Blatant Campaigning

I'm a finalist! I entered the Lorna's Laces contest over at Yarn Miracle, and my essay got picked to be in the top three! Go vote for me! I've been drooling over LL for months!

Life as craft

I’m an unfaithful crafter. During my recent cleaning and re-organizing of the craft supplies, it came to light that I have substantial amounts of materials for the following hobbies:
1. Knitting (duh)
2. Spinning (also duh)
3. Crochet
4. Dyeing
5. Shibori
6. Calligraphy
7. Watercolor painting
8. Acrylic painting
9. Sewing
10. Beadwork
11. Embroidery
12. Scrapbooking
13. Ukranian Pysanky
14. Soft-glass lampworking

I knew in a vague sense that I had a lot of crafting material, but reorganizing it all really brought it home to me. And the thing is--I'm not very good at any of them. Oh, sure, I can knit 3/4 of a sweater or a pair of socks. I can crochet afghans, I can dye cotton and wool and silk. I can produce the odd painting or calligraphy for a Christmas gift, I can sew and bead and embroider (Ugh. I hate embroidery.). But I never really take the time to master anything. I never get to the "art" level. I steam ahead into every new project, but I peter out at the end.

I need to learn craft commitment. My new goal is to really master something. Knitting, to be specific. I want to get really, really good at it. That's going to require a lot of work, most of it in the form of finishing the many UFOs that are lying around the house. I hereby pledge that I shall finish one UFO in between every new project I start. I know I can't promise not to start things, but if I give myself an every-other-project diet of UFOs, I think I can make a dent in this thing. It'll be tough, but I shall persevere.

P.S. If you like history, don't forget to check out PastCast.net, where every week my husband and I produce a new historical podcast. This week's is on Douglas MacArthur. See you on the radio.

Bad, Bad Blogger

So I got sick. And then we went away for a weekend. And then I had finals at UW. And then I got sick again. For this, gentle reader, I beg your forgiveness. Nothing should bring me to so shirk my fiber duties. I haven't even taken pictures of the new Sockapaloooza sock I started. Mea culpa. But I shall, oh yes, I shall. For now, though, my latest purchases on Ebay, from Holland and England, respectively.

First we have the sock yarn. I desperately wanted some self-striping sock yarn, but I hate the faux-fairisle ones. You know, the ones with the little short blips of color and white that make little checkerboards, or vertical stripes, if you are untalented like me. So I hied myself to Ebay and found some lovely cotton-blend Regia from the India collection and blew a fairly shocking (for me) amount of money on two skeins:

Rajastan


Patna


Then, I set out in search of affordable Kidsilk Haze and discovered this seller, who not only had KSH for $10.50 a skein, but was also offering free shipping from ENGLAND! I got two skeins of this:

Heavenly


I'd like to design an Orenburg-style scarf for it with some of the patterns out of Gossamer Webs. If it comes out nicely, I'll post the pattern for sale at Etsy.

Does anybody have any suggestions for working with KSH? I've heard it referred to as "yarn crack," but I've never been able to afford it before (Etsy is a wonderful thing), so have no experience knitting it. Would Bryspun or Balene needles work well? I'm thinking that Addis would be way too slippery and blunt-tipped. Any comments would be appreciated.

Coming soon: Hot Pink Sockapaloooza Pomatomi.