Insubordiknit

Corn and nettle spin

I'm a freakin' student again! And an art student to boot. Tonight was my first class and it was awesome! It was design 101, not much to you seasoned artiophiles (huh?) but to me newbie, pee-in-my-pants cool! My prof. is nice and funny and helpful and my classmates, at least those in the immediate vicinity of me, are the same. Strangly, it's many olderish (like me) people. So hopefully the egos will be a bit tamer than with those crazy kids.

In other news, the b-ill has been hard at work on my yarn shop, it's set to go live ultra-soon! I've been standing over him, peck-peck-pecking, so not too much news on the spinning and knitting front. I am knitting something that's going along very well and quick, but it's a secret.

I did manage to squeeze some spinning in today though. A new frontier for me, plant fibers!

Here's my first attempt at the amazing ingeo, which is corn, folks! Yep, there's some extra twist in there. It's mostly orange with a bit of red and some red shimmery goodness.

My second attempt looked a bit better but had 2 breaks where I joined, gotta get used to joining non-I'll-hang-onto-anything-wool. It's really interesting stuff. The recyled aspect of it really speaks to me, plus the planty-ness of it. Pretty easy to spin once I got the hang of it, a bit sqeakier than wool, but very smooth and silky. It pulls a bit like yearling mohair, you can just gently pull your hand back and it drafts itself, the trick being, for me at least, is to make sure it drafts itself the thickness I want. It's so soft and shiny, like a baby's bum, if it were made outta shiny and well as soft stuff.

Next I took out the ramie, which starts as a nettle plant, an herb I took a lot of as a pregnant gal. This wacky was a bit harder for me to control, what with all the hair flyin' everywhere and the sneezin', jeez. I'm not quite happy with the result. It made such a firm, ropey yarn. It makes no sense that with such a firm yarn my hands automatically went to making a boucle. Yeah, huh? It was a total failure as a loopy, frolicking yarn. Anyway, I'll definitely try and try again.

Also, and I know I run the risk of getting zero responses by my placing this request down at the end of my mundane post, but here I go -- I'm in the market for a drum carder and wanna get some opinions. Who's got one and do you like it, love it, hate it, wish it had a feature, lacked a feature, did the damn dishes etc? Please, lemme have it!

my pain, their god

Again with the belly shot. Apparantly, I'm the hieght of fashion, showing the skin between my dikies and the lower hem. It's all the craze nowdays, just sos ya know. Of course, the bellies sporting this look are usually 10 years younger and just a bit tauter, but what the hell, I ran outta yarn and I'm secure in my pouchiness.

This tank could possibly be the easiest and fastest knit evah! It's from loop d' loop and it took 2 days and almost no skill minus the smallest bit of a top down raglan. Yowsa! I've gotta where it in the blistering heat because if the girls get one hint of a breeze, they're eager to poke thier heads out of the ribbon yarn and say hello to whatever eyes happen to glance. Risque, that's me, all over.

I wore it today to my new chiroprator's office, uh, excuse me, wellness practicioner's center, which just reeks of youthfulness, hipness, and, wait for it...scientology. Yep, L. Ron right out there in the lobby next to the babbling brooke fountain/aromatherapy dispensor. My doctors have names like Dr. Loren, Dr. Jerry, Dr. Angie, shaved heads, pierced tongues, and instrumental 80s metal ballads abound. It's just not right, yet, oddly comforting. I learned that my neck's on the cusp of phase 1 and phase 2 of veterbral subluxation complex. Phase 1 is correctable, everyone is in phase one, practically. You get a few adjustments and your back is back to being a zero. Phase 2 however, is one step away from that poor old couple you see walking down the street, 2 feet shorter than they used to be, only able to look straight at the ground, haven't seen the sky, a mirror, or each other in years. Apparantly, that's almost me. Reallly, it'd be perfect though, I could look at my fashionably exposed belly forever and ever.

It is bad though. I know this, not from their fancy words or the 12 hours of dianetics videos I'm sure to have to watch to get the promised 40% off of thier astronomical rates, but from the CONSTANT god-forsaken pain I've been in for over a year. Did you know that when I knit or type, I wear a big, white, velcro shoulder/back brace. Yep, I'm that sexy. How'd ya like to lick the pudding now? It's all in my right shoulder and it's with all the time, like a bad dream, or herpes, or well, constant shoulder and neck pain. And I've got one helluva pain threshold! Like super-woman over here, hear these words -- 59 hours of drug free, active labor. So understand, I need these people, with thier fancy adjustments, strange and slightly arousing traction machines, 60 appointments in 6 months. I'll worship whatever god they've got, get fitted for the suit I've gotta wear when the mothership arrives, hell, I'll even let Tom Cruise stand up on his tiptoes and lick the pudding in public, as long as they can fix my fucking shoulder!

That said, Dr. Jared got a good peek, thanks to ribbon yarn, size 9 needles, and a brisk office temperature.

Summer Tunic

Supa easy and fast knit (2 evenings). From Loop d' Loop, a simply brilliant book. Knit on 9s with choo-choo ribbon yarn, though it coulda been knit on 7s and be just a bit less of a peep show.

On my summer vacation I learned that...

On this trip I learned that:

* i am not suffering from any false impression, nor is it the infamous parent eye, my son really is the coolest little guy in the whole freakin' world. He can also forget his mama in a hot second to get his head turned by any cute girl that will watch him break dance, let him lick their arm, and not mind all the poop talk.

* my brother is a responsible, stand-up-ish 38 year old man who is now married with 5 amazing kids. It's a shock to me too! No longer the blacksheep, more of a gentle gray, and I for one like the hell outta some gray.

* the camera won't mysteriously combust if my my brother and I are captured in frame together. Observe the only picture of us in 15 years, and I had to take that fucker myself!

* I don't have to don my Live to spin, spin to live shirt every time I sit at the wheel, apparantly it works just fine in a harley bike week shirt too! He's a natural, my pop. His yarn rocks!

* even on vacation, I can spin over 1500 yards of fancy, scmancy yarn! Lookit the pretties! There's lotsa texture and some new colors. I wanna keep them all but they will be up for sale as soon as the Insubordiknit yarn shop is open, which will be very soon!

* that my commenting system, or rather the MTblacklist I have is place to keep out the asshat spammers, actually denies most of my legitimate comments too. I've gotten numerous e-mails and shout outs on other blogs about it. If it's happening to you, leave a comment so I'll know. Yeah, I know. It's actually kinda an ego boost, I can imagine the scads of people out there, desperately trying to tell me how pretty I am and how I'm such a winner, but they just can't get through. Yeah, me, so popular, a true kelly taylor. I almost don't wanna fix it so that my popularity can live on and on. Feh. I'll fix it soon.

* that, according to my parents computer, I need to use fewer and smaller pictures on my blog. Notice the difference already? I'm all about accomodation, baby.

* that my family still deserves the title of crazy bestowed upon them so long ago, though I've added a fuckin' to the beginning.

* butterflies do dirty stuff too.

Now that the obligatory trip talk was taken care of in such short order (due to the ingenius list technique), the blog will return to it's regularly, randomly scheduled updates where I go on and on about spinning, yarn, knitting, and that burning sensation when I pee.

Oh yeah, it's nice as hell to be home.

Pennywise scarf

Glampyre's fabulous pennywise scarf. It was fun, fast, and well-written. Here's a coy close-up. Both yarns are from my early handspun collection.

Me and my madness

I'm insane. Mad, I tell ya. Completely. And there's many people who no longer call me friend that will, no doubt, back me up. I'm going to my mom's for 2 weeks and from the state of our luggage, you'd think we were starting a whole new life. Of course, our new life would have to be built around fiber and spinning wheels, but hey, I'm okay with that.

Here's the first layer of my 66 quart taget box, followed by the second layer, and the third. It took my ass and b-ill with duck tape to get it closed.

There's another box with Pablo. Yeah, I plan on spinning while I'm there. There's also a bag of yarn for 2 designing projects and a few books thrown to, you know, make me look all scolastic and shit.

In the knitterific news, last night I started and finished testing Glampyre's fabulous pennywise scarf. It was fun, fast, and well-written. Both yarns are from my early handspun collection. I wore it to trader joe's today and got several compliments. If you've about 25 yards of some fun handspun, knit this! The pictures don't do it justice, the whole thing evokes hanging ivy and flowers.

Yesterday I traveled to both my LYS to pic up a few things for the trip and took a collection of my yarns for them to look at (as one shopowner gave me my 1 hour spinning lesson, and the other is a knitting friend) and they both made me feel so good. It was wonderful. They both thought I should be selling my yarn! In fact, one shop said if I created little hat and scarf kits, she's sell 'em! Exciting eh? So, when I return, the shit is on! and the yarn is going on sale!

See ya!

18 year old yarns

So I'm off, with Little Bit in tow, for two weeks to my parents house. When I return B-ill will have (i hope) set up a seperate page for all my yarn porn, perhaps with the intent of decreasing the amount living at my house (ie. selling?), but definitely with the intent of decreasing the yarn porn content and increasing the witty banter content on the front page of my blog, and no jokes about that not being the answer to increased witty banter, but rather someone who's banter is more witty. Yeah, I figure not everyone wants to read about the ins and outs of each and every yarn I spin. Plus, I feel like I never get to talk about my knitting, and I've got knitting, baby! lots o kintting. But since that hasn't happened yet, here's some more yarn! The above pic is called corporeal glee and here's a glorious close up of it's 75 yards of bulky purple/blue/green merino with uncarded red and green bits, and long stripes of red thick and thin supercoils, plied with purple nylon. It's well, corporeal glee!

Then there's 150 more yards of dead pool, except in Romney. And 175 yards of 2-ply merino makes eater. So lovely and soft and purple-y. Of course, there's the self striping merino goodness of 85 yards of single smorfin and 55 yards of a bulkier and interesting self-striping 2-ply double-smorfin. Okay, no more yarn, I promise.

Also when I get back I'll be back in the saddle so to speak. My last university final was 2 weeks before Little Bit was born. I haven't been back since. This september I step into the hallowed halls of learning once again and I'm nevous and excited as hell, or as a freshie. I changed my major from Economics to art with a focus on craft and fiber. Yeah, big change. Plus it puts me in school another year and a half instead of a year. The reason for my nerves is that, even though I'm doing craft and fiber, I have to (get to) take all the traditional art classes -- drawing, painting, on into sculpture, metalsmithing etc. These are things I've not done too much. Drawing? The last good drawing I did was out of a kids how to draw book and it was of a twinkie fishing from a wooden boat, for filling, with a pencil-pole. Oh yeah, and a dinosaur watched him from the shore. Clearly I will not be at the top of my Drawing101 class. It's nerve-inspiring, I'll be in there with 18 year olds artists, people who can actually paint and shit. Yikes! If I was 20 I could never do it, never put myself in a situation where I wasn't the best in my class, the highest grade etc. However, at 30, I'm okay with it, really. I am. Really. A chance to learn, right?

Plus, 18 year olds. Yum.