Sorry for Going AWOL!

 * * Quick Reminder * * 

You have until Wednesday the 21st (my hubby’s birthday ;)) till 11:59am to enter the GIVEAWAY! Click →HERE← to enter!

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 * * I Have Been Negligent! * *

Oh friends and neighbors, I am so sorry for dropping a giveaway in your laps and then disappearing for days – this is the first time I have ever done that. You know, if there wasn’t a natural disaster occurring that is 🙂

I would love to give you a really good excuse like 1) I worked 60 hours last week or 2) I have almost 40 orders for ruffle scarves or 3) I was at the Mid-Ohio Fiber Fair and lost in a great euphoria of fiber and yarn or 4) I was crazy busy getting ready to get Trevor ready for work, which starts tomorrow.

But honestly it was a bit of laziness. I should have been able to keep up with reading all your wonderful posts and promoting the giveaway every day but I was just so burnt out that I felt kind of foggy all the time. I like to put a piece of myself in my posts, and all my pieces were just a little too tired to do it justice. For that I feel a bit guilty – okay, a lot guilty. Hopefully this week will slow down enough that I can give all of you the attention your blogs deserve and make a post that won’t bore you to tears.

It’ll be a busy week! The giveaway ends Wednesday at 11:59 and Thursday a post announcing the winner and listing all the wonderful shops and small business will be listed for your viewing pleasure. I am so excited to see how it turns out and who I am going to get to make a care package for! After that it on to more ruffle scarves!

Cannot wait to catch up with every single last one of you, I’ve missed you through my haze of ruffles! 🙂

The Great Ruffle Scarf Conundrum

If you remember from last Friday, I had decided to cast of (haha) the idea of making ruffle scarfs in an attempt to make money just for the sake of making it. I thought filling my Etsy store wall to wall with ruffle scarves might bring me a profit – but I was missing “real” knitting. So after a very rejuvenating weekend of knitting whatever I wanted – including another ruffle scarf for my grandmother, go figure – I was feeling like myself again.

Till Monday came around….

Monday morning I received a very excited phone call from my grandmother, she loved the scarf. Fantastic! I love giving presents that someone is going to use and love. Good times. She quickly handed the phone to my Mom, who was there visiting, and my Mom asked how much I would charge per scarf if she bought the yarn. I named a fair price and figured I was in for making two or three more scarves.

Holy crap Batman….I was wrong.

28 Skeins of Ruffle Yarn.

There are 28 (TWENTY-EIGHT) skeins of ruffle yarn in the bin that showed up this morning, along with my very enthusiastic mother. I am going to take this as a good thing – if I don’t I will be contemplating how to stab the yarn to death with my knitting needles. So here is a rundown of what I’ve learned about ruffle yarn so far.

• Patons Pirouette – This is my favorite. It is the easiest to work with and knits up the fastest. I also like the different types of layering (sequins, metallic floss, even roving yarn) that creates a great deal of depth.
• Premier Yarns Starbella – This is my second pick for ruffle yarn. It takes a bit longer with a little less effect and the yarn twists a great deal. I think I spend more time untwisting than I do knitting.
• Red Heart Boutique Sashay – Is my new least favorite yarn to work with in the world. It has a weird, super synthetic silky feel – but not in a good way. The yarn wants to splinter so badly that you really have to take your time. It twists far worse than the Starbella and the scarf, following the instructions, is too long. Frankly – it is like knitting with fish net stalkings that had a long night on a very busy hooker. I hope I have made my point.

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With that said I would never turn down the opportunity to bring some money into the house, even a little goes a long way with two people who know how to budget. So I am on a ruffle pilgrimage and so far have made four scarves in two and a half days. Wanna see some photos?

** Patons Pirouette **

28 Skeins of Ruffle Yarn.

** Premier Yarns Starbella **

OSU Ruffle Scarf.

** The Evil Red Heart Boutique Sashay **

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So there you have it, four down and twenty-four more to go. I have a horrible feeling that there will be more ruffle yarn in my future but for now I am going to take it in stride. I am timing myself so that I don’t work with this yarn for more than 75 minutes a day, this seems like a good amount of time and I can still work on my other knitting and spinning endeavors.

So, friends and neighbors, what gets you through a project that makes you want to pull your hair out?

 

Knitting Emergency and Attack of the Panic Monster!

Beware friends and neighbors, there is about the be a full on attack from the Panic Monster….

This is Why You Don’t Buy Cheap Needles

Now, I know this may have happened to many of you out there, but this has never happened to me. I am sitting, drinking my coffee and working a round of particularly demanding cables when BOOM! there goes my needle off the cord. Stitches are flying, cables are unraveling and my mind has just jumped into OCD Panic Monster mode.

Serves you right for buying cheap needles Rachel. This wouldn’t have happened with nicer needles. How are you planning on fixing your epic failure here? Hmm…you probably don’t know how to. Best to just frog the whole hat and start over, you’ll never figure it out.

– Panic Monster

So, sitting here I am faced with a dilemma, do I try to figure out how to get the stitches back on the needled or do I frog? Well, first I needed to pace the house a bit to calm down…then do the dishes…then clean the bath tub… After doing so I managed to save all the stitches in the goofiest fashion ever.

Needles and Cords Held Together…sans Harmony.

After saving the stitches and ensuring they were back on the needles/cord correctly I felt pretty good about myself.

Then came my next problem.

The needles I was using were a size 3, and I don’t have another pair of size 3 needles. Usually the idea – even in this situation – of going out to buy new needles would have been delightful, but there has been a stop put on:

• Buying new yarn.
• Buying new tools.
• Buying new books.
• Buying anything that isn’t absolutely necessary!

So…cannot afford to buy new needles, big deal right? Well, yes. It is a big deal. It makes me feel so small knowing that I cannot afford to buy something so simple as a new pair of needles to fix my project. I was so enjoying doing this hat and now the only way to finish it is to put it on a pair of size 4 needles and pray that you cannot tell the difference in the gauge. I am crestfallen, 28 years old and I cannot afford to buy a new pair of needles.

Back on the Needles. Just on the Wrong Size.

I keep reminding myself that this is bullshit (pardon my language), and temporary. I don’t have cancer, no one has died, and money isn’t everything. I’ve never even really considered it a big thing – but then we’ve always both had jobs. I just wish the store would sell something or I could get a part-time job where I could bring in some extra money. I feel like I am letting my husband down, and it is a wicked bad feeling. I just never expected to be financially responsible for so many people (my niece (kinda), my mother and father in law, my husband and myself…and Max).

GET A GRIP RACHEL!

Okay…I’m back. So the hat is on bigger needles, the world will continue to turn and I am strung so tightly that gauge shouldn’t be an issue ;). So, I will hopefully finish this hat today so I can post about it tomorrow with the new stitch pattern. Until then, please enjoy the newest bird that has come to visit our feeder.

Footloose and Fancy Free Bird. Lucky Bastard! (Again, sorry about the language).