Back to it.

I thought I would try to "catch up" with all if the things I have done since the last time I blogged, but then I  realized l would never do it if I tried to climb that mountain. So hopefully I can just keeo up with current stuff from here on out.
Lately I have been knitting and spinning:

This one is a single lock of wool spun thread weight and knit into a tiny dress on tiny needles.

This is a second pairs of fingerless mitts I made out of scraps. The cuff is handspun and hand bit is store bought.

Small Things

In addition to the bear sweater I have knit a few other little things. First is a tiny pair of baby booties that I am not sure will fit a newborn they are so small.

I also made myself a felted bag to keep my spinning wheel tools close at hand while spinning (I used some yarn leftover from my hand spun sweater)

Last but not least I got a good amount of hand carding and spinning done. This purple Romney yarn is destined to be paired with some natural grey Romney on the loom (I still need to spin that). I am not sure what the end product will be yet, I just know I want to weave with it.

Like It Was Made For Him

Jacob asked me to make a sweater for his very best friend, Matt. I picked out the yarn a while ago but on Saturday I finally found the right pattern. I was unsure about the pattern when I first stumbled upon it I was expecting a smaller size but found a model of an adult. I read on and discovered the pattern is truly a custom fit sweater so it doesn't matter the size of the wearer as long as you get gauge. On Sunday I got Matt measured and cast on. Before it was even time for PJ's I had Jake going through the button bin to pick out the buttons he wanted to have me put on it. As luck would have it we found the perfect button in the bin AND  it was the right size for the button hole!

Another Addiction

I have been having lots of fibery fun lately. First I finished carding up the fiber I dyed with Easter egg dyes.

I also got around to taking a picture of the plyed yarn I made from the roving I bought at the spring fair.

My guild is also making some friendship hats in which we all spin up some yarn, cut into 30 yard skeins. Then we all take about 8 of these mini skeins from each other and make a hat using some of each yarn. Originally I spun this yarn:

to use but Jacob begged me to make him a hat out of it so I ended up using something else. My hat did not turn out like planned but in the end I think it will work. This is a shot of it before blocking. 

I hope it will look a bit better after I finish blocking it.

Finally, the new addiction is weaving mini squares. While looking for something else on YouTube I came across a video of  a woman with a little square loom that she was weaving WHILE warping so when you are done with one, you are done with the other. I followed the link to these little looms and figured I could make one for WAY cheeper than they were being sold for. Rather than spending 25 bucks plus shipping I spent 3 bucks at the craft store and invested 30 minutes of time and voila! A little lap loom!

Less than 24 hours later I have a tidy little stack of woven squares that will make a neat little blanket when they are all sewn together.

Now that I have finished knitting the hat and it is blocking I can go back to whipping out more squares - seriously these things only take minutes to make and they are tons of fun. I didn't even get bored doing plain white ones. While I am still working on the hexipuffs, I think I will be using my samples on these little squares as they are more suited to different grists of yarn and stick to sock yarn for the hexipuffs.
I think I will make a larger square loom to do bigger squares out of that I can then felt. These things are a great size for sample weaving and I may even make a few more in this size with different setts just for the purpose of sampling before weaving.

Shawl

A few weeks ago I was at Yellow House Yarns to pick up a copy of a knitting magazine. Of course I had to look around and I found something that I decided I really had to have - a beautiful spring shawl that changed colors and patterns throughout. I decided against the yarn they made theirs with in favor of a heavier yarn because I knew I wanted my shawl to be a nice warm comforting shawl. After looking around a bit I settled on some Malabrigo Rios. I bought two skeins and headed home to cast on. After fighting with it for a while I gave up on the pattern and made up my own. After I used both skeins I decided i wanted my shawl a bit bigger so I went back to the yarn shop and after a lot of searching with Megan, one of the owners, we found the one remaining skein in the colorway I needed. I finished my shawl and got it all blocked and dried in time to wear to my shift at the Shepherds Extravaganza at the spring fair.

Junk

So I guess today's post is about using up some junk. First we have the sweater that I bought a few years ago at Good Will for the purpose of reusing the yarn. I started to take it apart and here is what is left - a front and half a back:

The problem I kept running into is that the yarn kept breaking...and not just in a few tough spots but ALL the TIME so I knew I wasn't going to be able to re knit it without a bunch of trouble.

I was about to throw the whole lot of it in the trash when I remembered that I got a pair of very fine hand cards for Christmas that I thought might be able to make the yarn fiber again. Here is a tuft fresh off the carders:

I hope to be able to toss this on the drum carder and spin it into a stronger yarn. If that doesn't work It's going in the garbage. I think what I discovered is that the sweater was made of non-virgin wool (perhaps the yarn was already re-purposed once before).

Next up is what I call one of my 'Junk batts'. I used the fiber left over from flick carding some locks that I spun a while back  I tossed it all on my drum carder and got this lovely batt:

Here are the singles all spun up.

I thought about plying this back on itself or perhaps leaving it as singles but I wanted it to be a little stronger. so I got out some shiny (but dirty) locks out of a bag of mystery wool and combed them into a roving that I spun into another set of singles. Here is the pair waiting to be plied.

Finally the resulting yarn. I think in hind site I should have used the batt as the outer part of a core wrapped yarn. I think that would have showcased the colors a bit better ad given it and even more fun texture.

What I am learning is that these sorts of yarns area  BLAST to spin but are far from what I like to knit with on a normal basis. I am sure I can think of something to do with it though.

Last but not least is that I have been bitten by the bug...the hexipuff bug that is...I don't care if it's the "popular pattern" right now, I think it's a cute idea and I have a ton of odds and ends that lend themselves well to this application. I have learned quickly how to adapt the number of stitches for various thicknesses of hand spun and hope to be able to use everything from lace weight to bulky.

I was using my small bits to make key chain socks but after making the last sock I realized I don't know where the key chain is and so I will make my little samples into these for now. I love the idea of having a snugly quilt that is just as awesome to lay on top of as it is to cover up with. Not only that but I will be able to look at this and have a little mini record of my previous projects and I think that's pretty neat.

Wool Days

Well, I have a bit of catching up as usual but her it goes:

Not so long ago I decided to try an experiment with my new drum carder. I started with some brown "mystery wool" that I think is Romney. Then I cut up bits of yarn (leftover thrums from the Sheep To Shawl) and sprinkled them in.

It worked. Sort of. 

I like the look of the color interaction but I am not sure how well the bits of yarn will stay in with wear. So next time I think I will card up the little yarn bits first.

This last Sunday I declared it a "wool day" and spent most of the day playing with wool in various forms. First I was updating my spinning notebook with a fiber blending project I am working on. Here they are all blended, spun, skeined and stored in recycled jelly jars:

I also have issues throwing things out so the scraps from the blending got spun up into a little mini skein that I knit into a sock for my key chain and had some left over to put into my spinning notebook.

I also wanted to get some wool washed so I could spin. The fleece I bought in April was Romeldale, a fine wool that I wanted to treat with care so I washed the locks one by one in the sink. Here they are dirty, ready to be washed:

A dunk in hot soapy water of the first 2/3 of the lock, then flip it, do it again and repeat in the rinse water. 

Here they are sitting to dry on the drying rack all nice and white:

Then they were flick carded one lock at a time and set in my spinning basket waiting to become yarn:

And then some spinning on the wheel - going for lace weight so we'll see how big it gets when plyed and set.

The kids wanted in on the wool fun and because I really loved the way the colors of my scrap bits behaved together I decided to dye a larger batch and see if I could make a batt that would get me similar results. Here is the wool all dry and ready to be carded on the drum carder.

After running each color through the carder individually I separated them into strips and layed them on the carder in a sequence I hope will gain me the desired yarn. 
 Here is the pretty batt all rolled up. I ended up with two of these as I did not want to overload the carder.

Yesterday I still had the wool bug so I spend some time carding some more of the mystery brown wool that I used in the skein in the first picture (Just a plain brown batt, nothing exciting to look at). I also carded up the remnants from combing out the locks of wool for my spinning basket. That yielded 3 rolags that I soaked in water and vinegar and then dropped some food colors into.

After the color had set, this is what I got:

A bit more muddled than I wanted so I am going to have to play around with the way I am dyeing things to get the desired results.
And last but not least is my current knitting:

A companion scar for my most recent hat. I love how soft this yarn is!

I have been knitting

Even though I have not been posting lately I have been knitting. I finished the mitten I was working on and I made a hat for myself. I will be making a companion scarf from the remaining yarn.

I have also been spinning and I finished an experimental yarn using brown wool and cut up thrums from a weaving project.
I also made a new spindle using a pretty jade green donut bead I found some time ago. I was not sure how I was going to feel about a bottom whorl spindle but it is now my favorite spindle.

Mitten

While I did decide to scrap the stock I was working on, I have still been knitting. In fact I don't even feel bad about missing a day of knitting last week with all of the progress I have made. Only about an inch left in the thumb and my fist mitten will be done.

Unplugged and Unknit

Well, here we are, back to the land of technology. With the harsh weather in our area we ended up losing power for a bit. First on Wednesday night we lost power in the middle of cooking dinner. Fortunately for us it was closer to the end of cooking dinner and we were able to still eat the meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn. The potatoes were a bit lumpy and the corn was not quite hot enough but the meatloaf reach temp so it worked. We were only out for about 2 and a half hours before the power came back on but it was tough to keep the kids calm and get them to bed in the dark. The power was on all night and then went out at about 7 the next morning just after Brian had finished his shower. Poor Jake was in the shower (after jumping in after Brian was done with it) and it freaked him out a little. We got everything sorted out and Brian headed off to work. 

I am really glad that our gas fireplace works without electricity (wasn't sure it would come on as you do so by flipping a switch on the wall but it did). Were it not for that fireplace we would not have stayed warm enough. The power stayed off all day and I am really glad that we don't make a bunch of TV part of our daily routine. Yes of course I let the kids watch TV but I try not to let them ever have more than 2 hours a day so that made filling in that time from our normal routine not too bad. Cooking was a bit of a challenge and I had no coffee but my wonderful Brian brought us dinner home and picked me up a camp stove and some propane. We played board games on the floor by the fireplace with the kids and had some wonderful family time. The power was still out throughout the night and so we fired up the camp stove for boiling water (coffee oh sweet coffee - thank goodness for the french press).

It turns out that we were one of the lucky areas that got our power back on around 4pm that day (Friday) and oh it was so nice to feel that furnace kick on and my poor fish were on the brink of suffocation without the aerator going but they pulled through too.

On the knitting front I got my minimum stitches knit on Thursday but alas on Friday I did not knit a single stitch...I have decided to give up on these socks. I dropped out of the test knit ion Wednesday night as I knew I would not be able to meet the deadline. I also have finally come to accept that I detest cabling. I don't mind it if I have to pick up a cable needle every so often but when I have to cable on every single row I can't stand it. Now I know to think carefully and thoroughly examine patterns that contain cabling so I know which ones to avoid. Now the difficult task it to decide which socks I DO want to knit as I am sure I want another pair of socks on the needles.

Will all of the goings on this weekend and how I am feeling right now I am not sure what was knit on what day but what it boils down too is that this is where I am at on the sock and I have made sure to knit at least one row per day (have not attempted today's row yet). I think I have knit about 18 rows since I last posted about it.

This weekend was busy - Saturday it started snowing which caused some problems for my folks getting here but they made it safe and sound none the less. The kids and I met up with them at Toy R Us so Jacob could pick out his birthday present. Then we headed home and ordered pizza for dinner. Abby had started running a fever and throughout the night she woke up about every 10 - 15 minutes (oh how I wish I was exaggerating that). All day Sunday she was calm, quite, tired and at times, downright groggy (absolutely the opposite of Abigail). The kids took it easy all day and I did not even make them get out of their jammies. My brother and his wife came down and later in the day Brian's mom and step dad came too and Jake opened gifts and we had cake. Today I took Abby into the doctor and it was confirmed that she too has pneumonia. I did not know that pneumonia could be communicable, but I guess so. I also started feeling ill today (runny nose and fever is all for now thank goodness but if I start having a cough I'll be calling a doctor). After doctors it was off to the pharmacy for antibiotics then to the deli to grab a quick lunch and drop some by Brian's office so he could have lunch too. By the time we got home, had lunch and I got the kids down for a nap I was wiped so I had a little lie down on the couch until it was time to make dinner.
My darling Jacob came up to me after waking up from his nap and said "why are lying down mommy?" I told him "Mommy doesn't feel very good right now" So he sits down next to me, starts rubbing my arm and says "is there anything I can do to make you feel better?" All I could do was say "how about a hug" and gave him one - it was that or start crying with how sweet he was being. About 2 minutes later after I had got myself sat up and prepared to do some workbook stuff with him he walks up to me and hands me a glass of water "for you to feel better mommy" I have the sweetest kid in the world.

Bummer

My poor son. I feel so bad for the boy. He has had a fever for several days so we decided to call the doctor. They wanted to see him and after doing so diagnosed him with pneumonia. Which means that we had to cancel his birthday party on Sunday. This made him so sad and that broke my heart. By the end of the day he had come to accept it but still it makes me sad to see him so upset.

That being said I spent my day consoling my son and therefore did not get a blog post done and managed to only knit one row on the sock. So here is the knitting for the last two days:

5 year old in the house!

I did not post yesterday as I was busy running around and doing something called life. Anyway it works out since the knitting progress from the day before was minuscule and not worth photographing and I only knit about a row yesterday so there will be no photo of the same stuff you have been seeing thus far. I am happy that I have remembered to get at least a stitch in a day thus far (at this point I am still getting in at least a row a day but I don't want to jinx it). I am going to have to pick up my pace though as I am on a deadline for this sock and will not meet it if I don't get to it. In fact I only have 9 days to finish this sock so I guess I better REALLY get to it.
In other news today is the 5 year anniversary of the birth of this little monkey:

I can't believe he is 5 already. We will celebrate by letting him pick where to go out for dinner tonight and open  a few gifts from Brian I. On Sunday we will have a party with friends and family at Round Table (Jacob's request). On that note I am off to play with the birthday boy.

Stupid teeth

A few days ago I woke up with an odd feeling in my teeth, like I had slept with shims in between them. Slowly over the next few days one tooth started to be very sensitive to cold and even the act of air passing over it. Anyway long story short I went in to the dentist today and the good news is it's not a cavity. The bad news is it could be worse. It's either a dying tooth (dentist doesn't think this is it and let's hope not) or perhaps the way I grind my teeth at night is affecting it. Either way it will probably cost about 500 bucks minimum to solve the problem (night guard or root canal).
Anyway here is the sock progress for yesterday's knitting:

Moving forward

Progress! This sock is knitting up wonderfully! Can't wait to put them on me feet. Now, back to Battlestar Galactica while I knit.

Did you hear that?

That was the sound of my knitting hitting the frog pond. I finally admitted to myself that the stitch pattern was getting lost in the beautiful coloring of the yarn and because I am testing the pattern for the designer I wanted to be sure her beautiful design could be seen. Also, cables seem to be a bit of a challenge for me so I don't want to go to the trouble of a cable if it can't be seen. I did not post yesterday as it seemed silly to do a progress update on something that lost ground to the point it doesn't exist anymore. On the plus side the new sock is knitting up much faster. I don't know if it's because of the different yarn or because I have started this sock 4 times now (1st was wrong #of sts cast on - this is why designers have their patterns tested - to catch little typo's like this; 2nd was I realized it was coming out too big; 3rd I CO weird and couldn't fix it so here we are on the 4th go). I am really glad I chose to start again. I am much happier with the results.

Two more

As the day before I only knit two rows yesterday but those rows did finish up the first half of the pattern repeat. I worry that the pattern will be a bit lost in the coloring of the yarn. We will see.

Two Rows

Yup two rows is all I got in yesterday so I am not going to bore anyone with another horrible phone picture of essentially the same damn thing as yesterday...Hopefully I make more progress than that tonight...we shall see.

New Socks

So the current knitting is a pair of socks. I am conducting a test knit for a Ravelry designer. I really like this pattern - it is simple enough to be easy complex enough I won't get bored. If you are a wiz at cabling this one is probably a do in your sleep pattern.