Fiber Friday

A little yarny goodness to take you into the weekend!

This one was dyed up last weekend and is now listed in my Etsy shop. With all the June gloom that I've been seeing, when I was creating this yarn, I wanted something fun, fruity and ready for summer...the result was Mai Tai! It's a hand dyed yarn, recycled from a beige Gap sweater. The plies were respun on my spindle to bring out the best in this yarn. It's 130 yards of worsted weight delight!I also dyed up something a little more representative of June gloom, recycled from the same sweater, although I'm keeping this one for myself. ;)

Finally finished!

I have a small issue with my knitting projects. I seem to have a habit of getting 85-95% done with them, then they disappear into the "almost done" vortex. Usually it's a question of sewing up some seams, sewing on a button, weaving in the ends. Ok, there's theme here. Apparently I don't love the sewing part. I don't know if that's a great excuse for letting a project sit in my closet for 3 months before being "finalized" enough to wear!

Last night, while rummaging through my closet, I came across the minisweater (pattern by Stephanie Japel) that I started making sometime in December or early January. It was literally done except for some ends to weave and a button for the front...which took me about 90 seconds to take care of. I was proudly able to wear it into work today, seeing as the So Cal weather is bright, sunny, but not too hot.

Anyway, here it is. 3 weeks to knit, 3 months to finish, but I love it. I also understand now why everybody loves Malabrigo - it is buttery soft to work with and wonderful to wear. My husband was happy to take these photos (probably because I essentially asked him to photograph my chest) although his opinion on the cardi itself is "I like it, but where's the rest of it?" He cannot for the life of him understand the concept of a shrug/bolero/anything missing the bottom half. Good thing I'm not making him wear it. Personally, I'm really glad this knit piece got a happy ending!

A productive day off

There isn't really anything fun about having to wake up at 7:00am on your day off to let in the workers who are continuing to demolish things in your house. Having said that, I had a very productive day.

After a little Guitar Hero, and watching them tile the walls for a little bit, I took a little trip to the Salvation Army Thrift Store a few miles from my house. Firstly, the place is huge. Figuring out where to start was a challenge, but I had also taken note of the 50% off store wide sign on the way in so was definitely determined to find something good! About 45 minutes later, I had found quite the load.

• Soft pink cardigan with brown collar: Wool/angora blend, bulky weight yarn that is buttery soft. If I had to liken it to a commercial yarn, I'd say Malabrigo! This one is already half unraveled and has come apart beautifully with no knots and no argument.
• Red Benetton sweater: 100% Merino wool and put together raglan style with no seams!! It's laceweight so may take a while to unravel but the no seams thing makes me a little giddy.
• Lemon sweater: 100% cashmere. It's a women's small but nonetheless I had to snatch it up. Best part about it? It was $0.95.
• Men's tweed sweater: Nice 100% wool in good condition. It is a tweedy yarn but is also begging to be overdyed.
  

The grand total price was $5.45 and I also found out that they have the 50% off sale on the last Friday of every month. I know where I'll be spending those Fridays!

I did have to run off to a lunch with some clients from work, but fortunately they're great guys and it's not a business lunch in the boring sense, so that was a good break. Then I had promised the husband to make moussaka for dinner. It's one of those meals that my mom used to make and that I loved as a kid but never tried for myself. This is the recipe I used and it turned out great. It took exactly an hour to prepare and then an hour and fifteen to bake. To top it off, our friend is on his way over with carrot cake for dessert! I could have dealt with a chance to sleep in but I definitely can't complain about how the day's been overall. =)

What is lavender, fuzzy and makes you sneeze?

After the success of unraveling my first sweater right before New Year's, which yielded about 800+ yards of yarn, I am finding my new supplement to the fiber arts to be quite entertaining. I've never been one for finding excellent thrifty deals but when I read about the finds that the thrifty folk on Ravelry (who inspired me to try this in the first place) seem to come across, I'm encouraged to keep looking!

The selection of thrift stores near home and work aren't wonderful, nor are these places super cheap. The concept of a wool sweater for $0.50 leaves me in awe and extremely jealous as I just can't see these particular stores selling for such prices.

• American Cancer Society (Burbank) - gorgeous stuff, but pretty expensive and more a place to go if you're trying to buy a $300 pair of designer jeans for $50.
• Goodwill (North Hollywood) - nice big and bright store, but terrible quality of sweaters right now. They're mostly acrylics and sweaters that just aren't in good condition.
• American Way Thrift Store (Burbank) - where I've been having the most success so far, but is accompanied by that very authentic thrift store "smell" to go with the dark and dusty warehouse looking room that it's comprised of. It also seems to be quite popular and is picked over quickly so the good stuff isn't around long enough to go on sale!

On my most recent trip this week, I went to American Way (at the intersection of Magnolia and California in Burbank, just in case any locals are reading this). The sweater section seems to be hugely depleted right now, probably on account of the 3 days of cold weather that we've had recently. Go figure that I would start trying to find sweaters to reclaim during the "cold" part of the year in L.A. Having said all that though, I did find a couple of nice sweaters.

The first is a beautiful lavender nylon/angora/wool blend. It appears to have been made in a raglan style and the seams have been pretty easy to work with. The downside being that I am completely covered in lavender angora rabbit fuzz and have had several sneezing sessions this afternoon seeing as it's taken over my office completely. The lace weight yarn that I'm getting from it seems worth it to me though and I am hoping to have well over 1000 yards once I'm done (insert happy dance).

The other sweater is a wool/rayon/angora/cashmere blend. The seams have been a little resistant but I am being patient and trying to remember how lovely and soft the yarn will be once I can get it undone. The other interesting thing is that what appears to be a worsted weight yarn in the sweater is actually 6 strands of lace weight. I'm going to keep it as a worsted 6-ply (sort of) because I don't really want to deal with un-stranding and weakening the yarn.

I am telling myself that this new fascination with commercially made sweaters is so that I can learn more about the formation of knitwear. After all, guys have been taking things apart to find out how they were put together for years right? =)

'Tis shiny indeed

Our anniversary evening was lovely last night. We exchanged gifts (I got him an xbox 360, he got me a watch) and then went out to dinner. The server at the restaurant coincidentally was the same guy that headed up the waitstaff on the evening of our wedding reception that we had there. He gets two thumbs up from me! After dinner, we went to Best Buy to get a second controller for the xbox and then played a few rounds of Kung Fu Panda with the new toy. I am pretty much horrendous when it comes to video games, although he has now been instructed where to get a good deal on Guitar Hero for me. Hehe.

So, on the more crafty end of things, I've been hearing about people unraveling sweaters and reclaiming yarn for a while. I've never been one for patience when it comes to thrifting, but while out searching for a horrible holiday sweater for a party this weekend, I figured I'd take a look at some other sweaters to give recycling the yarn a try. I found a nice cabled sweater in a cream color. The fiber is a wool/cotton/acrylic blend and it was $5.99 at the local thrift shop.

With a little help from this tutorial, I have so far removed one sleeve, which came apart pretty easily. There were a few knots and breaks while unraveling the first sleeve, but overall a quick and easy experience. The yarn appears to be about fingering weight and I have no idea how much yardage so far, but the ball I made is about 4 inches in diameter. That's just from one sleeve! I'm going to be able to make a lot of socks with this I think...and I also think it's going to encourage me to experiment with dying the yarn. Yup, I might be out of control!

Finally made something for myself!

I am so frequently caught up in making things for my Etsy shop, or charity, that I am very excited that I finally got around to making something for myself! I present to you my latest knit item...(thanks to my co-worker for taking these pics of me).
I found this beautiful pattern on Ravelry and I just knew that it was going to be something that I needed to make. The pattern is Ophelia, and can be found here. The design is originally for a cardigan, but it wasn't sitting right on my wide hips. I went ahead and seamed it at the front (using the invisible mattress stitch seam) and now it's a v-neck instead. I've been getting compliments on it all day at work and I'm really happy to be showing off my handiwork.

A view of the lace pattern at the back.