Tag Archives: Hand-dyed Yarn

First, an update on the hand-made wedding thing.

Here’s our save the date postcard, photographed by Brock’s sister, Lori Locke. She’s an amazing photographer and artist. (The font in the photo is original by her.) If you live in Northeast Kansas or the KC Metro area, give her site a look! The picture was taken in front of the old barn (at the farm where the wedding will take place) over Thanksgiving. (True story, Lori was just taking pictures for fun. She didn’t know we were getting married yet when the photo was taken. I am really grateful to her for letting us use it!)

Next, here’s a quick picture of what went out in the January Shipment of the RAWR sock club.

The inaugural yarn was, of course, hot pink, could it be anything else? Also, the special gift this time was a hand-printed greeting card featuring hipster Tiny Dino. This was my first shot at block printing, and I think it turned out pretty well. Brock drew the dinosaur and helped a bit cutting the linoleum. I really like how the cards came out. I am toying with using this technique for the wedding invitations.

Card in detial

I finished my abigail cardigan and have been wearing it for a couple of weeks. Not one person has asked me if I knit it myself, which tells me I did a good job with the construction, so I am pleased. The yarn is pilling a lot in the underarms, but nothing a sweater stone can’t handle.

I am now hard at work on the Call Him Ishmael sweater I am making for Brock out of Nikol Lohr’s Literary Knits book. I am knitting it out of plain ole wool yarn that I dyed a nice masculine red, somewhere between brick and wine. I am nearly done with the yoke and love the pattern. It’s the perfect ration of mindless stockinette to shaping and cabling. Of course, it’s been in time out for the last three days because I twisted half the cables backwards on the last cable round and didn’t notice until I was four rounds up. I have become rather adept at dropping down and re-twisting the cables (the trick is to use double pointed needles on just the part you need to work on), but couldn’t face actually doing it quite yet. I will tackle it this afternoon so I have something to do during the Superbowl, as I am neither a big fan of football or beer and junk food.

Speaking of beer and junk food, I have been hibernating in the losing weight arena, possibly eating too many gluten free bread-like products and not enough vegetables. I have, however, been working out more regularly, and am making a commitment to do something active every day this month. So far so good. I hope to give weekly check-in updates about my progress in this arena. I have been gluten-free for 10 months now. I feel like after almost a year, I should have made more progress. I do try to remind myself that it has been a stressful year full of new jobs and changing birth controls and stuff that generally makes it difficult to lose weight. But then again, what year isn’t, you know? All I know, is I want to be stronger and buy fewer yards of yarn to make myself a sweater. Two, very simple goals.

And last, but certainly not least, I have been very distracted the last couple of weeks. Our apartment complex changed it’s pet policy at the beginning of the year, which made my goal of eventually living in a place where I could have a pet and a garden in the ground slightly more attainable. We decided to adopt a kitten from the local shelter. Since then, I have been reading about taking care of cats, reviewing cat products and foods (and trying to find an affordable grain-free cat food.) Basically, I haven’t been thinking about much else other than making our home right for our new addition. It’s very similar to how I was when preparing for Athrun, though much less intense.

Meet Minerva Pigwidgeon Cheeseburger III, I am sure she will be a recurring character.