sarahspins » General

There’s a new toy in the house!

Sarah — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:29:39 +0000

it’s all mine! I picked up a Passap Duomatic 80 last week… I’ve been learning how to use it and how to fix a few “issues” that it has.

Ravelry Flash for Everyone!

Sarah — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:22:09 +0000

Casey was kind enough to host the Ravelry flash bars I developed for my own blog directly on Ravelry, so if you’ve been coveting these and weren’t able to get the sample code from me, as long as you are using a blog system capable of handling them (anything that allows embedding flash), and you can figure out how to format the link correctly and get the code on your site/blog you can get your own!

Check out my Ravelry Flash Bars page for instructions

Changes are happening..

Sarah — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:16:22 +0000

It’s been a very busy year and I apologize for my lack of any regular updating. I realized last week that I have only updated this blog a handful of times this year, and that’s rather pathetic. This is my first year homeschooling and it has been much more time-intensive than I expected it to be, and I feel like I’ve spent most of my time playing catch-up for things we’ve gotten behind on. I think originally I thought maybe I’d have more things to blog about, but that isn’t really true.. mostly I just have less time to think about blogging, or to sit down and actually do it

Between myself and the kids I have spent a good bit of time waiting for various doctor’s appointments this fall, during which time I was able to create a new look for my blog… I’m really happy with it, after bouncing around through several designs over the past two yearsthat weren’t quite “it” for me, one finally came together and gives my blog a fresher and more cheerful look than it has ever had before – but I’m sure it will continue to change and evolve

With a new look for my blog comes a new promise that I will try to update at least every other week. I was going to say weekly, but I know that may be asking a bit much… every other week is probably way too much! Other than schoolwork, I’ve been very busy making socks all summer, since I opened up and started offering custom sock spots on Hyenacart last spring. I enjoy making these, but I’ve found that I majorly overestimated my abilities and took on more work at the end of the summer than I was really capable of finishing quickly (I am still working on some of them), so while I will continue to offer custom socks spots, from this point forward those will available on a much much more limited basis and a slower schedule – probably only 8-12 spots per month, and less if I know that my schedule will be busier than normal (like right now), which basically means I won’t stock any time I am running behind.

In addition to some visual changes here on my blog, I also just finished working on a redesign of Tiny Lady Cooperative’s Hyenacart, and it’s set to go live at the end of this week, and I am super excited about it. As our congo has changed and evolved (and has grown much larger than the original group of 3!), the original cart design had become a bit dated. To unveil our new look, we are planning two big stockings for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I am hoping to get some sock puppets finished in time – they are cute, and fun to make, and I know they’d be perfect for holiday gift giving

That is all for now, I expect a bigger update in a few days as I finish up more of my current sock orders (and yes, if you are waiting, I am getting them done, it’s just been very slow, and for that I really do apologize).

Making progress

Sarah — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:27:29 +0000

The bars are coming along.. I’ve fixed a few bugs that I had found, as well as a memory hogging issue, and I’ve got a few people signed up to test them. If you’re interested in testing them too, please PM me on Ravelry with your email address and API key, and I’ll email you a code snipped to use. The flash display is somewhat customizable – you can change the color of everything as well as which type of projects are displayed, and I’m working on the ability to change some other things as well.

I got distracted from my Lizard Ridge by a super cute hoodie pattern I’m testing.. I have about 2″ of plain knitting to go on the skirt and then I can do the lace part, then finish off the sleeves and work on the hood. The test knits I’ve seen so far look impossibly cute – I can’t wait to get a little bit more done with mine. If i like how it turns out, I’ll probably make a bigger one for Kaia

(excuse the lensbaby shot, it was already on my camera and I didn’t feel like swapping lenses to get a quick progress shot)

Maker Faire!

Sarah — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:05:34 +0000

I totally had a blast. Lost of people stopped by to see us, and Shelly and I were super busy the entire weekend! I managed to crank out one pair of socks Saturday morning in about 45 minutes, which I then took off the machine but left attached to each other, so Shelly and I could show what a pair looks like fresh off the machine. That worked REALLY well for demonstration purposes – quite a few people commented that I must not know what a foot looks like, since it was hard to make out just how what came off the machine became socks, but it was great to be able to show them all the parts of a sock, and how it all comes together when you separate them and close the toes. Most people were surprised that there was very little difference structurally between the socks we make on our antique machines, and the new ones you can go pick up at any store.

Shelly and I both have a lot of ideas on how to make things go a little smoother next year (or for any CSM demo, really).

sock knitter

Originally uploaded by yi
Yeah, that’s me – I was putting tags on socks!

It’s almost yarn related?

Sarah — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:24:06 +0000

They like yarn, that’s close, right?

We adopted two kitties Saturday from the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter. We had no idea they had a kitty special going on when we decided to get both of them either (and we were okay with paying two adoption fees).. which for some reason impressed the lady that did all of our paperwork… but it meant that we walked out with two kitties for less than we’d expected to pay to adopt one. They are both too cute for words.. they camed named from the shelter but I doubt that we’ll keep the names (though we’ve not come up with anything better? So they might stick… hope not!).

10 week old Calico “Heidy” (she’s the shy one.. I almost wonder if her name wasn’t a shelter employee being silly. She’s a real sweetheart now that she’s warming up to us – she’s even starting to act like a kitten after just being here a day)

11 week old black/white “Dallas” (she’s a goofy girl.. might as well have a goofy name too?)

Both spayed and microchipped, complete with their first shots… for the bargain price of $75 We had been promising the kids we’d get a cat for months now, so it wasn’t quite an impulsive thing.. though getting two sort of was. Really we just couldn’t decide, so instead of arguing over it, DH just went and started filling out paperwork. He’s awesome.

Spinning again

Sarah — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:45:49 +0000

I started on this blended batt a while back (so long I have no idea what’s even in it, though I do remember buying it, at least!) and thought I should go ahead and make some progress on it, since I haven’t touched my wheel at all, in about 6 months! This is a handful away from finishing the first bobbin. I’m hoping I’ll have the rest finished and plied this weekend. It’s a fun blend of blues, greens, purple, and a bit of pink here and there, and some white fibers that I can’t identify – I thought at first they might be silk, but now I’m honestly leaning more towards them being nylon. That’s not really a problem, I think this yarn is destined to become socks when it’s finished

Mmmm.. fibery

Raffle winners should be announced on Saturday for the Zen String Raffles (we are waiting on Angelina to draw the #’s that will determine the winners).. the raffles did phenomenally well, and we’ll post the totals for entries as well as the final amount raised for Angelina after the last of the auctions end tomorrow.

Zen String, in Full Swing!

Sarah — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:33:07 +0000

As our fundraiser to help get Angelina back on her feet is coming to a close, I just wanted to thank each and EVERY one of you out there who either donated items for the raffles and auctions, or has contributed by buying raffle tickets and bidding on auctions, as well as those who have supported Angelina privately – your generosity has vastly exceeded our wildest expectations. We have surpassed our goal (and then some) for the entire event with just the raffle ticket sales alone. I am just astounded by all involved. Angelina is an amazing fiber artist – we definitely miss her tons, as I am sure most of you do too, and we cannot wait to have her back in action.

Georgia’s generous donation of a 6 month subscription to her Booty Club that we have paired with 4 gorgeous colorways from Angelina on various yarns (below – they are awesome, aren’t they?) has without a doubt drawn in the most supporters (and raffle ticket sales) – I don’t think we can thank her enough for that. I think Georgia herself might be a bit surprised at just how much she was able to help us earn (I think we are planning to annouce the final numbers when everything is finished – which should be Saturday sometime)

If you are just hearing about this now, don’t worry, there’s still time to buy raffle tickets! Sales end tonight (Friday) at 9pm though, so don’t delay – winners will be announced Saturday. Some of the auctions will continue into Saturday as well… such as this handspun and hand woven scarf that I donated (yeah, that isn’t a shameless plug for myself!). It was probably one of my favorite FO’s of all time (next to my most awesome socks, of course)!

Ribber, ribbing!

Sarah — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:21:54 +0000

Yay, I got it working (and I made a video of it – I’m not sure which was more of a challenge)

Ribber in Action (video)

I also finished the *pair* of Anne Carson socks, knit a pair for my sister, and a pair for me!

Legare sock, #1

Sarah — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:59:37 +0000

It’s glorious! I took the machine apart and spent the evening cleaning all the parts, including some sticky oil that was causing one of my uplift cams to stick when I changed directions doing a heel, and I cranked this beauty out with no trouble at all Wow, if only my NZAK had been that easy to crank on right after it arrived (it is now, but it’s had some time to break in).

I was so excited I just cranked it off the machine so I could marvel at it. Now to go do the other one…

Step One :)

Sarah — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:09:32 +0000

Acquire fencing!

It is beautiful, isn’t it? It was free, which makes it even better. Not sure how much we have, but it’s a start, anyways.

Step Two: Install Fencing
Step Three: Get Sheep

I’m sure it will be a little while!

Another ribby pair, and some blog tweaks :)

Sarah — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:14:43 +0000

I am thrilled with these… 2×1 ribbing, all the way down the foot. I had some (serious) issues with each sock, but thankfully because of where the problems were located, I did my best to just forget about it while my work was on the machine, I was able to confidently handle both of those when I was finished – which was MUCH simpler than trying to deal with it on the machine. These are short ankle length socks since they are knit from the leftovers of the first pair.. I tried a picot hem on the top to see how it would work/function, and I think it would be fine on a taller pair of socks.. it’s a little loose around the ankle though, but this pair was more of an experiment than anything else, so I’ll just keep that in mind for next time. Aside from being a smidge loose at the tome, these are a nice length though, and the hem even looks cute folded over, so it’s all good.

Blog Tweaks

I don’t know how many readers there are out there that might have noticed, but my progress bars have been MIA a few times over the past few days as I have been tweaking the code for them (a lot). I’ve generally made a grand mess of things and I need to sit down and clean up my both my CSS and my code (I have bits commented out all over the place, and I’m doing with three files what I think *could* be done with just one), but I got a few things working that have been bothering me for a while.

Changes:

Added day of the month to the started/finished dates (originally ravelry had no day field)
Added finished date to FO’s (since this was recently added to the JSON, along with a few other fields)
Added a “recent FO’s” section to my sidebar – since a lot of my projects don’t actually end up being “in-progress” at all, I thought this was a nice addition
Added happiness info (thanks to code provided by pocketsize on Ravelry) to my sidebar and on the FO’s gallery page
Overlayed happiness/comments/favorited info on my project thumbnail on the sidebar images. That’s something I’d been wanting to get working for a while, I just abandoned it a while back not wanting to deal with the CSS (it really wasn’t that hard though, I’m just lazy). I even made super tiny icons to go with that, but I’m not completely happy with the smileys… I wish they were clearer, but I haven’t yet found any the size I want, and attempts to make my own have ended in failure.
Added titles to the comments and favorites, so you get a ‘tooltip’ with more information

Things I want to do:

Show the medium flickr image when you rollover the thumbnails. Not sure how I want to do that exactly, or where to even start with the code, but since I added the little rollovers to the comments and favorites, it had me thinking about those thumbnails. Solved this by using lightbox, and tweaking my code to include a link to flickr in the image caption to abide by their TOS. Pretty happy with this, though I’d like to include more project information in the caption, but I’ll work on that later.
I’ve been trying to decide if I want to do anything with my notes info as well. I don’t reliably utilize this on ravelry now – sometimes I include useful information, and sometimes I don’t, and sometimes what I put is a little bit cryptic. Decided I don’t need to do anything here
I would also like to get some math working to display the amount of time it took to complete a project. So if something was a one-day project for me, I think it would be nice if my FO page reflected that… and likewise, if something took a while, I think that can be helpful to see as well. Done! I’d like to make it a little better (display weeks and days for projects that take a while – say more than 30 days) but for now it’s a good start – most projects only take me a few days anyways. Ok, I’m really DONE now!
I want to break hibernating projects out and reformat them. Currently they are marked as hibernating by a small addition of code, but I’d like to be able to apply specific CSS to them that would be different than the “active” progress bars. Currently the recent FO’s and the active bars use essentially the same CSS, and I’m fine with that – the FO’s of course just don’t include the progress bar itself. Done!

Happy Birthday little guy :)

Sarah — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:02:51 +0000

Hard to believe a whole year has gone by!

In the spirit of staying in a small cabin in the mountains…

Sarah — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:03:05 +0000

I thought I’d post this. I saw it on a friend’s LJ, and it was too funny not to do myself.. even though I don’t normally put this kind of stuff on my public blog

Amazingly enough, skunk is not on there. I saw a skunk about THREE FEET from my front door this afternoon! Thankfully it just took one look at me and the great big bag of trash I was wielding and quickly ran away (though I had, quite smartly, immediately shut the door, you know, just in case).

A quick update before I leave

Sarah — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:32:08 +0000

I know I’ll be too busy with last minute details tomorrow to remember, but Thursday I am heading out with the kids towards Estes Park! We’ll be there Saturday morning, after which we will continue on our way (a 7 hour drive) to our vacation destination – a cozy little cabin nestled in the mountains.

I will try to update while I’m gone (likely the rest of the month), but I can’t promise anything. I’ll have my computer, and I’ll have internet, but what I may very well lack is TIME. Always a problem with three kids, but take three kids away from home and it seems to cease existing

I did finish a pair of socks last night though! I wore them all day today, and they’re super comfortable. I’m not terribly happy with how the yarn pooled, but at least it pooled evenly, and just my luck – the large color patches at the tops of the socks are on opposite sides, so they’re all matchy matchy

I cast on for another pair as well, and I’m almost halfway through the first one.. don’t think I have any hope of getting the pair done before I leave, so they’ll be going with me, as well as yarn for another pair. I decided I’m going to travel lite, and if I find myself needing something else to knit, odds are good I’ll have picked up something at the wool market, or if I get super desperate there is a cute little yarn shop about 10 miles away in Ridgeway (assuming it is still there – I think it is though). Not that I won’t be stopping there anyways, of course

The yarn for my afghan arrived, and I decided it would take up too much room if I took it with me, so that will be postponed for a while.

I tracked down some Sugar’n Cream Stripes! I’ve been wanting to get some of this for a while.. I have a tote bag in mind for it, and I probably will take that with me.

Work on my lace top has stalled – I got distracted by the socks since the weather is set to be a bit chilly compared to here, so I was compelled to make something warm for my feet. I plan on picking it up again when I get back.

I upgraded my blog software yesterday, and I fixed a few bugs with my theme that had been bothering me for a while – I just hadn’t been motivated enough to fix them. I tweaked the styling for my progress bars a little bit, and I also added support for Gravatars in comments. I also cleaned up a few other details like using widgets for my sidebar instead of coding it all out by hand.

Bunny!

Sarah — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:54:00 +0000

After nearly a year of waiting (I met his breeder at last year’s Kid n Ewe festival), I’m finally closer to getting a fiber bun.. I just need to arrange when/where to pick up this adorable little 8 week old english angora, and he’ll be mine!

Isn’t he cute? I still have to figure out what I’m going to call him – and I’m open to suggestions. I don’t want anything too stupid or cute for him, or at least, not unless it’s something *really* funny. Otherwise I think I want something semi-serious.

I’m making progress on the tangled yoke.. I’m done with the first sleeve, and about 4″ into the second one. Sleeves are no fun. They’re kind of like second socks. I’ve been having a case of second sock syndrome with my cedar dancing socks, which I actually picked up yesterday, attempted to knit a row on (I’ve done the cuff and one pattern repeat – about 1″ of knitting total), majorly screwed up, and put away again. I’ll tackle it when I’m done with the cardigan, because clearly I don’t think I can concentrate well enough on it otherwise.

Moving the blog :)

Sarah — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:56:10 +0000

I’m moving over to http://www.sarahspins.com/ Please update your links/subscriptions! If i did everything right, your logins should still work fine

Oh yeah, I had a baby!

Sarah — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:13:41 +0000

I’ve been MIA again, but for a VERY good reason

Cute, isn’t he?

Odin Sebastian Easter was born 07/07/07 @ 9:07am, weighing in at a hefty 9lbs 5oz.

I’ve been busy adjusting to having 3 kids at home, but I’ve been spinning again(I couldn’t spin while pregnant – no matter what I did my legs would go numb after a few minutes) and will have some new stuff to show off soon!

Oh yeah, I have a blog…

Sarah — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:51:24 +0000

I’ve been pretty busy lately, but somehow I never managed to post about anything – OOPS!!!

Anyways, I completed another pair of longies for Kaia, knit from Zen String’s Nirvana Worsted in Lufaloo (and trimmed with Paton’s Merino I dyed purple to match). I really wasn’t sure about these as I started work on them, but I’m quite happy with how they came out – the colorway is a really great “goes with almost everything” one, so I don’t have to be real picky about what shirts I pair them with.

Then I knit a sweater for the new baby, from Zen String’s Serendipity Sport in Autumnal Rainbow. I really really REALLY love this yarn, and the sweater is almost painfully cute! I’m very pleased with how it came out, and I only used a little bit of the second skein, which means I have enough of this yarn left to do something else with – I may eventually make myself a pair of socks with it.

Then I got this sudden “oh crud, I need more easy diapers for DH before the baby is here” urge and made a bunch of Very Baby AIO’s.. I had to stop myself from making more. They are painfully cute!

Sorry I’ve been MIA yet again..

Sarah — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:10:18 +0000

I’ve been caught up in a mid-pregnancy funk, and not really motivated to do much of anything crafty-ish. On the bright side, that means that I haven’t done much of anything (at all – other than clean house!), so no one really missed too much (but click the more link to see all I’ve been up to)

My bathroom is now cleaner than it was before DD was born (when at 37ish weeks pregnant I thought it might be a good idea to finish laying down flooring). I cleaned out my car too.. and cleared out all of my typical “car clutter” – mainly so that I could get in there and make sure I could fit 3 car seats in the back (and I can – yay for Radians!)

I did make some kimono-style shirts back in March, those went fairly well… and they’re very cute. I had to do some significant altering to the pattern though – the first “newborn” sized shirt I made fit my almost two year old (it was a little short, but definately nowhere near NB size!). I also make quite a few pairs of NB sized wool pants from various woven wool fabrics I’ve had laying around. DD got a couple of pairs as well

Then, while I happened to have the right fabrics out for it, and my machines were all set up, I made some cloth pads for my sister (and a few more for me) that my mom took up with her when she visited for Spring Break. Mom still hasn’t mentioned these to me directly – but my sister says she didn’t seem all that surprised

The yarn from my Zen String co-op was finally finished and I got to go pick that up – and WOW that was a lot of yarn!! I couldn’t even get it all in a single shot. It didn’t take me long to get it all sorted and ready to ship out, but it ended up that I had to wait on 8 skeins to get re-dyed because they were short or hadn’t met Angelina’s standards, so I picked those up on Sunday. So, as of today, everything has been mailed out except for ONE lonely package – I’ve emailed her a reminder that the yarn is all here, but I haven’t heard anything… hopefully she’ll get back to me soon so I can say that it’s ALL been shipped.

It didn’t take me long to get to work on the yarn.. I knitted a pair of socks for me, then a tiny pair for my DD, and then I knit two pairs of shorties, all from the same colorway… not sure what I’m going to get started on next