yay for yarn clubs.

I got home today, a day that was long, and I was in need of a pick me up as the caffine was fast wearing off.

I got home to a little box, and it made my evening, so I shall take you through the opening of the December shipment of the IYSSC.

There was this (note it was packaged much nicer but I decided after I opened everything that I wanted to do a whole reveal photo post), a little green package and a package in a breast cancer awareness baggie full of treats (let it never be said that Miz Vi skimps on the pressies, these were fabutastic).

So lets get into the opening of the yarny portion. There are seven little individual skeins, each meant to represent an aspect of the coasts (in order from left to right : sea stars, breakwater, kelp, crest spray, driftwood, cape perpetua, and green solar flare). Each  skein measures around 50 yards (350 total) and I’m already thinking of ways they’ll work together for a scarf or shawl of some sort.

Then there were the treats (what was inside the little mesh breast cancer awareness bag). Left to right again there is, V-aide (violet kool-aid, aka that magical crack weve all been slurping on), Spiritual-tea, and a canister of lipbalm.

The lip balm is delicious, I was almost tempted to just eat it, trust me this wouldn’t be that strange. But the really cool thing was when you open the tea

The little card reads about the Spirituali-tea (what the ingrediants are) but I think the coolest part (aside from the smell, which is to die for) is that (and I take this directly from the IYSSC packet *hopefully not infringing on a copywright* “a sample-sized bit of Spirituali-tea, a handblended tea mix that comes from local, organic growers (where possible), blended by moi” (I assume the moi is infact Vi herself).

Okay so that was my joy for the day. Off to paperville, may the mountain not collapse in on my head.

Not Dead!

Hey everyone, I’m sure you’re all wondering where I went, well I didn’t go far. I’ve been horribly sick, and starting a masters degree, and well let’s not forget how life likes to take a look at whats going on and give you just enough stress so that you’re willing to rip out your hair but not enough so that you want to jump headfirst into the bog of eternal stench.

Masters studies is proving to be interesting, as is TA-ing (Teachers Assistant for all those not up on the vernacular), it however lost it’s fun last week when I started being struck down by this mutant illness (for which I am on a second round of anti-biotics), thank goodness for reading week, I would otherwise feel horrible for being sick for so long. At least one can still read and write papers (with the help of my trusted laptop nicknamed tenspeed).

So knitting… yes I have been knitting, and spinning, because neither requires strenuous exercise.

I started and finished Norah Gaughan’s Loppem (from book 3 I think) out of my very own handspun, the brown was called Fezzik (after andre the giant’s character in the princess bride) and the yellowy stuff was called sunny side up (since it reminded me of eggs).

I read all the errata as well as suggestions which I was thankful for during the knitting, I went a size down as I read that it fit rather large, and I also did a mixture of k2tog’s in the underarm when doing the edging so the arm holes wouldn’t be insanely huge. The last mod I made was button holes, I made them after two stitches instead of four, a common mod, because I wanted the buttons to be in the same place as they were in the pictures.

I also cast on for the knitting olympics. I took into account that I am sick and that school takes priority so my goal is to finish a hedgehog (you heard me right), I am done the knitting currently but I am not finished. I need to get eyes and a nose, felt, stuff, etc. before I can say I get gold in the knitting olympics. Here’s the progress thusfar (don’t be fooled many an end needs to be woven in yet before felting)

Now as I said previously I got a laptop (and he is adorable, or as adorable as a laptop can be, but permit me my weird inanimate object affinities). As I have an “office” at the university now where I can do my research etc, I also have a place to hook up my laptop. So ten speed comes with me pretty much everywhere, and in the process I decided he needed something to look styleish with, so I knit a cozy out of handspun ramboulette (from lambchop the ram) the colorway was called envy. I still need to put buttons on (we all know how long that can take me).

I’ve also been spinning. Mostly because it’s easy to do when I can’t do much else. I had carded some ram (because there’s a lot of ram around here). When I was carding I decided I wanted to do a color shifting yarn, or a self striping if you will, so I carded it and labeled it into four different sections, I then divided the two sections into two so I could ply them together (I didn’t want to navajo ply as I felt it would become too chunky, and ram has a tendancy to poof when the twist is set anyway).

The result was this:

it goes from pink to purple/blue in a four step transition. I think I’m going to knit Citron from knitty out of it. There’s some significant yardage which is nice. It’ll have to wait for a while, because while I have shown you many things it doesn’t say what’s currently on the needles nor does it say how little time I actually have for such endevours these days.

Okay, enough digressions from me, I am alive, and now I should get back to that paper (get used to hearing that sentiment).