Contest!

May 12, 2006 Chris 94 Comments

I can’t believe I missed the obvious caption yesterday about Chaos having his foot in his mouth (which he did)… Obviously, it’s been a long week and my captioning brain is not up to snuff. And, since I won another contest yesterday (a drawing for a $15 gift card to a LYS from everyone who sent cage liners or squares to Chris of Chris Knits for her local Humane Society) (ok, ok, technically Chaos won, but he doesn’t get out much), I’m feeling the urge to spread a little contest fun myself.

The prize will be a 480-yard ball of Brooklyn Handspun superwash sock yarn, color Carnival. This colorway will cover all of your Project Spectrum knitting needs up until August (neutrals). (Tail not not included.) If a non-knitter wins, I’ll send that person something other than yarn and select a second winner.

The contest is to leave a comment with a caption for the picture below. Caption comments made before 6 pm Central Daylight Time on Monday, May 22 (my six-month blogiversary!), will be numbered and I’ll use a random number generator to pick a caption. Please note that the mouse in the picture isn’t SRM, but is the wonderful catnip mouse that Elizagrrl knit for Chaos.Have fun! Be creative!

Festing

Shepherd’s Harvest anyone?

May 11, 2006 Chris 36 Comments

Thanks for all the kind words about the baby bolero!

Although it’s nowhere near the scale of MDS&W or any of the big fiber festivals, this weekend we’re having our own area fiber festival, Shepherd’s Harvest (and Llama Magic). I’m going Saturday with Charlene and possibly Jeanne. I know Kerry’s going to be out there Saturday, Renee on Sunday, and Kate’s not sure when yet. Anyone else?!

I’m taking one class on Saturday morning, Dyeing Patterned Sock Yarn (there are still openings as of 7:30 am, May 11). I was mightily tempted by Beginning Needle Felting (you make a little felted copy of your pet – how cute would a tiny felted Chaos be?!), but it’s Sunday afternoon and I have family obligations. Other fun things include a rabbit agility demonstration, herding demonstrations, sheep to shawl competition (5 hours to go from fiber on the hoof to finished product), and a bunny to bonnet demonstration.

If anyone’s interested in getting together to chat and knit or spin, there’s a Spin In in Building B. I’ll be lurking around the Spin In area by 1:15 pm, knitting on either my Black Lagoon lace socks or my funkadelic Meilenweit Cotton socks (not yet featured here). I’ll have my sturdy grey Mountainsmith zip-top tote with me.

Hope to see you there!

“Mwmph.”

Knitting, Those Cats

Bolero and SNLGM

May 10, 2006 Chris 53 Comments

So Monday night at 11 pm, I admitted I wasn’t going to finish the baby bolero that night.

“You just would not believe how exhausted I am from helping with that bolero!”

The baby was born yesterday, so I raced home after work and finished my last two rounds of edging, wove in ends, did the fastest steam block ever, and took the bolero over to the hospital (where it was well received). Whew!

Baby Bolero from One Skein, using less than a single skein of Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton, color Sand. I made the following modifications: three-needle bind off for the shoulders, picking up and knitting the sleeves instead of knitting them flat, and only picking up 34 stitches on each of the front edges. I would definitely knit this again – it’s pretty speedy, economical, and damned cute. Plus the Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton is nice stuff and didn’t make my wrists ache at all.

A little Project Spectrum sparkly mouse action – Sparkly Neon Lime Green Mouse (SNLGM) has been hanging about recently, trying to cover for SRM.

“Smells like… neon lime green.”

“Must destroy evil SNLGM!!”

“Mmmmmm…”

Dyeing

Frazzled

May 9, 2006 Chris 31 Comments

Whew! Things just seem to have gotten a little crazy over the past week or so. Work is busy, busy, busy. I’m waaaaaaaay behind on bloglines (if you’ve been wondering what happened to me there). And some very dear friends’ baby is due imminently. I had a picture of the baby bolero I’m knitting (note that I’m still knitting it and am not done with it), but the picture vanished into the internets somewhere. Grrr.

At least I managed to take a picture of one of the skeins of (hopefully self-striping) yarn I dyed! This was a test skein, from some random fingering weight yarn I had around, and isn’t enough for a pair of adult socks. I then dyed a skein of Knitpicks with these colors, but I didn’t get the purple as dark as I wanted. Anyway, this skein was dyed with Jacquard Silk Dye, which also works on wool and other animal fibers. These are liquid dyes and are definitely not the most economical way to dye. I just happened to disover a bottle of purple and a bottle of black in my cupboard and decided to see what would happen.

Check out Jeanne’s blog entry about some of our warping board adventures and a rubber chicken.

“Wait, did you hear that? Do you think it’s SRM, crying to be found??”

Dyeing, Project Spectrum, Randonymity

This and that

May 8, 2006 Chris 35 Comments

Wow, last week must’ve been my lucky week. I won a contest at Kristi’s and received one of her very cool sock patterns and I won a contest at the Crafty Modster’s and will be receiving a copy of her Project Spectrum May mix cd. Fun!

Hmm, looks like Kelly’s cat Sockies doesn’t approve of Chaos’ antics… Check out the gorgeous green yarn Kelly dyed!

Jeanne and I dyed yarn yesterday. It’s not quite photo ready, so I’ll just show you what my hand looked like after I forgot to put my gloves back on before rinsing the dyed yarn – please note that, due to the flash, you’re not getting the full effect. My hand was dark, dark grey.

“Mom? Why is your hand blocking my photo op?”

I drove past this very Project Spectrum building on the West Bank (the area around the part of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus that’s on the west bank of the Mississippi). I can’t remember for sure, but I might’ve worked doing telephone fundraising for nonprofits out of the upper story of that building back in 1990 – trust me, it wasn’t that color 16 years ago, or I would remember!

Chaos also had a busy weekend, following the sunspot around the living room.

“…………………………………………..”

Those Cats

Another Phantom Paw…

May 6, 2006 Chris 31 Comments

Trek has been making these cute little sock bags and I asked her to make me one that was black and purple. Behold – the Stumbling Over Chaos bag!

Notice the cute mini needle wrap for carrying a needle when you don’t want to carry a Chibi. And the card? Inside it says “The card because Chaos is the 1st place knitblogger cat.” Awww…. Thanks, Trek! I love the paw print fabric! You can see the purple lining over at Trek’s blog, because when I tried to get a picture of the lining, I got another Phantom Paw photo instead.

“SRM? Yoo hoo – are you in there, SRM?”

“Wow. No SRM, but the mysteries of the universe revealed!”

I forgot I had ordered a custom-dyed skein of Brooklyn Handspun Black Cherry sock yarn, but was very happy to be reminded!

“SRM? Are you up here?”

Randonymity, Those Cats

The Phantom Paw and Other Tails

May 5, 2006 Chris 47 Comments

For the curious, my tattoo is on the back of my upper left arm. I had a mole biopsy there maybe seven years ago and it left a scar that bothered me, so I camouflaged it with the tattoo. (And my dermatologist even thought that was a fine way to deal with the scar!) Until last November, the tattoo was just the top half, which means “Good luck.” And yes, it was a bit difficult to photograph! It’s actually backwards (which amusingly didn’t occur to me until just now, or I could’ve corrected it!), because I ended up taking the picture in one of the plentiful mirrors around here.

Now, on to the Phantom Paw:

For all the Minnesota knitters who just took a collective gasp, trying to figure out how they missed the Yarn Harlot coming to town, don’t worry. Ana picked this up for me when the Yarn Harlot was in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago – thanks, Ana!!

Check out my new tape measure:

front

back

Yeah, that paw is definitely persistent, isn’t it?!I found some gluten-free beer while I was in Wisconsin! Of course, upon trying it, I discovered that beer tastes sort of weird if you haven’t had one for over ten years. Chaos doesn’t think too much of beer. When I tossed a bottle cap on the floor for Chaos to play with, he tried to bury it.

“I definitely don’t approve of beer. But that stuff with those nifty corks, that’s ok.”

This is what Chaos’ water looked like last night when I got home from work.

No, I agree, I don’t think that mouse is colorfast. Wouldn’t this have been a great March Project Spectrum picture?!

Alongs

I is for…

May 4, 2006 Chris 27 Comments

Indelible.

happiness

Dyeing, Festing, Those Cats

Neenah redux

May 4, 2006 Chris 38 Comments

At last! 🙂

My first class was Rainbow Dyeing in the Microwave with Merike Saarniit. We learned how to do one shot dyeing with acid dyes. This yarn

became a bit more colorful, with the help of Country Classic colors Spring Violet and Raven.*

I was sufficiently inspired that I went down to the vendor room and picked up some yarn for Jeanne and I to try acid dyeing. After we get dyes someday, of course.

My second class was Exotic Stitches for More than One Color with Anna Zilboorg. I used some variegated purple and black to create this multi-stitch pattern swatch:

Detected any color theme here yet?! I also took Twisted Traveling Stitches with Anna Zilboorg, but I don’t have any pictures from it. I had a migraine and my stitches, while twisted, went on very short and somewhat erratic journeys…

On Friday night, I was sitting and knitting in the hospitality room at the hotel and someone called out, “Is Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos here?” Um, maybe… And that’s how I met Blogless Carla, pictured here with the amazing door prize she won. Those are five Alice Starmore books, kids… Note the look of shock on her face.

I met Blogless Jodee…

and Blogless Lydia, all three of whom will be at the Taos Wool Festival this fall, so hopefully we’ll meet up again there. Carla and Jodee are already rather (in)famous.

I also met knitblogger Amy Lu of Some Call Them Sticks and String… I Call Them Sanity – check out her nifty necklace!

I took advantage of our weekend-long discount at Yarns By Design to purchase a few things… (I know, you are so not surprised.) From the left, two skeins of Blue Sky Organic Cotton (one destined to be the baby bolero from One Skein), a hank of Helen’s Lace in Black Purl, Opal Zebra, and Trekking 108 (inspired by Cyn’s gorgeous socks).

*I dyed two other mini-skeins with Evergreen (plus a dash of Buttercup) and Raven. However, I don’t have very good pictures of them… You might remember that Chaos is fascinated with mini skeins.