Success on both!

I do not have the patience for this

I am sitting here waiting and waiting and waiting for 2 very exciting things.  I do not know what to do with myself in the meantime.  

1) My yarn is coming.  For 3 days the tracking information has said it is at the sorting facility in massachusetts.  Then suddenly, this morning, it was out for delivery in Chapel Hill.  My deliveries usually come by now, and its not here yet.  I want to touch my new yarn!  

2)  My hair dye is developing.  For the past year and a half I have been in law school and therefore not allowed to have a personality.  Now I don't have anyone overly uptight to impress until I go back to school in May, so YAY I get to have flaming red hair again!  But um...I haven't dyed my hair a bright color (and therefore used anything higher than 20 volume developer) in a year and a half.  I forgot how stinky and itchy it is...and how impatient I am to see what color my hair ends up.  15 more minutes until I can rinse. 

The stash is growing...

Best Boyfriend Ever ordered me a skein of every color of my favorite yarn EVER, Universal Yarns Classic Shades.  This stuff is sooo soft and comes in the most gorgeous colorways.  I can’t wait to see all 16 of these colors in person, I bet the website doesn’t do them justice :)  Its been almost a year since I’ve knit with this stuff so once I’ve started a project with my new order I’ll post a more detailed review and pictures. 

I finally took pictures of my yarn!

My Knitpicks Palette for colorwork

My FAVORITE color changing yarn

Acrylic saved for specific projects

Single Skeins (mostly for chaos afghans)

Single Skeins by color

My nicest luxury yarns

My acrylic I'm not sure what I'm going to do with

Ok I need goals...

…or I am never going to get all my projects finished.

Here we go.

Dec 9 - Finish the last scarf for family friend and weave in ends on other 2 scarves and 3 hats

Dec 10- organize and photograph yarn stash

  - weave in ends, wash, and  block older sister’s scarf

Dec 11- buy googly eyes and put them on soot sprites

  - start mom’s hat

Dec 12 - Finish mom’s hat

Dec 13 - Start mom’s scarf

Dec 14 -finish and block mom’s scarf. 

Dec 15-18 - complete little sister’s xmas present that shall not be named in case she reads this

Dec 19-20 - make boyfriend’s xmas present that shall not be named in case he reads this

Dec 20-31-Make Link Afghan #3

New year:  Knitting FREEDOM 

Just got an order from someone in Australia!

My little soot sprites get to go somewhere I've never been!

Oh god can't stop knitting

So…business is picking up.  My etsy shop has sold $548 of knitted/crocheted stuff in the past 2 weeks.  This is obviously really ridiculously  exciting but its starting to become anxiety inducing.  For one thing, two of my very favorite items sold and I miss them *cries on the way to the post office*.  They were my babies!  I made them with string and pointy sticks!  Second of all, I don’t know how to handle customers who want custom orders but then don’t stay in good contact with me.  I think I just need to not knit anything for anyone until I’ve been paid.  Third, oh dear lord I have SO MUCH KNITTING to do.  Like…a family friend ordered 3 hat/scarf sets to give out as Christmas presents.  They’re cabled so thats another $150 right there…but I’m getting really tired of knitting the same pattern over and over again.  I finished the first set last night so I’m starting on my second hat today.  I intend to finish it today as well.  I want to get all 3 sets in the mail on Thursday so she has time to ship them to the people she’s giving them to.  Then I have to knit my mom, little sister, and boyfriend’s Christmas presents.  Then I have another Link Afghan that was just ordered and needs to be delivered by 1/15.  Any bets on how long it’ll be before Carpal Tunnel sets in?  

Here we go!

I've got my black friday/cyber monday sale off to an early start!  Check out my shop for details :)

Yarn Review: Kaleidoscope by Elegant Yarns

Kaleidoscope was part of my recent gigantic multi-colored yarn order.  I chose it because its 100% wool and I knew I wanted to make a felted bag out of mitred squares.  Its also pretty affordable at $7.20 for a 100 gram skein (only $5.40 after factoring in the WEBS discount due to my order being over a total of $120).  I liked this yarn but I’m not in love.  One of the reviews on WEBS says the purchaser is having trouble felting it…I think there must be something wrong with their washing machine.  This stuff felted like a dream.  One quick hot wash/cold rinse cycle with a towel and bam, sturdiest felt purse ever.  You would never guess each of those diamonds was individually knitted.  I would absolutely buy it again if I wanted to make another felted bag, but probably not for anything else.  Why?  Its got that scratchy cheap wool feeling to it.  I’m not sensitive to wool and there are several yarns I love to wear against my skin that are 100% wool, but I would NEVER use Kaleidoscope for a garment.  The label doesn’t say what kind of wool it is, but we’re definitely not talking merino here.  Bottom line?  The colorways are fun and I highly recommend it for felting, but for garments there are better options.  

*The bag is available on my Etsy shop.

Yarn Review: Chroma by KnitPicks

The finished scarf

See all the beautiful colorways of this yarn here: KnitPicks Chroma

I am in LOVE with this yarn.  I’m currently working with Chroma in worsted weight but it also comes in fingering.  I recently purchased an obscene amount of multi-colored yarn because I just freaking love multi-colored yarn.  I’ve been playing around with entrelac lately and multi-colored yarn creates some really neat effects.  One of the yarns I included in my recent purchase was Knit Picks Chroma Worsted in the colorways Lollipop (pretty pastel colors) and Prism (rainbow colors).  I picked this yarn mostly because the colors were pretty and I was already ordering a few other things I needed from the Knit Picks website so I figured I might as well give it a shot.  I am SO glad I did.  I started knitting with it last night; I’m making a scarf using K1P1 ribbing and switching colorways every 2 rows.  The gradual color changes create a really neat effect when you stripe it.  The colors I chose are gorgeous and were accurately portrayed by the photos on the website.  This yarn is also REALLY REALLY soft.  Its 70% wool and 30% nylon and knitting with it is so wonderful its like candy for your fingers.  If they have a cyber monday sale I very well may be buying more; I think this stuff would be great for entrelac cowls, especially since its worsted weight and will work up faster than the fingering weight Mini Mochi I used for my first entrelac cowl.  One potential negative thing to be aware of is it does have a bit of a thick and thin quality to it.  Its single ply and most of the time its approximately the same weight but there have been a few places where it has been a little thinner than I would prefer.  I can also see one place on one of the skeins where 2 ends are knotted together creating a not so subtle color change.  But overall, I really like this yarn and will definitely be buying it again in the future!

Lollipop

Update 12/8/12:  I've worked with this yarn quite a bit since my initial review and I wanted to provide an update.  I recently finished a project with the fingering weight and it is just as lovely as the worsted.  The thick and thin problem I encountered in my first project has not reoccured, however knots ruining the subtlety of the color changes are fairly common.

Greensboro Knit and Crochet Show

Fair Isle Class Project

Knit and Crochet Show Purchases

This Saturday I went to the Greensboro Knit and Crochet Show and it was super fun!  To start with, I was very grateful that I made it there alive.  I got stuck in a torrential rainstorm during my 1-hour drive up there and had I left about a minute earlier I probably would have been part of the like TWELVE car accident I drove past.  I arrived around noon and my class didn't start til 2:00 so I had plenty of time to browse around the shopping floor.  I bought some really fun looking yarn- all self striping.  One skein of sock yarn, 2 DK, and 3 worsted weight NORO!  Yay for my first ever Noro purchase!  Its called Kureyon and 100% wool so I think I'm going to use it for a felted bag, possibly involving mitred squares.   After shopping and obtaining caffeination from the hotel coffee shop I made my way to my fair isle class.  This was the first ever knitting class I've taken.  I've learned EVERYTHING I know about knitting from books and the internet so it was nice getting help from an in person instructor and having people sitting next to me who I could compare progress with.  I've been afraid of fair isle for the entire 5 years I've been knitting but it turned out not to be that hard!  I made an awesome little wristlet and I'm totally inspired to start making all kinds of nerdy fair isle projects.  

Also I put a few new items on the Etsy Shop last week!  My FAVORITE new item is the Chaos Afghan.  I've been working on it since June and I'm very excited to have it done.  This particular afghan is going to Greg but I would love love LOVE to make more of them for custom orders!  

I think I would make a really excellent housewife.

Does anyone else just desperately want to be a housewife?  I have a finance degree and I'm in law school...and my boyfriend is an artist...so thats not too likely to happen but I think it would be really ideal.  I mean there are so many advantages...right now our apartment is a mess.  If I was a housewife instead of a stressed out law student (or stressed out lawyer a few years down the road) I would have time and motivation to clean it.  And if I was a housewife I would have time to learn how to cook and we could eat healthy home cooked meals instead of bojangles and mcdonalds.  But most importantly...I could make a real business of Niki's Knerdy Knitting. I would have time to finish more than one project a week.  I would be able to take photos in daylight.  I could learn how to spin my own yarn!  People keep laughing at me cause I tend to say things like "I wanna drop out of law school and be a full time knitter"  but like...I'm kind of serious when I say that.  

Must. Not. Buy. Yarn...yet...

Universal Yarn Classic Shades - Rainforest

Crystal Palace Yarns Mini Mochi

I've been staring longingly at the WEBS website all day trying to resist making a big yarn order of all these beautiful yarns I've been dying to try.  BUT there are so many yarn-buying events in my future that I really should hold off and buy my yarn in person because that is SO much more fun. This weekend is the Knit and Crochet show in Greensboro.  I'm signed up for a fair isle class and I'm planning on driving up 2 hours early so I can check out the sales floor.    Then Oct 8-9 is the raleigh/durham/chapel hill/cary/apex yarn crawl so I'll be driving all over the place and probably buying a little something at each shop.  I'm super super excited.  I tried to make a little yarn excursion this past weekend but it didn't work out all that great...I was driving to Atlanta to visit my sister and I intended to try to stop at a bunch of yarn stores over the course of my 7 hour drive. Unfortunately, I didn't get started until 2pm so I only got to visit 2 yarn stores cause they mostly close at 5.  The first one was The Twisted Knitter in Mebane, NC.  This store was AWESOME.  I bought 3 skeins of universal yarn classic shades which I'm pretty sure is my favorite yarn ever.  The colorways tend to remind one of Noro but the yarn is SOOO soft and as an acrylic/wool blend it is machine washable.  I'm not sure why acrylic gets so much hate...no one is allergic to it, you can machine wash it, and it can be quite soft.  Maybe the people complaining about it have been getting all their yarn at Michael's/AC Moore.  Red Heart Super Saver is NOT a good example of acrylic yarn people.  

OK I did work. Knitting Time!

Chaos Afghan

For once I’ve actually completed a law school assignment with a reasonable amount of confidence that its not complete and total shit.  At first I was like “this is too easy, I must be missing everything important”  (this how i’ve felt the entire time I’ve been in law school and usually its true) but after re-reading the assignment and the chapter of the textbook and the hornbook and a form book I’ve decided that this assignment was actually just meant to be really easy.  Yay!   Now I can go home and play with yarn!  The chaos blanket is sooooo close to being finished…I think I’m down to 3 skeins of yarn that have enough left for more rows…2 of them are practically laceweight though so they’re gonna take a little while, not sure if I can finish it tonight.  Once I get this done my next work-in-progess to finish off will be a REALLY SOFT baby alpaca mitten thats been sitting around with no thumb for like a month and then a granny square baby blanket made of different shades of pink.  

I just want to FINISH something

I'm in that awful knitting place where I have like 8 REALLY BIG works in progress and I just want to do something different.  I promised myself I'm not gonna start anything new until I finish these and from now on I'm only gonna have two works in progress at once: one nerdy thing for the etsy shop, and one thing that lets me use fun yarn (because cheap michael's yarn is great for amigurumi but sometimes a girl just needs to play with cashmere).  One of my giant works in progress at the moment is what I'm calling a Chaos Afghan.  I purchased a single-skein grab bag from Webs and picked 22 bright, fun yarns from the mix.  I'm crocheting 2 rows of each yarn in a ripple pattern and as I run out of a yarn I drop it out of the pattern and just keep on going with the yarn I have left.  When I run out of yarn it will be done.  This has been a really really fun project, I love playing with a bunch of different yarns.  And its getting pretty close to being done...not counting the gazillion ends I'm going to have to weave in once I'm finished crocheting.  I'm definitely keeping this one but I'll post a picture of it on Etsy as an example of a custom project, I'd love an excuse to buy another grab bag and make another one of these, perhaps in a different color scheme.  Once its all finished I'll get a pic up here too.

Okay weather, thats enough, now leave me alone.

The weather is out to get me today.  See I have a major phobia of tornadoes.  I’ve never experienced one but i dunno, maybe I was too young when I watched the wizard of oz because tornadoes are just the scariest thing in world to me.  This means that when the weather is in any way severe (even very heavy rain)  I get very nervous and when there are high winds I am reduced to cowering in the bathroom (because it has no windows) just waiting for the roof to blow off and me and my kitties to fly into the air and get carried away never to be seen again.  AND today the weather is absolutely screwing with me.  First, I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm went off (so annoying) because there was very heavy rain blowing against the window by my bed and it was making me too nervous to sleep.  Then the lightning and thunder started.  I was contemplating not going to class but my wonderful boyfriend offered to drive me to school on his way to work so that I wouldn’t have to walk to the bus stop in the weather from hell.  This was very sweet of him but since he starts work at 9:00 and I start class at 9:50 that meant I got to the law school an hour early and had nothing to do.  That would have been fine…except immediately upon my arrival at the law school I get an email that my first class is canceled.  Now I didn’t have anything to do until 11:00.  If I hadn’t been too scared of the weather to take the bus, I would’ve gotten the email in time and could’ve stayed home and knit for another 2 hours.  I waited out my 2 hours and went to my 11:00am class.  Halfway through I heard this siren somewhere on campus.  I was a little concerned cause hey, I have anxiety issues, but nothing came of it so I figured it was an ambulance or something.  Nope.  10 minutes later the dean (or someone else important) bursts into the classroom and informs us we need to stop class, get away from the windows, and go cower in the basement because there is a tornado.  Now the law school seems pretty sturdy, and is halfway underground so I wasn’t too worried about my own safety but my boyfriend was at work above ground and my poor little kitties were all alone at the apartment!  Thankfully after 30 minutes of shaking uncontrollably the warning was cancelled because apparently the tornado had dissipated a few miles away.  Then, in my 3rd class, the sirens came on AGAIN and we were all ushered to the basement AGAIN because there was ANOTHER tornado.  Once again, the tornado did not actually hit my part of the county and we were allowed out of the basement after 30 minutes.  All in all, I’ve experienced a lot of really unnecessary anxiety today. And I have one more class...god knows what will happen next.

I'm OLD. And also some knitting websites.

I turned 23 today...that age sounds rather adult...but yeah...a year into law school with a full fledged yarn addiction I'm not feeling all that grown up.  When my BF turned 24 last May I was like "oh god I can't believe I'm dating someone who's 24.  Thats so OLD!" and now I'm OLD too!
Anyways, while in Hawaii I discovered that my skin is extremely sensitive to sunlight and consequently I spent a lot of time indoors at the hotel (this is not a complaint, the hotel was gorgeous and I got to knit).  Thankfully, the hotel also had free wireless so I've discovered some really cool knitting stuff on the web.  My LYS's facebook page posted a link to the Fall Knit and Crochet Show which just happens to be in Greensboro this year.  YAY for copious amounts of fun with yarn just 45 minutes away from meeeee!  While I contemplated taking every single class, I've decided just to drive up for saturday afternoon to take a fair isle knitting class (fair isle and color knitting in general is something that has terrified me for far too long) and check out the shopping room.  While exploring that website I THEN discovered TKGA (The Knitting Guild Association).  Any knitters reading this should go check out their website immediately, they have all kinds of useful resources.  I'm particularly excited about the knitting correspondence courses that they offer, including their Master Knitting Program.  I want to be a master knitter!  Just you wait, 2 years from now I'll have a law degree and a knitting certificate and I'll go around bragging about the knitting certificate.  Anyways for now I've enrolled in their "Basics, Basics, Basics" course so that I can make sure I have all my basics technically correct (since I have never gotten any knitting help from another human being) before I start the masters program.  I'm SUPER excited about this because I get to knit swatches and then send them in to get feedback from someone who knows much more about knitting than I do :D  My class materials came on friday so I'll be getting started knitting my swatches this week! I'm also getting close to finishing the rainbow spectrum afghan I've been working on...I decided to block every square individually before sewing them together so thats taking a little while but expect pictures of the finished product very soon!  I think its coming together really well but I gotta say, I regret using Cascade 220 yarn for this.  I've been trying to purchase higher quality yarn from WEBS or my LYS for most of my projects, but for even a moderately sized afghan this just costs too much!  This project was super fun to make and I hope to make more to sell on Etsy but in the future I will be using nice, cheap, machine washable Red Heart Super Saver for any afghans.

Thank you Geek Crafts!

So today I was checking out my shop stats on Etsy to see if my facebook page (Niki's Knerdy Knitting on Facebook) was generating any traffic when I discovered that several views had been directed from my FAVORITE blog: Geek Crafts .  They featured my Soot Sprites on one of their postings today!  I am super excited to have them notice me just a week after I listed items for sale in my shop.  Thank you Geek Crafts, you guys almost made me start jumping around and squealing in a very quiet resort lounge in Hawaii :D On that note, Hawaii is completely gorgeous and fabulous, look at this big manta ray I saw swimming around in the ocean just a few feet away from me!  And of course, I've been doing lots of knitting (my needles made it through security after all!).  I've started a new project just for this trip, its an afghan made of 49 squares: 7x7 to represent all the colors of the rainbow!  Here is my progress so far, you can see I've incorporated all the combinations of red, orange, and yellow and am just starting work on the green sections:

Big News!

After a summer of working at a law office full time and not knitting nearly enough, I have FINALLY gotten my Etsy shop, Niki's Knerdy Knitting, up and running!  I'm uploading pictures to my computer as I type this and will be adding bunches of new items to the shop throughout the evening, please check it out!  In other news, I'm leaving for vacation to Hawaii (YAY) on friday, lets keep our fingers crossed that the ever inconsistent TSA doesn't take my knitting needles away at security and I can get lots of knitting done on that 12 hour flight.

Some Pictures

So the other day I took out ALL my yarn and works in progress and unsold items and laid them out in my living room and took a bunch of pictures.  It was pretty epic.  Unfortunately, those pictures are on my camera and my camera is in Chapel Hill and I am in Raleigh.  My car died and trapped me here away most of my yarn :( I'm having separation anxiety.  However, I do have some pictures from NerdCon of finished items that I've been meaning to post so here they are:

Chesire Cat 

Chesire came out a little creepy.  I always feel like he's looking at me...and contemplating eating me.

Space Invader Illusion Knit

Goomba

This one is really cool.  If you look at it straight on  you just see stripes but if you look at it from the right angle the pattern emerges!  Its difficult to photograph the effect but its really neat in person.  When I get back to Chapel Hill and my camera I'll be posting a photo of a larger illusion knit of Bruce Tim's Joker.

NerdCon

NerdCon went fabulously.  I found new homes for Pikachu, Sackboy, some Soot Sprites, and a spiky hat.  It was super fun seeing everyone's costumes and all the awesome stuff the other vendors had.  I'll definitely be looking for more cons like this in the future (and I'll be better prepared with more plushies!).  I plan to get everything I didn't sell at NerdCon up on my Etsy shop this week but I'll be taking a bit of time off knitting and crocheting in order to focus on exams.  Once my life is slightly less hectic I'm going to start working on creating my own amigurumi patterns!  Thanks to someone's suggestion at NerdCon, a MineCraft Creeper will be first on the list!  I'm also looking forward to more illusion knitting (pictures to come!) and experimenting with sock knitting and tunisian crochet.

Eyes!

 Pikachu is officially done!  I finally got around to buying supplies other than yarn.  Soon I will have Soot Sprites complete with googly eyes too.

Aaaand this is what a Cheshire Cat looks like before being sewn, stuffed, and embroidered.  I'm hoping the finishing touches make him a bit less...erm...terrifying.  This project has taught me that knitting rather than crocheting plushies is NOT as similar as you would think.  He's knitted on straight needles whereas usually I crochet in the round...in the end that means that in addition to the normal stuffing and sewing all the pieces together, his body and limbs all need seams sewn as well.  I may try to adapt this pattern to crocheting once NerdCon and exams are over and I have free time again.

I was a useful human being today!

Yay me!  Today, in addition to going to class, I filed my taxes, rewrote my resume, and found out where/when I need to go to see a criminal proceeding to write about for my criminal law class.  Now I can spend the rest of the day making more plushies for NerdCon!  Oh and if someone out there wants to hire me...I could send you a copy of that rewritten resume...please?

Pikachu!

Isn't he adorable! Okay so he's mildly creepy without eyes...but they're coming soon, I promise.  I have all these  horrifying eyeless creatures sitting around because I keep going to AC Moore, getting completely and totally distracted by all the lovely yarn (OMG MILL ENDS), and completely forgetting to buy felt and googly eyes.

Creepy yet adorable...

I made a Little Big Planet sackboy for NerdCon!  I'm also working on a Goomba, a Pikachu, and some soot sprites.  Hopefully I can get enough projects done in time, I've got 18 days left...

Silly Kitty

My kitten Elphaba was just sitting at an open window when it started POURING completely suddenly. The rain didn't get in or anything but it made a noise. My kitty now looks a lot like this:

What have I gotten myself in to?

So yesterday I got a facebook invite to AppState's NerdCon and noticed the option to request a vendor table for free! So I signed up and it looks good that I'll be able to reserve a table.  BUT I don't really have anything to sell.  I can bring pictures of a couple projects I've done and given away and hopefully people will request custom projects...but I definitely need some more stuff to put on my table.  The date is April 16th so I don't have a ton of time, I'm gonna be doing a LOT of knitting for the next few weeks.  I decided to take a little break from the Link afghan so that I can try to get a few other things done.  Today I've been working on a pattern I'm calling Afghan Squared.  I'm doing this one in granny squares too but I got this awesome 100% Bamboo yarn from a mill end sale that gives it a really cool texture.  Hopefully I can get it done relatively quickly.  I need to think of some smaller projects too.  I think I've figured out a pattern I can use to make an amigurumi Baneling so I might make a few of those and some other amigurumi creatures if I can find patterns.

eek...a blog!

Okay so...now I have a blog.  Scary.  I fail at Twitter and I never quite caught on to the LiveJournal/Xanga craze in high school...but the internet seems to think its a good idea to use a blog when you are trying to have a successful Etsy shop so here I am.

Today I skipped an entire day of classes to catch up on housework.  Now that I've missed three classes and all the expired food is gone from my fridge, I feel much more on top of things.  I'm a special snowflake :)

Progress so far

But I'm supposed to talk about knitting right? I have SOO many projects in mind right now...and I've already purchased yarn for most of them.  You should see my closet right now, I have 3 file boxes and a ton of shopping bags just full of yarn, god forbid one of my cats gets in there.  One of these days I'll take it all out and take a picture of it, its pretty intimidating (yes, yarn can be intimidating, stop judging me). Anyways, right now I'm working on this really awesome afghan my friend James asked for.  I'm crocheting a ton of granny squares and putting them together to make a pixelated Link.  See that graph? Thats 285 squares.   Crocheting them is quick and easy but sewing them all together just might kill me.  Nevertheless, I think the afghan is going to turn out fabulously.