A Christmas Picture Post Posted at 12 Aug 2012 08:18:25 AM

Happy 2011 everyone! There are no resolutions happening here in Casa Confusion, but we did have a nice holiday and some good accomplishments. So much time has passed that I don't feel like I have a good theme for this post - too much ground to cover - so bear with me if this seems more like a photo dump.

First up is the Christmas gift that D requested - straight out of Despicable Me:



Here's the top of his little head:


Pattern: Despicable Minion by Wolfdreamer
Yarn: RHSS
Hook: Um... the blue one (world's worst crocheter, right here). Probably G or H?
Modifications: None, really. I think I made him taller than the default pattern called for, and the mouth is different. The pattern includes a lot of ways to modify the little guys!



Next is the blanket which I made for my parents, and which I've been positively sitting on until I knew that it had made it to New York safely! It's alpaca/wool for warmth and comfort, and a very snuggly blanket if I say so myself.



Pattern: Serenity
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca
Needles: US #7 (4.5mm)
Modifications: I doubled or perhaps tripled the size as written, which required me to hack & dice the charts up rather a lot. I threw out the original edging and replaced it with an extra cable twist and a knitted-on cable edging.





For Christmas I received a very lovely and stately little spinning wheel: the Kromski Prelude. I went up to Susan's and tried out several wheels, and this was the one I liked best in feel, looks and size.


My lovely little Kromski Prelude


I've been practicing with some undyed merino/silk to get the hang of it, and moved on to plying up some of what I had in the Plying Pile to get the hang of the counterclockwise thing.


A subset of the Plying Pile. Huacaya alpaca, 4 out of 6oz of the hot pink merino, and 4oz of purpleish white merino/bamboo


So, while on some extraordinarily lousy conference calls last week, I managed to spin up the last of the merino/silk, ply it, and move on to plying the spindle-spun huacaya alpaca from Strange Folk Fest. They were an interesting experience: I spun the merino/silk quite worsted and plied it tightly, but spun the alpaca woolen and plied it just past balanced.



And of course, I had help.


Endora Cat.

Posted in: knitting, crochet, life the universe and everything, spinning

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