Update

Well . . . it has been a while since I blogged . . . I've been busy with things like work and knitting and gerbils and spinning and forgetting to blog. What can I say? Oops. Plus, you know, working 2nd shift seems to suck up all the time. And I have discovered the cuteness of gerbils taking sand baths . . . they roll in it. Soooo cute! Plus all three of my girls bark. Yup, my gerbils bark.

Let's see . . . the alpaca shawl is done, but not yet blocked.

Expecting has like 4 more colors to go to be done with that row of pages. The date on the last pic I've taken is 7/27/14.

I requested a QS (quick stitch) of Ice Wind I - lol I seem to have problems remembering if it's 1 or 2 - I've liked this one since I picked it to be the picture of what Corsira, who is the daughter of Tannith & Corsaire, will look like when she's all grown up. Now I've got the QS of both Ice Winds (the other one is Tannith's little sister, Piper).

I also discovered etsy. And in particular, two specific sellers. Neeley's Knits has 4 different Babylon 5 colorways - I do love me some Babylon 5. I had her do a custom order of her Marcus yarn, which I had my mom put away so I could open it on Christmas morning. Hmmm . . . I've still yet to "receive" my yarn . . . mom put it in a "safe place". The other seller is Lady Purl Designs - her blog is ladypurl.blogspot.com. She has some fun, nerdy colorways and I love her descriptions. The first yarns I got from her were a lace weight color called Mermaid Tails (for The Little Mermaid) that I "made up" a shawl pattern I'm calling Mermadia. I've yet to get far on it. And I got a fun sock yarn colorway made of 80% wool and 20% angora, called "Twixt My Nethers" - created for the Firefly/Serenity character named Kaylee. I knit some socks out of that to dress like Kaylee and I had enough to make fingerless mitts as well (and still have more of that yarn).

Speaking of socks, I got several pairs done . . . well more than several pairs. Let's see . . . Christmas socks for my sister, me, my mom, my sister's boyfriend (as he was there on Christmas morning, so therefore, he must have new socks) . . . and Girl on Fire socks (yes more Lady Purl yarn!) for my sister and I to take to watch Mockingjay part 1 . . . and I had to have some Hobbity socks too. I used another Lady Purl yarn called The Shire (or There and Back Again). I started the Smaug socks while watching the movie . . . but I messed up on the ribbing, so I'll have to start them over. Which is good since I have to watch the movie again as the movie seemed to be on fast forward or something. Oh and the blue Cascade Heritage yarn I "got" for Christmas 2013, I knit that up into socks and some wristlets. And socks for my sister too for Christmas.

I've also made some fingerless gloves. I found a free pattern on Ravelry (oh that place is soooo bad for finding neat things to do!) - it's called Te Ara and it's got a neat cable portion. Fairly simple/straightforward, but look complicated. I used the Multipass yarn (LP) for mine and another LP yarn called The Capitol for my sister's. I just finished a pair using the Kaylee yarn that I adapted to be shorter/no cables. And still have a lot of yarn left lol. Edit I forgot the name of the pattern is Te Ara Fingerless Mitts not "Te Avanna" . . . lol I guess I was remembering that tea company, Teavanna, or something.



I also got a lot of spinning done. I went to a spinning workshop at the Vinton Public Library. I got to learn corespinning as well as beehives and lace. I want to make some more of the b&l yarn in "Drazi colors" - green for the beehives part and then purple for the inner core bit. The one on the left is the corespun, I got to use pom fur for it. And the other is the beehives & lace. And then in October, I got to participate in Spinzilla. What is that? It's a week where the idea is spin as much as you can. There are prizes and things like that and people compete to see how much yarn they can spin. Last year (the 2nd year) it was October 6 - 12, this year it will be the 5th - 11th. I have that week as "vacation". My goal was to spin a mile. I juuuuust made that. It was funny, I would tell the gerbils "it's spinning time" and they would start digging about. I decided to spin as a Rogue Spinner (mostly because I waited until the last minute, but also because I don't know enough about which team to pick.)

And because of this Spinzilla, I was introduced to Mirkwood Arts and the Mirkwood supported spindles. And I waaaant one. Actually a couple. That's something I want to get to expand my skill set. I also want to try other sorts of fiber (banana, rose, angora, silk, etc).



Ok . . . onto the cross stitch. I got lot of that done too.

I did get some done on Tannith (poor thing, looks like another year before she'll get done or something like that). At least I'm on the second row now.

I finally got SK Logan framed for my mom (she goes "I trust your judgement when it comes to framing") and SK Forbidden Doorway for me. SK Logan is hanging in the dining room right above the little triangle/corner desk and Doorway is over top of the gerbils in my room. She's really easy to forget it's stitched and not a print or something.

And . . . in October . . . finally, after a lot of work from a group of us, I can finally reveal the "secret project". It is a quilt of The History of HAED that a group of us made for the owner/designer, Michele. We divided the chart into 12 parts and each part got a stitcher to work on it. Mine was what I called "Left Facing Dragon". And we each used the 25 ct Magic Guide lugana fabric and 1 strand over 1 for full crosses. And then we all sent it to one of the ladies (I included some purple fabric as it just seemed appropriate for this project) for her to quilt it all up. She also included a patch with our names on it. We also sent in pics and hand-written notes to be turned into a scrapbook of the journey. We had a simply marvelous time being sneaky. And Michele was so touched and moved by it, it made it all worth the effort. (Plus, it was just fun planning/making it happen!)

So . . . here's Left Facing Dragon and the finished project:



So . . . I'm a sucker for a HAED SAL. I mention this because I got "suckered" into doing a Halloween SAL. And it was a good reason to finally start the first of The Very Long Term Project (which I started a facebook page to under that name). What is TVLTP? I want to stitch all the Faces of Faery that have been charted. Hmmm might be a bit longer to do than I thought. So I started with Faces of Faery 99 (or as I call her 99.)

And speaking of SALs, this year (2015) there is a HAED BB SAL. I picked the QS Frogs Kissing. It was the most fantasy like one and I don't fancy Santa. Here's what I picked and how far I got on the 16th (mom's foot surgery). And in the big cross stitch group I admin, they decided to do a HAED SAL. So I was like ok I'll participate. And rather than being cheesy and having it do for both SALs, I decided to pick something other than QS Froggies. I went with QS Nostlagy, which was from the 2013 BB SAL and was my second choice for that one. I haven't gotten far, but still. She's one of those character pictures. I picture her as a Human necromancer. She is more of a science/see if it can be done (almost innocent) rather than evil "I play with dead people" sort of way.

And I decided yes, I will participate in the once a month (1st weekend) SAL for the Mystic Stitch group. I'm doing Night Shade II.

And then, for some reason, I decided Melena ought to have some attention too. I just don't have an updated pic yet of her. I got distracted by spinning yarn on my spindles.

Almost done . . . next time, I am going to announce a new giveaway. But we'll save that for later.