Unicorn Fiber Wash Power Scour.  Love this product.  I got a free sample kit from them and did two small batches of my lovely alpaca.  It worked so well that I immediately bought more Wash!  It works so well, that I am left with white fluffy clouds of alpaca fiber.

So my big bottles arrived on Friday and since then, I’ve been going about the weekend doing regular weekend stuff… inbetween washing fiber.  They go through about three washes and sit in them for 20 minutes each.  Then I spin it in a salad spinner (squeezing the water out would cause it to felt) and then let it dry.  And once it is fully dry I have beautiful fiber ready to be dyed or carded and spun.

I’m planning on dyeing some fiber, but I still need a pot.  My dad gave me one, but it aluminum and you want to use stainless steel or enamel  coated, because aluminum can react with the dye and do funny things.  So I’m on the hunt for an inexpensive pot, since once I use it for dyeing, it should never be used for food.  I have all the other tools, I’m just missing the pot.

Thank you Terry, for my beautiful Alpaca fiber, I’m now getting it into a place where I can do something with it!

Pie day is March 14.  (3.14, get it?)  My roommates Readerle and Salsa throw an annual party to celebrate this occasion.  Everyone is invited to bring pie and we have fun activities like, see who can name the most digits in pi (Kyle won that one).  They started having this party while we have been living with them.  It’s the 3rd annual and the funny thing?  It’s my first time attending.

It was a GORGEOUS day out, so many skirts came out of closets.

And now I will leave you with some food porn.  mmmm… delicious Pie.  Thanks to everyone who brought their delicious culinary masterpieces.

This is the last straw

A snag.  A snag in my lovely sweater.  The first straw was the fact that I was a row short on my increases and  so my sleeves would be a little off center.  The second and third straws were the stitches I dropped and the small holes in the sweater that they created.  Through all these, I have soldiered on, thought, “meh, it will be fine once it’s all finished.”  But now one of the kitties has decided to investigate what I was working on while I was not around and now there is a snag for which I cannot fix.

So what, you ask, do you do when the final straw has been plucked?  That is simple, you ribbit it all out and start over.  Normally this doesn’t bother me, but this one will hurt a little as it’s not a simple hat or scarf, but a sweater in lace weight yarn.  I may cry a little.  Oh well, this should give Julian a chance to catch up.  Wish me luck with attempt number two!

Okay, so my intent was to work this sweater with my friend Julian, while watching Jane Austen films.  Well, I finished the sweater.  I just, when I get going on a project knit, I want to work it.  and I don’t do that really casually.

So I have finished my sweater and Jules is still working on her swatch.  That’s okay because today I picked up yarn for making the same sweater as her, which is in a lace weight, so hopefully that will slow me down.

Here is the finished sweater:

I think it is smaller than the photo in the magazine because I was using a different yarn, but my gauge might be tight.  But I am a brat and refuse to swatch and just want to start knitting!  But it still works.  Check it out, here is me, modeling my newest creation (my second sweater, ever):

So that is my new cuteness.  Now, on to the next one!

Well, this year instead of heading down to Madison or Chicago for Christmas, Kyle and I decided to strike out on our own and spent the weekend in a beautiful cabin on Lake Superior.  This was what we had out our front window.

How Gorgeous is that?  It was worth it just for sitting on the couch and seeing this view, with the waves rolling in and out.

We took walks, watched Christmas movies, I knitted, and we had fun using the little kitchen to make yummy food.  We brought up all our supplies, and since I was feeling under the weather, Kyle took the lead on most of the cooking.  Here is a totally sexy picture of my husband, preparing delicious steak for dinner while I sit on my rump and knit.  <sigh> it was really nice.

I will not bore you with too many more pictures, but they should all be uploaded to my flickr, which you are welcome to check out if so interested.  But here is a bit more of the lovely scenery.

So that is a little of our Christmas getaway.  I hope that you as lovely a Christmas, and a really happy New Year.

Well everyone, we have finally done it.  After years of lusting after the beautiful large flat screen, flat panel TVs in the store, we finally brought one home with us.  It is a big beautiful 46″ 1080p 120HZ TV and we are very happy to have it be the newest member of our family.  Okay, I know to many people the fact that a TV makes me so happy and how much time I spend watching it is kind of awful.  But the truth is I do watch a lot of TV and Movies and I now have a lovely TV on which to do it.

I will now sew a button on my sweater (which yes I did finish) while enjoying my brand new shiny toy

So Interweave Press who prints and makes some fantastic knitting, spinning, crafting, etc. literature came out with this fantastic special edition magazine called “Jane Austen Knits”  It is filled with 35 different projects that are all inspired by Jane Austen, her books, and the Regency era.

I saw it coming and couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy, and no sooner did I have it in hand than I knew I needed to create at least one if not several things.  Now for those who know me, I am the type of knitter who has been knitting for over a decade and still does not know how to cable.  It was only recently that I learned to make socks and that is because I found the “2 at a time, toe up socks” book.  (and I have still only used one pattern out of the book).  I look at things in pattern books and while I find them beautiful, I tend to stick to simpler projects.  It’s just the way I am.  I don’t often want to think to hard about knitting, I just want something to be working on in the car on a road trip, or while watching tv in the evening. So for me to pick up a pattern look at it and go, “I WANT to make that!”  can be a big deal.

But as is accustomed, I don’t like to go alone into my madness.  I like company when I start to go over board on things.  So my friend Jules was whipped into a frenzy along with me, and we each picked a sweater to attempt.  I have chosen the Woodhouse Spencer.  I adore both the novel “Emma” (having played her once up on a time), and Spencer Jacket style.  

I have chosen to use a wool tweed in a lovely purple color, from Rowan.  I am working the top part of the garment now, you can see my progress, and this is all before watching a single Austen inspired movie.

My dear friend Jules is attempting the Barton Cottage Shrug which seems to be quite popular on ravelry knit group.   While I find this encouraging and depending on how Jules does with her sweater I may need to make one for myself, it is however made with a lace weight yarn which will take her FOREVER.  But it is a lovely sweater…

Now the great question, knit some more, or go bake cookies… oh decisions, decisions!  Thanks to Interweave and all the talented knitters for this great magazine with such lovely patterns.

Thanks to those of you who commented on my last post.  Christmas in a cabin on the north shore is looking really lovely.

So today  I went out with my dear friend Rachael, we had a very tasty lunch, did a little shopping at the mall with some coupons we had, and then made our way to the Eisenhower Community Center in Hopkins for the 3rd annual Upper Midwest Alpacas Fall Fiber Festival.  We got there for the last hour, which was just enough time to make the rounds.  I entered the door prize and won!  I got a $20 gift certificate to spend at the festival.  I went to grab it and the woman said, “You have 15min to spend $20″.  Well, it really isn’t hard at these things to spend that, very quickly.  So I bought myself a new pair of Alpaca socks:

There were some great vendors there and I bought some dye and fiber, so I think soon I will make my first foray into dyeing fiber  Rachael got some lovely lavender satchels from the same vendor I bought the dye from.  O so many pretty fibers and yarns and other things I wish I could have brought home with me.

It was a very successful outing.  I will definitely be back next year, quite possibly a little earlier in the day!

Hello everyone out there in reader land!  (Okay the handful of you who actually pay attention when I post every month or so)  Let’s get your opinion!

With the holidays coming up lots of discussions were had.  Are we going to a Halloween party this year ?  Where are we having Thanksgiving?  and of course Christmas.

This year, since my sister is spending Thanksgiving in Madison, they will be in Texas for Christmas.  And since my sister will be gone, my older brother might be in Florida with his in-laws and my dad and little brother it sounds like will be in California.  Kyle’s sister is heading to Duluth with her family, so I’m guessing we will do a weekend before Christmas with them and my mother-in-law.

So we could go down to Chicago to visit with Kyle’s extended family for Christmas, OR we had the sudden thought, we could just go away together.  Just the two of us. Somewhere.  Be romantic and cute.  We could drive up to the north shore and hole up in a cabin at a lodge somewhere (this has the appeal of not requiring air travel).

But just for funsies, where do YOU think we should go?  Pretending of course that there is no budget and we have our own private jet that will allow us to avoid holiday travel rush.  Some place warm with a beach?  Or the perfect New England snow white christmas complete with fireplace and horse drawn sleigh?

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!