I did manage to get my skein of Apothefaery Fibers suri alpaca in Snowdrift skeined up with no major issues. I need to pay homage to the knitting gods for giving me good luck with floofy yarn….before I am struck down with tangled yarn.
I have also officially ran out of of the last the original skein of suri alpaca and now just added the snowdrift skein. The plus side of floofy yarn is that I can spit splice EXTREMELY easily! You really can see the first two of the three color blocks. I am intrigued to see how the third lines out.
My next decision point is to decide how slouchy to make this hat? I have a recipient in mind and she hard gorgeous natural big beautiful hair so I need to noodle through how to best fit for that. In the meantime…..lots of glorious round and round stockinette to soothe my trouble away.
I have been listening to the Nomad Yarns podcast for a couple of years now. It is a married couple who ran a yarn shop turned into yarn truck as well as dye independent label yarn. They have small children and pretty much speak my life. In this time of cancelled events and social distancing they advertised mystery boxes. You pick your price level and give them some suggestions of colors, weights of yarn, etc and they put together a surprise.
You guys….this was so worth it! It was a happy mail day indeed. My box was bursting at the seams and full of goodies!
I received two skeins of West Yorkshire Spinners Aire Valley DK in a nice blue, a skein of Nomad Yarn Twisted Branch sock yarn, a custom needle gauge, two mini skeins of Nomad Yarns Pallete, a set of Carbonyz Size 2 double pointed needles, a set of Knitters Pride stitch markers, and some waste yarn.
I loved everything in my box and it was neat to not know what I was getting. I have zero idea what to do with any of this and my stash is already at SABLE but this was a good investment. I supported a small business and I got to have the joy of new to me goodies.
Today I will regale you with my yard work adventures from last weekend. We have a large landscaping bed off the south side of our house. It’s out of sight and out of mind and long neglected. Well, bring on a global pandemic and I decided I needed to be outside and away from kids! The area looked like this to start.
I raked, scooped, shoveled and pulled weeds for a solid three hours. The bed at one point had a wooden mulch layer but I scooped that out as well, no thank you termites! I managed to get down to a pretty nice even dirt layer. I did use a quick spray of weed and grass killer to discourage new growth. My next plan is to call a local quarry and get some rock delivered. I want nay NEED low maintenance ground cover. I do plan to roll out and stake down some weed barrier before the rocks.
I could barely move my arms and legs the next day (or two) because I moved a metric poop ton of debris! I filled two trash bins and five large yard bags with junk. I probably should have left the sanitation workers a tip…
Anyone else out there sprucing up their yarns or gardens in this time of #stayhome?
Jellybean looked at me this week and said “we should make cookies”. And I said why not! So here is more gratuitous quarantine baking content.
We made pretty standard cookies except for Jellybean insisted on adding the whole bag of chocolate chips. He then put fork marks in them like peanut butter cookies because why not? He also squished the completely flat. So we have very nice and crisp cookies.
They lasted all of 3 days. But to be fair I only baked 1/2 the dough and froze the other half or another baking day. I hope future Rachelle enjoys the work of past Rachelle, lol.
I worked the toe up gusset heel ala Wendy D Johnson and I’m started up the leg. I haven’t decided what kind length of socks these want to grow up to be. I really do need more shorties in my drawer but this is really nice auto pilot knitting. I may not be ready to start the toe of the second sock….
I think I will sleep on it for a couple of days. Happy Knitting!!
I have been steadily cranking on my Fluffy Sockhead Hat made my Apothefaery Fibers and I very quickly realized I was going to run out of suri alpaca. I had some funds laying around that I had earmarked for the (cancelled) Knitting in the Heartland Event. So I decided to get more suri alpaca and support an indie dyer at the same time.
I purchased two skeins of Snowdrift (white) and two skeins of Sterling Silver (grey) thinking that this will be nice solid colors to have in my stash to work up with the perfect future project, no matter the other yarn color. In the meantime I am going to skein up one of the snowdrift skeins and add to my aforementioned Fluffy Sockhead hat. It will be lighter than the original suri alpaca skein but will end up adding a third color block section to the hat.
I’m just going to consider it an unintentional design feature! Happy Knitting!!
In these times of change and only the necessities I’ve been challenged to make due with what I have around the house. Last work week was brutal in ways I cannot even explain. I’ve been working from home for a month and I think I think I’ve almost doubled the number of hours I put in a week and i’m farther behind than I’ve ever been. But I digress.
On Friday evening, I realized we had run out out of wine. I’ll pause for the gasps of horror. But I was nonetheless deterred. I googled recipes that would use up the odds and end of our very dusty liquor cabinet (leftover from the pre-Jellybean and PB days where we would have actual proper parties with stout beverages).
I had some standard vodka and some creme de cacao so my first lesson was a chocolate martini. I dusted off my cocktail shaker and drizzled some hershey’s in a frosted class….a promptly poured a double after the kids went to bed. It was delicious and just the trick to take the edge off a long week.
On Saturday night the hubby got in on the action. He told me he was going to surprise me and came downstairs with this lovely concoction! It was a pour man’s White Russian or as he called it a “salted caramel white russian”. Please excuse the lack of proper glasswear…we have two kids and there is a global pandemic, any glass will do in my book!
This was one was ice cubes with one part vodka and two parts salted caramel Kahlua all topped off with vanilla almond milk. (We save the cows milk for the kids since we aren’t always sure the store will be stocked). And you guys….this was AMAZING! It was like a cold salted caramel coffee. I will TOTALLY do this one again.
And the best part was we didn’t have to leave our house and we are using up bits and bobs that hopefully aren’t expired and will kill us. Either way, salud!!
You guys, I have a dying FO this week! The weather turned a little nicer so I sneaked outside on a break from work and took photos of our Easter dying attempt.
The tie dye turned out very nicely! It was very muted compared to the yarn but I’m guessing that is the difference between a plant fiber and an animal fiber. I have zero idea of what we will do with this fabric as it literally just tiny remnants. But Jellybean was really pleased with this “art” and that might just be enough for me!
I think the yarn made a very lovely variegated skein! As predicted we have white/undyed spots for sure. But it’s not a bad first attempt. I have not yet re-washed this skein to see if I am going to have any dye loss. I will for sure do that before working this up into a project. I 1000% percent do not trust my dyeing skills…lol.
I think this looks really nice skeined up even! This skein was a partial leftover so its around maybe 50-60 grams? I’m not sure what I would even want to do with this once I’m safe the dye won’t run on me. But all the value of spending time with Jellybean and forgetting about the state of the world for an afternoon was well worth it. Even if I never knit this!
Caution….food porn ahead!! I had a particularly heinous and stressful day ahead of me while simultaneously having leftover homemade pizza dough in the fridge…
You guys, I made Parmesan garlic and egg breakfast pizzas. And ooooohh my did they taste amazing and everyone of the 600 calories!
I didn’t follow any recipe and just scrounged ingredient from my fridge. I made four mini pizza crusts and seasoned them with butter and garlic salt. I then slathered on some Parmesan garlic pasta sauce and topped that with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. And to top it all off I cracked a large egg on each pizza and put in a 400 degree oven. They took about 12-13 in to get the eggs cooked but yet still soft.
Two of the eggs slid because my pan was not level. So lessons for next time! I think I might make the crust have ridges or perhaps use my better stainless steel pizza pan to keep things tidy. Never mind how they look….they looked delicious and we devoured them! this one is for sure will do again!!
Thanks to many (read: MANY) conference calls and video meetings I have made pretty good progress on my Antagonist Socks! The toe increases are done and the foot is one inch shy of starting the heel.
I’m really enjoying the yarn! There are flecks and pops of mossy green, burnt orange and a some other colors I can’t quite describe that keep me interested. The finished fabric is not merino soft but feels like imagined the BFL content would turn out. It is still soft but feels firm like it won’t pill or wear as easily.
I’m pretty sure I am going to do a toe up gusset heel by Wendy D Johnson for these socks. I have that almost memorized and it fits my foot quite nicely. My next hurdle will be to see if I can turn the heel while knitting out of video call frame….
