Fiber Friday: A Pink/Purple/White Fingering Weight Skein of Gorgeous Yarn: Cheshire

Right now, I can't promise a new colorway every week, but I am Really excited about this one, with a capital R. I kept going back and forth on this one. Do I keep it? Do I see if it sells for X amount of time and then keep it?

In the end, I am trying my best to provide great colorways for you, so that I can buy more yarn from the mill, and make more gorgeous colorways. I worked really hard yesterday on this site and re-arranging furniture in our house to make more room for the ever expanding studio area, so I'm going to keep this short, as I totally rocked it out and earned a fun day.

You can find this skein and others by clicking the link "To the shop!" in the navigation menu.

Meet Cheshire. A pinky purpley mauvey with a hint of brown skein in Puck. While I think Cheshire would be great for some sock, I think he'd make an even better simple shawl to show off his colors. We all know Chesh is a bit of a show off. ;)

Colorway: Cheshire
Weight: Fingering
Yards: 438
Material: 75% Superwash Merino Wool / 25% Nylon
Dye lot: None
Available: 1

Time to put Zeke out to pasture: Getting a new sewing machine and website updates

I have been working diligently since last Thursday on getting things moved from Etsy to here, just to have to move from here over to my very own dot com in about a month or so. My brain is mush!!

I have added a shop page (you can find it in the navigation menu up yonder) and in that page, you'll be directed somewhere else based on the yarn weight and fiber type that you're looking for. Then you get to see all the pretty yarn. We had a very nice photo shoot the other evening, and they're ready to show you their best top model photos. Not all of them are entered in yet, as it's still a work in progress of it's own.

I'm also working on a very pretty shawl, and though I started it out to list for sale, I'm falling in love with it the more I work on it, and holy crap! It's actually being made from my very own hand dyed yarn. Puck will be pleased, as it falls under his "line."

I'm not normally this productive. (Hey, what I've been doing may not look like much, but I promise, mushy brain is mushy like over cooked oatmeal.) I'm bribing myself, and finding that it's working out pretty nicely. I want to do two things; 1: I want to play good ol' Caesar 3 - I really can't get enough of this game. It's so zen when you're playing on the city construction kit...or as I like to call it 'Piss Off, Caesar' mode. 2: we refinanced our car, and in the process got some money back from our previous lender, and my wonderful, loving, amazeballs hubby took me to the store to get a new sewing machine....and I want to touch it!

I unpacked it, and put it on my sewing spot and haven't messed with it at all. I've been such a good girl! I told myself that when I made decent progress on updating the shop portion of the site, I would be allowed to play with my new machine... well, I'm allowing myself to learn what all these new doohickeys do. My first machine is fifteen years old,  and you wouldn't think that a lot would change in sewing in fifteen years, but oh boy...this thing has functions that I can't even begin to fathom what they do.

I know I'm not the only one that names my...how do I say this without sounding dirty....oh heck, we'll just stick with machines. My computer's name is Jet, because he's all black and dark gray. My first sewing machine I named Zeke, and I'm not really sure why. But Zeke will be going to my son, since now we've got two machines that work, even though Zeke isn't in the best shape of his life.

Now, my new machine, I'm calling her Mildred. For no other reason than when she's fifteen years old, I can say things like, "Well, Old Girl, you gave it a good try, but I think it's time you went to see The Doctor."

Here's a picture of Mildred. No, this isn't staged to show off the pretty yarn sitting next to her, that's just how it happened to be (aka: I pulled out the yarn so when making the entries for each skein, I didn't get the name wrong. Can you imagine how pissed Blue Fairy would be if I called her Cinderella?)

Do you name your sewing machine or laptop? I'd love to hear what you call him/her/them.

Yellow and Gray Hand Dyed Superwash Merino Yarn and Coat of Arms

Yesterday, I broke out the dye pot because I wanted to make for myself some butter yellow and gray yarn, because those are my favorite colors right now. I love the color play between the two. If done right, it can be gorgeous and no bumble bee like at all.

However...

I was using a dye that I haven't tested yet, and I really know better. Sometimes, my excitement to make someone that I know I will love gets the better of me. Here's how it turned out:

You can find this skein of yarn, and others by clicking the link in the header named: To the shop!

While I adore how gorgeous the gray came out, the yellow was a bit brighter than I wanted. When I showed it to my husband, he went into a Google-fu flurry and pulled up his family crest.

 I started laughing, because the colors match so perfectly!! So here it is, a new skein of yarn and it actually has a name!!

Yarn Company: Little Bit Fae
Name: Puck
Colorway: Coat of Arms
Weight: Fingering
Yards: 438
Material: 75% Superwash Merino Wool/25% Nylon
Dye lot: None

If you want to check out his family crest, or look up what yours is, I've found HeraldicJewelry.com to be pretty helpful.

Finding Value

I've struggled for a long time to try and find a unifying theme for my blog so that it becomes something of value, rather than a place where I post the stuff that I make that no one really wants to see anyway. It seems to me that all of the blogs that I love to read are about something, whether it's knitting, cooking, photography, sewing, etc. They've all got that one thing that holds them together. The problem with doing that for my blog is that I am interested in far too much, and I go through my interests in phases. If I had a blog about ceramics and pottery, it will have been dead since 2004.

I love to create things, and I'm finding that it doesn't matter what medium it is, I will try it a few times and see if it's for me. Most of the time, I really enjoy the activity, but sometimes, I could really do without it. Recently, I swore off of quilting. I love looking at them, feeling them, and being in awe of some really amazing work, but I don't have the patience for piecing tiny stuff together...and all that math! I love me some geometry, but not that much. It's just an aspect of sewing that I can do without...happily. The same goes for crochet. I love making tiny little crocheted dolls and amigurumi, and I love how quickly the projects go when compared to knitting, but I do not like the fabric that crocheted stitches create. It's lumpy and bumpy, and any color changes in the yarn turn into camouflage in crocheted items. The sample picture on my crocheted dishcloth pattern is a perfect example.

So really, the unifying theme of this blog is me. Every day I wake up to my kids, either Goosie laying her head on my chest, or kissing my face (which sounds sweet, but I assure you it's at the most obnoxious hour of the morning, and I am not a morning person) or to both Goosie and Bug yelling at each other in some asinine argument that I can't make heads or tails of. Usually, it's just "Yes!" "No!" "I said 'yes!'" "Well, I said 'no!'"...and so on until I find the strength inside me to let them know that I am awake and yell, "SHUT UP!"

And then of course they know I'm awake, and both come barreling into my bedroom (thank God I don't sleep naked) to complain about the argument or that they're hungry, thirsty, bored, etc. and I'm still bleary-eyed and barely conscious.

Most of my days feel like a fight between being Mom and being myself. I struggle constantly with being who I want to be, and being who society tells me I should be. Maybe it's just my old fashioned way of thinking, but I'd really love to consistently have purple, or blue, or pink, or some other bright color of fun in my hair, but I don't because moms don't have fun hair. Moms wear God-awful jeans up to their armpits, Bermuda shorts that are too big, carry around an endless supply of tissues and bandaids, and ugh! I don't want to be a badly dressed mom-supply vending machine.

I do love my kids to tiny little pieces, but there are (many) days where I wonder if I should have ever birthed them. I'm not sure if at the end of it all, I have what it takes to see this motherhood thing through. They're 9 and 4 and I am looking forward to the days where they shut themselves in their room, blast whatever garbage they call music too loud, and they leave me alone.

And then I feel terrible for thinking these things. The Pinterest Moms are certainly going to come after me and scoff at me and judge me, because don't I know how lucky I am? Don't I know there are hundreds of women out there who can't have children, and I am just so blessed with two??? Don't I just want to scoop them up and make my whole life orbit around their every little desire?

This is why I had the "No kids after 30" rule. Because that sounds absolutely horrible to me. I don't want to lose myself in order to cater to these poopy little crooks! I swear the word that gets the most use in my vocabulary is "stop."

I hope we get a good school system when we're done being stationed in California, because I want to send Bug back to public school. I want to have confidence that Goosie will have a good start in Kindergarten and that they Army keeps their word on not moving people from station to station once a year, and sticks to the once every four years at a minimum. I cannot wait to have all my days filled with silence and doing whatever the hell I want.

So there's my unification. That's why I changed the name of the blog. I am more than just their mom. And I will claw at the sides of every box that people try to put me in like a feral cat with rabies. They are not my life.

Super Duper Easy Dishcloth

Crochet Pattern

Hook Size: 5mm; H
Yarn suggested: Lily Sugar'n Cream
Yarn Weight: Worsted/Aran
Gauge: Not important

Ch: 20
R1: sc in every ch; ch2 turn
R2-9: dc in every stitch, ch2 turn
R10: dc in every stitch, pull tail through last stitch until you have a loop as long as you'd like leaving enough extra yarn for the knot, then tighten. Take the loop and knot it, making sure the knot is snug against the dish cloth, then break yarn close to, but not right up against the knot.

Makes approximately one 6in x 6in dish cloth. To make it bigger chain extra stitches and measure, then repeat row 2 until length is the same as width.

I get roughly 3 dish clothes from one ball of Lily Sugar'n Cream. You may get more or less depending on the size of your dish cloths.