Yarn Pirate Shop →

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or a wonderful 3 day weekend if you don’t do Christmas).  I had a great time relaxing and knitting and spending time with my family.  I finished all of my gift knitting but I was in such a frenzy I didn’t take any pictures.  It was just a pair of socks and 5 of those sock keychain thingies. 

We had my family over for Christmas eve, which is the first time we’ve been able to do something like that.  We owned a very small house for a few years that wasn’t very condusive to entertaining.  Now don’t get me wrong, that tiny house was a wonderful excuse for us to avoid annoying things like unexpected guests–no one wanted to squeeze themselves into our tiny house.  I don’t love to entertain or anything, but I do like to occasionally have family or friends over for dinner or whatever.  Now that we have a bigger house and, um, a table it is so much easier and more enjoyable.  Heh, and the two big dogs really make it an enjoyable experience for our guests.  Have I ever mentioned they are hyper?

Christmas eve was a blast, and I hope to make it a tradition every year.  Mr. Yarn Pirate cooked a delish pork roast and a bunch of other tasty dishes.  I set up the buffet with all kinds of goodies and set the table with my fancy placemats and napkins.  I googled “folding fancy napkins” about an hour before dinner and that’s what I came up with.  It was so easy!

My sister warned me that her presents were “ghetto” when she came over, but it turns out what she made me was probably my favorite gift ever.  She painted me a few very simple portraits of my pets, using pictures she found on Flickr.  I was so touched by her gift.  She really did a great job.  I can’t wait to frame them and hang them up!  The pictures below show her painting on the left and the original picture on the right.  She tells me my Frogger painting is still in the works…

I’m trying to convince her to open up an etsy shop and take special orders for pet portraits.  She doesn’t think there would be much interest.  I think she’s wrong.  If any of you are interested let me know and I’ll pass the info along to her.  She thinks she’ll be ready to start doing them in Feb. 2007.

Christmas morning was pretty crazy at our house.  We are the kind of people who buy presents for our pets.  This year we went all out.  It started a few weeks ago when Mr. Yarn Pirate found an ebay auction for “100 slightly used brand name tennis balls”.  Tennis balls are a commodity around here, so he decided to buy them for the dogs for Christmas.  He also drove around to all the Walgreens in our area and bought out all of a certian stuffed duck they sell.  Our dogs are crazy about those ducks, and since they are sometimes hard to find we just decided to load up.  Um, we don’t have kids yet, so that’s my best excuse.  That and maybe we need to get out more…

Mr. Yarn Pirate really suprised the heck out of me on Christmas morning.  He bought me many wonderful gifts, things that I both wanted and needed.  But how he managed this I’ll never know.  A few months ago I spied the most beautiful necklace at ShopClementine.  A whole bunch of emerald beads wired onto a silver leaf frame.  I stared at this necklace for a long time, but it was just to expensive to justify me buying it.  I try to stay under $30 when I shop for jewelry on Etsy.  I never mentioned this necklace to anyone, I never bookmarked it or anything.  I checked back a few weeks ago to look at it again and it had sold.  Imagine my suprise when i opened up a little package from my hubby on Christmas morning and there it was, with matching earrings too.  I think this is proof that we are a perfect match.  How many husbands out there know exactly what jewelry their wife wants without even so much as a hint?     

This picture isn’t doing the jewelry justice at all.  Those are genuine emeralds, a deep green, and very sparkly.  I love them sooooo much.  I love my hubby too.  He’s a keeper. 

Before I get into talking about my holiday sweat shop, I’d like to say a huge thank you to my buddy Virginia from scribbles n bits.  She sent me the most thoughtful package today!  It was full of wonderful hand made treats like soap, stitch markers, and a super cute cork board with cool sparkly thumb tacks.  She also sent the one Yarn Harlot book I haven’t read, a kit for baking goodies for my mutts, a bar of my favorite chocolate, and a card from one of my favorite illustrators.  Hey, V, howd’ya know??  Thank you so much!  I was very touched by your kindness, and I love all of the wonderful things you sent.:)

I was officially caught up on all things Yarn Pirate on Friday night.  I’m taking a wee break from the yarn to attempt some holiday crafting.

Over the weekend I made some very festive placemats and cut out all the pieces for a quilted table runner.  The placemats were kind of a last minute idea.  I couldn’t find anything I liked at the usual stores so I made a run to Joann’s for some fabric and interfacing.  This is some of the laziest sewing I’ve ever done.  I didn’t measure, didn’t pin, I didn’t even use my fabric scissors (couldn’t find them).  Since I was just sewing a couple of rectangles together I thought “Why bother?” and they turned out pretty good.  Well, there is one that is pretty messed up on one side…but that’s why they are reversible. 

I did some knitting too!  I was worried I might have forgotten how.  A few months ago I decided I was going to knit a whole bunch of smallish Christmas stockings to decorate my fireplace mantle with.  I ordered some Telemark from Knitpicks (verdict:  I like it!), knit one cabled stocking, then promptly got so busy I couldn’t finish my project.  I finished the second stocking this weekend, a red n’ green striped number.  I tried to make the toe pointed and elfin looking, but I think it looks stupid.  I think I’ll sew a jingle bell to it and call it good.

I feel like I need to print a dislaimer before I show the next picture.  I know the big, gaping hole in our fireplace is ugly!  See, when we bought this house back in June it had a huge black cast iron fireplace insert that was much, much uglier.  The first thing we did was rip that sucker out (and by “we” I mean my hubby and FIL).  We looked into getting some kind of gas insert, but frankly it’s hard to be inspired to shop for fireplace inserts in the sweltering heat that was last summer.  So we kinda put it off and now I have to post this picture with the ugly hole.  Ugly fireplace aside, I’m pretty happy with how the mantle came out.  I have some decorations that belonged to my husband’s grandma, some new stuff, and some of that great knock off old looking stuff that’s really new.  I love my little stockings that I bought over at Knottybits!  Oh, and our Christmas stockings are Paul Frank felt stockings that I found the first year we were married.  I embroidered eyelashes on mine so we can tell them apart.   

I worked on a few Christmas presents too.  One I can’t show yet, but take a look at these little guys!

I got these at The Loopy Ewe.  They’re little sock blocker key chains.  It comes with directions for knitting a tiny sock out of left over sock yarn.  If there’s one thing I have a lot of it’s left over sock yarn.  Aren’t they cute?  I made these while watching tv last night, probably about 2 hours worth of work.  That’s yarn pirate yarn I’m using too!  These are going to be perfect gifts for certian family members who have been complaining that I never knit socks for them…

Speaking of left over sock yarn, I found something fun to do with mine.  I don’t normally have a ton of scrap yarn left after the dyeing/skeining process, but for some reason these skeins came from the mill with many extra yards on them.  It was hard to divide them up exactly evenly, so I threw about 20 yards extra on each skein and kept the rest for myself.  I’m always curious to know what my colorways look like knit up, so now I can knit up some samples.  I balled them up all homespun like and put them in this big glass vase.  I think it looks pretty.  I have it sitting on my buffet with some Christmas decorations and it looks very festive!

I was very bad this weekend.  I cast on with my Snow Angels yarn from Adam even though I have tons of gifts to finish.  I couldn’t help it!  The yarn was calling my name.  I love the way it looks so far, though I’m afraid I won’t get much more done on this sock until after the holidays.  If any of you are counting, this makes 5 socks on the needles at once.  I had to buy more size 2 dpns just to feed my sock starting syndrome!  (I’m too stubborn/lazy to learn the magic loop technique)

I’m going to try to do another post on Christmas Eve to show the fruits of my labor.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get it all done…

Q:  How much yarn can one little yarn pirate dye in a week?

A:  A lot.  A lahahahot. 

I’ve dyed so much yarn in the last week all I see when I close my eyes is, well, yarn.  The click-click-click of my skeiner and the squeak-squeak-squeak of my swift are still ringing in my ears.  Thank goodness for my ipod.  Oh little ipod, how did I ever get along without you? 

I’m finishing up a few more orders and then I’m taking a break.  I need to catch up on the rest of the things in my life.  I need to catch up on some things around here too!  For starters… Contest winners.  Wanna see the prizes?

There’s some good loot there!  The winners are… Valerie, TJ (got a blog, TJ?), and Heide.  If any of you are experiencing prize envy you can click over to One Planet Yarn and Fiber and score some loot for yourselves.  It might be worth your time to pop over there.  See this big pile of yarn?

It should be up for sale very, very soon.  It might even be up right now. 

Moving right along, last weekend I went to Urban Craft Uprising with Sarah and I had a blast.  Sarah was very sweet and introduced me to all her crafty peeps.  We did a lot of shopping and I had a great time.  I didn’t bring my camera so I don’t have any of my trademark crappy, amateurish photos to share.  I’m glad I didn’t bring it though, cause I was overwhelmed by the LOOT.  Oh man.  I was in heaven.  I was pretty good…I did manage to buy a few gifts.  But lets face it.  The stuff at UCU was pretty much made for me.  I loved everything I saw. 

Sarah is an amazing spinner.  I got to hold a skein of her handspun on my lap while we watched a fashion show.  I fondled it so much I felt like some kind of yarn perv.  She has also been awarded the “coolest person ever” award for making me this:

That happens to be a needle felted Yarn Pirate Snowman.  I super sized the picture so you can see the clever little skein of undyed sock yarn in his twiggy snowman arms.  I already told Sarah how much I love this, but I’m gonna go ahead and say it again.  Sarah!  You are the best.  I love, love, love my snowman.  And you were right, my dog did want to eat it.  He jumped up in the air about 4 feet trying to get at it.  Don’t worry though.  It’s safe and sound.

I got some delicious yarn in the mail today! 

Left to right:  Lanas Puras (mmmmmm), “Blueberry Pie” from my buddy Angelina at Cinnamon Stitches, and “Snow Angels” by Adam at Adam Knits & Dyes.  It’s all so lovely.  I can’t wait to get some time to knit!  Thanks guys!

And finally… I’ll be doing a pretty big shop update on Saturday ( 12/9/06) at 11am PST.  Lots of great stuff.  New colorways, a few one of a kind hand paints, old faves too.  Here’s a sneak peek for you.

One of these colorways won’t be in the shop update.  It’s an exclusive colorway for The Loopy Ewe.  You’ll have to check over there early next week to find out which one it is!