FO Friday 5/9/14

With all of the WIPs I just started, I only have one finished object to share this week. 
A fellow Hufflepuff house cup member unexpectedly lost her daughter recently.  A bunch of us are knitting 8x8 squares that will be seamed into a blanket for her.  I made the basket weave square from the Dream Catcher Baby Blanket by Susan B. Anderson using Caron Simply Soft in Navy.

I also only have one FO to share this week and it is my blanket square for our Hufflepuff friend.

I did the Harris Tweed blanket square from the same pattern that Jess used. 

This weekend I plan to work on my spinning and more squares for my blanket, do you have any FOs that you want to share? Comment here or share them in our group on Ravelry!

MDSW 2014 & Modular Mondays in May

This past weekend was the 41st annual Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival in West Friendship, Maryland.  Jen & I drove down Friday night and came back Sunday afternoon.  We have been going for a few years, but in my opinion, this one was the most successful for us.  We both got everything we wanted on our lists (and more!), we didn't feel rushed and the weather was beautiful.  

Friday night, Cephalopod Yarns was having an open house from 4-8:30.  When we got there, we shopped a bit and then met and knit with noman, largosmom, and NekoMich.  They are lovely ladies and so much fun to talk to!  

We got to take a tour of the studio and got some info on something they will be announcing on their site shortly (!!!)  During the tour, one of our friends, lipsral, arrived.  I am so happy that I got to meet her!  We have been friends for a few years and it was great to get to meet her in person and give her a hug.  She knows we have been working hard on our sock yarn blankets so she brought each of us a special cup filled with mini skeins.  The cup has the tree and moon logo that is on the South Carolina flag.  Every time I drink from my cup I will think of Renee.  

Saturday, we woke up early and headed to the fairgrounds.  We got there around 8 am and the booths didn't open until 9.  We headed to Gourmet Stash because I have been dying to try to spin punis and there was a limited edition Maleficent colorway that I needed to get my hands on.  I also got some punis, which I have never spun before. I was nervous, but am always looking to get better at spinning.  I bought the MDSW exclusive set in the colorway "Spinner's Hill."  Also in the booth was The Vintage Rose.  She has so many amazing themed sets of stitch markers.  I am kicking myself for not getting the Sherlock set or the Harry Potter set. I snagged a set of Game of Thrones stitch markers that are awesome, a dragon, a castle, a sword and more!   I'll have to check out her etsy shop soon to see if they are available.  I did get myself a spinning wheel stitch marker to remind me of the amazing weekend I had.  

Next, we headed to to the Bosworth booth so I could get my own spindle.  I have been borrowing Jen's mini for months.  I got myself a zebrawood midi.  It's 32gm/1.13oz and gorgeous.  I tested it out that night when we went to the spin-in and I am in love with it.  It spins for miles and is so smooth.  

We wanted to check out Miss Babs, but the line was super long so we skipped it on Saturday.  We both scored at Into the Whirled.  I got some beautiful Corriedale in "Blink".  I was trying to decide what  to get when I saw a fiber called "Godswood."  So that was my second Game of Thrones item for the day!  I got it in Polwarth and it is gorgeous!  One of the booths was selling 4oz of targhee for $3 so we each picked up a bag.  I've never spun targhee before so I'm looking forward to trying it out.  I have spun Targhee before and really enjoyed it so I was excited to see the great deal that we got for it! Plus, since we got natural colored fiber I may try to dye it as well.

There was an HPKCHC meetup at 2pm so we headed over to the hill outside the main building.  It took a few minutes, but we eventually found our group in the crowd.  It was so nice to put faces to all of the ravatars I have been seeing for 7 terms.  

Hufflepuff Hoggles in the back!

We each scored a gradient batt from Loop to spin, mine is even Hufflepuff colors! (that is not what they call it but I am heh).  I bought a gradient braid from Fiber Optic Yarns too.  I have looked at their yarn and fibers before, but have never bought any of it.  I went in thinking I would buy the Chocolate Covered Cherry colorway, but left with a gradient that looks more like peacock colors to me.  After more shopping, we decided to head back to the hotel, refresh and go to dinner before the spin-in.  

The spin-in was pretty fun.  When you came in, you got one raffle ticket.  Throughout the evening, they would call out random numbers and if your number was called, you got to go to the table and pick a prize.  They held contests for who could spin the most in a minute on a drop spindle, on a spinning wheel.  Who could spin the most blindfolded.  The had a word search contest that Jen won.  After Jen won, she gave me her ticket and her number was called so I chose a t-shirt. 

At the spin in, Jess with her new Bosworth and Jen with her Lendrum

Sunday we woke up early and went back to the fairgrounds.  We decided since we still had an hour before the booths opened, we would head over to Miss Babs to see if we could get the MDSW exclusive colorway.  We were 8th in line, chatted with some nice people and got our yarn.  

After Miss Babs, we stopped at Jennie the Potter.  They were sold out of the MDSW mugs but we each got our first Jennie mugs.

The rest of the morning we just walked around, looked at animals and then sat and knit/spun for a bit before heading home.  

Jessica's haul from MDSW

Jen's goodies from MDSW

Jessica's sock yarn blanket with 62 squares so far

Jen's blanket with 126 squares

For the month of May we are celebrating Modular Mondays!  When we say modular we mean anything that you put together to make something else. Like blanket squares or hexipuffs. You have seen our sock yarn blankets here before, but we want to know what modular items that you like to work on.  Each Monday we will share our progress on our blankets and at the end of the month we will give a prize away in our thread on Ravelry. We will send you a set of sock weight mini-skeins that you can use on your own modular item.  All you have to do is leave a comment (with or without a picture) of something modular that you have made or want to make.  You must be a member of the group, and only one comment per person. We will select a winner using a Random Number Generator after midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on May 31, 2014.

Beginning Knitter Techniques

As knitters we all have preferences in needles, yarn, cast ons and bind offs.  So I thought that I would share what I think are good tips for someone who is new to knitting. These tips are based on my experiences knitting.  You get to benefit from my mistakes!

1. Your first project should be something small. Most beginner knitting classes I have seen are for a scarf. A scarf?! A project that is 5-6' long! Most of these projects are all garter stitch too! So all you learn with that is a cast on, knit stitch, a bind off, and that knitting is incredibly boring. Don't get me wrong, there are great scarf patterns out there, and I am even going to be knitting a 12' garter stitch scarf for a Christmas present.  I just think that when you are learning something new that it should be something you can finish relatively quickly so you get to experience success early in your learning! So I recommend a washcloth.  Not only is it  small project, it is a functional item you can use all year long! A washcloth can use knit and purl stitches. Increases and decreases. You can even do lace work in a washcloth. 
Another good option for a beginner project is a hat.  You learn how to use circular needles (which you can use even when knitting flat), you learn how to knit in the round, knit, purl, decrease.  You can learn how to cable right away, do lace.  The sky is the limit!

2. I prefer smooth metal needles to wooden ones, but as a beginner wooden needles can be your best friends.  Wooden needles are more "grippy" and make it harder for the yarn to just go sliding off the needles.  It is that reason that I use metal more than wooden now, I feel like wooden needles slow me down.  I also am a tight knitter so I tend to bend wooden needles.  When working on my first hat I changed to smooth metal dpns (double pointed needles) near the crown.  I was almost done with this cabled awesome hat! The next thing I knew one of the needles was in my lap, and the stitches were starting to drop! It was a knitting EMERGENCY.  Luckily I was able to catch as many of those stitches as I could and a woman at the local knitting shop was able to get everything back on the needles.  This traumatized me from metal needles, and dpns in general.  I eventually got over those fears though :-)
Like Jen mentioned, wood/bamboo needles are perfect for a new knitter.  I still use wood needles once in awhile, if I find myself working on a tricky pattern.  

3. When you move on to projects beyond washcloths use yarn that you wouldn't mind wearing.  You do not have to spend a fortune on yarn (I have spent over $30 on a skein of indie dyed sock yarn to make a pair of socks), but you should stay away from anything that is so inexpensive that it hurts your hands to knit with it.  There are many companies that make great inexpensive acrylic yarn like Lion Brand Vanna's Choice, and Knit Pick's Brava. Once you want to make something that you want to be able to shape and stretch you need to use something that contains and natural fiber. Acrylic doesn't block like other fibers. 
I would like to add that even while learning, you don't need to knit with something that feels awful in your hands.  There are plenty of budget friendly, lower end yarns that are great for learning and that won't make you feel like you are knitting with steel wool.  Use what you love and makes you happy.   

4. The best tip I can offer is to join Ravelry.  It is a fantastic community of knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers, and other fiber artists. You can get access to thousands of patterns many of them are free. You can keep track of your yarn stash, your projects, your needles and more. You can find local knitting groups and groups of people who have similar interests like the HPKCHC (Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup).  We even have a group there where we can share our projects with each other and host giveaways :-) Find us there too, Jess is SameOldKnit and I am jpester.  
Another great source if you get stuck with your knitting is knittinghelp.com  They have a large variety of video tutorials that can help you with pretty much any knitting technique.  I can't even count how many times I went there to learn how to do a specific cast-on or bind-off.  

These are just a few tips that I have for beginner knitters.  We are hoping to start making tutorials to post on this blog soon.