Kangaroo Thoughts

Psst....

I moved!

Come back soon

Oh, I'm saddened.  I just read that Mission Falls 1824 Cotton is being discontinued.  This is my favorite cotton yarn of all time - I made my cousin's daughter a sweater from Wee Knits from the yarn.  The cousin lives in san Antonio, so it being cotton and not wool was a good thing.   Plus, I've often used 1824 Cotton held together with Lion Brand Homespun (I'm so not going to link to that right now.  You can buy the stuff at Walmart - surely you've seen it, right?) to make winter caps that hold their shape and are nice and warm.  And it's nice to use in place of ribbon when wrapping up simple gifts. 

I think I'm going to behome in a few weeks - I may need to stop the LYS and stock up - assuming they still have some left.  Hmm..maybe I'll be lucky, and no one else likes it as much as I do. 

Um.   Sure....

Coming back

Well, I've not been a very good knitblogger, now, have I?  No, but I have been knitting.  Unfortunatly, it's still the scarves.  I'm coming to realize I may be knitting scarves for a while to come still.  They're not hard, I can make ~$10 off of each one and do it while at my job, meaning I'm sort of getting paid twice.  That makes it hard to say no to someone when they say they want one too.  I'm thinking about starting a knitting class/club through my job, as lots of people have expressed interest in learning how to knit, and I'd love to teach them.  Thing is, I want it to be manageable.  Our public library had a learn to knit workshop, and over 50 people were in attendance.  It was an absolute mess!  If you were able to pick up the instructions the first time, or be lucky enough to be sitting near an already established kitter, then you might of picked up some skills.  Otherwise, it was just a bunch of confusion. 
So, if I do have a knitting class, it'll probably only be open to 5-7 knitters at a time.  My boss at work has said she'll pay me to provide the class for an hour after we close, but I'm wondering how I would handle it if it takes more than and hour, as it likely would (any ideas? anyone?).  I mean, I love to knit and love teaching others about it, but at the same time, I'm broke.  I'm working two jobs (anywhere from 40-55 hours per week) while going through graduate school (full time), and it's no wonder that most of the knitting I do is fluff.  Between late October and Christmas, I made no less than 55 scarfs from Lion's Brand Fun Fur or  other novelty yarns available at Walmart or Hobby Lobby.  I bought yarn to make my sister a sweater, but nothing doing so far.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, as it wasn't quite the right gauge for the project I intended, so this may be my first foray into sweater design if I ever have time to make it!
So.  What I need to do is carve out just a little time for my knitting, and I'll be fine.  But I'm really not the organized type, so who knows how well that will go!

Two posts in one night - go figure

I just noticed that the winter Knitty's up.  I really liked Cathode, Belle Epoque, & Tempting.  I also really liked Wavy - I think I might make it soon for myself.

Pondering a change

I realize it's become pretty stale around here.  I've been knitting scarves (and scarves, and more scarves), and as they're not all that interesting on the 32nd time, I haven't found the need to share the process.   It's dull for me, and likely even more dull for you.  Seriously, though, it's going to be good when I'm finished.  I had a week around Thanksgiving when I didn't get hardly any done at all.  I had a doozy of a cold that kept me out of the loop (actually, it kept me out of most of my loops - I went home from work early three times that week, and my apartment is only just beginning to recover from the messy side effects of my exhaustion and misery). 

I'm thinking I may be consolidating this blog with my other one.  When I first started blogging, I combined my knitting and daily stuff, but felt I needed, for some reason, to be more knit-centric than other-stuff-centric.  And really, that isn't the way my life is.  So, I separated the two, and made a more general blog here.  But, as you might have noticed, I don't do so well with that.  So, back to the old model.  The burning question, then, is which title to keep?  Which design to keep?  And which URL to keep?  Maybe the answer to these all questions is neither.  Maybe I should rethink, re-title, and re-design it all, leaving those lovely little "I've moved" links at the top of both the old blogs.  Interesting, no doubt, to the three of you who actually read this.  Whichever way I go, however, I should probably wait until I've finished all my commissioned scarves and my school work before I undertake a change with my blogs, as it will undoubtedly take a good chunk of time to complete any overhaul.  This is precisely why I'll probably do it sometime within the next week.

Scarfing it up

Huh.  Typepad is doing something new.  The font that you've chosen for your blog is not the one that appears in your "Compose a New Post" window as you type.  Pretty neat, actually.

Still nothing new to report.  I'm still focusing on the scarves.  The good thing is that I usually am able to work on them the entire time I'm at work, knitting away while I talk to the ladies and make sure they're using the machines correctly.  On the other had, that means that people keep seeing them and wanting them.  Hmm...I suppose theis may turn out to be too much of a good thing. 

In other (unrelated) news, I met a boy.  And I'm nervous and excited and giddy and really scared.  Read all about on my other blog.

Drowning in Novelty

Yup. I'm totally sucking it up lately. I haven't been posting at all. Of course, I have been knitting. Oh yes. I work at Curves, and I made a few fluffy eyelash scarves for my boss to used in a drawing. Well, the scarves sat on the front table for a week or so, and now I have orders for almost 30 scarves! One of the ladies saw them and asked if I sold them. I was sort of caught off gaurd, but I said sure. She asked how much, and I said $20, doubting she would pay that much. Instead, she said okay right away and asked for one in black. After that, it just kept picking up speed - it really sort of suprised me. So thanks to my little scarf business, I'm absolutely drowning in novelty yarn. I'm keeping it all in a storage ottoman that I picked up at Walmart a couple weeks ago.  The first picture is layer one. The next is layer two. There's still more under all of that - I just didn't want to dig out all the yarn to take more pictures. I inventoried all of it yesterday, and I'm sitting on over $220 worth of novelty yarn. Yikes!
I haven't even had the time to work on anythign else at all lately. My sister's Grecian Plait is languishing on the shelf, as is my friend's wedding afghan. I should work on them, too, but I'msort of feeling tied to the scarves. Oh well, they go pretty quickly, and so far, the novelty of the novelty yarn hasn't worn too thin. We'll see if that's still the case in a week!

The cold is coming

It's almost here, and I don't really care for it at all. It's funny, though, because you would think I would love cooler weather. I'm a knitter after all - don't I love wearing sweaters that I've made? Well, sure. But I hate being cold. It's really no fun.

Right now, it's okay. I can just wear a sweater and a jacket and I'm fine on the walk to school, and not too hot once I get there. But the real cold is coming - the king for which I'll have to dig out the big coat. Grr.

I need to find a yarn I like enough to knit a scarf for me. The cold is coming, after all (see rant above), but I don't have a scarf I like. All the scarfs I knit are usually for others. Maybe after I lose some more weight (I'm almost at 10 lbs lost - I'm going to get my hair dyed at a salon [when I've done it in the past, I've always just bought a box at walmart and done it at home] as my reward for that) I'll splurge on some fancy expensive yarn to wear around my neck.

Plaiting fun

So I'm finally getting to work on a sweater again. I ordered a bunch of Austermann Caprice from elann to make Grecian Plait for my middle sister. She asked for it a while back, and now I found a yarn that would would work (and that I could afford!) I was going to take a picture of my progress so far, but then I realized the batteries in my camera were dead. Grr. So, no picture. Sorry. I'm only 22 rows in so far anyway, so it wouldn't have been too exciting anyway.

I'm also making a bunch of fluffer-nutter scarves for work. My boss is doing something involving drawing prizes and breast cancer awareness, and she was trying to think of some more things for prizes, so I offered to make some. They're all pink, but not all the same. I just went to walmart and got three different brands in three different shades of pink. So, they'll all honor breast cancer awareness, but they won't be all alike. Plus, little projects like that mean FOs! Yay! One is already finished, the second is half done (I ran out of yarn and had to stop until I got more), and the third one is well on it's way to being half finished, too (just like the second). It isn't rocket science, but the people who get them will probably love them, and it's for a good cause, so I guess it's all right. I'm beginning to realize I like projects that are more rocket science. It's sort of a problem. I want to try fair isle, but I can't really afford the yarn to do a whole sweater. I'm thinking I might try a pillow, but I dunno. Or maybe I'll make another cabled sweater. I think my dad would like one...

Thinking about a new project

I've done a little knitting lately, but not a lot. I'm not apologizing, since I've needed to focus my attention elsewhere. But I do miss it. I'm almost caught up with my homework, though, so I may soon have the time to start knitting more regularly. All I've really got on the needles right now is the afghan and some washclothes, though, and I'm itching to cast on for a sweater. I'm still sort of planning to make the sweaters for my former cooperating teacher's sons, but I'm still not sure on their sizes. So, I might look into (finally) starting Grecian Plait for my middle sister. I told her I'd make it for her about a year ago, so this might be a good time to actually get around to it. Before I commit to buying all the yarn, though, I kind of want to swatch with both Berroco Mohair Classic and Classic Elite's La Gran, as I've read that the two are more or less interchangable. So, does anyone have an extra ball or two of one of these that I could buy?