I got the colorcard from yarn.com for Valley Yarn Longmeadow. There were some colors I could use for my aforementioned baby blanket, but nothing I loved. And once I started adding up prices and realized that I was still spending $60 on yarn, I decided to look elsewhere.
I ended up buying a 2lb cone of natural dk 100% cotton from ebay. It was $20 shipped. I’m going to dye it myself.
You might have noticed my snazzy new progress meter to the right. I’ve been working on Temptation II for a couple of weeks now and I’m overy 25% done. I’ve got 8″ of the 14″ body done and I’m into my 2nd (of 4) balls of yarn. Considering that I am only working on the on the Path train to and from work, I’m pretty pleased. Once this is done I have a whole list of new projects.
A few months ago I came across some cool silver ladybug beads in a craft store. I bought them with the intentions of making some jewelry for my mom for mothers’ day because she likes ladybugs. At some point I even bought red and black beads too. And then mothers’ day came and went and I totally forgot about the beads. But I found them last week and I made her this bracelet tonight.
I’d also like to give a shout out to crimp beads. I’ve been making jewelry since I was a little kid and I’ve never been any good at making knots. With tigertail wire and crimp beads I never have to! Woo! I’m also a big fan of toggle clasps. They are so much easier to do than lobster clasps. Especially on things like bracelets.
In the continuing saga of my search for baby blanket yarn I had the though to perhaps dye some 100% cotton yarn. I went over to yarn.com to scout some out and instead came across…
This brand new cotton/microfiber blend is the perfect yarn for your warm weather knitting. It is incredibly soft to the touch and has a lovely twist. The color palette is light and bright. You will love knitting with Longmeadow!
Content: 60% cotton/40% microfiber
Weight/Yardage: 50 Grams/117 Yards/ball
Gauge: 5 1/2 sts=1” on #6 needle
Knitting Weight: DK
Price: $3.49
The weight and price are right. Even the cotton/microfiber blend would be good. Plus it comes in a bunch of colors and the $5 price of their color card includes shipping. So I ordered one! I did have to email customer service to find out about the shipping though, since they only do an estimated shipping and say it’s based on actual weight.
There is a myth that knitting and crocheting is inexpensive. I suppose that probably goes back to when people sewed their own clothing because it was cheaper than buying it in a store. But in these when everything is mass produced in china, the price of clothing has gone down dramatically. So when clothes were more expensive, making it yourself was probably cheaper – accent on the “er”.So these days when you can buy a sweater in walmart for $12, who expects that making it yourself will cost $80 just for the yarn? I don’t even blame this on Stitch N Bitch and the whole trendyification of knitting. In fact I think that that movement has made quality knitting products available for much lower prices via outlets like elann.com and knitpicks.
So anyway the route of this is that I want to make a baby blanket for my friend. The pattern calls for Rowan Wool Cotton (50% cotton/50% merino). It’s $10 for a 50g ball and I need 15. That’s $150 just for yarn! Now that’s ridiculous. So I did some research and found I could probably substitute Brown Sheel Cotton Fleece (80% pima cotton/20% merino). Now that is $8 for a 100g skein, so I’d only need 8. That’s $64, which is more reasonable but still expensive. Finally I found Elann.com Sonata which is 100% cotton and $2 for a 50 g skein = $30.
Now one of my issues is that I love the color combo they use in the pattern, and I haven’t found any other company that has similar colors. I had thought about buying natural yarn and dyeing it, but that wool/cotton blend worries me. Plus Elann doesn’t have color cards, although I can get some “snips” by sending them a SASE.
And to add on to my rant, online yarn stores need to make color cards available with more reasonable shipping. Everyplace I’ve looked wants to charge me $5 to send a $4 color card. I think my plan is going to be to head over to Yarnware and see what colors of Cotton Fleece they carry.
What is with the ridiculous amount of wordpress comment spammers lately?
I think I’m not the only person having this problem.
I just updated my blacklist with lots of words like betting and viagra and hopefully that takes care of this problem.
The SVA Pearl Paint is really small so they didn’t have the dyes. I figured I would just head down to the one on Canal St after work. Then I had the brilliant idea to call and double check that they carried it beforehand. I did and they do, so I think I am busting out of here early to buy dye. Yeah! I should enjoy the sunshine before the deluge begins.
I’ve decided I need some brown dye so I can make my mint chip yarn this weekend. Now the only place i can think will definitely have acid dyes is the Yarn Tree, but that’s out in Brooklyn. However there is a Pearl Paint down the street from me by SVA. I think I’ve heard that they carry Jacquard Acid Dyes. I’ll have to take a walk down there during lunch and see what they’ve got.
Have I mentioned how excited I am that I figured out how to do long draw?
I haven’t done any spinning in over a month. I’m definitely getting the hankering to do some though. I have that lovely tinkly that Pippikneesocks sent me to play with.
I have been knitting though. I actually did knit an entire lace pattern hat, and then decided I didn’t like the lace so I frogged it. C’est la vie.
When I started knitting I bought a set of Denise Interchangable Needles because I didn’t want to have to buy a new set of needles for every project. But recently I was going to start working on a hat for a friend and I couldn’t find one of my 10.5 tips. Oy. So I decided to by a 10.5 Addi Turbo Circular. I make a ton of hats on 10.5 so I figured it would get good use.
Good lord..knitting on those is like butter. I still like my Denise’s and will use them but if I’m sure to use a certain needle size a lot I will probably pick up a set of Addi Turbos.
On a side note it’s really annoying to me that Patricia’s Yarns charges over list price for stuff. Everywhere else I looked they were about $19 and she charges $21. I’ve seen the same thing on yarn. Now I’m all for supporting my lys, but don’t rip me off. I knew she was going to be more for the needles but I figured it would be less than the $4 I’d pay to take the subway to go to another shop.
So of course right after I got the drum carder out of the box I had to play with it. I’m glad I got the junior version as it’s still pretty large!
I have had this ugly roving that I got for free with my wheel that is white with these pink, yellow and blue threads. Awhile ago I had some leftover purple dye so I tried to overdye it but ended up with purple wool with pink, yellow, and blue threads! Since the purple was handy I carded up some of that. Then I carded up some of the white ugly. Then I carded it up together! I’ve been reading Deb Menz’s Color in Spinning and one of the parts that fascinated me is color blending with the drum carder. So I decided to layer my batts.
So here is my first finished batt…in 2 views so you can see the layers
And then of course I had to spin it up! Spinning from nicely carded stuff is so much easier. I played around a bit with how I split the batt and drafted so there definitely some variations in the yarn. But it does have sort of a nice tweedy look to it.