Christmas Loot

I was so busy during the last few weeks of the year that I didn't really have time for blogging anything. What I did do was contract a killer headcold that turned into an ear infection that forced me to take today off. The good news is that I feel better now and hopefully I'll be able to return to life as normal tomorrow.

I got a couple of new toys for Christmas. First off, I got a gorgeous Kromski Sonata wheel and a matching spinning stool. The mahogany finish just glows and it is so much fun to spin on! To go with my wheel I got a full pound of yellow wool (of some uncertain breed, probably Corriedale) and two bags of Alpaca fiber dyed in two wonderful shades of green.

I am almost done spinning the pound of yellow. I am stuffing as much as I can on two bobbins mostly to see how much yarn I can actually put on a bobbin. The bobbin on the lazy kate on the wheel is the first bobbin I filled up. I have some more to go and I still have room on my second bobbin, so I am not worried about if it will fit or not. Of course, I have no idea how big normal bobbins are, but I have been reading that Kromski has some of the biggest standard bobbins out there.

Along with a spinning wheel from my family, I also got a 2 inch Golding Tsunami in Cherry. I have been wanting one of these spindles ever since I thought about learning how to spin. It spins like a dream and it is so light! I never thought that it would be so easy to spin consistently thin on a lighter spindle. Of course, I still love my old spindle and I will never give that up. I do still have a spinning project going on it. But this little thing is just dreamy to spin on!

I have a batch of combed cotton on my Golding right now. Yes, cotton on a drop spindle. This little speed demon makes it easy to spin fast which cotton loves. Since I found the combed cotton too sticky to work on my tahkli, I decided to try it on a drop spindle. That extra bit of stick it has lets it hold together nicely until the twist gets introduced to it.

The last big things I got were three socks worth of sock yarn, a cookie scoop, a video camera, the first season of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, the Derpy Hooves episode of MLP Friendship is Magic, and the midnight purple Nintendo 3DS with a free copy of Nintendogs + Cats.

I felt like a princess this Christmas getting spoiled like this. I haven't had that feeling in a while. Now I really need a job so that I can keep feeding my wheel and spindles fiber.

Tatting Saved My Knitting

I know how to do a few different crafts. The main craft that I like to do is knitting, but another craft that I like to do is shuttle tatting. I haven't done any tatting recently because I didn't like how my shuttle was working. It has a bobbin inside the shuttle that you can pop in and out to fill it up with thread easily, but the bobbin kept slipping the more I used it.

I was working on taking out my holding thread on my handspun socks so I can put in my afterthought heel and I was getting frustrated because my knitting needle was not small enough to un-knit the strand easily. I tried the small crochet hook that I have for fixing knitting mistakes and that wasn't small enough either. So I thought about my tatting and remembered that the shuttle had a tiny crochet hook that you can use to un-tat your mistakes. It worked beautifully to help me un-knit the holding thread.

I recently house-sit for my parents when they went camping. They have been going to a nice little campground with a town nearby that has an awesome yarn shop called the Gentle Arts. Last time they got me a comfy blue t-shirt with the name of the shop on it.

I was teasing them when they were leaving to remember that my favorite color was red. My mom also knits so I was hoping that they would bring me back a skein of sock yarn because I knew they would be going back to the store. Instead, they remembered that I wanted a niddy noddy that was more travel sized and brought one home to me. It is beautiful! It is made out of medium walnut and the top and bottom bars rotate so that it can lay flat in the bag. This makes it perfectly travel sized! It wraps up skeins that is 1 1/2 yards in size which is smaller than the bigger niddy noddy that my dad made me which wraps up to 1 3/4 yards. If I had it my way, I would have my Dad make me another one that had the features of this tiny one, but was big enough to hold 2 yards. That way I wouldn't get them mixed up. I can't wait until I get to use it.