Nodding Off

It's an incredibly cruel joke your body plays on you. The one where you are tired enough to be jittery, slurry, confused but your body will not let you fall asleep. Maybe it's the mind. It has been a rough week sleep-wise, but I'm on the path to recovery. Staying up late and waking up early, but no real major problem. I told my husband that tired was worse than pregnancy tired. Worse than newborn tired. I do not remember being that tired ever... even when I had insomnia. I missed a walk I planned on doing for domestic violence awareness yesterday. I was a little bummed about that.

I have a ball winder that turns my yarn into cute little diaper cakes. It was a yarn cake party here when it arrived. E and J helped. A yarn swift is the next big knitting-related purchase on my list. I found some on eBay for reasonable prices and while I was there browsing, I realized a niddy noddy needs to be on my list. Sharing the stream of ideas with my husband, as I usually do when I'm online browsing, I told him I needed the swift, a niddy noddy, spinning wheel, and a sheep farm. "Niddy.... noddy?" his reply. I think he thought I made the niddy noddy part up. No questions or concerns about the sheep farm. Was I joking?

I've got buying yarn down, dyeing is next on my list to try and a niddy noddy, a device that skeins yarn, will make dyeing/skeining easier. Enter jokes about dyeing, collecting fluff insurance in the event of my dyeth. Really, though, a yarn farm is in my retirement plan. One can dream of it happening sooner. Or at all.

Micro-knitting

Meet Althea Crome. Mad knitter. Micro-knitter.

Incredible! Please take a moment to look at her galleries (one click and you get the gist. ;) ) I love her, her knitting, and her eclectic clothing/jewelry taste. Who knew there were knitting idols out there?

I'm curious of this method, but I don't think my hands would do well. There are things I do with average-sized needles that keeeel my wrists.







One last thing, check out what she did for the movie Coraline (short vid):


I've seen the movie several times. Her creations give me tinglies. If I didn't know how much thought, patience, and super raw talent went into her items, I'd eat them.

WIP - Cable Longies

CIMG3207
Originally uploaded by mrrnymrr

I'm a chronic finisher and not much of a WIP-shower-offer. (WIP - work in progress) This is my first time doing a braided cable and I love it! I have f'd these longies twice to get the cabling effect I was going for and have gone back multiple times to fix calculation errors. F'd is short for frogged--a knitting (or crochet) term meaning a project was undone to be redone or forgotten about. Things are moving along well now, if you exclude sticky, curious fingers prodding my work or and the bodies those fingers belong to thinking naps and decent bedtimes are so two weeks ago. So, to show of a WIP, this is the one to do it. I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit. I'm starting the first leg tonight!

Although fighting to get the look I wanted, these are turning out wonderfully. Look at the striping! Usually I have to alternate skeins or fuss with needles and increases to get this kind of striping. This colorway is amazing. It is Zeus on 100% Merino from Uruguay. I think Purewool [100purewool.com] is getting boring to me, however. My hobby is getting expensive!

I cannot wait to show off a finished pair on my son. And I will in 3-4 days.

New here!

My name is Melanie. I'm a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) to a 2.5 year old girl and a 12 month old boy. I had a daughter from a previous relationship that passed away in 2003 at 14 months. Someday, I might tell her story, but this blog is primarily about my knitting projects and progress and maybe a few snippets of life between. My husband and I have been married for over 3 years and I dare say we have a good relationship. Sometims SAHMing wears me down and it can be difficult keeping things interesting. I hope to return to a career someday.

I first knit a project as a young girl with a church group that all my friends belonged to. In high school, I picked up crocheting and I continued with that, making the occasional scarf or improvised-and-failed hat. I picked up knitting as a real hobby two years ago. I started knitting longies (wool pants used as cloth diaper covers) and branched from there. The bulk of my projects are longies and I hope to commission sales of custom longies as my name gets out there. It is not a lucrative business venture, but a hobby I love doing and a hobby there is demand for. I created a blog to track my progress, find others interested in fiber arts, and to let it be known to the people I care about that knitting isn't doilies and musty afghans. I hope to design projects in the future, but thanks to Ravelry.com (a yarn/pattern database-meets-social networking site) I don't HAVE to in order find what I'd like to make next. =)

I think that's a good enough intro. Questions/Comments? Drop me a line. I'm pretty easy-going. I have the same name on Ravelry, too.