buying and selling

Oh my, it's been a while hasn't it? Long enough that I had to read my last post to refresh my memory about the last projects I was working on. Stefanie Japel's  easy raglan v neck is still on the needles, I am, however, so, so close to finished that it makes complete sense that aside from knitting it at S&B (stitch n bitch as it will now be known as in my blog) I haven't touched the sweater in almost a week. I think I sat down and devoted an hour or so on Thursday so I could finish the first arm and then try it on (and it looks pretty great), only to fold it up and put it away. meh.
progress pictures:
Just before starting the waist ribbing:

Waist ribbing completed, arm ribbing on waste yarn so as to try it on-I have longish arms and like my sleeves to either be 3/4 or almost knuckle length.

Somewhere in all of that, I decided to knit B some extra mitts as his green mitts got felted and shrunk at school (I don't even know how that happened). Granted, they were a little small on him anyway. Going through the stash for colours he'd like proved difficult. I had a lot of leftover balls so I opted for striped mitts, great stash busters! I weighed each leftover ball, divided them in half and worked them up-I used bulky yarn on smaller needles for a denser, warmer knit. Worked out pretty well. Mitts are a great little project for playing with colours, and satisfying because they work up so fast.
The grey balls are Cascade 128 I believe? I've long since lost the tags. The black is leftover Swish bulky (<3 this stuff)  and the blue balls (hehe) are also Swish bulky, in Planetarium. The picture does not do it justice at all-it's one of my favourite colours that Knitpicks has.

 Working up so quick!

 Finished! B likes them, I like them. They're warm (too warm actually, his hand was sweating today when he wore them to the park) Success!

So that's all in actual knitting.

There has been some stuff going on in the home, I'm hesitant to talk about at this time. It's been stressful though-and it took a 4 day headache/ jaw ache to realize stress was making me clench my jaw. I'm trying to me more mindful and relax my jaw, and do some deep breathing when I have a chance. I also need to kick my ass into doing yoga again (and working out for that matter).  But yeah, I don't actually knit much when I'm stressed-I actually turn to reading more. I've re-read a number of books over the last couple of weeks. I tried to re-read American Psycho (a book I've read at least 30 times) and couldn't do it. I seem to crave autobiographies and memoirs when stressed.

Anywhoo! I ordered some lovely little tags for knitted items. I've only seen those ugly tags at Michaels-you know the ones "knitted for you with love" blargh. I don't necessarily want ones with my name on them either-especially since I give so many items away. But, I did need something I could sew onto the 5yr olds knitted things, that I could label.  Online options are many, but most of them were the ugly, itchy labels (5yr old is very picky about tags on his skin). Etsy to the rescue! And more specifically: Ananemone etsy shop! Love love love the labels. Everything in their store is just so damn sweet looking. I ordered these labels. It was a super easy transaction, shipping was fast and I'm really pleased with the labels.

 I will definitely order from them again.

I ordered some Wool Of The Andes Bulky from Knitpicks, in Navy, Stormy and Wallaby (well technically M ordered it) so I could make his mom, sister and aunt each a pair of slippers (my go to slipper leethal mary-janes) for Christmas as all of them are difficult to shop for and apparently like home made gifts. I got the shipping notice on Friday so I should get the wool by this coming Friday, or early next week. If I crack down and actually knit the second sleeve, I could have my sweater finished before the WOTA gets here. Each slipper only takes (me) a few hours, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting them all done in time for xmas-maybe I'll have enough wool (and time) leftover to make my own mom a pair as well.


Then I did some selling of my own-I had some yarn I absolutely hated working with. I bought a butt ton (aka sweater quantity)of berroco fuji to make a sweater from the berroco website. Started to knit the sweater, hated how it felt. Didn't even really like how it looked knitted up. Frogged it, balled it up and shoved it in a drawer for a couple of years (possibly 3?) I hate ebay, and wasn't familiar with how to sell items on etsy (nor could I fathom opening an etsy store for one item), so I thought I'd try one of the yarn communities on reddit. Not long after I posted I got a message from someone who was interested. I was so happy that someone wanted to take the whole lot that I gave her an incredibly low price. Happily! Someone gets yarn they think is beautiful, and I get to make space for yarn I'll actually use!

 I'm hoping she makes something fabulous!

So the transaction went down last week-money just languishing in my paypal account when, while surfing, an email from Knitpicks popped up. Ah! Sales! On yarn swifts and ball winders! I'm thinking, "oooh, use the money from berroco fuji sale and get a swift!" Can you get a swift without ball winder? no! I need both. But they're kind of pricey...start googling. Not looking like I can afford both, I could get one or the other. Check Ebay (I hate ebay) check local craigslist and kajiji (y'all are crazy to charge almost full price for a yarn swift that looks like it was chewed by your dog. Eff that.) Just to cover my bases, check Etsy-and BOOM! Mama's got a yarn swift and ball winder on the way. I like the look, I like the price, and my paypal covered all but 3$! Sweeeeet! I'm pretty excited by this.

As for the Bulky Cowl I made a couple of weeks back? I did give it away. It was super soft and super cute, but I just didn't like the colour on me :/  I offered it up on facebook and it was literally scooped up minutes later. Both my mom and P were bummed that they didn't get it in time. It's so nice to have one's work coveted :)

I have this scarf (I should get a picture of it-it's just a garter stitch scarf in some teal yarn that I think I bought at Walmart 4-5 years ago?)-it's about 9.5 feet long-I'm thinking about undoing a couple of yard (or like half of it's total length) and turning it into an infinity scarf, or make it even shorter and turn it into a cowl.  I suggested to T that she could do that and it made me start thinking about the scarves I have made over the past couple of years...like this one I knit last winter:

It's called soda-fountain-scarf and I used Malabrigo Worsted in Glazed Carrot. I love it, but now I'm wondering if I should seam it at the end, call it an infinity scarf and love it even more??? Hrm...something to think about!