Flotsam

Last year we had some pretty major flooding happen in the area. My BBE's sister had a box wash up into her yard, and tried to find out who it belonged to, with no success. She told the BBE that maybe he should come and take a look, because it looked like it had tools in it. Well, we went and took a look, and what did I see? Well, there were 2 pairs of electric sheep shearers, 2 big ball winders, a wooden umbrella swift, some kind of a rug hooking machine - and a couple of other things that I couldn't even identify! She's held on to the box for quite a while now, and needed to make some room in her shed - so we went over and grabbed the ballwinders and the swift, all were quite mucky and the swift was missing some of the connectors to hold the arms. And you know what the weird part about all this is? She lives about a block off of the Freeway - there are no sheep or any other type of fiber animals within miles and miles of here!

We took everything to the BBE's shop and cleaned them up, and he fixed the swift for me too! We took these puppies apart, and cleaned every piece we could get to. The BBE even took the metal guides and ran them on his grinder with the wire wheel to get all the pitted rust off.

Now I have 3 ball winders (the one I have at home is just one of the little blue ones) and 3 swifts/skein winders. I've been working with one of the little Japanese metal swifts, which hasn't been ideal for bigger skeins. One of my niddy noddy's is just too big for the little swift, though I can make it work fairly well if I put my arm into the bottom of the skein and wind slowly. My Japanese metal swift is mounted on my bookshelf pointing out into the living room, so that worked for me, but not as well as having a lovely huge swift!



I love that my new wheel has a hole at the top to accommodate a skeinwinder - and now this new (to me) swift. I love a lot of things about my new wheel though, so I thought it was time to take her outside to get some more pics. It was getting a bit late in the day, hence the long shadows....


Boo is not happy about the new wheel, and he is even less happy about the new swift. I've got it folded away at the moment, but all this stuff is just "too big". I'm sure he'd be better about all this if we had a bigger place, but I try to keep Skipper in my room as much as possible, when I'm not using her.












Here's what I've been spinning. Remember the Merino/Tencel blends that I bought at Lambtown? Well, they've turned into two full Joy bobbins - about 4 ozs each. I'm having a bit of a quandry as to what I'm going to do as far as plying is concerned. They're fairly fine singles, and I could simply just ply them together. Or I could spin up another bobbin of undyed merino tencel blend that I bought the same day - or I could dye up that Merino Tencel (I'm thinking an orangey/pinky colour - fairly bright, more on the orange side - but with pink thrown in for good measure - if, of course I can manage to get that right!). And of course - I have 8 ozs of the undyed merino tencel blend so I could even dye both of those up some kind of coordinating color to go with this current stuff, and then spin and 2 ply those together to be used in a project.

On the Knitting front:

I started another Azalea shawl from Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting with my rainbow dyed silk last night. I'm only doing 2 repeats this time - working back and forth. This will be the third time I've knit this pattern. The first time I did three repeats, and didn't make it nearly big enough. The second time I knit 4 repeats and gave the shawl to my grandmother (I tried to take pictures of it before I gave it away - the only one that came out halfway decent became my blog header!), this time it will be just 2 repeats, which I'm positive will block out to a nice triangular shawl shape.

Also, I have an FO to show off - next post I promise! I finished the P90 top, which I am tremendously pleased with! It is maybe the most flattering knit I have ever completed. I need to go jump in the shower so that we can go do a phot shoot. Stay tuned!


And have fun!