Cricket in a Biscuit

The kids and I recently dove into the world of home brewing. Sometimes my Facebook feed is all recipes, recipes, more recipes… Look! More annoying recipes, recip— ooh! I should make that! Root beer was one of those stop and scroll back recipes for me. I did a brief skim of it, enough to know I needed brewer's yeast, and kept scrolling. A couple weeks later, brewer's yeast in hand, I went back to find the recipe. Couldn't find it. I was fairly sure of who posted it, so I searched their timeline. Nothing. Pinterest will have it. Everything is on Pinterest. Well, not everything apparently. I found more root beer recipes than one would ever believe existed — did you know you can carbonate with dry ice?! — but not the one I was looking for. Since I already had the yeast, I was bound and determined to make something. There were two recipes which stood out above the rest. One used yeast, a different kind, but no biggie, right? Wrong! But more on that later. The other used a...

I cut my knitting — planned and on purpose — cut my knitting. Even more horrifying? It was handspun yarn. And you know what? It really wasn't that bad! The Twist Pullover had been in my ravelry queue for the longest time. I put it on the list with every intention of making it, but then the yarn turned out a little thicker than it should have been and the yardage was a little short. There was a bigger problem, though. From the first glance I'd decided I needed to make my twist shades of blue with dark at the bottom transitioning to light at the top. I bought the pattern, spun the yarn, and then realized the instructions had the front and back knit separately and seamed together. Had I realized that before, I could have spun the yarn accordingly, one skein for the front and one for the back, each going through the color progression. As it was, I had the entire progression in one giant skein. Bummer. Fast foward to this summer. I had two spins going, each with a proje...

A highly textured yarn of over-the-top oranges and pinks can't be used for just anything. Sometimes it is worth it to wait for the right pattern to present itself. People tend to be intrigued by spinning. It's not something often seen, so it draws attention. It also draws a lot of questions. The first, "What are you doing?" I continue spinning as I explain until, eventually, the inevitable question, "But… what are you going to do with it?" The puzzled expressions deepen with my response, "I don't know. I have to finish it before I know what it wants to be." Apparently, it is not enough to simply make yarn. I must also make something with it. Immediately.  Truth is, I rarely spin with a project in mind. Although, given the length of my ravelry queue, I should, but it takes a lot more skill and deliberation to spin that way. I spin for the fun of it — for the fiber, for the sake of spinning and for something to do. Sometimes there is...