Packages!

I might not have gone to Rhinebeck but I had my own little fiber fest this weekend. On Friday, my friend brought me roving from her mom. She sent 2 4 oz. balls of wool, one dark brown and the other a light grey. I was going to take a picture of both of the balls but couldn't wait that long to start spinning it! I've spun up both balls now and am starting to ply the two together. The tweedy effect is really fun.


Lily decided to "help" me take pictures outside. She never really takes an interest in my yarn or projects. The roving, however, is a different story. I think that the smell intrigues her.


AND look what came in the mail on Friday! Yea! A box full of etsy purchases!





The seller even included a bar of handmade soap! Yum, mango spice.

Here are some more gratuitous cat pictures. She was just enjoying the sunlight so much. I kept throwing acorns to her and she would play with them for her standard 5 seconds. (Five seconds is the maximum length of time that the cat will play and no longer. This ADD behaviour doesn't help much when she is trying to catch mice.)



I have been knitting some though the spinning is taking up much of my time. I cast aside all of the other projects that are OTN and started up another one. Have you seen the Mermaid Fingerless Gloves? They are a variation of the Pomatomus socks. I've decided to knit 2 pairs for friends for Christmas. In order to force myself to finish them, I'm knitting 2 at a time but both of them in different colors. This way, when I finish these 2, I'll be forced to continue to work on the other 2 so the pairs will match. Does that make sense?


They are much further along than in this picture. I'm almost ready to start the thumb increases.

Remember this?

Remember this?


It went from that to this. . .


. . . then this . . .


. . . and finally to this!


I should have waited to post this until I had started and then finished a project with the yarn. Then the picture sequence would have been complete! :) I'm planning to make a hat, Madge, from KnittySpin with the Cherry Tree Hill yarn but am not sure what to do with the undyed.

The first skein (98 yards) of the colored that I made was much thinner than the second. With the second one (86 yards), I was deliberately trying to make it heavier than fingering weight but the yarn turned out all bobbly and uneven. That will probably be the one I make the hat out of because the pattern embraces the bobbly-ness. I made a third skein with the rest of the Cherry Tree Hill roving which ended up being about 46 yards and much closer in thickness as the first one. The only problem with all of this spinning? I'm out of roving again. Hmm, that stuff from yesterday will hopefully come soon!

Slight falling down, part II

I blame the pretty pictures. I really do. That and the lack of roving stash.



Top to bottom they are Mardi Gras, Broken Hearts, and Cowgirl Chic from CJ Kopec Creations. Etsy is a wonderful, wonderful site but very, very bad for my PayPal account. Oh, and I also blame Lime and Violet's Daily Chum where they feature wonderful etsy shops as well as having other interesting articles. At least I won't have to worry about the lack of roving stash after this comes in the mail! I just have to worry about the whole "giving back the spinning wheel to the person from whom you borrowed it" thing. Hmmm.

More crack

Hi, my name is Anne and I am addicted to roving. And it happened in a very short period of time! But first, here are some pictures!

I've finished the main part of the back of the Brennan Cardigan. It went surprisingly quickly for such a long piece of knitting.


Now I have to pick up the stitches that were put on a holder on each side and do the fun pattern. It will hopefully go pretty quickly because, as we all know, cabling is crack.


I finished and blocked the shoulder shawl that I was working on from Victorian Lace Today. It turned out really well and blocked to a much bigger measurement than I expected. I still haven't decided if it is going to be a gift or not. We'll see when Christmas rolls around how desperate I get for gifts.


Progress has been made on the Double Bordered Diamond scarf also from Victorian Lace Today. I only work on this one occasionally, though, so the progress is not quick. So far I've done 7 of the 20 repeats. Reading the comments on Ravelry was really funny because one person said "forget 20, 16 was plenty for me!" Sorry for the really bad lighting!


And one of the most important pictures of this post (well, at least to me!) *drumroll* is my first single!!! It's overspun and lumpy in places but I love it. <3


After spinning up all of the undyed roving we got at class, I kind of went on a crazy "must have roving" couple of days. It was like withdrawl. But then Kim got this beautiful stuff in! It is roving from Cherry Tree Hill and the colorway is Watercolors. The colors are really surprising because, on the website, the Watercolors looked very washed out but in person, these are so strong.


I picked it up yesterday night but got so excited about it that I didn't even wait to take a picture of the bag of it. Instead, I headed over to the meeting of the spinners guild and got to work :) One of the other ladies had a ball winder so I was able to free up one of my bobbins.


The guild meeting was so much fun. I am definitely going to have to become a member! One of the women lives on my street and has a herd of sheep. She is an omnipotent goddess. She brought a bag full of uncarded (is there a special term for that? I need to get spinning books.) locks and her plethora of tools. Then we had a chance to practice carding and making the wool look like the processed roving. I really need to learn official terms. Anyway, here is a small bit of the wool that I am going to play with later.


It was just so much fun to listen to everyone's conversations about various things like chemical dyeing and natural dyeing or the different properties of fibers. I think I'm going to learn a lot!

One of the other women brought some yarn bags that a college student made. They have pockets on the inside for needles and other notions. I'm going to be giving one as a Christmas present and then have to decide what to do with the other.


All in all, I have a new obsession and need to start looking for a wheel of my own!

New obsession

Yup, it's all over. Why did I resist for so long? Roving stash here I come!

Guess what!

Guess what time of year it is!

Yea!!! Ironically, though, I haven't been knitting that many socks right now. My goal for Socktoberfest is to work my way through Cat Bordhi's book and actually finish a pair (or two) of socks for Dad. He is 6'4" so making socks for him is a little daunting.

Guess what I did yesterday during lunch and break.

A horsie finger puppet! Black is such a hard color to photograph so sorry for taking such a bad picture. I have to make a lot more of these so they can race. I had never done any crocheting other than making flat squares but was determined to make this work. Guess you need the right incentive :)

I finished the sleeves of the Brennan Cardigan last night and went back to working on the back. The cardigan, however, is not a project that I can work on in class. (The needles make too much noise.) So I picked this shawl up again.


The border is trucking along. Why is this one so much easier to do than the one on the beaded shawl?


Inspired by everyone else's sewing projects in the blog world, I made this shopping bag a few weeks ago before I fell off the horse. Hehe, cow.


Look at the inside! Is it just me or does it look like a cow field? Highly amusing.


I cut out material for 5 other bags but just need to sit down sometime and finish them. Not all of them are the same material.

And finally, look what I saw the other night. Does this amuse anyone else as much as it does me?

Pictures (finally)

I bought some new batteries last night and finally took pictures of my swag and knitting progress. This first one is the Knit Picks order that I received a few days ago. I've already used (or am using currently) 5 balls of the Wool of the Andes on my Brennan Cardigan. The undyed yarn is 2 skeins of Bare laceweight merino. That should be a lot of fun to play with sometime soon. I haven't had a chance to use the Harmony needles yet but I love them from just handling them!


This picture of one sleeve is from early in the evening yesterday. By the end of the night, I had finished with the increases and only had another inch to knit before I get to the decreases and bind off. Whew, this is flying!


Here is the back that I started before deciding to do the sleeves first. You cast on and knit for 2 inches with the smaller needles and then change to the larger ones. In this picture I had just switched sizes. The Options needles are so wonderful because I could leave all of these stitches and just switch the tips.


This is the stuff from the Appalachian Heritage Fest. Look at the pretty roving :)


The thing that amused me the most though? This guy right here!


Baaaaaaaaa!

Progress!

Look! Progress! I've been plugging away at my Double Bordered Scarf from Victorian Lace Today and it is slowly growing. I'm coming to think of it as my escapism project. Whenever something gets too hard or boring or overwhelming, time for the simple and yet complicated looking scarf! The cashmere yarn is soooooo wonderful feeling. I waffle between really liking the colors and only sort of liking the colors.


I went to the Appalachian Heritage Festival on Saturday. It was the first year for this event but they had a pretty good turn out of vendors. It gave me a chance to do a lot of Christmas shopping. I also went a tad nuts over lotions and handmade soaps. One vendor had lotion bars that can sit out on their own little dishes. I chose a French Vanilla bar and dragonfly dish for Mom (she loves dragonflies) and a tube of Coconut Cream lotion for me. I was sorely tempted by the sheep dishes. You can't even imagine how wonderful this lotion smells. I might have to get on their website and order more. Then another vendor had chocolate hand lotion. It smells like you are putting the most delicious hot chocolate on your hands without the whole risk of burning yourself. Probably shouldn't use these when I am hungry, huh?

The many different vendors, demonstrators and animals were very interesting. I would have taken pictures but my camera doesn't have any batteries. One of the llamas looked very disgruntled by all of the people. There were so many spinners around and so much roving. I bought my first little bit of roving, 2 oz of Shetland from a ewe called Faith. I'll play with this once I know a little bit more about spinning. Speaking of spinning, there were so many spindles, wheels and roving there. Very interesting :)

There was also yarn there but I didn't buy much of it. Just this skein of sock yarn in OSU colors for Dad. This yarn is 70% superwash wool and 30% seacell and feels like silk. It should be a lot of fun to knit up.


I also got a couple of jars of honey for Christmas presents. It is amazing the kinds of things you can learn at these festival things. Two ladies were talking to the man selling the honey telling him about how they put honey on cuts and burns and it helped heal it right up. He said that many studies have shown how honey is a natural antiseptic. I also learned that the lighter honey is the honey gathered in spring. The darker kind is gathered in fall. He had just harvested the fall honey that I bought a couple of days before. Talk about fresh! He was also talking to another person about how taking local honey each day can really help with allergies.

In other news, I received the yarn for and cast on yesterday for the Brennan Cardigan. Don't you find making the sleeves last seems like they take forever? You are so close to being finished with the sweater and then you still have to finish a huge chunk of knitting. So this time, I cast on for the sleeves first rather than last. I've already finished all of the ribbing and almost finished with the increases. It's kind of amazing how quickly they are going. Guess if you are determined, things will go faster. I've also been practicing my backwards knitting for this project so I don't have to keep turning it back and forth. Very helpful :)