I'm Having So Much Fun!

I can not be the only one who absolutely LOVES getting packages in the mail, can I? Living in a super small town, if what I want isn't at Walmart, I pretty much have to order it online. This makes for a lot of packages being delivered.

Today, there were two on my front porch! My recent Ebay acquisitions have arrived! I'm happy to welcome to my stash, 4 new acrylic/wool blends for me to play around with:


I haven't knit with wool yet at all, but I had heard a lot of Lion Brand's Ease line, so I thought these might be fun to play with. The Encore yarns you see there actually have a slightly higher percent of wool in them. They seem kinda scratchy, so maybe not a knit for against the skin. Anyone have any ideas? I like the maroon and the gray together, but the blue may end up finding another home. I won the auction for all 4 with a bid of $7.50! and it had Free Shipping! These were all tossed in to my Stash Bin, after logging them in to my Ravelry account of course!

I also managed to take care of my lack of circular needles with this recent Ebay auction. I don't think this gentleman knew what he had when he sold me all these for $12 including shipping. lol


Most of them are metal, larger sizes (ranged from US 4-13) and between 29" and 36" inches long, which makes me very happy. I think the pullover vest I'll be making for my dad is done in the round, so they'll get broken in soon. And these things are bloody expensive when bought new! I bought my metal one at a Local Yarn Store for like $15!! I feel very good about this purchase! Now... on the hunt for some double pointed needles. hehe!

I've also begun dabbling with the idea of making stitch markers. You see, about a year back I was kinda getting in to making jewelry and I have quite an impressive yet very random stash of beads laying around. These stitch markers were a few of my first forays in to the crafting.



The first ones are made of wood beads and the second ones are made of a glass and some kind of natural stone. I didn't label my beads back then, so I couldn't tell you exactly. lol I have a few questions for those knitters out there that like decorative stitch markers: How many matching ones do you normally need? Do you buy sets of 4? 5? 8? Also, how big are they normally? These here are made to fit up to a size 10.5 (top) and size 7 (bottom). Also, is it important for the ring at the top to come all the way closed, or is partially open okay?

Also, in case you haven't noticed (hehe) I'm trying harder at making my blog photos pretty. My good friend over at Ponder & Stitch has been giving me some tips. What do you think? I've kinda become obsessed with this blog thing. lol In fact, between the recycling yarn and making stitch markers, organizing my stash, and blogging about it all, I really haven't got a whole lot of KNITTING done. LOL! What am I going to do once school starts back up?

Oh, and speaking of my recycling yarn, I think it's coming along nicely. They really haven't un-kinked though, which apparently hanging dry was supposed to be able to accomplish. Here's my pull so far, drying out in my carport in the sun:


I sorta made the rookie mistake of making one of the skeins WAY too big, like 650 yards. LOL Oops! So it's taking a LONG time to dry. (duh) I think I'm going to rewind them on the new niddy-noddy that hubby made me from pvc piping! I'm not sure if it's absolutely necessary to rewind the smaller ones or not if they're already in circles like this. Also, I think I'd like to print labels for them that look kind of nice. Does anyone have a favourite site that has templates?

What do you think about trying to over-dye some of these skeins? I'm probably going to have about 10 200 yard skeins, enough to play around with the colour a bit if I want. I was thinking of trying out the Kool Aid method. Do any of you more knowledgeable dyers have any suggestions as to the colour or strength of colour to use? I'm scared it'll just be hideous. lol Maybe a little bit of green added in would be nice?

Man oh man, I'm just so excited about everything I have going on. I've even started looking in to spinning tutorials, but I really don't think I'm ready for that yet. I wish I had someone closer to me who did this kind of stuff so I could learn by watching. That's always so much easier than trying to read instructions!

Hope you all have a happy Monday!