April Events!

There have been goings ons.  I have been busy the last few weeks.

In March for "Spring Break" I went to Arizona to see my brother.  We looked at the Grand Canyon.  And I did not do anything yarny except knit on the plane and in the car and showed a 10 year old how to knit.  I wish I had brought a starter kit with me.  I would have left some knitting with my brother's home...

I also got to birthday tickets Book of Mormon.  Fantastic Show!  And a long trip to downtown Bank of America Theatre was great for knitting!  I also went to YarnCon.  I wasn't planning on being first through the doors, but I was up early and headed down after chores.  Was probably number 25 or so.  I got a great good bag, with patterns and yarn and YarnCon swag.  And then I went into the gym with all the fun vendors in it!

YarnCon is like a live Etsy Marketplace.  It is fantastic.  A good vibe, the Plumber's Hall is an amazing venue.  I got to meet Tammy of Knit and Fiber Creation Etsy shop.  She runs the Walking Dead yarn club I'm in.  LOVE it, and since it was shortly after the season finale, it was good to talk about the show too.
I spent about an hour and change there.  There were shops selling scented goods and it started to bother me.  A big thank you to all those who worked hard to put on the show!

I head off tomorrow for Yarn School in Harveyville KS and I can't wait to give you a full report :)

Books For April

So, I have been reading a lot lately.  I got books for Christmas and they included The Hunger Games series and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I tore through the Hunger Games books and had started reading a book I picked up on vacation a while back, Breaking the Rock.  It's about the escape attempt from Alcatraz.  It's interesting, but I don't know that I care for the writing style much.  Bounces around a bit, switches between calling people by first, last, and nicknames.  Hard to follow.  But I'm over half way through.  I NEED TO KNOW!

All this other reading really has led me to open some of these other knitting books.  And I got a couple new books, The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs.

I'm going to take this one to Yarn School with me.  I hope to have some time to really look at it and find out who has tried what.  I like the section on plying.  The Visually Learning book for spinning really does a lousy job with explaining plying.  My favorite part is that there is a swatch knit up in the sample yarn.  I like it.  I think this is a great little resource book!

I have a couple fit for your body books I'd like to get a little further into before I talk about them here.  I also have the Craftsy.com class for Amy Herzog's book.  I hope to cover them together.

A new blogging schedule, with math and themes

I think I've come up with a way to regularly post!  Themed posts across a month.

Every day divisible by 5 (oh yes there is math) will have a theme.

Here's a tentative schedule, On the:

• 5th: Spinning 
• 10th: Classes and other learning
• 15th: Books!
• 20th: Events
• 25th: Finished Objects
• 30th: On the needles

So, let's see how this goes.  I guess I'll see you one Monday.  Which is about Books!  Good, I've gotten some books :)

But, since I missed classes and other learning I thought I would clue you in on what I've got in hopper.

I've put out my April - June teaching schedule for Fuzzy Wuzzy Yarn.  I'm teaching Navigating Ravelry, and my knitting friend N let me test drive it on her.  She liked it, and left feeling a little better about what's out there.  I'm teaching sock classes, TAAT on 2 Circs, Beginning, and Toe Up.  Then a summer project class.  It's a keepsake Wedding Garter!  I've given these away at a couple showers, I think it's been well received and I love picking out colors that I think the bride will love.  I think my students will too.

I am taking a class too, it's from Craftsy.  I got Felicia Lo's Spinning Dyed Fiber and it has been very helpful.  I love the platform, and I love watching Felicia spin while I'm drifting asleep.  I hope she doesn't take umbrage with that, but I also find myself treadling along with her too.  And I was cleaning off my bobbins, spinning a Frabjous Fibers bump of Merino and Nylon Sparkle in color Trapeze.  I was intending to chain-ply it, but one of my bobbins was under-spun (Thanks for the feedback Felicia) and so I made a true 3-ply and chain plied the rest.  Here are my results:

The chain plied is on the left and the fractal plied is on the right.  Stunning right?