Dec 24, 2012

Merry ho ho!

I wish you all a very happy Christmas and many pleasant things in the new year.

I'm a few short hours away from finishing my Christmas knitting (that's cutting it close, eh?) and the dyeing is done for the year. We'll start anew in January with all sorts of vim and yarn-dye-friendly acid.

Good tidings to you!

I almost forgot! There's a 10% coupon on the entire Etsy shop from now through to the end of January. Happy shopping!

Dec 11, 2012

Fibres West, Here We Come!

Just received notification that we're in and I AM SO STOKED!

Check us out right here (it's alphabetical).

Oh my bizogleness, so much planning to do!


(that's not me, but that's how I feel)

Dec 10, 2012

Ho ho ho!

Well, things are sure moving along! I've sent off my form for Fibres West and hope that my application is accepted. I've asked for a 10deep by 5wide booth (half size) and the Tiger Friends and I are bouncing ideas around for the booth-that-shall-be-fantastic.

In other news, I have a giant custom order for Woolly Woolly that will become a jacket, so I hope that we'll see pictures of it soon. It's a reasonably priced wool and perfect for outerwear. It would also make a nice vest ... do I need another Angostura? I think I might!

In other news, the sweater for hubby that inspired the original chocopoo colourway is coming along, albeit slowly. I've confused my brain and fingers by knitting a felted bag in bulky weight, so when I go back to knitting on my worsted weight sweater, my brain thinks it's fingering weight and I lose a bit of love for the sweater. But alas, I'm past the arm hole spot now and hope to have the back finished before the end of the year. I have to thank dear hubby, though, because he's much smaller than he used to be (-50 pounds or so) so it's not as painful to knit as it would have been a year ago.

More news coming soon ... I hope!

Nov 13, 2012

Christmas Craft Fair

Our trial run with "the public" is coming up in less than two weeks! (We've been a quiet online vendor up til now.)

The Christmas Marketplace is on November 24th from 10 to 2. The address is 16011 83rd Avenue.

The Two Tigers will have a table, loads of yarn and great big smiles. Hopefully people are willing to accept a do-it-yourself Christmas craft like hand-dyed yarn offers instead of only being interested in pre-made, finished-goods-style crafts.

If all goes well, we will go back to dyeing like madmen and will try for a showing at a yarn-centric event - Fibres West! We might be too new for that, but we'll see. There are lots of events happening in 2013 if that one doesn't work out.

If you had your head chopped off every time you stuck your neck out, there wouldn't be any growth on the planet. Sometimes you have to take a leap and hope there's a smooshie landing.

Oct 25, 2012

Still dyeing

We just added five more colourways to the Two Tigers Etsy shop. Things are hoppin' in this house!

Shine on you crazy lace weight in A good year:

Sport 'paca un in Limp-wristed lavender:

Woolly Woolly in Purple nurple:

Superworsted in Rusted out floorboard:

Sport 'paca un in Toad in the hole:

Check out all the colourways at twotigersyarns.com, which changes on a weekly basis as more and more colourways get added. We'll have about five more colourways to add within a week.

Now, back to setting up the new loom..........

Looming

My loom arrived!!!

More on that later............   :O)

Oct 19, 2012

New Colourways

Yes, four or five new colourways went up just a couple days ago. I have around five more that I'll be adding in the next week and then probably five more the week after that.

I realized that I gave you a convoluted way to find said yarn, so here's a link to the Etsy shop, where you can directly see what's on the shelves, waiting for a forever home.

I have a table at a craft fair in November, which I'm incredibly excited about. It's my first one and the organizers are sooooo nice. It's the fair's eighth year and they draw quite a crowd. I hope they love my yarn-with-cheeky-names. Being in November, it's still early enough that purchasers could knit something up for a loved one before the end of the year.

I'm well into my Christmas knitting. I'm more than halfway through the second gift. I think I should do two more, and maybe even four more, before Christmas. That's about my max. I think my brother would scream like a little girl if I gave him something knitted. He just. would. not. like. that.  My Mum and Nan can knit their own and my Mum knits for my Dad. That leaves the in-laws and they're the ones I've counted.   :O)

Now, this weekend, wish me luck with hand-paints and shades of gray. It's the start of the rainy season where I live, so gray seems appropriate.

Toodles!

ps - I've been waiting waaaaay too long for my loom and can't wait to get it!

Oct 6, 2012

Huge diversion

Check out twotigersyarns.com. It's growing, slowly but surely. I'll have new colourways up this week, with many more to follow. Oh, the plans I have!

I am going to see how Etsy.com goes before I launch the shop on the site, but stay tuned.

Don't hold your breath for too many blog posts - I'm busy! Hopefully you understand. Maybe I will port the blog over to the site (yes, I can do that) and keep things documented. Time will tell.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Sep 30, 2012

Getting in deeper

Oh my goodness. I was lucky (?) enough to be called "Yarn Bitch" by my Mum's cousin because of my obsessive love of yarn, and now that obsession has gone two steps deeper:

1. I set up a dye studio in my basement. I'll be selling on Etsy soon, but I need a bit more time. How much? I don't know. It could be later in October or it could be in January. There are a lot of details to iron out. There's a lot to think about and plan when it comes to selling hand-dyed yarn! It's all superfun, though. I wish I didn't have to spend so much time on my other job so that I could putter around in the basement all week. That seems scandalous, though. I need my job. It keeps me sane on a different level. Okay, it partly contributes to my madness, but it also keeps me sane.

2. I just bought a loom. It's the Schacht Cricket Loom (15 inches) and I got the 12-dent reed for it as well. OMG, I'm so excited to get that little student loom and start cranking out ... stuff. My 12-year-old is right into weaving, so she'll be all over it as well.

Mmmmmmm, yarn!

Sep 16, 2012

Finally!

Okay, first there was the drive up to Quesnel. Of course hubby wanted to get some geocaches on the way, so we stopped a few times. It always seemed to be at metal garbage cans, but he did pick all the ones that were an easy get from the highway.


While I was waiting for him, I took this picture of a lovely road sign that a concerned neighbour had crafted:

 

I guess not everyone knows that you can't poop on the other side of a barbed wire fence that is two feet from a rest area off the side of the highway. Sometimes knowledge is hard to come by.

Then we arrived at Ten Mile Lake and settled in for the week. 


The girl child asked, "I wonder what Jesse (the dog) thinks of squirrels," so I replied, as any parent would, "He doesn't know what a squirrel is. To him they're microdogs from the Microdog Planet." We had fun with microdogs all week.


Hubby caught a fish almost as big as his head, when you include the beard. It was his first trout since the Evil Derby of 1983 when he was robbed of the Biggest Fish award (a new rod and reel) by ... AN ADULT!



We went to Barkerville and found this sign on the way. I didn't realize that we had Mexicans in Canada during the gold rush, but they really did come from all over. I didn't see any Mexican gravestones in the Barkerville cemetery, though - mostly Scottish, Irish, English and some more southerly parts of Europe. A few Americans too. 


One of the free shows in Barkerville was over at the water wheel and this guy was HIGH-LARIOUS:


That's some crappy picture-taking - he was up high, having just scaled the side of the water wheel's structure. You don't get a sense of that at all. Anyway, he was cool.

We went to Pinnacles Park and saw the hoodoos. It was really impressive, and what an amazing view!




He only has three teeth on the bottom where everyone else has four. You know those four that are in the front? Clearly I don't work in the dental industry, so I don't know what they're called. I do know that you're supposed to have four, though. It's a handy trick to avoid braces, so if you're young and you can put your mind to it, try to only have three teeth there.


The hoodoos were giant:


Then we went for a walk in downtown Quesnel and they had this lovely water wheel by the river. It almost makes up for the bad picture of the funny guy in Barkerville. Almost.


On our way home, we stopped for some geocaching:



Then this (plus another treat that didn't get photographed very well) were waiting in our fridge when we got home because the very next day was a two-person birthday at our house. Thanks, Friends!


The kid had friends over the following weekend and the friends brought over the cutest little cake pops:


Next up, I finished my Color Affection shawl. 



And then we went to Alice Lake for the Labour Day long weekend. It was cold under all those trees, as usual, but a lot of knitting was done. 


And on the way home, we saw a bear at the side of the road. He was almost ON the road, but he changed his mind. He was jiggling when he ran. Must be just about time for hibernating.


 And that's about it. PHEW! I don't have any news on my dyeing because it's entered the top-secret phase. All shall be revealed soon enough.   ;O)

Aug 23, 2012

There will be a post

I've been horribly remiss, and now all the content is piling up and making for a most daunting endeavour.

I camped.
I fished.
I went to Barkerville.
I knitted on the Color Affection shawl.
I knitted on the green striped socks.
I dyed things.
I have photos.

It will all come, in due time. I have to celebrate the rest of the summer, though, and camp a bit more, so there may not be photos until mid to late September.

To apologize, I'm offering one heavy bag (the kind you hang from your ceiling for the purpose of punching and kicking) for sale at a great price. If you can find it on Craigslist, you will win the chance to buy it. Good luck!

Jul 29, 2012

Whipsocks

We had a great weekend on the Whipsaw trail and I have several pictures to share, because I'm that kind of girl.

However, under my login, Safari has disappeared. So here I am logged in under the kid's account, but the kid doesn't have access to my Pictures folder. So I'm going to fix the Safari problem on my account rather than mess with her access, and I'll be back in two shakes.

Okay, here we are, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Below are my socks-in-progress at the start of the weekend. The one on the left almost had a heel and the one on the right totally did not. Not even close. Not even started. Hubby decided that since we were at Whipsaw, and since they were socks, they shall be named Whipsocks. I'm totally on board with that.


Below is Dick's cabin and it's the second cabin that you get to when you're following the trail from the Hwy 3 side. I'm not sure whether Dick built it, or if it's just named for him, but there you go.


Dick's cross is in the front yard. I'm pretty sure Dick's not buried there, but you never know.


Bob's plaque is just to the left of Dick's cross, on the ground. I think these guys really loved the Whipsaw trail, and they're not the only ones.


These dogs did too.


This is Dillon, just up from Memorial Rock, which we encountered on Day 2. Memorial Rock is so named for another fellow who really liked the Whipsaw trail. I tried to find the photo that has his plaque in it, but it's hiding. Memorial Rock was covered in dirt this weekend, so I couldn't get a picture of it. Plus, there were 18 Jeeps driving all over the place and it would have been like Frogger to try to do anything on the rock face. Dillon's Jeep is wearing Trail Skinz.


These are sub-alpine beauties. They're about an inch across and the slightest bit purple.



This is a tiny piece of the trillion-flower garden that grows in the mountains around the Whipsaw trail. The minute the snow has melted, the flowers are starting and within days there's a covering like you wouldn't believe. Plants move fast when their growing season is so short. And they really know how to be colourful.


Okay, here we are back at Memorial Rock and this is a tire in the air.


This is my hubby driving up the very steep face of Memorial Rock. Those wires going from the good to the top of the windshield are Limb Riserz, made by the fine people at Trail Skinz.


This is how steep it is. See how the people are standing? How the trees are? When you are on the ground and you're looking at the rock face, it wouldn't occur to you to drive up it (* if you own a Jeep or other four-wheeler, you would look at it and want to drive up it). See the Trail Skinz? When you're driving down a backwoods trail and the trees and brushing and scraping against the sides of your vehicle, we call that a BC Car Wash. The Trail Skins keep the scratches out.



These are the Whipsocks against the background of the wee meadow in the overflow area at Wells Lake. If you're lucky, you get the spot right by the lake that has a shelter and some seating (and a view of the lake), but if you're us, you always seem to get the meadow a bit of a ways from the lake. There are two socks with heels in this photo.


This is our campsite, with the wee tent for two and the Hood Skinz on the Jeep. They have skulls on them. We just have them because they look cool, although another friend has them in black to cut down on reflection from his massive lights.


That about wraps it up. The socks have an inch or two of leg on them now and I'm going to do a swirly rib up the length of them. It's KnitPicks Felici fingering-weight yarn, in case you're wondering. I was a bit annoyed with it, but I'm getting over it - the striping is opposite. The socks are knit so that each has its own ball, and they're knit at the same time. They are both centre-pull balls and I should have rewound one (clearly) because they have stripes that are opposite to each other, colour-wise. It reminds me of the no-matchy-matchy fiasco with the Chroma yarn. Upways or downways, those things weren't matching.

Jul 20, 2012

I made yarn

Evening 1 - One bobbin filled.




Evening 2 - Second bobbin filled and the two plied.



End result = 108 yards of worsted / aran bulky weight from 100g of beautiful Merino roving in the Candy colourway from Unwind. Two hundred g to go.


I thought I'd have some trouble spinning anything but really fine singles, but it went not too badly. And so much quicker! If I failed to make bigger singles, I had a secret back-up plan to use more plies to get to worsted weight. That seemed like a bit of a cop-out, though, so I tried my darnedest to spin something bigger as consistently as I could. Turns out my consistency at that weight could use some practice! I could also use some practice at getting in between bulky and superfine weights....

Chocopoo Brown

After sitting in the pot cooling down, the yarn did indeed take up the rest of the colour. I had complete dye exhaustion, and I was fairly exhausted myself. Note to self: save dyeing for a day when you haven't also worked 8 hours in an office.

Here's the yarn after cooling and washing - note how it's not felted:


I was extremely hopeful because it looked like it would dry to a really rich, solid brown. And it did! If you click the picture you'll get a bigger version, in case you want to see all the chocopoo loveliness up close.


Now I just have to dye another 1000g of yarn and then get knitting. Hubby approves so it's all systems GO. He might even get that sweater in time for winter!

I have 4oz of merino/nylon roving I could dye as well, and about a pound of corriedale roving, and another pound of bfl roving ... I'm going to have so much fun!

Jul 19, 2012

The 100g Test

It's not done yet, but the first test of the lucky number 6 has commenced. I was rooting for number 6, but my daughter came home and proclaimed number 3 her favourite. Hubby voted number 6 with no hints or advice from me, so we have more in common than a child.

As I mentioned previously, I had to have 133mL of dyestock for 100g of yarn to get 2% depth of shade. What that worked out to, with the 1-1-4-4 ratio of number 6 was:

13.3mL red
13.3mL yellow
53.2mL blue
53.2mL brown

It was a dark and stormy pot....


But 20 minutes in, it was looking just a wee bit on the gray / green side. I could see from the water left in the pot that there was still a fair bit of red to go. I guess some colours 'take' faster than others.


After an hour on the simmer, I had only a bit of colour left in the water. It's sitting in the pot cooling down slowly now (we don't want felt), so it'll probably take up the rest of that colour while it sits. Ideally, we want clear water at the end. Look in the pot, though - it's still very dark. That's the yarn! 


Once I've taken the yarn out, given it a rinse and got it dried, I'll post another picture. The wet results in the pot right now look like we have indeed achieved the perfect chocopoo brown, but that really remains to be seen.

Until then!