PippiKneeSocks.com

This week I’ve been working the coil/knot yarn chapter.
Some of the techniques, I’ve been taking more of a step out approach.
Not for this one…. I just kept going, and going, and going.

Fiona
10 yards
2 ounces
Wool with copious amounts of recycled silk sari and nylon tinkle (with some mohiar for good measure.)

This was my Fiber Friday for today. (I haven’t participated in eons… Oy, the guilt.)
The topic was Enchantment. (This totally reminded me of Fiona in Shrek.)

With any luck, this will be headed off to the land of Oz, into the hands of a master; later next week.
Cross your fingers…
And shuuuuuuuuush. You didn’t see me here on the interwebs.

First up, Saturday sky! (*get it sky, spy… Okay, that’s the best I could come up with…punning on demand is akin to the sex on demand….)
Hold your hats on, it’s….. it’s…
BLUE!

A smashing day. Currently 46f!

And now for some actual Spy work….
Fireside Footies in the wild
First up, Shelia’s enlightening near death experience.
(*oh and look, I made an unintentional pun in the comments)
& Amanda’s new floor to go with her new footies. (Amanda, If I were you, I’d put something grippy on the bottom.. Apparently, my footies are dangerous!)

Some of my less treacherous handpaints
Strange days from Maia. (I think I need to take a trip out west & steal visit them.)
Terrapin, coincidently from two of my fellow Deadhead Sisthren
Stella’s (scroll down to see those socks in action!!)
And one of Brenda’s (Who by the way gives much food for thought on the kitchener.)

If I’m missing anyone Hollah!

Also spied, is my spinning project for the day.

It’s called Spring kitchen (*only punny to me, I’m sure…)

One more thing, before it slips my mind, yet again…
Big Yarn Mama could use our knitting help!
Her & her students are making these comfort dolls. The goal is 100 by April First! (Pass it on! They have 40 right now!)
Help make a Orphan with AIDS smile a bit, won’t you??

I haven’t posted a Fiber Friday in eons! (BAD! of me to neglect a place I love so much!)
This week the topic was Imagination:

Mine I call ‘Third Eye’

62 yards
1.2 oz
Handspun, hand dyed wool with silk cocoons.
apx DK/Worsted.

My feeling on my imagination fluxes. Sometimes it brings me great visions, that I can execute, other times, I fall on my face with it… Hopefully, as with all I do, I’m having fun with it. (Ahh, hope is strong!)

And, well, it’s Friday… Tyeing up loose ends over here, it seems like the more I tie up, the more I find.

I’m also attempting something I shamefully haven’t done in a while… I’m cooking a huge meal tonight. (Call the heath department!)
We have been existing on Amy’s frozen pizza and those Quorn “chicken” nuggets for far too long. I have to say, it is hard to get inspired to cook for my family, who all have such different tastes! Let them eat cake mac & cheese. (Maude forbid they go and eat anything Green!)

* Apologies, as I could not find one punny thing about this post!

Even tho we hit record low temperatures last night and when I finally got out of bed it was a mere 4f above, I am feeling pretty springy.

I’ve been spinning lots of bright stuffs, freestyle, like.
(clicky to make it bigger)

Scout sent me some yarn from La Lana Wools that she acquired on her recent trip to Taos.
Very inspirational stuff! I’ve never believed in having pet yarn, until now. I’m pretty functional, to a fault. (Hence my deep love of the sock.) But, this yarn shattered some of my paradigms. I love it when something comes along and blows out my brain cells like that.. It is really a gift.
I wonder if the beautiful folx at La Lana would adopt me???

Happy Spring lovelies!

My goodness!

Not so impressive… This is how it has pretty much looked all winter…
(But, what is rather impressive is, the temperature! We have double digits! After a week of solidly below zero 90% of the day. Whoo hooo!)

Note the wind damage to the tree on the left, the top is gone. This week a bunch of our trees took a beating.. Our apple trees were especially hard hit.
It has been almost an eternity since I’ve posted a Saturday Sky. I thank you Sandy, for not ruling your webring with an iron fist of doom. For not kicking me out for either my “extremist politics” or my lack of Saturday Sky shots.

I know I mentioned something about posting some shots of my finally finished Pinwheel blanket. But, I’ve been slacking. For a few reasons… Restless kiddos (5 has been on skool vay-cay for over TWO weeks now & 3, well, my sweet little boy won’t leave my side for longer than two minutes…) And well, the blanket, tho, I love it dearly, really isn’t pretty….. (If you have been reading this here blog since way back when I started it, you will remember the yarn was spun at random from all scrap/waste wool from the 200lb bag of scrap/waste I have sitting here.) So, the color combos may hurt the eyes …. Hey, I was trying to recycle my waste, not really make an heirloom. (And, yes, more and!!) It is choc-fulla glaring knitting errors! Riddled, I would say.) So, perhaps on a day when I’m feeling braver…

Speaking of being brave, I suppose it is time I say something publicly…. (Some of you know & I’ve dropped some hints here and there….)
I’ve been signed to write a fibery book.
That might explain my long absences from the blogosphere as of late. (My excuse from before that, laziness.)
Anyway, it’s a bunch of work, and I’m on a super tight deadline, but I’m up for the challenge.. It’s incredible to imagine I can write about what I love to do…
Speaking of my writing… The new Knitty is up, and with that brings the latest installment of “Get Spun” in Knittyspin.
It’s all about the hemp…. Hemp, hemp, hurrah!

I hope you enjoy it & find it useful in your fibery adventures! (If not, I’m apparently up a creek, no?)

i haven’t fallen off the face of the internets or anything; i’ve been busy and sick. mostly sick; and it seems like forever now, it has far surpassed the point of “gettin’ old”. & it has been so long since i have written here, i think i may have forgotten how. which is terrible. i should utilize this space to try to help me make reading about spinning interesting. after i hit “send” on my latest article, i had some pangs of regret. solidified by making matt read one of the eleventy hard copys; and him only getting past the third paragraph on the first page. so, i’ve failed. (seems to be alot of that going on with me in recent weeks. but, you know that can work to my advantage, by making me try harder. sitll and all, not a great place to be; in the right here, right now. I should try starting by using proper capitalization and punctuation. I’m no ee cummings. Ever notice, My favorite punctuation is the ! followed by the ; what gives? Reading my stuff out loud, and doing edits is very painful.)
So what has been going on in my world? (clearly you didn’t click on your bloglines to be witness to my beating myslef up, did you?) Let’s see; in no particular order…
WORD to

Lime & Violet (for those of you unawares of L&V… hottest new fibery goodness pod cast out there! can we say Chock Full of Fresh & Funny!!! And by hottest, i mean they are getting all kinds of attention from the i tunes peeps and bloggers alike; and we all know that the blogosphere is always right on ze money.)
So many of my lj peeps were talking about it, I tried to listen, but being a podcast virgin; I didn’t know one had to wait.for.the.page.to.load. I also i had no idea they had mentioned me in some fashion until my mama Scout shouted out to me. Thanks Scout! I do have to shamefully admit, that i haven’t given it full listen yet,(just bits and bobs) I’ve been so far removed from this box it isn’t even funny. Even if i was sitting right here, the noise level in this house is decibels above my preference; making it hard to pay attention to something; or anything really. (bedtime you cometh not a moment too soon.) But from what I was able to gather from the little bites i was able to hear, it is up beat and funny! And Lime and Voilet are stand up chicks, so I’m sure it is all good stuff! (sooooooooooo, go give a listen and when you are done, click that little donation button; any podcast that is awesome enough to give me a shout out deserves a bit of fundage to keep their servers up.(Podcasts use up a metric butt ton of bandwith, in case you don’t know.)
So, what else…?
ah, the “I wanna be an elf” hat

Made from a ever so slightly variegated (kettle dyed) green bulky think and thin single, on size 10.5’s. With YO’s every few rows, carried along with a semi-coily number.

Semi coils, interesting, but I’m still not too thrilled with them. I’m far too anal it seems.
I’m not happy with the hat in general, I’m going to frog it. But, I continue to knit on it. (WTF?) I think it has something to do with “the drugs” Velma mentioned…. ‘I do it for the drugs.’
So, I’ll keep knitting on it until it is done, then i’ll frog it.

My second sock is progressing ever so slow.

I may have mentioned this before, but I was suffering from SSS even before the first one was done. I was putting off the toe decreases, and kept putting them off, the poor sock wound up being a bit too long with a boxy toe. Will I undo my kitchener, and frog back an inch? No. Boxy toe will stay with us as an ode to imperfection. An ever present reminder that I need not always be perfect.

I’ve only done a wee bit of spinning.

This yarn, will hopefully become this sweater. I can hardly wait to get the book in my hot little hands, so I can see just how much of this i need to spin. (Well, there is a plethora of reasons why i can’t wait to get it; have you seen the table of contents?!?!?! Lynne Vogel!! among many other super talents, including Crystal Canning & if I’m not mistaken, the book is lovingly dedicated to her memory.
Another reminder that our time here is short, we are only passing thru. People will not remember us for what we do, as much as how we do it & how we are.

Well, I’ve tap-tapped here long enough, perhaps if I blogged more than once a week, I wouldn’t be so painfully long winded.
Live gracefully & stay true to yourself.
♥

and i don’t mean me (although, some very well may disagree! hehe)

the pattern for the booze bag is up over on knitty
i made a few others, from handspun..

it took under 100 yards of x-bulky (roughly 80)
& i modified the pattern a bit.
i have another one that i’m trying to get finished out of regular bulky thick and thin, but, i’ve been so caught up in this, that, and the other, that i put it aside and forgot about it.
when i was working on the pattern to go with the coil article, i saw how i could take this basic idea, of the eyelets, and really run with it. hats, bags, belts… (my first idea was a belt, being for the summer issue and all…. but, i wasn’t able to find notions i was happy with in time…) it will be fun fire side knitting come this winter.

now, go! make one!
♥

i woke up the other day with a really kooky idea. and like with most of my kooky ideas, this one just won’t let go.
the autonomy of the Tibetan people has been threatened since the 50’s when china stomped up in there.
the united states supposedly went to war, in iraq, because of the gross human rights violations sadam committed. and the WMD’s supposedly hidden within that country. (and we give china most favorable trade status??!?! oh! china has no oil! that’s right…)
china is littered with violations of human rights. just check out this google search(or the more specific tibet google search)
speaking of google, i’m sure you are all aware of google, yahoo, msn, et al’s cooperation with the ‘great fire wall of china’)~~ i wish i were a smartie…. (just go to yahoo china or google.cn and type in anything about freedom and tibet, etc.. and see what comes up; or rather what doesn’t. translation made easy by altavista’s babel fish.).
last week wile those of us in the us celebrated our ‘independence’ Tibet suffered yet another blow to it’s.

now, i feel really small and powerless sometimes; as Tibet’s occupation has gone on for a good 20+ years before i was born. my heart, thoughts and compassion are regularly with my fellow humans. spinning in particular is very meditative for me. sometimes the abstract concept of thought following energy is just too intangible for me. sometimes it is good to have some tangible box, or measurement….. hence, kooky idea. since i spin a-LOT of yarn, and yarn is mostly measured in yards or meters, i wondered how many yards it was to Tibet. (mainly the Potala Palace, in Lhasa. ) well, from my little shack in the woods, here in vt, it is 7243 miles (11657 km) , or 12,747,680 yards (11,656,378.6 m)….. that is alot of yardage! (i did the maths and one yard is equal to 0.000568181818 miles) so, there for if i spun 2,000 yards of yarn a week; it would take just a hair over 122.5 years to reach Tibet (i suppose i have a lifetime or two left…) but, if i added dyeing yarn in there, i could get there quicker. if i spun 4,000 yards a week it would only take me 61 &1/4 years. not so unrealistic, considering people take entire lifetime pilgrimages prostrating from remote himalayan villages to Lhasa.

so, as part of ‘project new leaf’ i’m going to set forth on this journey. spinning my way to Tibet.
i need someone to/or show me/or help me make one of those WIP progress trackers for my side bar.(help???)
and i also need someone to show me how to get it in there; i’m still lost in wordpress. i can’t even add rings properly. sometimes i miss the old way. at least with hard coding html, i could see it better from the inside out… one day i added some div tags to an entry and my blog wound up upside-down and sideways. :0

♥