Today's blog brought to you by the letters W-T-F???

As requested from my 3 year old, she wanted a fishy hat like the one I made for her friend Alex but in clown fish colors. Ok, not a big deal, I have the neon orange that is brighter than a thousand suns leftover from a previous project, I have black and white yarn...I can do this again. I should have guessed this new hat project was going to be difficult starting with losing my size 8 double point needles and from the previous hat experience using circulars proved to be a pain to use. Not wanting to spend much money on a new set, I picked up the cheapest pair I could find. They are ok needles but once again in previous projects I have done the type of yarn sometimes picks out what type of needles I should use. The double points I got are plastic and with this orange yarn, it slips off the needles quite easily and it looks like I should have gone up a size to work with this stuff as well, ugh. I should have just picked up the wooden pair and just deal with the fact I lost my good size 8 wooden double point needles and pay the extra dollars to get a good set again.

So I continue to knit this stuff up dropping a stitch here and there with a 3 year old asking "Is my hat done yet" in the background. Now it's time to do the short rows....ok...knit to the end...do I slip the stitch first or do I move the yarn from the back to the front?? How did I do this last time...no that's not right, let's try this, no...not right again. Ok, I just need to look this up, where did I put my notes?? Ok, ok...slip the stitch first, bring the yarn to the front, slip back the stitch, bring the yarn to the back and turn...got it, that was easy...why couldn't I remember this?? Ok, time to go back and do the next short row...ok I'm at the end of the next row time to do what just took me 5 minutes to figure out...ok...what did I do first...slip or bring the yarn to the front?? Crap, I need to look it up again!! Ok, ok slip, yarn, slip, yarn and turn, got it. On to the end of the next row..hmm...is it yarn then slip then yarn...WTF! I've only managed to only do half of the first set of short rows required on this hat since starting this 2 weeks ago. I don't understand why I can't seem to remember the steps to doing these short rows? This is just stupid!

When the hat frustrates me I just set the needles down and go to another frustrating project I have going on: Cotton spinning. Carey was right, I'm going to hate it to the point I want to stab myself. Spin cotton or stab my eyes out...hmmm...tough choice, I'll go for stabbing myself but then I would drop all those stitches in the short row I just did, damn it! What frustrates me about the cotton is not what Carey warned me about, the breaking of the fiber is a pain but what is frustrating to me is once I find that groove to spinning it right the minute I walk away and start back up I can't get it going right. Again...WTF...I was just doing it right and then I needed to stop, come back and now I can't seem to get it spinning right again. I spend the next 15 minutes trying to get it going again just for it to break on me. AARRGGHHH....so much for a relaxing hobby. I have noticed that cotton seems to produce a bunch of what I call "Yarn Barf", leftovers from the roving that are too small to get back on the single that you are spinning up. A good spinner (example: Carey) wouldn't have any but I'm not that good and still have some yarn barf with any fiber I spin.

Just walk away from the frustrating cotton for a minute and do some predrafting of some newly dyed wool I did a couple of weekends ago.

Trash bag of goodness becomes....

Empty gift bag of drafted goodness ready to spin!!

2 1/2 pounds of wool all drafted and just ready to for me to spin. I got together with my friend Carey at her house to dye all this using her Country Classics dyes that she's had much success using. I'm surprised I made it out the door with it but then again at the rate I'm going with the cotton, I should have taken Carey's offer of spinning it up for me. I still have more fiber to dye up and if it stays some what warmish this weekend I'll try dying the bamboo fiber with the dye that requires a well ventilated area.

I've also gotten back into finishing up some sewing projects and started a needle case out of some fat quarters I got last year from the shop hop I did with my mother & sister. I'm sure there are patterns out there to use but I just figured something out and sewed it up.

Not too bad, just need to stitch the lines to form the holders and I'll do that later tonight.