playing hooky from knitting

Both swatches are Noro Silk Garden - double crochet. They’re swatches - yes, swatches. Blocked and dried ones, even. I feel nice and proficient, and am glad I can now produce square swatches.

The top one was done with a 5mm hook and the bottom one with a 6mm hook - I’m planning a dc raglan sweater, and I think that’ll eat up the 9 skeins of Noro Silk Garden quite nicely, thank you. It’s inspired by a sweater in Not Your Mama’s Crochet, though 1) it’s not on Ravelry. Hmph. and 2) calls for Noro Kureyon. Which I do like, yeah, but not in this. I tried it and ICKed it.

So that’ll be a project I’ll do anon… it’s soon to be November! I need sweaters.

First: to decide on gauge. The bottom one is closer to the book, though a bit tighter, and I can’t imagine crocheting it any looser. I think I’ll do the math and ensure crocheting a larger size would get me the size I need - I think so. It’s only one dc different, or so.

double tagged

Tagged not once but twice in the same weekend for a meme? I might be a wee tiny bit popular. Or not. Honestly, I’m flattered! Thank you, Jen and Erika!

Eight random facts about me? Hmmm.

1. I am not the sort to go to sleep early, in terms of “I will go to sleep at 9 pm tonight!”. And then go to bed at 9 and go *thunk*.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

That’ll never happen.

But! When I’m tired? I will go to bed early and read in the dark, either a book with a flashlight, or Benkei the back-lit wonder and read blogs. I do it on the theory that the sooner I go to bed, the sooner I actually fall asleep. This does work more often than not.

This is a very good thing lately, what with the full time job and the part time job. And the need for sleep. So I go to bed at ridiculous times like 8-10 pm and more or less get good amounts of sleep.

2. I have…. *counts* 27 surgical scars. Fourteen of these are inside my mouth. I have had surgery involving incisions seven separate times in three different locations: inside my mouth, my right knee, and my right wrist.

3. I’m a strawberry blonde with ash brown roots. I’ve given up trying to dye my hair to match one or the other. So if you ever see me? Trust me, it’s real. Stop asking.

4. I live for cheese.

Current fetish: dubliner cheese atop triscuits with a can of diet coke mit lime.

This cheese is only available at one store in a big radius around my apartment. (How do I know? Gramma tried to find it elsewhere… why? I don’t know.) (Shut up, bland midwestern cheese.) That sounds dire, right? Until you learn it juuuuust so happens to be the grocery store nearest to the apartment.

5. Everything in my bathroom is white. Including the shampoo and soap bottles.

6. I never ever heard of Spy vs Spy until Tiphanie’s blog post about it. Rilly. No, I’m happy under my rock, thank you for asking.

7. My favorite color is white but in a new yarn store I fixate upon pinks. I think the word for this is “predictable”.

8. My favorite time for my 3.5 mile walk is 5 am. Which maybe conflicts with the seeming inability to go to bed early.

I hereby afflict tag (in no particular order) (Why, yes, there are more
than eight people. I’m ok with that. Are you? And no links. Dude, I’m lucky to be posting at all… sigh.) Tiphanie, Carrie, Janine, Michaele, Samantha, Teri, Karen, Chris, Brigitte, Jen, Ali, Margene, Kristi, and Jeanne. And you!

one for you one for me

I admit it - after the two weeks of doing nothing but knitting on Chris’s shawl in secret, the first thing I did when I boundoff her shawl was to cast on for one of my own!

This time, just for fun, using Regia Silk 6 ply… I am just enjoying the different texture and feel that this experience is giving me, you know? I plan to just knit it until I run out of yarn, for a shawl that’s got size to it. The 6 ply is an interesting experience, what with the polyamide content… it’s crazy stretchy just unblocked, so I can’t wait to see what happens when I block it.

Lace. Lace is wonderful. Stressknitting lace is its own joy…. I wouldn’t say it’s relaxing but I would say, definitely, that it’s absorbing.

And sufficiently impressive! I took this to the crochet class so the teacher would understand I was a Serious Knitter ™. Although, perhaps she could tell from the Juliet sweater I was wearing….

I love this pattern so much. Seriously. Evelyn Clark? GENIUS.

handmade hug

I couldn’t give Chris a hug, so I did the next best thing: I dyed her some yarn and knit her a flower basket shawl from my the color purple yarn. I really loved knitting it, and the way the tincture played with the yarn was crazy satisfying to me!

I hope she liked it I added repeats to it, and a double skein’s worth got me a whole shawl plus lots leftover.

And she’s lucky, for sure, that it was purple. This shawl took me under two weeks, and was infused with much Kiefering. Of course.

Wear it in good health, my friend. Thank you for you.

hooked

Because I’m not busy enough with a temp job, my new full-time job of dyeing, and you know, that “knitting” thing? I signed up for a crochet class! Last night was the first class, and while the initial twenty minutes were pretty terrible, I finally got it. And can crochet, REALLY crochet, left handed.

SO. HAPPY. about that.

Maybe now I can finally make use of that Happy Hooker book and the Interweave Crochet issues!

First up: a hat! And a blanky! Whee.

Well, before that: more swatching and practice. I’m just a visual learner, that’s all, and last night’s class was worth the admission fee. Three more classes to go!

in the wisp of time

Because I have (not so) copious amounts of free knitting time, lately, I decided to cast on for something new! And easy! And lacy!

Next time I have the desire to do that, I should examine my choice of yarn more closely, I think.

Rowan kidsilk haze, love you! hate you! You know how it goes.

The pattern, of course, is wisp from Knitty, and I do love it. I think it’d make a great travel neckwarmer/scarf, and it’s rather easy to do, so that’s good.

But maybe next time? Mindless knitting? Not involving mohair.

of yarn and bellamoden (and sales)

When did you start dyeing?

I started selling my products in early September of this year! It’s amazing how my little dream has exploded, far exceeding my hopes. In addition to my little shop, I’m a dyer for The Loopy Ewe, and I’m still pinching myself about that.

But dyeing itself? I started the planning and the development of my methods two years ago, essentially in secret. Very few people knew.

Where do you find your inspiration?

I usually begin by imagining a situation, a setting, an emotion. A color will often pop to mind, evoking the feeling I desire.The more deeply I examine the scenario I’ve created, the greater variety and number of colors that appear.

In nature, gemstones have variegations within, and often differ from other stones of the same type. I strive to create hand dyed solids and multicolored yarns that revel in nature’s imperfection and savor its subtle complexity.

And then, there are books. Tactile and imaginative, a favorite book can lead me to glorious colors. Take Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: liberty, struggle, sacrifice… translated into color, I might express those ideas as red, white and blue.

Of course, the very same colors can be interpreted in other ways. Blueberry pie and strawberry shortcake.I might simply be hungry. There’s no right or wrong, as long as the colors feel good to
you.

Why do you dye yarn? What is your motivation?

bellamoden is not just the name of my blog,and the name of my new little company, it is also an embodiment of what knitting and dyeing have come to mean for me: beautiful objects made by hand. My hands.

Bella, beautiful. Moden, of the hands.

The truest joys and deepest satisfactions in my life have always been attained through creating with my hands.

bellamoden has been a long journey for me.

You see, I broke my thumb and wrist in a fall eight years ago. Unremarkable, really, except for the fact that I developed de Quervain’s tenosynovitis. Over time and three operations, I lost most of the use of my right thumb and could no longer flex or swivel my right wrist.

I am not sharing this so you feel sorry for me. I am telling you this so you can understand what this venture means for me.For so long, all I could feel was the need, the unmet need to create with my hands.

It is hard to overstate the impact that this amazing substance, yarn, has had in my life.

With dyeing, I paint, evoke colors, play with effects and create images that I see in my mind.There is nothing, to me, more sublime than handmade objects made with handdyed yarns. Yarn nourishes my soul every day.

More than that, I create things with my hands, exactly as they are.

********************************************

Today I’m reviewed in the Mobtown Review and, accordingly, I’m taking $4 off of every skein you buy.

$20 yarn!

Can’t decide what you want to choose? Want a surprise in your mailbox? Click HERE! Please keep in mind there may be some lead time for yarn with this option, depending on demand.

As always, I am open to special orders, including dyeing yarn similar to sold orders. See yarn you want, but it’s already sold? Do not despair! Contact me.

Special orders requested today will qualify for free shipping, regardless of quantity or when the order is finalized.

Questions? Comments? Contact me at bellamoden AT gmail DOT com. Please be patient, I’m extremely busy! I will get back to you ASAP.

Thank you for your support!

THE FINE PRINT:

The $20 special applies only to in-stock yarns, and today only, from midnight to midnight CT.

access denied

I know most of you don’t think about it. You want to watch a dvd? You toss in in the player and hit play. And you’re happy. Along these lines, any dvd player will do.

Me? Not so much.

The aggravating thing is that you don’t know without trying the dvd player whether or not it’ll play captions. There is no other way to find out. Manuals won’t tell you, and indeed it’s maddening that some dvd players in this day and age will actually not play captions.

It was an emergency to find one that would, last week. My trusty little captions-playing dvd retired without notice. Nice! Except maybe not so much. The replacement player I found didn’t play captions, but would play subtitles only, which is about as pleasant as walking home in the rain. It gets you there, but it’s not very fun. No sound effects, no inflection markers, no indication of whether dialogue was onscreen or offscreen, and to add to it all, the subtitle quality varied from dvd to dvd.

Oh, and to add insult to injury: singing? Wasn’t subtitled. FUCK YOU CLOWN.

First world problem. I understand that. Nevertheless, I have this crazy idea that I’m as entitled as anyone else to watch dvds with captions should I so desire.

So I returned the replacement player, and the gramma insisted that the poor Best Buy victims hook up dvd players to a tv until I found a dvd player that would actually *gasp* allow the captions that were enabled on the tv to show up while the dvd was playing.

It took three tries.

And personally? That’s three tries too many. It shouldn’t be that hard to find a dvd player that does captions, never mind finding documentation on the captions, should a player elect to not do the right thing and enable television-based captions.

Access. It shouldn’t be a trial.

swimming upstream

Did you think the Tiphanie was finished?

Maybe not so much. I know! Three pairs of socks, each cooler than the last! These are of course pomatomous socks from CookieA via Knitty… and man, it is so breathtakingly gorgeous!

These are easily Tiphanie’s very best socks ever, and I’m so honored to have them. Every detail is just so perfect, the knitting is amazing… amazing! I’m almost afraid to wear them. Just because they’re so freaking flipping frigging gorgeous. The fit is so perfect, from toe to cuff.

I’m gobsmacked! Truly.

I love the color of these very much also, but of course you already figured that out, with how pink they are…. Socks That Rock lightweight in lover’s leap. And that’s maybe the only weird thing about them. On the site, they appeared to be red, and oooo red! Want! But these are not red… just terribly screamingly pink. Which I love very much! Of course! But it’s odd. You know?

But who cares. These socks are just perfect. And are mine. Mine! Amazing.

cosmic relief

One pair of socks for my birthday was awesome, right? What’s better than one?

Two!

This one is named cosmic. You’ll have to ask Tiphanie why, though.

Lorna’s Laces in the summer color. And I love them. Muchly! The cuffs are inspired by My Fashionable Life’s giotto socks. Picot hems, three bands of eyelets. Love!

Stripedy stockinette goodness. Who can resist? Not me.

Certainly not Picasso.

I wonder why he loved them so. But loved them he did.

Preen preen. I am so happy it’s fall. And I have heat now, by the way. They turned it on yesterday already. Awesome.

Now I just need a down comforter.