Archive for the ‘Crafts’ Category

Alot to share…*spoiler alert!*

I’ve been knitting and busy dealin’ with life’s unexpected events, but I won’t trouble you with that! I have much to share and I’ll have to break it down over a few posts. First, this post has spoilers, so if any of my “spoilee’s” are reading, be prepared to be spoiled before you get your swappy package!

First, I’ll start with a project I started Saturday (yesterday), it is the “Bulky Shrug” from Knitting Pure and Simple. I’ve had this pattern for awhile, I was just waiting for the right “super bulky” yarn to come along. Working at my LYS, I ran into just the perfect yarn, “Spud and Chloe“. I never knew of this yarn until I was arranging the yarn on the shelves and realized how lovely it was. I love the easy labeling Spud & Chloe has, they clearly label their yarns “super bulky” with “outer” and “sweater”, easy peasy! I picked up 4 skeins in Gray enough for my Bulky Shrug. Look at this sqooshy-lovely yarn:

It’s “Outer” Super Bulky, Superwash 65% wool, 35% Organic Cotton, did I mention my LYS is “Green Planet Yarn”? The owner is truly great, and the store is stocked with great organic yarns.

For the few hours I spent working this new Bulky Shrug, this is what I ended up with, it’s turning out great!

I’ll be sporting this baby at work next weekend!

Onto my other endeavors, spoilee endeavors, I purchased 2 skeins of Canopy yarn (sorry no pics), in Acai colorway, a lush red made of 50% baby alpaca, 30% merino, 20% bamboo. I choose to make the “Bella’s Fingerless Gloves” pattern for my spoilee, Svendel, to wear when she goes to see New Moon later this month! I love this, easy knit and fast too!

Another item I made, which is a new love of mine’s, is knitting jewelry. In my 1st Love Bites swap at the beginning of this year, I was given a beautiful knitted bracelet and I fell in love with it. I scoured ravelry for a pattern but nothing. So I improvised my own pattern and voila!

I love these bracelet’s, I have so many ideas for other designs, but this one was easy and fast. Inexpensive and versatile to make, the choices are limitless. This is the bracelet I sent to my spoilee but I have another I made, however I felt that the beads were too large, so I made this one, and I was very happy with the turn out. I’ll post a list of supplies needed to make these as well as the pattern to make later this week.

For now that’s all I’m parting with, there is more but that will come in more posts to come. It’s November, and yes, gift knitting shall start, as well as all other holiday fun! Happy Sunday!

It’s all about the “1″

No. “1″ for 2008 has been a milestone number.

As most of you know I didn’t start knitting until December 0f 2007, when a good friend, Leslie B., taught me the basic Knit and Purl. Before that, I knew nothing of the fibery world beyond the staples of Knit and Purl. Little did I know at the time that it would be a craft I would wholeheartedly embrace and thrive in. Since then, knitting has been a “gateway” of wonderful things for me.

I’ve learned how to knit useful, beautiful, and creative garments. I’ve met other wonderful, creative knitters, crocheters, spinners, dyers, to name a few would be Marisol, Nell, Leslie, and Cheryl. All are great knitters, crafters, creative and inspirational in their own special way. I have knitting to thank for meeting them.

I’ve learned more about myself, how my love for this art really has a deeper meaning, finding out that my late Grandma Luz was a natural in this craft. Many times as I’m going through my stash, knitting, or anything that involves the wooly stuff, I often think of her. It’s a connection with her I never knew when she was alive, but one that I’m thankful for now because I feel her presence with me when I knit. Other great things I’ve experienced are swap, competitions, dyeing, spinning, and novice designing.

I’ve compiled a mosaic of pictures all from my 2008 year, which now that I look back was filled with so much. Especially this blog, something I enjoy so much. I’ve been maintaining it for 1 full year now, and am proud of what it inspires and how I can look back at my past.

There were so many more pictures I wanted to include, but felt this was pushing it. I won’t list what each picture is because there’s too many, but for short will list an overview below.

I look forward to another year of knitting, blogging, dyeing, spinning, and crafting.

-Sock Wars Socks, 3 kills
-Mini Scarf pin (personal project for Etsy)
-Tunisian Blanket
-Tech Square Afghan project (4 squares shown)
-Traveling Scarves Groups
-Crochet bag, Crochet Cowl
-Christmas Stocking
-MS4, SofSIII, Elm Row
-Basetweave scarf, Niners scarf
-Bookmarks, Dishcloths
-Gloves, beanies
-1st Rockymoreno “Skull” Cowl design
-My own dyed yarn, My handspun, knitting at night needles, knitta tag

Rocky's 2008 Year of Knitting, Dyeing, Spinning, Everything

Two for Tuesday

I have two cool things to share with you this Tuesday, plus I’ll also introduce my puppy, or doggy really, but I like saying puppy, cause she’s still a pup to me.

Here is my puppy “Rosie”, she is a 3 yr. old Full Bred Golden Retriever from Kentucky. I worked with a great breeder a few years back, and was lucky to get Rosie, who was the premier pup of the liter. It all came down to timing and chance really that we got her, cause typically you pay top $$$ for the premier pup, but through some unfortunate events, her original intended owners had a death in the family and couldn’t go through with the purchase, which is where I came along, literally the same day the breeder was notified, and voila, I had my puppy about 2 weeks later! Course, she was ever more cute and irresistible then as she is now.

She had a spa day at “Spa for Pets” in Los Gatos, CA this past Saturday, believe me, she needed it! They gave her the cutest tie with glow in the dark ghosts, great for trick’o'treating this year.

What she doing here? Well she’s got her eyes on some squirrels in the back, she goes nuts for those squirrels!

Here she is just being her lovey self, and cuddling next to me. I have the spa use Oatmeal soap for her skin, if you know Golden Retriever’s, they have sensitive skin, and usually go well with Oatmeal. Her coat is so soft right now…**petting her right now**

Ok and now to the two things I want to share. I received another great swap package! This time for my “Day of the Dead” swap. My spoiler did her work good, she gave me some great stuff! Here’s a full view of all the goodies.

Do you see that green chinese food box? There were 2 of them, both filled with homemade Peanut Butter cookies! My absolute fave cookie! The other box, well, aheemm…, didn’t make it to the photo shoot, courtesy of my hubby and kids. This box I stowed away for Lil’o me Cheryl even provided the recipe she used for these cookies! I’m so lucky for this!

Cheryl included everything in this package, fresh peanut butter cookies (can you tell I’m crazy about them?), yummy skully candy (gooey skulls, candy bones, skull rings), BFL roving, Dinosaur pattern, handmade soap in the shape of skulls, fake tattoos, 2 Marigold skull planters, a pencil, and a handmade knitting bag.

It’s all just fabulous, one of my faves, and I just can’t thank her enough, so so nice and awesome, is this knitting bag! Look at this, black, my fave color, and that fabric! I did a post on it awhile back because I saw some clothes she made with this fabric and I thought it would be awesome for a knitting bag, and now I have one! The bottom of the knitting is reinforced, and keeps a nice square shape, and there’s 3 buttonholes to string yarn through. The strap is comfortable and stretchy, she totally outdid herself. Check out her site “Rocka-ma-baby creations for mama and baby” over at Kavelizrd.etsy.com. It’s an awesome job she did, and she’s quite a seamstress!

Now onto the BFL! I now have in my possession, BFL roving! I love BFL, and always wanted some roving to spin with. I love greens, and this “Jonquil” is just pretty, I can’t wait to spin it. She got this from Etsy shop “The Fiber Denn“, such great fiber there.

My “Day of the Dead” soap came from “Queen of Queens” on Etsy, there so cute, I can’t use them, I’ll have to stash them next to my sheep soap!

Again, thanks oh so much to my spoiler “DevotiontoKnit”! You rock!

Second to share, is my progress on the “Tech Square Afghan” KAL. I had this project on hold for awhile, and finally finished the Tree Square. It’s basically a pattern of a tree you make, out of variations of cable stitches. For some reason it took me forever to get this square knitting. This is is now the 2nd square completed, and leaves me 9 squares left to knit. I also got all my leave buttons sewed on the other night.

If you look at the top of the tree, you’ll see towards the end I switched to just garter stitch, what I was supposed to be doing was a 3 stitch garter stitch border and reverse stockinette for the inside stitches. Well, I was watching the ever so painful 49ers game, and umm..fudged it up. I was so thankful to be done knitting this square though, that I just binded off and called it finished. Who knows, I might rip back and fix it but I don’t think it’s too too noticeable.. we’ll see, it will have to wait until I’m done with all the squares though.

In the picture above, I tried to get the completed Domino square, Tree Square, and the starter I’ve done so far of the Monogram square.

Here’s a closer look at the Monogram square, in the beige’ish center square, I’ll be using Swiss stitch to add my initials, RM, or I might just add M for my last name. Not too sure yet. I should get this square done by tomorrow, it’s going super fast.

In other news, I bought the “Central Park Hoodie” pattern, finally! Now for the yarn. I’ve finalized on going with tweed, but am still indecisive on whether to use Green tweed, brown tweed, or gray tweed…hmm? Plus I need to get a good brand, that is less than $10 a ball and is soft to touch. I’ve been browsing Knit Picks, and will probably purchase it at the end of this month. It will be my November project. I plan to start and finish my CPH during November **fingers crossed**.

That’s all for now… see you hump day

It’s Fall Charlie Brown

I got my “It’s Fall Charlie Brown” Woolgirl Kit! Yay! It is my most favorite thus far of all the kits I’ve ordered from Woolgirl. I’ll share, but first…

For my Falling For Ewe Swap:
Do you like football? Who is your favorite team?

So first, is “Do I like football?” even a question! I love football, and am a total fanatic with the game! I won’t leave my Direct TV service because they have the NFL ticket, which I have automatically renew yearly. I love the NFL ticket, you see every game on Sundays. Football is one of the many things my hubby and I share and look forward to every season. We always plan for our Football Sundays to make sure we can comfortably watch the games. In fact, since this is my first official Fall season ever knitting, I’m starting to realize that I’m having to choose football over my knitting. I still knit during the games, but boy is it hard, especially when its a good game. Plus I have a knit along I’m supposed to be attending every Sunday, but I can’t because I’m at home watching football. I’ve now learned to knit my easy projects during games, cause I literally tried knitting my SofSIII a couple weeks ago, and boy was that a mistake. I had to TINK like crazy.

Onto my team, which is the San Francisco 49ers. I had high hopes for this season, especially after the first few games, but now am just upset because the team is regressing again, and repeating the same mistakes as they have in the last few years. We have the talent and tools to win the game, but the play calling and coaching just aren’t cutting it. Mike Nolan (head coach) just can’t seem to keep the guys motivated through an entire 4 qtrs. of the game. If we continue at this rate through the end of this season, I know Nolan will be canned. There has been no real improvement with the team, and I bet if he’s canned they put Mike Martz in his place, wouldn’t be surprising. I just don’t get it sometimes. I’m still a 49er Faithful at heart, and will continue to support and cheer on during games.. if only the golden days would return

…and now “It’s Fall Charlie Brown”
As I was saying, this is my total favorite kit to date! Maybe it’s because of the colors?? Or just cause Charlie Brown is just a cutie? The colors are so pretty and totally me in every way. The minute I opened the package I was just in ahh of it, and didn’t want to unpack it cause it looked so pretty in it’s packaged state. I LOVE LOVE this knitting bag! Can I say more??? So, without further adoo, since I’ve strung you on this long, here are the goodies:

Treasures to love

Knitter’s Treasure Swap package from Marisol

Originally uploaded by RockyMoreno

My adventures in the “Knitters Treasure” Swap are now at end. It’s been quite fun having Marisol as my swap pal. I thought because I already knew her, having her as a swap pal would be easy, but it turned out to be much different. Marisol has a crazy stash (I’ve seen it!), she could literally open a yarn store from her house, the choices are broad, the colors are so gorgeous! She arms herself with all the right accessories, notions, etc. So in actuality, it was harder for me to get her things because “What do you get the Yarnaholic who has everything??”, well I ended up putting together a package I would really love to get myself. She will hopefully get it today, if not the latest tomorrow, or else I’ll be going postal at my local USPS office (just a metaphor, nothing serious)…hee hee

Besides my package to her, I received her package to me Saturday, it’s just FIBERLICIOUS! She knows about my recent interest in spinning, and really catered to it. I got some very pretty fiber, see that pretty red, white, burgundy, and orange huge ball of wool on the left? I can’t wait to spin this, I bet it will turn out real nice. I also got a very pretty drop spindle with glass rims, too bad I was tired when I took this picture, cause I totally cut it off, I’ll have to take more pics tonight so you can see how pretty the glass rims are. In my package I had 3 balls of some luscious red lace, 2 more balls of wooly fiber goodness, and some ultra soft green & white cashmere! A bunch of other goodies, sheep magnets (I LOVE MAGNETS), a sheepy tape measure, pretty glass stitch markers, and a WIP tool, plus a keychain needle sizer….. and what don’t you see here??? Are the bars of chocolate that came with my goodie package, but unfortunately never made it to a photo cause they were quickly gobbled up by the chocolate hoards at my house. Last but not least, a very pretty knitted flower, it will go great as an embellishment to a future project.

Marisol, I can’t say thank you enough for this wonderful package!

Besides my goodie Knitter’s Treasure package, I also was able to really make progress on my “Mini-Fiber Studio” this weekend. It is another treasure to me, and soon it will be completely setup for anything, spinning, dyeing, computer work, knitting, sewing, you name it.

Here are few pics of it:

We put in a large shelf, I’m now able to have all my books, patterns, magazines organized. I even took time to go through my entire stash, and organize it, seal it, and keep it safe from critters and such. There is so much more for me to do, I just need to find the time, but it is coming along rather nicely. I have a ton of magazines I still need to put up, more decor, more yarn to organize, but it’s a great start.

Plus I got my 2 balls of Noro I ordered for my Traveling Scarves Group 37 Noro Knit & Crochet group, the colors really are much prettier in person. Now to decide which one to start my piece with???

I’m thinking the one on the top? I’ll have to order me more of this lovely yarn, may favorite NORO colors.

Happy Monday Everyone!

~Rocky

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