The Price Scandle on Yarns

 

A site to help consumers avoid the cheaters and inflaters:

 

http://www.consumerfriendlyyarns.blogspot.com/

 

FYI: Knitpicks.com is a fair pricing company.

 

 

Until next time...

YAY! All done!

I can't believe how much easier it is to add content and what-have-you's with this new blogger beta! I love it! Plus, it's easier to add photos too.

Thank you Blogger Team!!

Until next time...

Upgrading

I am in the process of upgrading the template from the old CSS on original blogger, to the drag and drop blogger beta templates. Sweeeeeeet! I hated having to look through all that CSS! So things are gonna look funky till I get it back to the way it was on the new templates.

Until next time...

Cable is out, alternative activities-Spinning, fleece cleaning

So we turned on the tellie this morning and found nothing but snow...would rather have that on the ground, not in the TV. Upon calling Charter, the CS rep goes through a list of "Did you" questions. Did you move some funiture and disconnect the TV? Come on, I am not cenile! Is the TV hooked up to a VCR or switchbox? Is the VCR on or off? Is the switchbox in the correct position....on and on and....
Then when they could not find an issue, they told me they could not get someone out to check the cable until Tuesday afternoon between 1 and 5!!!! Okay...working lady here! I will not be home then! I told the lady that the cable box is not inside, so they should not need access indoors. TUESDAY! Come on now, just because we only have basic doesn't mean we are paying piss-poor basic-basic customer service! *smacking forhead* I find that to be completely rediculous. WHen another cable company comes into town, we are soooo switching! The only channel we can get is a local channel, and even that is really snowy. I think someone has tried to hook into our cable service because if we didn't have ANY service, we would not be getting just that local one. You'd think Charter would be concerned over that idea. Nope.

So, here is what I have been doing to occupy myself. Who needs TV when you are a Crafting Goddess!



This morning I met with the lady who brought the shetland up from an Indiana farmer. Here is a picture of some of it all cleaned up and drying. Droooool! It is soooooo soft! Nothing like what I got at the sheep and wool festival. That's the next picture under the yummy one. THAT is one horrible ass fleece. Very course, very nasty looking, very useless.


























And I finally got around to plying up the alpaca and silk. This is a before dyeing picture as it soaks in some synthrapol water. Yummy!

I also got a bunch of BFL carded into rolags and have begun spinning that up. I dunno which I will be sending to my Spin me a Treasure pal....HUmmmm....shetland....BFL? Shetland.....BFL? Both??

I ordered some ladder yarn from Knitpicks.com yesterday as it was on sale for $1.99. I want to make the blue wrap that can be found in Ribbon Style...of which I also ordered from the bookclub (crafterschoice.com) as they have a promotion of no pay till March. For once the place has something I actually want! It's a rarity with them. I think they are a closeout kind-of-club because they have some of the worst crafting books around, usually. I have a bunch of fat blue ladder yarn already, I just need some of the smaller stuff. For $1.99 a ball...that can't be beat!

Payday was really nice this time around. That extra work I had been doing really paid off. I was able to put a nice chunk of it back. If I am able to keep doing that same bit of extra driving, I may just have a drum carder by the end of the year! If I can manage to keep my grubby hands off my savings stash...grrrrrrrrr *slap-slap*-No-NO!

LMAO!

O! I heard from my Spin me a Treasure secret pal person today! YAY! I was beginning to wonder if perhaps the person they assigned backed out. NOPE! Hurray! I was just thinking about contacting the hostess to inquire about it today while I was cleaning the fleece. Luckily it slipped my mind and there was an email from her! She's reading my blog too, she says. *looks around...supsiciously* Who could she be? OOOo exciting!!!!

Until next time...

Mystery Skein Swap-OFFICIAL

Maybe sometime after the holidays, when we have all slowed down again and started to relax (ha!), we would consider doing a different kind of swap.

This is an exchange of one or more skiens of yarn (at least 3 ounces worth), and the person who recieves it will knit/crochet/weave something from it and send it back to where it came from.

 

Has anyone done this kind of swap before? The local knitting guild is doing something similar but they called it a paper bag swap because they were all put into paper bags so as to be unseen (so you wouldn't pick the fancy yarn over the acrylic for example). This would be an all fiber swap, acrylic and hand-spun included (I see nothing wrong with acrylic. It's cheap!). Maybe we would theme it for Spring?

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mysteryskeinswap/

 

This is a multi-group swap so updates will be sent to the group link above so I highly recommend those interested in the swap to join.  I will not be sending updates and the like to the individual groups. That's too much work!

There will be little activity right now, other than posting updates and swap discussion.

 

Swirling in a mysterious mist;
C4G

 

I am speaking out for women's rights.
Will you join me?
www.voice4choice.org

 

crowcallingwoman.blogspot.com

Spin me a treasure is finally a go! And foggy...

Yeah! I got my assigned a spin-me-a-treasure swap partner, and it turned out to be a mystery swap! So I contacted my person and left a couple of nice messages...anonymously.
Now...where is my mystery person? *feeling ignored*

Yesterday it was foggy all day...and the sun has not been out all week. Where are you sun! I am a solar powered being...I need sun to function!!! But the day had a very mystical feel to it. That was cool.

I finished another pair of socks. These are quite a bit lighter than the ones I knit out of my own spun yarn. Oh yeah, speaking of those, I showed them off at the Madison Knitting Guild along with my Wing-of the Moth shawl in progress. Wouldn't you know, the date I decide to show off my goodies, a camera crew from the public access channels is there...filming... *shys away to a dark corner* CRAP! And all day I debated with myself...should I do the show and tell? Nah, I don't need too....well maybe I will...and back and forth all day. They take pictures of what is shown, so I will post a copy of those when they get onto the MKG website.

I also want to organize my altar area. I want to take all the crap out from the shelf underneath the altar and place all my herb jars there instead. Right now they are still in the box we moved them into for moving. I want them out where I can see them and smell them on demand. And while I do this I will be listening to the book on CD by Dean Koontz-The Husband. OOOOoooo! Now I just have to get my ass of the damned computer and do it!!

I made some awesome soup last night. We are living off of it for the next two days till payday comes and allows us to buy some real food. LOL It is a miso/egg drop soup, with pepper, sushi seaweed wrapper ripped up, and added some garlic and tomato Polenta to it instead of tofu because we don't have tofu. The Polenta has been in the fridge for almost a year. The expiration date on it is FEB 2006. LMAO! But it was unopened and it tasted fine and it made a nice addition to the soup! I don't think Miso paste ever expires...that shit has soo much sodium in it that it would probably survive a nuclear explosion!

Until next time...

Swap-bot gone?

Does anyone know anything about www.swap-bot.com? I just went there to organize the mystery swap and it is not coming up. Is it my end, or did they crash and burn?

 

Swap-bot....where are you!

 

Until next time...

Linking to photo's trick?

Is it me, or does the new blogger beta not want photos to be linked to? Is there a different trick available for that?

I am trying to get the photo for the spin me a treasure swap posted on my sidebar, but it does not want to show up. Grrrr.

Until next time...

Sping Mystery Swap

I am trying to organize a new kind of swap. Read more below and if interested, leave a comment and a way that I can contact you.

>>>>

Maybe sometime after the holidays, when we have all slowed down again and started to relax (ha!), we would consider doing a different kind of swap...if there is enough interest.

I'm not sure what we would call it (ya'll can help me with that, right?), but we would exchange one or more skiens of yarn, and the person who recieves it will knit something from it and send it back to where it came from.
Has anyone done this kind of swap before? The local knitting guild is doing something similar but they called it a paper bag swap because they were all put into paper bags so as to be unseen (so you wouldn't pick the fancy yarn over the acrylic for example). This would be an all fiber swap, acrylic included (I see nothing wrong with acrylic. It's cheap!). Maybe we would theme it for Spring? Spring Mystery swap maybe? Or is that too soon of a deadline?

What are your thoughts about this? I guess I get to play hostess so I will work out the details if there is enough interest (no sense in working out details when there is only a couple people wanting to do it).

<<<

Until next time...

Spin-Me-a-Treasure has begun!

I finally got my buddy information (shhhhh! Tis a secret!!)

I've got soem loverly new fleeces that I am purchasing this weekend. The lady was kind enough to send me samples AND send the fleeces I wanted with a friend to the city I live in so I would not have to pay shipping!! Wonderful woman that Charlotte from Indiana is!! That way I am able to get twice as much fleece than I would normally because shipping is so much these days. The sellers can't help it, shipping costs keep rising. They keep raising the postage stamps every year now. *sigh*

Anyhoo, I cannot wait to get my hands in this new fiber!

Until next time...

Just keep Froggin-Froggin-Froggin

Ugh, all this froggin...leaves me all frogged out!



















Extreme close-up...LOOK OUT! Peeling away at the seams.








































Here is the last peice of that sweater, waiting patiently to be frogged and transformed into something else. So far, I have gotten four balls of yarn, each wieghing close to or over 6 ounces. The last peice will yield two more of these balls of yarn.

And lastly, my rescued pet Luna decided to do some spinning of her own that night! Checkin it out, it seems to be in working order...unlike the reciever in the corner. She didn't like that too much so she trashed it. LMAO! Actually the BF did that. It's an old reciever that his Dad gave him to take apart....for the fun of it. *shrugs* Whatever floats zee boats!

Until next time...

More treasure hunting fun!

I found three more items to frog at the East side Goodwills store! I wish they were a little cheaper...I feel that $4 for a sweater is asking a lot for second hand. I'm gonna plan on hitting the dig-n-save this weekend. They sell cloths by the pound (something like a quarter a pound). Loads of fun that-a-way too. They have HUGE boxes of stuff!

I've gotten two 6 ounce balls of yarn from the cream colored sweater in the other picture, thus far! That was just for the arms! I still have yet to frog the body of the sweater. WOW! What a find! AND, it is natural fibers (did the bleach test on a scrap peice). I think it is some kind of virgin wool because it is super soft, not even the littlest scratchy. Someone paid a shit-load of money for this yarn to make this sweater. I'm almost sorry to frog it...ALMOST...*snicker*. I'm not a sweater person.

Until next time...

Fuckin POsTaL!

Okay now. What wears blue, and can't read? A POSTAL OFFICE WORKER! What fuckin use is it to mark a god-damned package FRAGILE and then slap it around like it ain't even marked!! Mother fuckin postal worker, took my package which I stamped fragile many times (because they don't seem to see it) SLAPPED it down on the scales, ASKED if there was anything fragile...looking her in the eye, I said Fragile in a not too respectful tone, paid for it, and as I was walking away THE BITCH THROWS my package into the received mail bin! MOTHER FUCKER! That package is labeled FRAGILE!!! . HOW DISRESPECTFUL! When I call to make a complain, yet another BITCH talks to me like I am an imbecile, and tells me that they will do their best to handle packages marked as fragile with care, BUT if I want special handling practices I have TO PAY MORE for it! Okay, what's the use for asking if the god-damned thing is fragile and marking it as so in the first god-damned place! Fuckin postal office is as corrupt as the god-damned government!!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!