new yarns in the shop!! 7 new kits total. the 4 pictured on the ends are all for spiraling stripes hat kits, and the 2 in the centers are for ninja mitts kits, but of course they can all be purchased alone if that’s what you want. and of course all the pattern pdfs can be bought alone also.

the 3 top yarns are of my new “spun recycled” variety, which means they are multiple recycled yarns spun and plied together. they all include some part angora (details are in the shop descriptions). i am really in love with these yarns – it’s so hard to put them for sale, but i have so much yarn already, i can’t rationalize keeping yarns that are meant for the shop. but maybe a few of them, if they don’t sell within a few weeks, hmm…… yumyumyum yarn…..

i was planning to have a bunch of new knit kits in the shop today, i have the yarns all dyed and pictures taken, but i have been weirdly unmotivated today, blah. part of it is because i’m having issues with my arm hurting, for about two weeks now, and it’s really starting to piss me off. grr. and then i think this motivation problem has to do with having so many plans and projects jumping around in my head and wanting to finish/start all of them and not being able to focus on any one productive thing. or something. so i end up spinning and clicking around blogs and stuff for hours and not updating my site like i should. tomorrow! for reals!

so what i’ve been playing with lately is spinning different recycled yarns together, or yarn(s) with thread(s). i added this new line of yarns to ravelry, and will be adding at least one as a mitt kit yarn (the red one below) for sale tomorrow, and more later this week. i stocked up on tons of threads at my favorite craft thrift store, so the yarns are spun with all recycled materials, woo!

that top one is a mini-skein spun for myself as an experiment – a bunch of recycled scraps that i threw in the dyepot with other yarns, then spun with chunks of roving holding them together, then plied the whole thing with three different threads to hold it all securely. worked out pretty well, but it took a long time, so i don’t know if that whole method would be worth it for kit yarns.

have i mentioned how much i love my wheel? spinning is so much fun. here’s a little montage of yarns i’ve made in the last weekish…

and also, i got new glasses today!!

(that hat in the photo is knit from my “happy” handspun i made awhile back, love it!)

i’m having a pretty great birthday so far! lots of sitting around, relaxing, spinning, knitting, movie/tv watching…. when pete gets home from work around 10:30 he’s gonna take me out for a late dinner and dessert at rimsky’s, yummm. but i can’t decide where i want to go for dinner, since i want it to be small to save plenty of room for desserty goodness, and it needs to be quick since rimsky’s closes at midnight…. any recommendations? somewhere in southeast…

some things that have made me super happy today:

my brother matt’s birthday present to me – flight of the conchords dvd – which we watched late into the night last night. so so SO funny! highly recommended!!

sleeping in and pete bringing me stumptown coffee in bed, such a nice way to start the day.

lots of supersweet birthday comments/emails from family and friends, and happy fun feedback about the rap, yay! thanks everyone!!

spinning a prettytastic skein of yarn, practicing my plying, looking good. and pete gave me two spinning books! a great instructional one, and the beautiful pluckyfluff handspun revolution!

then knitting up the airplane through valentine clouds yarn i won from insubordknit into a great, fat+fluffy neckwarmer. love it!!

and now i have to tell you how hat attack went for me, it was so much fun! so, in this killer hat swap, you get assigned a target, who could live anywhere in the world, to try to “kill” by getting your hat to her/him as quickly as possible, before you receive a hat from your assassin. well, by complete coincidence, my target, kate, lives in my apartment complex, right across the yard! unbelievable right? so it was extra fun for us!

i finished knitting the hat at work yesterday, got home around 5:30, then i wanted to wait to attack until pete got home so he could photograph the event. so, i let her know of her impending death by putting my scary mask with the hat in the window, looking at her window.

then when he got home around 8, i put the mask on, grabbed a comic-ly giant knitting needle, and crept across the yard…

and i killed her! mwa ha ha ha!!

fun times! i’m so glad i did hat attack! if i hadn’t been assigned kate as my target, i probably never would have even known i lived across from a cool knitter! now i’m just waiting for my hat of doom to arrive in the mail and kill me… i hope it’s a good color!

so ever since pete and i first started dating (which was exactly 3 years ago yesterday, by the way) we’ve talked about making songs together under the name Avant-Garde Ice Cream. don’t ask where the name came from, pete doesn’t even like ice cream, it’s just one of those things… anyway, the years went by and we talked about song ideas but never actually wrote/recorded any. oh, i should mention here, i am not a musician – in this project idea, i write the lyrics (or we write them together) and i do some/most of the vocals, and he does everything else (music writing, composition, playing, recording, producing, all that stuff i know nothing about).

then about a month ago, bored working the day job, i had some sudden inspiration, and i wrote words for a knitting rap. last week, while i was out of town and pete was trying to occupy his alone time productively, he made my lyrics into our first ever AGIC song!! he did an amazing job, considering this is not his genre of expertise (just about the opposite), according to me anyway. the point is to be funny, not brilliant musically, of course. and he did all the vocals for this particular song, because it makes more sense, but in future songs i’ll help with that part.

so here it is, for a limited time only, free for download. i plan to leave it up here for a week, so through next weekend (2/17 to be exact), then probably make it for sale through itunes. so grab it while you can!!

i am thinking about making a “radio edit” (which would mean bleeping out bitches, hos, and shit, i think that’s all) so that yarn stores could play it and not offend any customers. think there might be any interest?

so let me know what you think! hope it makes you laugh lots!!

it’s here! Craft:06 on shelves at last! it is an awesome issue, and i still can hardly believe i’m a part of it! that’s right, way back there at the end, you’ll find the “recycle it” column is written by me! woo! i can’t stop using these exclamation points! yeah!

my column will show you how to make a bunch of rockin things from records and album covers (and i tried to throw a bunch of puns in there, yeah!) – including bowls, cd/dvd cases, letter sorters, clocks, and notebooks. fun stuff! and i was so excited to see that they even put one of my photos on the table of contents page!

it really is a fantastic issue, highly recommended for countless reasons. one of which is diane‘s tutorial for otedama (japanese juggling toys) – you can see some of diane’s favorites from the issue on her blog. tons of great projects…

ok i’m exhausted and can’t really think clearly enough to write anymore. i just wanted to get this posted for the release date. i’m having a great time down here with my family – got to spend time with all three of my rad brothers, saw the diving bell and the butterfly with my mom (loved it!), helped my brother matt move from san diego to santa monica, spent quality time with the supersweet kitties and spud, hardly touched a computer for the last week (kind of refreshing, you know)… definitely glad i came. i’ll be back in portland tomorrow night, catching up with blogs and getting back to dying yarn for more kits later this week. for now, sleep!