know what I mean. The yarn was worsted weight Caron Simply Soft in lavender, and a Red Heart Super Saver Multi-Color. I knit it on US Size 7 needles, and it knit up in about 4 days of working off and on. I took it up to the LYS, which is the drop-off point, and they said that it needed to be blocked just a bit, so I will be blocking it and then turning it back in. 

Then I made a blanket for the Make-A-Blanket Day Project Linus competition. At the last Make-A-Blanket Day six months ago they gave the knitters and crocheters a skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Cherry Red and told us to make a blanket with it, so this is just from stash donations that I have, and it is based on the quilt block of Dutchman's Puzzle. It is all ready to go and be entered into the competition this Saturday. I'm really excited to go and see everybody and make another blanket!

And then I have three shawl/scarf type items done. These are all going to my mom, well, at least the first two are. I think that the last one may go into the shop, which I need to do another update, but I have been thinking, that most of my items are for fall/winter, so I might wait until it is closer to that season until I post other things. The first one is a Nairi by Amanda Muscha. It was made from Malabrigo Rios, but I am unsure of the colorway, since it was from stash. The pattern calls for fingering weight, but I did it with the worsted weight on a US Size 9 needle. The ladies at the LYS thought that I am a tight knitter and I should have used an even larger needle, but I like how it turned out. I liked the pattern and I thought that it knit up well. 

And then I finished a Curl from the book Curls by Hunter Hammersen. This one is the Gridelin. And I made it out of fingering weight yarn, named Army Girl by Pagewood Farms. I've shown this one as it was in progress, but it was a blast to work on, and I've started another pattern from the same book. 

And finally I used the picot edge from the Nairi and just improvised a triangle scarf, with a skein of worsted weight wool that I dyed myself. I really like how it turned out. I'm not sure if I'm going to give this one to my mom, or if I'm going to post it to the shop. 

In final news, I have an Instagram account! I'm spinningknitting1 on there too! So follow me, and I'll try to do mostly daily updates of my knitting on there. 

Closet Treasures

While I was in my stash closet the other day I stumbled upon a large white trash bag. I had assumed that this was the final resting place for many project disasters. But much to my surprise I found some really delightful creations, and many of them were made with handspun, so I think that they are extra fancy. This post is really picture heavy, but I just wanted to show them all to you, because they show what I used to knit, and how free form and creative I was with things, not going off a pattern at all and just making really unique items. So without further ado here is the surprise projects.

This scarf has all commercial yarn, different textures, some fun fur, and some that was commercial yarn plied together.

 This hat is just a simple beanie made with novelty commercial yarn

This is a little hat made out of handspun that I thought turned out nice.

This is another hat made out of handspun, it's all crochet and has a really nice slouch to it.

These are all fingerless mitts made out of the same thick and thin blue and tan yarn that I got thinking I would make a sweater with it, but the sweater didn't look good with yarn that was this busy. I still have a ton left of it. One Christmas I made several slippers out of it too, and my grandmother felted hers! So I guess I should make some more slippers this year.

This is a simple triangle shawl with eyelet rows, made from Noro sock yarn, which I think is extra lovely.

This is a headband made from handspun, a really simple pattern just singe crochet.

This is a handspun shawlette, and I did a sort of stitch sample on it trying out different textures and patterns.

This is a scarf made out of handspun, and I really like how the colors played with each other, I just thought they all went together really nice.

This is a crocheted scarf from alpcaca, which means it's nice and soft, and even though I have a lot of alpaca to spin, this is not anything that I have spun.

This scarf also plays with texture. The grey-ish green parts are reclaimed yarn from a thrift store sweater, and there is novelty yarn as well, it's all shades of green and it's a fun scarf.

Then there are two that I finished before I started blogging again, and they will go up in my Etsy shop too, along with everything else that I have shown thus far. First there is a fair isle hat that I really like, and I have one just like it and I wear mine all the time, so I think it's pretty classy. Only mine is cool colors while this one is warm colors. 

And then there is a scarf that I tunisian crocheted from yarn that I got from Hobby Lobby, but I don't remember the name of it exactly. The stitch is a simple lace stitch (that's really the name of the stitch), and I thought that it turned out really cute. 

And last but not least yesterday I finished a hat that has a monogram "A" on it, and I'm super proud of this hat because I charted out the A all by myself and then did it with stranded knitting so I think that it really pops. 

I think that I have enough inventory to open my shop up next month, but I am going to continue making things (obviously), maybe just not at the frantic pace that I have been. Currently I'm working on a sweater, and two blankets and a pair of socks. Once I finish my sweater I'm going to start on a sweater for my brother, so that is all a lot of knitting, but I'm up for the challenge!

Finishing Things

I have been quite busy working on things. I finished several things, including one of the books that I was reading. I finished reading Against Calvinism by Roger E. Olson. I thought that it was a good argument against Calvinism, hence the title, but I'm not sure that it totally convinced me, but it didn't really provide very good explanations of alternatives to Calvinism, but just presented problem with the Calvinist theology. I recommend reading it if you are interested in Calvinism, and haven't made up your mind about it, but don't really know anything about it. (This is where I was coming from). It's very informative and good at explaining things, and at a few points almost feels repetitive, which really helps to drive the point home for me personally.

Now I'm reading For Calvinism by Michael S. Horton. Which is the other side of the coin as far as the Calvinist debate goes, just presenting the Calvinism theology with a more positive light, whereas Against Calvinism was an argument against it at every turn, and it was hard to picture why anyone would believe it in the first place. For Calvinism I hope is going to answer the question of why people believe and embrace Calvinism, not that I have decided which side I fall down on, but it's still important and interesting to learn about.

I'm also reading A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. It's a book about how she spent a year following all the biblical laws literally and how she discovered things about herself through following the laws. I think that it's interesting, and I'm learning a lot about different Biblical women that I had never heard of, and I am interested in the Bible, and finding someone that scoured the Bible and found all references to women in order to figure out what it means to "live biblically" is really interesting to me. She writes in a very approachable style, and has her own blog, where you can read about different things. She links different pages of her blog in the book, so I think the two are coordinated, but since the book was written several years ago she's probably not writing about being "domestic" anymore.

In other news I finished a scarf that was two strands held together, I'm calling it "Dirty Snow". It was a strand of white boucle with bits of color and then a strand of lace weight that striped between light blue to white to dark blue to tan to brown and then all the way back again. I like how it turned out. It's just a strip of garter stitch, but I thought that any patterning would be lost in the boucle, so I thought it best to just keep it simple, and not have a lot of complicated things going on.

And then here's a close up of the scarf, where I hope you can see the strand of the lace weight. It had a pretty good halo and was also metallic. 

I also finished a hat, knit with mill ends of sock yarn, and it was striped, and I knit it on my size US 2 Karbonz 16" needles. I did about 2.5" of ribbing, 2x2 ribbing. Then I did a simple mesh stitch that I made up. It was a row of eyelets, and then three rows of plain knit. It was knit in the round, and then I did my normal round decrease at the top to close up the hat.

And then finally I made a baby quilt for Project Linus. It was a along time in the coming, and in the last two nights I finished piecing, put on a border, and then quilted it and put on the binding. And I learned that while I am not terrible at long-arm quilting (my mom has a long arm quilting machine), I am absolutely terrible at sewing straight enough to put on binding. It's quite challenging for me and I'm not really sure why. It's a bargello pattern, made by Jodie and some of her other patterns are available at the Project Linus Kansas City Chapter website. 

And then here is a close-up of the back just so you can see some of the quilting a little better. There are little flowers traveling all the way around the border, but because the border is so busy you can't tell that it's quilted at all unless you are feeling it.

So there you go, everything that I've finished in the past few days. I also cooked up a storm yesterday, and now have enough food for several days. Today I'm going up to Angelika's Yarn Store, and I'll be seeing some new friends, and then I'll be going to Matthew's Ministry, which is a ministry for adults and children with special needs. I'm really looking forward to it, I enjoy it a lot.

Splitting A Ball in Half

Today I finished a scarf that I made with four different balls of Hobby Lobby's I Love This Wool, but before I show you the picture, I am going to describe my method for splitting balls in half without a ball winder, a swift, or a scale.

This is the ball in it's original state. One could just start knitting from the inside or the outside, since it's a center pull ball, which is perfect for my purposes. The first step is to find the inside end and the outside end, holding them together, start winding a ball, just manually. 

At the end of all that you will have a single ball held double. Cut the string in half when you get to the very end of the original ball. If you are making two at a time socks you can stop here, and can knit both socks from the same ball, meaning that if you are knitting toe up you will know exactly when to end in order to use up as much of the yarn as possible. I prefer knitting two at a time toe up, on 40" cable needles, size US 1. I think that they go fast. I will describe my vanilla sock recipe in a later post. 

 Next take both ends of the ball and start winding two separate balls. If the yarn gets twisted, simply untwist it. I never find it to become terribly troublesome.

Continue winding into two separate balls. 

Eventually you will end up with two completely separate balls.

Tadaa! A ball split in half with no fancy equipment whatsoever.

After I split the ball in half today I finished crocheting a scarf. I used half of four different balls of Hobby Lobby's I Love This Wool, so I have exactly enough to make an exactly identical scarf, which I think that I will end up doing. I would just like to say that I did not love the I Love This Wool though. I thought it was too splitty, and it kept splitting on me. It did come in a variety of different plies in the Naturals line. I started with a solid brown, then did a section of three plies of brown with one ply cream, then half and half, two plies brown, two plies cream, and finally three plies cream and one ply brown. I think it ended up being a really interesting gradient, and I may have to experiment with making gradients like this using handspun, since I have never really played around with anything more than Navajo plying or two ply, so playing with more plies would be fun. Here is the finished scarf. I used a size US J crochet hook, and used the berry stitch, which is just alternating double crochet and single crochet stitches every other stitch and then double crochet in the single crochet and single crochet in the double crochet in the next row.

I came home this evening and made an especially yummy dinner. I roasted peppers, tomatoes, and chickpeas in the oven, sprinkling them with garlic salt and pepper. I sauteed zucchini, yellow squash, and red onion and minced garlic in a skillet on the stove top, and then I cooked some gluten free spiral pasta. I waited until each component was done then I mixed them all together with olive oil and Parmesan cheese in a plastic container, I ate half and saved the other half for tomorrow. It was really delicious, and I might write out a more specific recipe, but I don't really want this to become a food blog, since I think my crafting is more interesting than my cooking. I'm also not always exact when I cook, so making recipes is not my forte. 

Crochet, Bake, Knit

Hello everyone! It has been an exciting day of nothingness here at my house. Yesterday I spent the day chilling with my grandparents, and managed to get a scarf done and a hat started. This is the scarf, and I'll save the hat until it's finished.

The scarf was made using the honeycomb stitch of tunisian crochet on a size P hook. The yarn is Wool-Ease Chunky by Lion Brand Yarn Company. I like how it turned out, it's not really big enough to be much more than an accent piece thought, but it would add a pop to someone's wardrobe, and the grey makes it neutral enough to go with more than just a lime green coat or sweater or something. 

Then this morning I made (drumroll please), cinnamon rolls! They are gluten free and from a recipe found at the Recreating Happiness Gluten Free blog. My pictures are not as scrumptious as hers, but they taste delicious! This is the first time that I have been able to have gluten free dough that turned out yeast-y and gooey like a real cinnamon roll, so kudos to her! They were awesome! I think I would take the dough by itself and make dinner rolls (just cook balled up dough so that it's pull apart, but without the cinnamon filling, obviously), it was that good! So here's the picture of how mine turned out....

The link to this recipe is here (Recreating Happiness Gluten Free). It's really great, I encourage you to try it on a boring afternoon. I will warn you that the dough is very sticky and can be tricky to roll into the cinnamon rolls (hence some of mine are a little ugly, they tore when I was rolling them up). But the end product is well worth it. Also, this recipe is entirely from scratch! So you will need quite a few ingredients, but honestly, I had everything in my cupboards already and didn't have to go get anything, so based on my experience I would say that all the ingredients are fairly common, especially if you have been baking gluten free for any length of time. 

While I was waiting for my cinnamon rolls to bake I finished another cowl, made out of Mega Brushed by Premier Yarns, it's 100% acrylic, and I held it double and used a size 13 needle. I used the basket weave stitch, using a pattern that I improvised for my friend when she was making cowls for her family this past Christmas season. I am quite pleased with how it turned out, I think it will wear well and be very warm, it will be going up on my Etsy store in March along with everything else that I have been showing on here (except for the Project Linus blankets, of course). 

Other than that I have been listening to sermons by different people about the differences between Calvinism and Arminianism, and think I am leaning toward Arminianism, but am also torn about determinism, because it seems to make sense in a sort of way. I am still reading Against Calvinism by Roger E. Olson, and Mythologies by Roland Barthes. How I have been reading Mythologies is that I read through it and just underline any word that I may not know (which tends to be slang, it's a philosophical, yet contemporary book, it's hard to explain). Afterwards I go through with the translator on my phone and look up any words that I had underlined previously. I think that this will reinforce my vocabulary and also strengthen the vocabulary that I am able to recall and use, not just the vocabulary that I am able to recognize, because I find that those are two different things. I also found out just yesterday that the community college in my metropolitan area offers courses in Chinese, four separate semesters, and I am seriously considering enrolling in Chinese in the fall, it's too late of course for the spring semester, but that will be something to look forward to. 

So that's it!