Tag Archive | Nerd Girl Yarns

Two Knitted Hats and a Cute Puppy

Okay, shhhh, do you hear that? Yes, that! That, my friend, is silence. Something that has been hard to find in the last three weeks. The husband went back to to work on Monday and today the children went back to school. I have enjoyed having them all home with me (for the most part) but we had enough togetherness. Now it is time for the alone-ness. Okay, sure, the puppy is home and soon enough will be pestering me because I don’t want to take him for a walk in 5 degree weather with wind chills of 15 below. But right now he is sleeping and I am listening to just the wind blow outside and it’s delightful.

Right, so, knitting! Yesterday at this time I had two half-finished hats. This morning, I have two completed hats! Once we did our running around, I had nothing to do but knit. Of course, first I had to survive errands with two kids who were tired of each other and me. But we managed to get shoes at Target without ANY unplanned purchases. We went to Joann and left empty-handed because the yarn was all 25% off so I couldn’t use my coupons. I’m telling you, I was strong yesterday! It must have been because I was wearing my new “I Am Strong” necklace. I must wear that every time I go to Target.

Okay, seriously, hats. I am pleased as punch with them. First up, we have a Spring Beret knit in Misti Alpaca Pima Cotton & Silk. This yarn was heavenly to knit with: soft but strong. It didn’t slip around while I was doing the lace bits, which was nice. And it’s the prettiest baby blue color, my photos don’t do it justice. I think it will be perfect for those April days when we’re all tired of the brisk wind and eager for the return of warmer temperatures. I used this Spring Beret pattern and followed it exactly (except for when I made mistakes and had to maybe k2tog or m1 to get my stitch counts right) for the less slouchy version.

Secondly, I finished the swirly beanie for the boy. This was the easiest swirl pattern ever, and yet I made so many mistakes. I had to frog back several rows once, and then frog the whole thing and start over. But once I realized I had to work on it alone, it was fine. It’s called Odessa and written to include beads, but of course I left those off. My 11yo son might not appreciate beads. So he got some fantastic Nerd Girl Yarn in the Foxy line. The colorway is called #nofilter and the colors are so bright and vivid. I truly love this yarn and can’t wait to start knitting up more.

It felt good to get those done. I’m down to only 4 WIPs, which of course means I will be starting something new today. Our snow and cold, plus the peace and quiet, means I will be snuggling in with a blanket, yarn, tea, and some Grey’s Anatomy. I expect great progress today. For now, I will leave you with a photo of puppy, Captain Jack. He loves the cold and snow. He wants to smell all the smells and eat all the crunchy things.

No Willpower = Swirly Knitted Cowl

Dec23

I failed. Those gorgeous skeins of yarn I wound yesterday? The ones that were supposed to be for after the holidays? I couldn’t wait to start playing with them. So I pulled out the Nerd Girl Yarns Foxy in #nofilter and cast on the Later, Gator! cowl. After maybe three hours’ knitting (super fast for me) I had a new cowl, and I love it. I made it with the girl in mind, and it looks lovely on her, but I was kind of sad to let it go. These aren’t colors I wear much, but I like how it turned out so much I kind of wanted to keep it. At least this way I’ll get to see it often, and even borrow it if I want. The blue reminds a bit of TARDIS blue, so I picked a pattern with a bit of wibbly-wobbly swirl to it. And the really cool thing is that this pattern only used around 95 yards, so I’ve still got around 180 yards left! So I’ve cast on a swirly hat, and the boy (also a Whovian) will get first crack at it. Merry Christmas Eve Eve, and happy knitting to all!

Yarn for the Nerd in all of us

Aug3

Have you heard of Make magazine? Or maybe the Maker Faire? They’re parts of a larger Maker movement that encourages people to…well, to make stuff. They want people to interact with their environment, to open their minds enough to think about how to do something differently, or to create something fun and interesting and helpful. The magazine has all kinds of project ideas, and my husband has been reading it for ages. He loves to find fun things to do with the kids. I’m awfully glad he does too, because it led to a new yarn source for me.

So, the Maker Faire. It’s “the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth—a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.” Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Kansas City hosted a Maker Faire last month, but unfortunately it fell on a weekend when we simply did not have time to go. But shortly after, the Make blog featured one of the KC vendors, Nerd Girl Yarns, and since Alex reads the blog, is a nerd, and has a wife who loves yarn, he watched the interview. (Watch her interviews here) And then he shared it with me, and I got all excited because guess what? NGY is in Odessa, Missouri which is only about 30 minutes from me!

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of them before, but as I poked through the website I realized that it was because she focuses on the dyeing, and selling custom orders. She does have a small retail space, but it seems to be more of a sideline. And I’m okay with that, because the yarns she creates are awesome. Yesterday I got out to the studio for the first time to see some of the yarn in person. The retail section is small, with just one little bit of wall devoted to yarn. The other side has the hand-dyed clothing, and there were a couple of chairs for those inclined to stay and be crafty. I wasn’t there for that. I was there for the yarn.

A lot of the colors are inspired by Doctor Who, like a blue and brown named Tenth Doctor. There was a red named I Am the Cyber King, and a Gallifrey with oranges and reds. There was a TARDIS blue, of course, and a yellow/orange with a touch of blue Sunflower. I was really hoping for the Blue Box Exploding, which is mostly blue with some yellow/orange too. She has Don’t Blink, Doctor Donna, Fantastic, Raggedy Man, Regenerate, and Time Machine. Both my kids (and the husband) are Whovians so I’d love to get some of each to make them lots of Whovian presents. I can’t do it all at once, though. I know. Patience, grasshopper.

They’re not all Doctor Who, of course. There’s Windu, Nevermore, Resurrection Stone, Serenity Firefly Class, Forbidden Forest, Walking Dead, Girl on Fire and so much more. So many references that I don’t even get! I can’t list them all, so you really should check out her stuff yourself. Go to her website here.

The really cool thing is that you can order the colorway on any base you like. So if you adore fingering weight, you can get that. If you love bulky yarn, like me, you can get that. You can get exactly the yarn you want!

“What did you get??” I can hear you asking. My eye went first to a gorgeous purple sparkly yarn named Secretly Spiders. The site says it’s inspired by Night Vale, and sadly I have no idea what that means. All I know is that I love it. It’s on Smashing, which is a DK of 70% merino and 20% silk with 5% silver-toned stellina to make it shine.I kept picking skeins up and putting them back. I really needed to restrain myself to 2 or 3 skeins, but it was hard. I struggled with choosing based on the Whovian names or the colors. I ended up going for the colors this time. So my second skein was a beautiful blue-green blend named #nofilter. The colors were more vivid on the fingering weights, but I knew I’d enjoy a heaver weight more, so I went with Foxy. Foxy is a DK weight too, but it’s 85% Polwarth Wool and 15% silk.Once I got through the initial getting-to-know-you phase, I was able to look beyond the wall o’ yarn, and that’s when I saw the sale section. It wasn’t big, and there were only two bowls of yarn, but any sale yarn is good yarn in my book. My third selection came from that.This is called Shtako. No idea what that means. Feel free to enlighten me. But the purple caught my eye, and as soon as I touched it, it was mine. It’s on the Luscious yarn, and it really is luscious. It’s Heavy Worsted, 60% superfine merino and 40% silk. It’s heavenly. It’s only 100 yards so it will have to be a small project; I’m thinking some fingerless gloves.

I also got a medium project bag with the logo, like you see in that first picture. You can never have enough project bags, and at $12 it was the perfect price. She didn’t have any Blue Box Exploding, so I’ll probably be ordering some in the near future. And we got to talk to Christa, the owner, for a little while, and she mentioned the possibility of doing quarterly events where they dye larger quantities of some of the popular colorways. I’m really hoping that happens, because I’d be there in a heartbeat! If you’d like to find out when that happens, follow her blog here. Maybe I’ll see you there!