Handspun Luna Moth

So I shared some new laceweight that was totally unplanned. Just trying to clear off some bobbins.

It's funny - sometimes I spin with a specific project in mind, sometimes I spin just because I want to try a new fiber, with no real idea of what I will end up doing with it. Sometimes I spin, and just end up with way more on one bobbin than another - too much to andean ply the remainder to itself... I do a lot of yarn that is one or two plies of one fiber, and another ply of something really scrummy like Optim or silk, which ends up getting spun very fine, and I end up misjudging how much I need, and have way more of scrummy fiber than I needed...

I have 9 bobbins for my Joy, and ended up with maybe 2 that I could use. 7 bobbins with bits and bobs of fiber on it... Not to mention that I have scads (20+) of spindled singles that I spin just for spinning sakes, even with no idea of what I will end up plying it up with.

I had probably a half a bobbin of finely spun merino that I'd dyed in a pink/lavender colorway. I had a roll of silk that I knew would work really nicely, ran out of that pretty quickly, then found another spindle of silk, ran out of that too - so I grabbed some optim that I'd spun on another bobbin, some more spindle spun optim, and then just some wool that I'd spindle spun. Whew! Leftover yarn!

It came out really pretty though! I haven't had a shawl to work on in a while, so I've been browsing the shawl patterns on Ravelry (I'm abiknits there too), tried to start a Veil of Isis which just didn't want to cooperate, and finally settled on the Luna Moth shawl from Elann.

I'm really pleased with it! Here's a close up of the stitch pattern in all it's unblocked glory... I have about 750 yards of this stuff. I plan on knitting till I run out yarn. We'll see how big that will become.

Anyway - that's it for this time.

I haven't been walking around so much just lately taking pretty pictures.

The weather here has been awful just lately, but we did go on a walk weekend before last down near the bay - nothing too exciting, but a nice little walk nonetheless. Here's a quick shot that I took that day


Till next time - have fun!

Yosemite

Thanksgiving weekend was so nice! I actually got to go someplace!

Wow - went to South Lake Tahoe,

Mammoth,

and then Yosemite, coming in through the back way. I'd never been before, and it really seemed necessary!

I took a ton of pictures - and spent an awful lot of time in the car... There was a lot of driving! Luckily I was able to sit in the passenger's seat a lot of the time, and even started a project out of the plumpy plum yarn that I spun up not too long ago. No pictures yet - but they will be forthcoming...

So yeah - this post has been in "edit" mode for a few days now, and I think I'm just going to post it up, even though there isn't too much more information...

Ethereal Chevron - Put a fork in er.

Whew...

So the last couple of days has seen me dive into a pile of books... I read the Deathly Hallows on Sunday, a good finish to the series, very satisfying. Monday I read a book called Spindle's End. Go figure! It was very good, a novel - but a take on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, and Tuesday I read one of the many Dragon Lance volumes - not a series that I've gotten into too much yet, but definitely see myself reading more. But last night I definitely just needed some air - three books in three days, does funny things to my brain! I managed to clean up one corner of my room, and do some dishes - but that's about all the energy I could muster.

Anyway... I have an FO!! Whoo Hoo and a yippeee... I finished weaving in the ends at lunch time today,= and I think that it could actually benefit from a blocking (which I might get around to at some point, maybe after I've finished the F&F Comfort Shawl properly. If one has to crawl around on the floor pinning out sodden wool, one might as well make a party of it right?)

Anyway I wove in the ends today at lunch. I got home to an empty house (but a swept sidewalk) so I asked my lovely new neighbor to take some shots of me. I think she did a pretty good job. I lent her the Spindle's End book, as a thank you.

This is yet another handdyed, handspun sweater.

The yarn itself is a three ply. Two plies of CVM, (that's California Variegated Mutant to non-sheepy people) and a ply of silk. All dyed in blues and greens.

It's not exactly my design, it's a Rick Mondragon bias knit jobby from Knitters.

I did some modifications though - the sleeves being the most obvious. I'm still on the fence about the length - but I didn't think it would look quite right with full sleeves. I am still kind of envisioning a longer belled sleeve. But I was a bit worried about having enough yarn to do the sleeves, so I kept em tight and not too long. Turns out (of course!) that I have plenty of yarn! Enough for at least another sleeve - but that would be silly. I only have two arms, so these two sleeves should really be sufficient, I should think.

I'm supposed to be going camping with the BBE and some of his family this weekend, so I wanted to be sure to get this post out there, and I still have laundry to do - not to mention the fact that I desperately need to empty up some bobbins on my Joy, which I'm planning on taking with me. We're not going far away from home, but just getting away for the weekend. I'm not looking forward to it so much. We haven't been spending nearly as much time together as we were. Nobody's fault really, we're just both stressed out, and I'm not feeling very sociable.

But I'll leave you with a pretty picture of a white rose that I took at a friends wedding not too long ago...

I woke up this morning...

When I walked out of the house, there was a really weird light, and as I walked out from under the trees, There was more and more of a red glow. Just strange as all get out. I was thinking to myself, "what in the world??!??". Finally when I caught sight of the rising sun I was totally blown away! There have been some fires in the area recently. Just kind of happens around here, this time of year. No rain all summer long, and everything is ready to go up like tinder.

Anyway - the sun didn't look like the sun.... It looked like the moon! But a bright RED moon. Like it was on fire itself or something. Very strange. Of course I took a picture. And of course, you really can't see the effect on my little camera (great for closeups - not so great for landscape photos, and it doesn't do well with weird light).

I was thinking that you know, if we were all back in the dark ages or something - we'd be up in arms and thinking that world was going to end, or our sun god was sick, and be doing funny dances, and rituals and ceremonies. Seemed like a bad omen kind of a day.

Anyway, work wasn't so bad. I got there without too much hassle (even though the world had this strange red thing going on this morning).

I found out tonight that I don't actually have jury duty tomorrow. Yay, for a day off! I know I could still go in - but I've gotten myself all psyched up for not going to work, and having two three day weekends in a row. So, I'm just not going in tomorrow. I have a big project due on Monday, so I got the bulk of that out of the way today, no worries for getting it out on time, and I'm caught up on all the other things that tend to creep up on me, and pile up. So yeah, I'm good to stay home!

Last night I plied up the Abby Batt. I got about 834 yards and just a smidge shy of 6 ozs. That's about 2200 yards per pound - a light fingering weight, or a heavy lace weight. Nice! Now I just have to find a pattern for it. I've really been enjoying the batts that I've been spinning up lately. I'm mostly a worsted type spinner (pulling bits of fiber out with my forward hand) as opposed to a woolen type spinner (pulling the fiber source back and letting the twist hold it all together). There are definitely a lot of things to be said for woolen style spinning! I notice that my wrist hurts a lot less on my pulling, or forward hand, that's for sure!




And here's a close up, just cuz I can :-)






So yeah, I'm really looking forward to my long weekend. I'm really happy that I'm sitting on my couch writing this. I'm almost on top of my bills, I have projects are going fairly well at the moment, and I have time to do what I want for a couple of days. Yay! Have a great weekend everyone!

No longer top secret...

So I've had this top secret project that I've been working on, and haven't blogged about. I wanted to try to submit it to Knitty - I started it before Christmas of last year, and though I've worked on it quite a lot, it wasn't ready until now. I had to re-do the top part of it four times to get it to where I was happy with it.

1st attempt: Body way too short.
2nd attempt: I don't even know, but somehow my calculations were way off for the sleeves/neck opening, and the whole thing was very wonky... Not good....
3rd attempt: I hadn't cast on enough stitches for the sleeve openings, and it almost worked, but not quite.
4th attempt: Finally!

I really like this type of pattern: Cast on for the body and knit in 2x2 rib with a lace panel in the center, framed by 4 purl stitches. Knit until the body is long enough (really!) and then bind off for the underarms - on the next row, cast on enough stitches to go over the arms, and then mark the corners where the raglan style decreases go... Decrease on each side of the markers every other row, and bind off the lot. I literally had two ends to weave in at the end, and I was done!

The yarn is some of my own handspun... It started off life as a couple of lovely merino/tencel rovings that I picked up at Lambtown last year. One a pretty rose color, the other a nice peach. I decided to throw in a bit of orange to the mix, and dyed up some more merino tencel. Plied all three together into a 10oz skein, and realised that I had made a terrible terrible mistake. The orange was truly eye searing, and with the other two subtle colors there was an awful lot of clashing going on. So I threw the whole skein into a dye bath with red, and came up with a very respectable skein of yarn (10 ozs worth even!). I blogged about the whole adventure last year here and here:


So we had our little photo shoot out in the bright and the wind... It's hot here today! Then we went for a little walk along the railroad tracks. I was asking the BBE if you could get to Larkspur Landing by just walking that way. No - but we could go take a look... So we started walking and ended up going over these old, old traintracks that are way high up in the air. They were actually used to film part of one of the Dirty Harry movies - I guess he jumps off the train tracks onto a bus or something. But that's where I was. Me. With my not so tremendously wonderful sense of balance, and my fear of heights. Pretty clever eh? Though I think it's a very good thing for me to get out of my comfort level, and not let my fear of heights restrict what I can and can't do... I took this picture after we'd gotten about half way down the tracks... And of course, we had to get back somehow, and the only way was over these puppies!









On the way we saw a goose that I think was hatching on it's nest. I probably wouldn't even have noticed it (being all concerned with not falling through the tracks and breaking my neck!) if it hadn't started hissing.

We walked as far as we could go - there's a draw bridge, that is currently up - so couldn't go all the way to Larkspur, just like the BBE had said. But we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the channel going through Larkspur Landing, and out into the bay... If you look closely at the bottom of the picture, you can see our shadows on top of the railroad bridge.

Oh, and I've been surfing around a lot lately, looking for patterns, and ran across this beautiful corset called Rosebud's Request... Has anyone else made it? Is there a KAL going on for it? It's just gorgeous - and I want one - probably out of my handspun.

Pictures of Progress (Pi - and Log Cabins)

I promised pictures of the No Sleeves in Your Pi in my last post.

To recap - this is a project I started, well over 5 years ago when I still lived in England, and was just starting to feel like I could do this spinning stuff. I spindle spun the body of the whole thing - on lollypop spindles no less, (though the outside border is wheel-spun BFL). All done very early on in my spinning career. Using everything that I could get my hands on - the only criteria being that it was all done in naturally colored fibers. I was in that stage of ordering little bits and bobs of just about everything I could get my hands on. I was also just spinning those bits as they came, and as my mood dictated - very whimsical and fun spinning - start a spindle with angora and silk, go through camel down, and end up with mohair or BFL, or shetland or something else altogether. Ply it together with another spindle of mixed together willy-nilly fibers and end up with a true work of art.

It was great fun - why don't I spin more like this anymore??? I should do. This was a great project for me at the time.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I worked on it for about 2 months straight. I remember thinking that the spinning took a lot longer than the knitting. Spin up two bitty spindlefuls - ply it together, set the twist and wait for it to dry so I could knit it into the shawl. I picked out stitch patterns, and then came to California on vacation - I hadn't been home in nearly 3 years at that point - and brought it with me to work on, especially as a momento - I was really hoping to have it done before I came out. Well - that trip ended up in me deciding that I just couldn't live in the UK anymore - my whole soul was screaming at me as the plane landed back at Heathrow... So I made the very difficult decision of asking for a divorce, and moved back to California the following May. Jumped without a parachute. Big time. But I'm glad I did, though I can't say there are no regrets. It's so hard to move country! I miss a lot of the friends I made - and I especially miss my oldest son who decided to stay there, but it's good to be home.

Right - well, the Sleeves part of the Sleeves in Your Pi just wasn't panning out, so I ripped those out, and just kitchenered the stitches backtogether. I'm so happy to have it done and dusted off - though it still needs to be blocked - I wanted to show you how pretty it is.

Also up in this post - more promised pictures - I've been working on my Off Centre Log Cabin as well - there's still a long way to go... but I'm a third of the way done. There's a full kilo of yarn in the 12 blocks that are finished.

It's being knit on size stupid needles (3.25mm) so I really have no idea when I'll be done, but I can say there's still plenty of yarn in my DK weight cotton stash to finish it off, so no worries there. There's a lot of Patons Cotton DK - some Elann Luna - Rowan Cotton Glace and Handknit Cotton DK - Jaeger Aqua - Wendy Cotton DK - basically a bunch of cotton DK that I picked up when I lived in the UK - most of my stash is pretty basic wools and cottons that I bought while living over there, I had it all shipped back to me as packing material.... And I have to say that out of everything that I did bring home with me - the stash took up the bulk of what I had shipped. I'd have a whole big box full of yarn, and a pottery salad bowl.

Anyway - Don't have time to post more right now - as always so much I want to talk about - so little time. I am kinda pleased with myself for keeping up with a couple of the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year (posting more - and finishing off some of these darn UFO's!)

An hour of ripping

Yep - at least an hour of ripping out the sleeves on my Pi Shawl last night - and all I ended up with was this! There's a lot of angora in this part of the shawl, and it's been sitting for 5+ years. I know you feel my pain - but I do want to get this done - and I am determined!

Might just take a few nights of rip fest though.

And I guess you can tell I was actually able to go on my walk today, it was slightly warmer - and I had warm, lined pants on. I stopped off at Ross last night, and bought myself some new clothes - The boss was expected today, and I really really need to do laundry - was dreading doing it in the cold last night (not having a washer and dryer is such a pain sometimes!) so I took the easy way out! So bad, I know! But I do like Ross - I shop the clearance rack - and you really have to look - but I came away with three pairs of nice slacks for work (two pair lined - which is good because it's always freezing in my department). Two pairs of comfy sweats, a 6pack of socks, and two comfy shirts for bumming around the house, and I spent less than $60. I do like a bargain! Makes me kind of wonder... Maybe I should just stop doing laundry altogether - I mean clothes are pretty cheap these days. My ex-husband once came up with an idea of a whole social structure just based on laundry. He was stoned at the time though. But just think about - the very structure of society based on how often you do your laundry. Can you afford to just buy clothes because you can't be bothered to wash them? Or because your boss is coming into town, and you really want to look your best... Well - I certainly couldn't afford to just live like that - but you know, it's tempting.

So yeah - my walk today. On the way down to the bay I saw these. Someone is spraypainting my name with arrows on the street?!? I'm sure it's something standard that they do - not some weird stalker thing or anything like that... But I just thought it was really weird that my name is painted on the street where I walk as often as I can! And the arrows? Well, I never know which direction I'm going in anyway.



I also saw this great grey heron - isn't he just spectacular?

Ethereal

I managed to get some pictures of the CVM/silk yarn all finished and ready to knit... Of course I can't cast anything on until I finish at least one WIP - so I think I'm going to go home tonight, kitchener up the sleeves on my Pi Shawl and call it good. Thanks for the comments folks - they really do help!

So here she is all 1,050 yards (10 ozs, in one skein). I wish I'd gotten at least one shot of it with something where you could get an idea of the scale of the monstrosity of it all... but I do love it! The skein was soaked in steaming hot water, and treated none to gently, which felted up the CVM strands in a really nice way... I love how this shot on one of the pathways near my work shows the glints of the silk throughout.

Here's a close up shot so you see the juxtaposition of the fulled CVM with the shiny goodness of the silk - mmmmm silk. I still have half a bobbin of the silk singles, and am trying to think what I can ply with it.

I finally cast on for my Second Sock of Shame - I can't even find many pics of the first one - just a bog standard 2x2 ribbed Sockotta sock in the Jeans colorway... Nothing fancy or exciting - nice socks, but I started them 2 years ago now. Damn, I don't understand what has taken me so long to finish the darn things!

I also finished block #12 of my Off-Centre Log Cabin that I started last year. I should be able to get some nice pics to show if I remember to bring them to work with me so I can take pictures during daylight hours - outside of my office... I've done it before - just lined them up on one of the many lawns in this industrial/office park type area where I work - not the ideal setting for taking pictures of knitting, but what else can I do?

It's been so freaking cold here! This morning there was once again ice everywhere on the way to work. Now I fully understand that it's January, and it's a lot colder in a lot of other places - but we just don't get freezing temperatures here very often. Add to that there's no moisture in the air, and I go around wearing my coat and a scarf and three sweaters all day every day - and get zapped every three minutes - static electricity is annoying!

Anyway, hope everyone is staying warm out there!

Some pictures!

So I was able to get some pictures today of the Stuff that I'm currently spinning - no go on the baby blanket I'm afraid... Soon though.

Oh - and we had a wonderful New Year's Eve - the Best Boyfriend Ever took me OUT - dancing even! Most of the time I got to dance on me own - but he actually got out on the dance floor for a few songs with me. A total First. He's the guy who doesn't dance. Very wonderful and romantic indeed... And to be honest - while my boyfriend is a really really good, steady, easy-going nice man. He's really NOT good at the romance department. Says it makes him feel all squeamish and mucky inside. I have to admit, there has been a bit of nagging encouragement in that direction on my part. He's fulfilled his quota for the time being - until, of course Valentine's day.






Anyway. Back to the pictures - What first? I guess the Pink Silk Bubble Yummy... Since I went on about what a PITA it was to Navajo ply two bobbins together (6 ply yarn) in my last post. It doesn't look that bad in this picture, but trust me - there are areas that are snarled and snarfed up within the skein - I figure I'll just deal with them when I'm knitting it up.




And here they are together.... Hard to tell how they'll both knit up - but I'm really hoping that I can make this work in some sort of project.

















I've filled up two bobbins of the 8ozs of CVM - And have the silk going on a third bobbin. Am currently trying to decide whether or not to spin up two bobbins of the silk (I do have enough) to make a 4ply. The CVM seems awful fine, and I'd like to make something that won't take a lifetime to knit up... 3ply might just work out ok though.

And in other news. A couple of posts ago I was wondering whether the scarf I gave my mom for Christmas last year was in a state good enough to take pictures of.... Sadly, while we were gathered at my Grandmother's house she came to me with the announcement that she had bad news. She had lent it to my step-sister, to go out to dinner with a friend. My stepsister accidently left it at the restaurant. Mom went back to see if anyone had turned it in, but it was gone. Sigh - it was spindle spun too - very pretty silk/wool blends in two different greeney colourways. I knit it up into a multidirectional scarf - and now will probably never get a picture of it. Though I do live in a really nice little town. I am sure that if I see it around town, the person who scored it would give it back. I sure hope they are enjoying it. I know for a fact that they have no idea how much work went into it. Oh well... So she informed me that I get to make another scarf for her. I'm planning on either the yarn left over from the Wings o'the Moth shawl - or the Red Hat yarn that I did in Ingeo.

Anyway - got to get to bed, it's late, and I'm being paged.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Handspun hat

The BBE went out and bought himself a cheap little ACKrylic beanie last weekend. It was not flattering, it felt awful, and honestly - the Best Boyfriend Ever wearing a cheap-o acrylic hat?? Obviously I couldn't have that.

So I grabbed a couple of leftover bits and bobs of some spindlespun stuff and started knitting. I had a 3.5mm 16" needle. I figured I would get about 5sts/inch with the yarn... So I cast on 100 stitches and knit in 2x2 rib with some green silk/wool blend that I spindle spun last year, and used most of to knit a MD scarf for my mom. That reminds me - I never did get a pic of that project. It was nice too - wonder if it's in piccable form at the minute.

Anyway. I knew that I wouldn't have enough of the green to knit the whole hat out of, so I threw in some stripes of some blue which was the border on my Comfort shawl, I didn't even have enough of that for the entire hat, so I threw in some other wool/silk blend. Knit for about 7" total, and then did an easy k2tog for a decrease 10 times. (Knit 2 together knit 9 all the way around) knit another row plain - k2tog, knit 8 - knit one round plain - continue on in this fashion with the decreases being one stitch closer together every other round, until you have a couple of stitches left on the needles. Break the yarn and thread through the open loops on the top of the hat, and weave in ends.

It only took me a couple of days to knit it up. Probably could have finished it sooner, but I let it sit for a day or so because I just couldn't be bothered to find another needle of the same size. For some reason I wanted to do the two circs method - Though I quickly decided that dpn's are so much easier for me - and once I switched over it was done in no time.

But the funny thing is - it doesn't quite work on him - it looks great on me! But him? Not so much - so it looks like I'll get to knit another hat as soon as I get home. Another problem is that I think I pretty much used up my whole stash of "spun up masculine type yarn, that would work for a hat" on this one. Oh well, it's not like I don't have commercial yarn that would work nicely as well. We're talking about a Jayne hat. And of course he has been bugging me for a while to make him a Rock Star hat - you know, like the old beer can hats - but with RockStar cans... and dreads, and it has to be orange and purple. Sigh.

I also spun up all the silk that I dyed in the Bubble Yummy colourway. I ended up Navajo plying it with two strands held together to make a 6 ply yarn. I really don't like Navajo plying much, and there was a fair amount of swearing - and the yarn itself has some weirdnesses to it where it started to all go horribly wrong, and I just let the wrongness stay in the yarn because it was way too fiddly and hard to pull the silk out again. Sigh. I like the grist though, and it should work well in conjunction with the kid merino/silk yarn featured in my last post. Though I also have to say - that turned out to be closer to 8.5 ozs than 10 - which makes me feel a lot better about the yardage!

No pics of the silk - it's sitting on my niddy noddy at home - I ended up with 190 yards or so, and like I say, it will meld in nicely with the other stuff that I spun - now what to turn it all into? Lord only knows.

In other news - I've been toying with the idea of taking the 4 days after Christmas off.... I have quite a lot of vacation time built up, but I don't like to spend it (probably why I have so much built up?) Anyway - after I got sick a couple of weeks ago, and had to use 24 hours of PTO - I thought there was no way that I should use up more for "just" me time. Well, I started to talk it over with the BBE. He asked me what I would do with all that time off (if I take 4 days - it means that I have 10 days off in a row!!) I said - "Whatever the hell I want!" And that pretty much decided it for me - I haven't had any time off since a 4 day weekend for my b-day way back in June. I guess I really need it because after the paperwork had been filled out, and handed in - I seriously felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. I was all smiles for the rest of the day - and I'm just so happy, and in such a good mood, it boggles the mind. So YAY for time off! I just hope I don't spend the entire time playing solitaire, like I did yesterday - so insidious and evil!

Bubble Yummy

So it's been a little while since my last post. I've been working on a top secret project - and can't post about that -this is the first time I've had a project that I can't blog - and it's really really no fun! It's been going along swimmingly - and then somehow I messed up part of the pattern - a really easy pattern - but mistakes have been made, which of course means frogging. I hate frogging! But once I get back to where I screwed up, it should just be a matter of an evening or two's knitting.

But spinning that I can share has progressed as well... I've finished plying up these three bobbins. The two bobbins on the outside are kid merino, I've showed you those before... In the center is the Tussah silk that I dyed in a similar colourway, but different dye bath. I've really enjoyed this project so far. The colours are so pretty together, and the fibers are so scrummy! It's just been such a pleasurable spin!
I plied all three bobbins together onto my Schippertje wheel (I just call her Skipper) and ended up with 540 yards of 3 ply goodness. It ended up being closer to 10 ozs. I still have almost half of the bobbin of tussah silk left over. That silk, man - it just does go a looong way!

Here you can see that there's actually even room left on the bobbin, with 10 ozs all plied up. I do love my Skipper! It was after dark by the time that I took this picture, so you'll have to forgive the flash picture. I really wanted to get this all skeined up, and see how much yardage I ended up with. I've been having some issues with her though. The piece of wood that is under the hinge for the front part of the treadle just has 4 little double pins to hold it to the treadle. Last night I had to reattach it - again - for the 4th time. I've even tried gluing it - but then again, I had one of the boys do it before. Maybe this time I managed to fix it properly - I'm sure hoping I have!

So yeah - 540 yards. Not nearly as much as I'd expected to get. I know a lot of you are saying - wow - that's a lot! But remember the yarn I spun for my Wings o'the Moth? I had two full Joy bobbins which gave me 1170 yards! I spun this stuff fairly fine, hoping for some good yardage, and ended up with less than half of that... Puzzling isn't it?

So I have enough of this yarn to make a good size scarf - or maybe (maybe) a bolero type vest, but I want a full fledged sweater out of it, so I've decided to spin up the rest of the Tussah silk (I still have about 6 ozs left) as a three ply, and then combine that into a project with this yarn. Which I've taken to calling Bubble Yummy. I haven't soaked it and set the twist yet. I'm expecting it to bloom quite a bit, and am planning on abusing the poor yarn to help that process along. But here it is, in it's unbloomed, unset, unabused glory.
I really wish y'all could reach through the monitor to touch it - it's just so soft and buttery! I wore it wrapped around my neck like a scarf last night, oh man! It's really not a good scarfy type color though - so will continue spinning on the silk. I was really hoping to get started on the CVM that I dyed, but no such luck. Soon though - I'm really looking forward to the soft halo of the kid merino blend against the silk yarns... doesn't that just sound like a marriage made in heaven? No idea what sort of pattern I'll use - but I want it to be something really feminine and girly.

In other news... I didn't get the job that I interviewed for. Can't say I'm not disappointed, but at the end of the day, nothing has changed. I still have a job - and it's OK - I'm not real happy there, but I do know what I'm doing, and where everything is - which I really hate about starting a new job all over again. So things workwise stay the same.

I got a quite a few comments about my daughter having turned 20 last week... I know - I don't feel old enough for that. People are usually surprised when I tell them how old I am - and then when they find out I've got three kids... and how old they are - well I guess I've gotten kind of used to it. I did start off far too young, I was married to my first husband way back in 1983.

The funny thing is - my daughter is my middle child. My oldest son will be 23 tomorrow. He still lives in England, with his other half, and their children. Yep - that's right I'm a grandma... I don't get to spend time with the grandbabies because they are just too darn far away - and that's a really hard thing for me to deal with - I do love the baby loving... But they're doing well, and the kids are fine and healthy, and apparently just smart as anything... So anyway - Happy Birthday Donny - you mom misses you and loves you very very much!

And of course I still have the Boo living with me - he's 16, but pretty easy to get along with most of the time. He gets mad at me because I have too much yarn, and fluff, and I should use up what I have before getting any more... Not that his opinion stops me or anything. He's just started a new home study program, and looks like he'll do really well there. He's also looking at getting his first job, working with my brother doing construction, which will be very good for him.

So - yeah - family update aside... I'm also spinning some more of the Optim that I just dyed on this sweet little cutout spindle. I love that you can see the cop building up through the heart cutouts, and it's a lot of fun to spin on. Very light, but with some rim weight. This is two days worth of spin - very fine laceweight. It will probably go into a project with the other Optim that I dyed and spun.

Until next time... Have fun!

More dyeing, more spinning - too many decisions

We had a very nice Thanksgiving. First we went to my mom's house for turkey and ham and all the fixings. There was even some of my son's pheasant that my brother had cooked up in the dutch oven. There were a lot of people there (I think 15 or 16 of us), and my mom's house is pretty tiny - but a good time was had by all. There were even babies to cuddle with! This is my nephew Zane - he just had his first birthday, and is walking very unsteadily on his own.

Then we went to the BBE's nephew's house, they'd already eaten - but there was plenty of dessert left by the time we got there.



It was a beautiful sunny morning on Thursday so I was able to get pictures of all the fibers that I dyed last weekend. I've already spun up the 8 ozs of Kid Merino (it's easier than typing kid mohair/merino blend).

I've got half a bobbin full of the tussah silk pictured here (last time you saw it - it looked like brains!) that I'm planning on plying with it. I still haven't decided if I'm going to do a 3 or 4 ply yarn. I guess it just depends on how much patience I can muster up. I love the two fibers together! Also, the kid merino is so soft and wonderful - I don't want to lost that in the yarn. But then again, I'm not sure what I will do with the 4 ozs of the tussah silk if I don't incorporate it all into one yarn... decisions.




On the right is 8 ozs of a superwash merino that I'm thinking will look nice plied with the mystery wool (probably about another 8 ozs) that I picked up at the Spindles and Flyers guild meeting and also got thrown in the dye pot last weekend. Or it might just become something on it's own (more decisions) But it sure is fun! I do love dyeing and playing with fiber!

The Mystery fiber is very spongy, and sproingy - whatever it's going to be, I'm sure it will be fun to spin. I don't normally like spongy sproingy roving - but I think I will like this stuff.








Next up we have 8 ozs of CVM that I dyed in a blue/green colourway. I dyed this in a tall vase - poured some green in the bottom - stuffed roving in - poured some blue on top of that - and just kept layering and pouring in alternating colors of dye. 8 ozs of wool was probably way too much to put into this size of a vase - so there are a lot of areas which didn't take the dye - but I really like that you can still see the natural oatmeal color within the roving. I am really looking forward to spinning this up - it might just be the next in my queue after the kid merino/silk stuff is plied up. I might just throw some silk that I dyed up in my last dye day (at the end of August)

Let's see... I also dyed some more Optim - mmmm Optim! It is just such a wonderful fiber - If you ever see any just touch it - you will have to take some home with you. I didn't try to match the Optim that I've already spun. But think that they might just have to end up in the same project together... at least I know I should have enough yarn to do something with.

I did go ahead and swatch the Optim that I spindle spun - even went so far as to knit the first couple of inches, to maybe make it into a design for a top that I've got kicking around in my head (and even scribbled out on paper). But decided that this particular yarn wasn't exactly right for that particular pattern. I decided that the tomato red merino/tencel blend would work nicely though so I've started knitting a new top for myself - but am thinking that I want to try to submit it somewhere, so probably won't be showing it off. I know - how boring! Not fun - but a lot of places do not want ot have had the design showed off anywhere else if they're going to take on the pattern.

Seems like there should be more than this to show everyone - but I just can't leave off this post without this picture of the kid merino on the bobbins - it's just kind of phartsy - and y'all know how I like my pretty pictures!

I'm so enjoying not having to go to work! The BBE just asked me if it was Sunday - nope! It's still Saturday :-) Whoo Hoo!

I'm planning on going out to lunch and shopping with my daughter in just a bit - she just had her 20th birthday! And we haven't really had a chance to celebrate yet, so that will be nice. We're planning on going to lunch, and then shopping for shoes. Not that she needs shoes - but that's what she wants, and it's her birthday.

And I will leave you with how I kind of feel - I captured this little guy gathering pollen the other day - no idea what the flower is called. But I don't know if I've ever seen a bee more heavily laden down with pollen.

F&F Official FO's

I managed to finish off the F&F socks last night, as I was hoping! Nice when it works out that way - somehow it doesn't usually. But that's one thing I really like about knitting socks. No worries about the perfect edging stitch, or you know - maybe these puppies need a lace edged pocket, or any other such nonsense. Socks are so wonderfully straightforward. I've developed my own preferences over the years and know that if I have a ball of sock yarn and 4 dpn's I can usually just go to town without having to pull out 10 different reference books. Unlike my Caramel Swirl cardigan which is still languishing at the point you last saw it.

I've tried - really I've tried. I've been over all the lace patterns at knitting-and.com. Numerous times even. I've tried the lace edging patterns at Yarnover.net. I've been through my own personal knitting library - pulled out all the books pictured, and still nothing that just resonates as being the exact right thing. Now - this is just a very small sampling of my knitting books - but out of the ones that I've pulled - you'd think I'd find something right?

This Caramel Swirl cardigan - she is stubborn. I started off thinking that I really wanted a saddleshouldered cardigan - and ended up with a standard raglan. The plain lines I think just call for an i-cord neck edging, so that is what I'm going to try as soon as I get done updating my bloggity blog. Just let the darn sweater do what it wants, and get the heck outta the way.




Oh - I was talking about my F&F Socks, wasn't I? I'm still not feeling 100% - but much better than I was. They started off life as a merino/tencel blend that I bought at Lambtown. Which I dyed in a dye-day frenzy a couple of months ago. Spun it up pretty fine 500 yards/4ozs. A fairly standard 2 ply. The way that it self stripes was somewhat planned. I divided the roving at the half way point, and took that first half and just spun that up with long colour repeats. The second half I split into 4ths lengthwise to get shorter repeats, and then plied the two bobbins together.


I mentioned that the needles that I used were horribly mismatched.... I even managed to get a pic of the needles I used with the socks in question. I guess I am starting to feel a bit better!

Final verdict on the socks... They're OK - I'm not totally in love with them - but that's probably just my general illness speaking. They are softer and squishier on the feet than my normal socks. And I've been needing new socks anyway - so I guess it's all good.

When I went to the doctor yesterday I was actually wearing one black sock and one white sock. All I could find clean. I don't have a washer and dryer at home, and just have not had the energy to do laundry, and to be honest - the need to have matching socks on was not at the top of my priority list.

The Christmas Cacti are blooming at my house. I love the weird alien looking flowers that appear every year.