arts and crafts

So it’s been awhile, yes. But knitting has been happening. Well, sort of. Crafty things. As well as a lot of school things and plenty of freaking out over what is happening after school is finished. After four years of preparing to go into either history or museum studies I have finally decided on library conservation. So yeah, I wasn’t expecting me to spring that surprise on me. I think it’s definitely the right thing to do (how can repairing old books all day not be the right thing to do?), but seeing as I spent my undergrad career skimping on the art and chem classes I need to take a year off to catch up on that good stuff. And then I need to go to school for many, many more years. This in itself is not a problem, but I would at some time like to make some sort of salary so I can actually, um, move out maybe? Yeah, that would be so awesome right now.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re all enthralled, onward to arts and crafts:

Over spring break I drug out the sewing machine; the very old, very awesome, very avocado green sewing machine. Box bags were made. (http://dragoknit.blogspot.com/2007/02/box-bag-tutorial.html)

Directions confused me so much at first, but I caught on. You have to be very clever to come up with these sewing things, I would never have thought of this.

Originally I wanted to make an art supplies bag but the first one wasn’t big enough for paintbrushes, thus my only option was to make a second, larger one.

Sorry for the bad angle, the other one turned out blurry....

And since I was working on art supply storage, I made this thing to keep/organize/protect my brushes.

And it wraps up like this, how nice!

I also decided that I want to make an afghan, so I bought 12 balls of Lion Brand Jiffy yarn. I know! But I decided the acrylic was a good decision because a) I think machine washable is a must for all large blanket things and b) I’m too poor for superwash wool. And it’s working out alright, very soft and easy to work with. Does not rip out well. At first I made the whole thing too wide, and with only 12 balls of yarn it would have ended up not very long at all, so ripping out was necessary. The yarn sticks together and doesn’t hold up so well, so don’t make any mistakes with it and you’ll be fine. Oh yeah, and it’s crochet, I thought I’d give that a try. I will say that things are going a lot faster then it ever would with knitting!

And some knitting, yes. For a friend’s future child, it’s the Baby Jiffy Knit Sweater (http://wishingiwasknitting.blogspot.com/2007/07/baby-jiffy-knit-sweater.html). I don’t know what’s so jiffy about it, it’s not going so jiffy for me. I never seem to have the right number of stitches at the end of each row but everything still seems to look alright and it’s turning out to have a really pretty stitch pattern. Gage and size info on this pattern is also rather vague, so I really don’t know what size I’m making here. I chose size 4 needles with Knit Picks Shine Sport. I’m just hoping I don’t run out of yarn, I seem to have a habit of doing that.



And so that’s what I’ve been spending my time doing, along with writing papers about medieval architecture and doing tedious color mixing projects such as this

Later dudes

things that people make

This is a terrifying thing to walk through

In Peruvian Andes this is this place called the Sacred Valley. It’s very pretty (this is an understatement, but I want to talk to you about yarn, not about how pretty Sacred Valley is, so we’ll leave it at that) and it’s rather hard to breathe there because of the altitude but you deal because it’s so pretty. It’s known for its Inca sites, and if you go you will find a lot of very poor villages filled with indigenous people. The Inca social system (not just Inca, but nearly every Andean society before it as well) was heavily based on the creation of textiles – textiles for offerings, for taxes, for weddings, funerals, etc. Some of the finest textiles could have thread counts higher than your sheets – your good sheets. And in the Sacred Valley there are still people weaving these things today. We visited a weaver’s co-op in Chinchero, Peru where they prepare, spin, and dye their own wool, and then proceed to weave it. And so, here are some lovely pictures.

Woman spinning. I did not see one spinning wheel the whole time I was there (that being in the whole of South America), they seem to only use drop spindles - that's a lot of spinning

Hand dying yarns


They only use traditional, natural dyes. These are examples of what is used to make each color.


Weaving belts

If you so happen to want to see more pictures of Peru (and Chile!) I have tons, and you can see them here http://www.zooomr.com/photos/beckylynne/sets/

I'm back!

Hi there!
Yes, its been a very long time since I've posted something. But I have a really good excuse, I was in South America, and they don't always have the internet there. Regardless, it was good times. I went with school and we restored some 1,000 year old textiles that were found in mummy bundles (which actually makes them rather gross because they were covered in 1,000 year old "body resin" ie/ dead person juice). We did other things too, like tour northern Chile and southern Peru; we were at Machu Picchu for my birthday.
I was expecting more yarn, seeing as nearly all the yarn you find here seems to come from South America, but not so much. I saw lots of alpacas and llamas and sheep and other such animals that yarn is made from, and I found lots of textiles and people weaving and spinning; but I found very little actual yarn for sale. I think it might be because everyone who does the textile thing down there also knows how to spin (like crazy, I have a great video that I'll post when i figure out how to post videos), so they all spin their own yarn. I did find a bit though, a few random balls floating about in the corner of stores. Really I didn't even know if they were for sale half the time, but everyone was willing to sell whatever you were willing to buy, so I have some yarn. Pictures later, I still haven't finished unpacking....

Now.... a meme about books! Which I was tagged for a long time ago by Dancing Knitter, but I've been a bit behind on my blog reading (ummm, so I have 287 entries still left to read....) and I just found it.


I recently finished reading:
Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird. And it's an awesome book that you should read. Let's see, how can I sum this up in a way that will make you want to read this.... It's about a Lawyer named Danny, and he's from Northern Ireland, but now he works in London. And one day his deadbeat friend from home shows up at his door. And there's terrorists. And it's rather funny and I really loved the characters and would like to be friends with them in real life. Here, read this summary, because this man is much better at summarizing than I will ever be: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article385756.ece

Turn to page 161 of the book, and read the 5th sentence. My book says:
"When Geordie came back into the living room carefully carrying the brimmed mug of tea, Ian had the money in three neat piles, all with the Queen's head on top. "

this is a lie, it's is not the 5th sentence but the 7th, because the 5th was very boring. Yes, I'm cheating, it's my meme I can cheat!


List of some of my favorite books:

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
2. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut
3. Beowulf
4. Catch 22, Joseph Heller
5. Sabriel, Garth Nix

And I don't know who reads this, so I tag whoever sees this, and then leave me a comment and I'll check out what you have to say about what you read.

Hi all
Just thought I'd let you know I'm not dead, just in South America. And there's yarn here! More next week, hope all is well!

cardigans!

I love cardigans. So much. There are very few patterns that I come across that I say “wow, I need to knit that NOW.” Every once and awhile I will find a sweater, sometimes a hat, never once a pair of socks. But I’m all about the cardigans; my Ravelry queue will attest to that (btw, my username is “brunhilda” if you want to be my friend!). Currently I’m knitting Kaleidoscope, which I will not show you another picture of because it looks nearly exactly the same as in my last post. This morning I checked MagKnits and found this pattern, Basic Black, that I immediately fell in love with.

This one could either be awesome or look like it’s for an old man. It’s a toss up.

The Mrs. Darcy Cardigan intrigues me, but I’m not sure I can pull it off. I’m afraid I might…. pop out of it, let’s say.

And this Drops cardigan has an awesome circle thing going on.

If there are any cardigans you like I’d love to hear about them :)

Oh my, it’s an update

But only a quick one. Although this blog is really worthy of a long, in depth one seeing as I haven’t been paying as much attention to it as I should be, but things are a bit hectic. School has kept me busy enough, and along with that there has been grad school freaking out, internship applying, and class choosing. I’m taking the GREs on Thursday, which is not helping me to stay calm about anything. I’m also going to South America in January on a study abroad, so there’s be a whole lot of that to organize. Apparently there’s lots of diseases that can kill you down there, and if the germs don’t get you the Peruvians are going to violently rob all of us rich Americans. I guess they have to push the worst case scenario, but it’s not really helping any of us to stay calm about this.

Anyway, aside from that, knitting has been happening, I have lots of FOs to show you, very few of which you were even aware that I even started. And I think I’ll throw a few non knitting pictures in there just to liven things up a bit. Let us begin:

Tiny birthday elephant for my mom. Sorry the pictures are bad, I finished this late at night and her birthday was the next day, so he had to be wrapped up. So it goes, just take my word for it that he’s cute.

Cell phone for scale


All wrapped up for mom!


(Make your own!: http://www.innerchildcrochet.com/patterns/tiny_white_elephant.html )

Pretty flowers Paul brought me when I got my wisdom teeth out (which sucked). He also brought many DVDs of The Office with him. We watched 19 episodes in two days, this part of getting my teeth out was fantastic.


Yarn on sale from Knit Picks. Shine Sport in Crocus (which looks nearly exactly like the Orchid I made the Summertime Tunic out of), Shine Worsted in Sea Spray (which I am quite excited about. When I saw it on the computer I was afraid it might be ugly in real life, it’s not), and Shadow in Redwood Forest. I have more than is shown here, I just didn’t think you needed to see 5 balls of the same color.



Remember that baby my cousin is having? So this is a sweater for it. It’s coming along, slowly by surely. Except it now needs to be coming along quick and speedily since her shower is on Sunday. I can nearly guarantee the hedgehog is not getting finished, that might turn into a Christmas present.

In Knit Picks Swish Superwash in Deep Ocean and Dark Navy. Pattern here: http://fpea.blogspot.com/2007/01/free-pattern-friday-mossy-jacket.html


Mister Quinn:
Kaleidoscope sweater from MagKnits a few months ago. Has been put on hiatus for baby knitting. Going super slowly anyway, and I’m having second thoughts about my gage and my yarn choice. We’ll see how this goes. Knit Picks Essential Solid in Dusk. (Yes, I live for Knit Picks).


Pattern here: http://www.magknits.com/Sept07/patterns/kaleidoscope.htm

Dinner! I made it, all by myself (and yes, this in itself is an accomplishment)! And it was really good!



So I lied, that was only one FO. But so it goes.

Dictionary.com's word of the day today is "woolgathering"!
My dictionary.com word-of-the-day email has this to say about woolgathering:

woolgathering \WOOL-gath-(uh)-ring\, noun:

Indulgence in idle daydreaming.

Similarly, in the meadow, if you laze too late into the fall, woolgathering, snow could fill your mouth.
-- Edward Hoagland, "Earth's eye", Sierra, May 1999

It would be easy to slip off into woolgathering and miss a deadline.
-- Jeraldine Saunders, Washington Post, March 4, 2004

Plagued by guilt, they took refuge in wine, women, and woolgathering.
-- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

The soprano roused Fergus from his woolgathering.
-- Sandra Brown, Where There's Smoke

Woolgathering derives from the literal sense, "gathering fragments of wool."

I think that's great! My local yarn shop is called "A Woolgathering," and now I totally get it.

Real post on tuesday if school doesn't kill me!