Persistent Knitter

I’ve been spinning!!! I’ve got some finished yarn, but no pictures. In the meantime, I’ve started up another roving:

It’s the December 2006 fiber from the Spunky Fiber of the Month. According to the label, it’s a Shetland fiber. The colors range from blue to pink/purple. I really like the colors and spinning it has been dreamy. I’m spinning it up quite fine, and the first chunk of roving I left pretty thick so I’m getting very very long runs of color. I can’t decide if i’m going to do a two ply, or do a navajo ply to maintain distinct color sections. i think if I do a 2 ply I’ll get fingering weight yarn; probably a sport weight with the 3 ply.

Another option is to ply it with another fiber of a differnet color so that I don’t break up the color runs at all, but don’t get such a thick yarn. I’d probably choose a white or cream for that since the a black would overwhelm and a grey would dinge* the colors too much. If the yarn doesn’t come out too thick maybe mittens? or a hat? or maybe a scarf? We’ll see how soft it is when it’s washed.

Opinions?

*dinge: To Make Dingy. Is this really a word?

We have a toe (plus a bit of foot):

The yarn is SO bright, I think I like it :)

I’ve since started a pattern on the foot. It’s just simple k3 p2 ribbing; and will eventually be the Horcrux socks at the cuff (pattern from Six Sox yahoo group).

I didn’t rib back to start the ribbing. When i wear them, the stunted ribbing sock will be in my shoes. The 2nd sock I’ll start the ribbing sooner. Or maybe not.

My new book had a sweater in it that demanded to be made. I brought some of my stash with me to tide me over until we get the rest of my stash household goods out of storage. Luckily, I brought the correct yarn for this:

A few days later, we have more progress:

This is unblocked, the shoulders are three needle bound off together, but the side seams are just basted together quickly. The color in the second picture is more accurate (and doesn’t look so hot with the red t-shirt I have underneath it, owell). I’m 1/3 of the way done with sleeve #1, but haven’t knit on it much in the past few days.

The best way to spend your birthday after the big celebration is over:

Note the glass of wine, the ball winder, umbrella swift and beautiful orchid in the background. The yarn on the swift was the actual birthday present: The March 2007 yarn selection from Spunky Fiber.

The yarn is fingering weight and a fabulously bright color, ‘Dandelion’, I’m doing toe-up socks with it, as I’ve never knit a toe-up sock before and wanted to do something new. So far I’m just doing stockinette because I think any pattern at all would get lost in this riot of color. I might change my mind by the time I get to the cuff.

I took the kids to the Butterfly Pavilion when we were attempting to keep them busy whilst waiting for the movers to show up. i took the camera and played around with taking pictures of flowers and things.

Click for a larger image. I didn’t crop this or touch it up in photoshop or anything (I did reduce the image size to 1000 pixels instead of 2500 or whatever the default size is). think it’s pretty darn good for a point and shoot camera and a person who has no photography skills at all.

I’m new to felting - but some yarn found it’s way to me that demanded to be felted.  Here is the before, where I am wearing the hat:

Huge, isn’t it?

Then here is the after, where the daughter is proudly displaying her new head-wear:

It’s totally cute on her. It’s really really thick. I used a front loading washing machine to felt it, and ran it through two wash cycles to get it to this size. If i was to make this same pattern again i wouldn’t make the top of it quite so deep as it is deeper than I like on her head. It’s a tight fit too, which means I should have stopped felting it sooner.

The yarn was a manos something or other -  A thick/thin yarn. In several places where the yarn was super thin I did some wierd double stitches to keep it thicker. The final hat has an almost boucle texture.    The pattern? Fiber Trends single strand worsted weight rolled brim hat pattern, named something ingenious like "Felted hat #2".

Moving Day Countdown: Exactly 1 month to moving day!

I’ve slowly been investigating all the yarn shops that are near me in my new digs. There are quite a lot of them! Each one is interesting in it’s own way, but I haven’t been to them all so I don’t have a true favorite yet. If I did, I would have to say it’s the shop i got all this stuff from:

While there isn’t any in this particular batch, the shop also carries spinning stuff; including rovings in some fiber types that I haven’t typically seen in a LYS before. Starting in the upper left of the picture we have:

• Trendsetter yarn, destined to be a scarf. I bought 3 balls
• Noro lightweight (can’t remember the real name of it). Scarf? Or something? I actually got this somewhere else, and it was on sale
• Mountain Colors Mountain Goat. This stuff is soooooooooooo gorgeous and this picture doesn’t do the color justice. I got three skeins, and have no idea what i’m going to make. i was orig thinking a shawl
• Jo Sharp, Knit #2. I’m already making a sweater out of this using stash yarn. More to come in future pics.

I’m doing more knitting these days. The Husband works 2 blocks from me so we carpool every day now. Most days I make him drive the longer stretch so I can knit. As long as it isn’t something hugely detailed and I only need to occasionally glance at the pattern it’s working out well - I’m on sleeve #1 of a sweater for ME!