Technically this is not a mishap in my book, but we’re going to categorize it as one for today. Poor DH, he’s been after me for eons to knit this basic raglan top down sweater. Well, I spun the yarn… lots of yarn. A beautiful light gray Corriedale. It’s gorgeous and soft. At least to me it’s super soft. This is from a fine sheep from a super fine establishment that always sells out of fleeces. I was actually thinking of getting another one as it’s been fun to spin.

Well wouldn’t you know it too itchy for him - poor thing. He can’t help his sensitive skin. At least I found out in the collar. We tested cormo on him - too itchy. Say it ain’t so… he’s so, so sensitive on especially in the neck area,  he’s telling me it has to be cashmerino, which is fine, but there is a boat load of wool in the basement destined to be sweaters. Oh well. Right? Cheer me up folks.

About a month ago my little gang came over for a dye day. Since we have a new spinner in the group (Hi Beverly!), I convinced her to dye wool. (We actually have a couple new spinners.)  Well, needless to say sometimes the studio is more like the mad scientists cave and accidents do happen. Categorizing under mishaps is my latest disaster - felted wool out of my dye pot. Whoops.

This is the lemons - felted bit. I could barely pull bits apart.

Well at least it appears to be felted and I probably would’ve tossed it into the oops pile if Beverly didn’t say to me in passing, maybe you can put it on your carder?

So this weekend while I was fixing up another pot for her Slytherin colorway, I decided I would give it a go, what the heck - there is nothing to loose right. Well to my surprise lemons to lemonade… whohoo!

This is the new dye pot full and I did a hot pour method this time - so the colors strike quicker and are more distinct and vibrant.

It’s still not quite dry in this picture, but will be soon.

The specs on this fiber: This is a special blend of 75% Merino 25% mohair that I had specially made at Spinderellas, whom I can whole heartedly recommend as they have done a fabulous job on all my fleeces. I’ve sent them a few lemons over the last few years and they’ve made beautiful lemonade for me.

 Well, it seems that I knit in the round much looser than I purl back and forth. Whoops! Well, I’ve been trying to decide do I re-work the numbers or go down a needle size. While I like this, I think it would look nicer in a bit firmer fabric - so before a visit to the frog pond I’ll be doing a few rows in another size needle to make sure I’m actually getting gauge.

My old friend Mishap stopped by to see me today. Actually he popped by yesterday too, but since I ignored him and proceeded full steam ahead things really got messy. Somehow failure never seems to stop me, as now it will be be a big laugh for a while and then in the end I’ll be right back on it trying to make it right. Anyway… here’s what happened.

I got it in my head I was going to do some felted slippers for my husband for Christmas. Well, it sounded really good in theory. There is an awful lot of wool to use in my basement and wet felting seems very fun. I read through several books and decided that yes, wet felting was the way to go. Ok - so I really wanted to do wet felting around a mold, but that seemed rather difficult, so why not just make a few pieces of flat felt cut them out and sew them together. Again - great in theory. Well, after the initial craziness of the wet felting - nearly threw my arm out in the hardening stage and sending into the washer, which I read online you can do - I failed to get to the part where you’re supposed to wrap it in an old sheet to stablize it. Again whoops…I probably should’ve went back to the drawing board. Did that happen, well no. Not even when I did have to make more than a few pieces of felt to get it right, but hey… again thought nothing of it. After the felt was done - I proceeded to cut out and attempt a slipper. The initial results didn’t look so bad, but then when I had him try it on it was a reverse flip-flop. Hmm… that wouldn’t work. So I tried to take the stitches out and shorten it a bit - but that got even uglier. So now this is what I have and some very lousy cut up felt I made… oh yeah and a decent laugh. However, felt I’m not done with you… back to the drawing board on this one and more practice in wet felting.

So that’s my tale this fine Christmas Eve… I really should stick to knitting and spinning the stuff, but I won’t. I’m hard headed that way. So have a egg nog for me and wish my friend Mishap well on his way home… hopefully I won’t see him again for a long while, but you never know. Stay tuned it’s just one fiber adventure after another around here. (lol)

So I’m definitely on the bandwagon of sharper needles please and have purchased some of the KP’s DPN, where they’ve resided in my GoKnit pouch with my current MIL sock in progress, who knew I would stab myself with them.

I slid into the booth at our local family diner tonight and must’ve did something just right because they popped out of the bag on the side here

and stabbed me here.

One size 3 US right in the finger. Monsieur Purl was worried and said I may have severed a tendon, but really it was just a flesh wound puncture and since I had my tentous shot in the last 3 years and it didn’t bleed badly, we went on with dinner and headed home. It hasn’t stopped my knitting and spinning - at least for now. I’m going to have to find a patch for that bag.

Well, I’m just going to break it to you. I lost the knitting mojo on the Peacock shawl and I frogged it. I was only on chart 3 and I thought “you know what, I’m just trying to hurry this one along, so I can knit the Bee Fields Shawl.” I will have to do it again. Maybe after Bee Fields. By the way, there is a knit-along getting started here for Bee Fields - so go sign up.

Now I’m trying to decide which needles to use. Buy more Addi Lace or move off to the Knitpicks. I was using the Addi Lace on the Peacock and noticed the drag. It was nice for lace, but I had to keep seperating my stitches. I can see the good and bad in that. At SnB last week I had a good look at the Addi set and I don’t know, the join seems pretty smooth to me when I ran my nail over it. I’m tempted, very tempted. I would need 2 more addi lace for at least $35 with tax. Now that is about 1/2 the price of the whole set of the Knit Picks. Hmmm.. more to think on while the kit gets here.

Since I frogged the lace, I started back on the sweater. I have knit part of one sleeve. I’m going to have a lot of joins as I’m attempting to keep the colors matching up to at least the elbow. The sleeve will be bell like still, just not quite as long so that I don’t look frumpy, since I’m so short.

The first of the two Firebirds has risen…

Unfortunately while I’m classifying this under mishaps, I’m not really counting it as real mishap though because I like it and it looks nice. I was about 3 inches away from finishing the cuff when I saw it. If you notice… I can’t seem to read far enough in the directions and just knit the back in plain stockinette instead of continuing the pattern.

Whoops. Fits great though.

So a few months back, you may remember how I was so keen on my PVC Niddy-Nosty that I made a bunch of and pawned off on my pals. Well, either I’m all thumbs at using a nostepinne or it’s the pvc - maybe a wood one would work better? But I keep getting so far and then a tangled mess. Here is my first attempt at plying on my spindle and I got to the end until it fell off the PVC and then got in a tangle mess.

The second attempt was a bit better, but still not perfect.

I don’t mind - I got enough done and will get a couple of small skeins. The whole thing is…I’m in a funk with my spindle spinning. I’m not sure if it’s the fiber - I love this fiber -but maybe it’s not meant to spindle. I don’t know - I’m just feeling a funk. Maybe I need to break something else out. I was spinning some indigo/black - maybe I should get to some dyeing or playing with something else and give it another whirl.

In other news - I’m a happy camper today. Monsieur Purl bought me a Barista espresso maker a couple weeks ago. It was a gift, but a total splurge that I felt insanely guilty over. However, I’m telling you I love making my own vanilla lattes - I make them really delicious. Anyway, today I stopped into Starbucks to pick up some espresso pods - which rock by the way, so easy to use - and what do I see… yes the machine… on sale…for…$200 less. $200 - well that’s huge. HUGE. So I decided I needed to ask for a price adjustment. Well, wouldn’t you know they tell me they don’t do that… so I headed to the store it was bought from with receipt in hand and - as soon as they could figure it out - price adjustment. Because you know that isn’t right - I haven’t even had it 30 days. It’s barely broken in. If it was like say a $50 discount - ok - I can see it - but $200 - it was a 55% price reduction. I asked the girl behind the counter if I should bring it back in and have her refund it and then resell it to me - I guess they figured I meant business. At that point they figured it out and bonus they were stocked on my pods, which the other store was out of - so all around good day.

In the “I hope I’m not the last person to find out” category - did you all know there are places out there that will do your shopping/meal prep and you just pick up, take home, and pop in oven on said night for dinner. We have had a new place called Dinner by Design open up. Well, I went in today to have a look - its in the same shopping center as Starbucks - well it was clean, and very reasonable considering they do all the leg work and prep - so I signed us up for 12 meals of 3 servings each. I was talking to Mother when I found it and she was totally appalled at my laziness. I’m not lazy - I just don’t like to do it. Life is short - suffering is not on my to do list.

Anyway she has no idea - she could’ve given June Cleaver or Donna Reed a run for her money in her heyday of family dinners. There were 3 of us and a full dinner landed on the table every night at 7 pm sharp - complete with afternoon trips to the A&P in full make-up, furs and pearls nonetheless. No I’m not kidding. Well, my reality is sweatshirts, jeans and no make-up with regular conversations that go like this - “hmm… any idea what we should eat tonight?” “I don’t know, you?” and then said conversation ends up with spaghetti out of a jar or a frozen pizza or fish sticks or something. The only plus is I have enough Prego spaghetti jars now to dye 52 flavors of fiber.

Really, I don’t mind to cook. I enjoy whipping up a special meal every now and again. Trying out something new. But everyday…<gag>… on the enjoyment level it’s down the pike - I much prefer to spend my time on a hobby I enjoy. Plus you know I have never been organized enough, in this area at least, to actually plan - having someone else do the planning/thinking works for me. This is just one less thing for me to worry about - maybe I can get back to my exercising, which seems to be suffering with all this work/real life stuff lately.

~ Madame Purl

Then you realize you don’t. I, of course couldn’t wait to get back to my sock tonight. I knitted and knitted - then when I thought I was in the right place I started the toe. Here it is all finished - btw going down the 4 stitches really helped.

I tried it on and noticed it was a bit snug - not a problem really - then I noticed I dropped a stitch when I was doing the decreases for the toe. Again not a problem as I tied it up. But of course the two things started to nag at me - if it’s not just right you know I will not wear it. Plus there is already a lot of time in with the spinning and the knitting - so what did I do - I took my little scissors and cut the toe out - then I put it back on the needles. Of course I was raring to go after this - but I forced myself to put it down and step away until another day.

Anyway - how the foot is this is how I figured the whole sock will be - it will be interesting on the second sock to see if any striping occurs.

~ Madame Purl

While you really shouldn’t try to knit when you have dilated eyes. I dropped a stitch and then two more fell off the needle when I was trying to get them. Whoops. Monsieur Purl and I went to the eye doctor and I got to have the dilation this time. Of course this isi just an easy pattern of to-go socks that I keep in my purse. I thought sure I can knit these - no problem. Ha. Well, they are all fixed and back in my purse for their next adventure.

~ Madame Purl