Briefly

Just a quick fly by to show you a couple of things.
Before our camping trip I used some of the leftovers from Abby's Coat to make a coat for my teapot:Yesterday I finally finished these socks! It only took me a year and a half. They were nice and simple enough that I got the majority of the fishishitup knitting done by the campfire on our trip.
And I don't know how I failed to start a Ravelry page or blog about it but a while ago I started this:
and have been plugging away at it a little here and there for several months now. The pattern is Triinu from Knitted Lace of Estonia.
Also the weaving on the Sheep to Shawl sample scarf is almost done!

Not much blogging - but there has been knitting!

I have been spending less time on the computer this last week or two and more time with the yarn and needles. I don't actually have any pictures to show y'all what I have been knitting on but I have indeed been knitting.

Mostly on 3 things. The first is that darned ol' black lace shawl that I started a year ago in May. I am determined to have it done before the end of the year. Also a beautiful knitted shirt that I can't wait to wear. It is found in the book French Girl Knits and is the pattern Anjou...I can't get a pic to upload so pop on over to Ravelry to check it out ifyou are so inclined.
The third thing (well set of things) is two teeny tiny hats and a pair of socks for my brand new nephew Mason Everett James Silvers. He came 10 weeks early on August 7th at 12: 57 am, as his mom was stricken with preeclampsia and had to be delivered but everyone is doing well. He weighs in at 2lbs 13oz and 15inches long.

I used one ball of Sublime baby chasmere merino silk and it was so deliciously soft! From an 11 dollar ball of yarn I was able to get two hats and a pair of socks that seemed impossibly small for a human being but I think will actually be to big for him for a little while (which is ok because I think that they have lines in his feet for now). The best part is that it is machine washable wich was awesome to find with someth that has cashmere in it.

I didn't have a chance to photograph them as I started knitting on them on Thursdsay and they went out the door the second they were off the needles on Friday afternoon so they could hitch a ride with Grandma and Papa to meet little Mason.

Yarny Things

Lots of Yarn play this week. I finished spinning 'Captain Planet' from the PhatFiber box...here is the roving:and the yarn:Then I spun up the 'Pool of Tears' Bamboo also from the Phat box. Again the roving:On the spindle:and the yarn:I finished knitting the handspun alpaca lace scarf:Now I just need to block it...can't wait for it to be all done (so I can fold it up and put it away until I need it...scarf weather is pretty much over).

Also I have been playing on the loom some more. After some fiddling on graph paper I had my desing pretty much figured out. I decided I wanted to try warping the loom 'directly' by using the single post method. I started by setting up a post:That post aligned with the loom so I could go from the warping bar/dowel to the heddle to the post and back.The yarn on a makeshift TinkerToy 'lazy kate' of sorts so that it would unwind easier while pulling it from the cone to the loom:After the warping was all done I started weaving - here is my very first plaid, designed by me! The pattern is quite simple and easily memorized. I did warp the edges with yellow when, if following the pattern, it should have been grey but I wanted a nice defined edge so hopefully it's the right call.
Next in line for the loom: Placemats!

Stuff I've been doing this week

So a while ago I made a hat for Jake and he really liked it but did not like wearing it. Originally it was way to big so I frogged it and cast back on with fewer stitches...making it too small. It's cute and it sorta fits but it's a stretch.

It does however fit Abby perfectly and she loves it to the point that she screamed and had a fit the last time I tried to put it on Jacob. So now it's Not Jake's Hat.I think the best part is that the ear ties are long enough they come to her knees with the tassels on them. It is really cute.

I finished up the yarn I was spinning on the Turkish and finally got started knitting the scarf I have been eyeing for a while. Here it is, almost done (keep in mind it is not blocked yet so it will look even better after that happens).While I was on Orcas with the kids I brought my spinning wheel and finallly started spinning the Faukland fiber I bought from Jeannie. It was a real challenge to spin worsted after having spun laceweight but I think I got fairly close. If anything it is a little chunkier than I planned but it will still make a fun sweater for Abby.The first fiber braid is all spun and plyed. One more to go. I think it's a total of 8oz.

I also finally got my ass in gear and ripped back the socks I made for Brandi for Christmas (they were too long). and got them sorted out. Hopefully they fit now. If not I am just starting from scratch.

Ok, so we all know I need a new hobby like I need a hole in the head but....

At the monthly spinning guild meeting one of the ladies was giving out free weaving yarn - the only catch was that she wanted to see something woven with it by I think June...Well I have had a loom in my craft closet for about 6 years now and have never taken it out of the box. I figured that if the yarn was free and the loom was free, I really didn't have anything to lose. So I checked out a book on Rigid Heddle Weaving from the guild library and brought it home. That was Tuesday night. By midmorning Wednesday I learned that I needed a way to wind my warp. Since I don't have a warping board I improvised:The only complaint I would have about the Tinker Toy method is that now they make the darned things out of plastic (great if you need to block your yarn...)and so the 'dowels' started to bend a little as I got close to the top (wouldn't have happened if I wasn't using as much tension) which caused the warp to be slightly shorter on one end - live and learn. Next time I am definitely using the single post warping method.
By Wednesday evening this is what I had after teaching myself to warp the loom and making myself some shuttles out of cardboard:

Last night I pulled this off of the loom:This morning I finished tying the warp threads. In about a week I have made a sampler. It is ugly as I am not hot on the color choice but it was free, what can I say. I tried out a few things and am glad to be over the initial learning curve. Here is a closeup of a couple of things I tried:
Now it's all about fine tuning. Next up will be a plaid scarf. We'll see how that goes.
I also learned about halfway through that the cardboard shuttles were simply not cutting it as they were snagging often enough to be so irritating I didn't want to weave. So I grabbed a balsa wood stick and got out the old Xacto knife and sandpaper and made myself some nice (smooth and lightweight) shuttles. I also remembered what a pain in the ass it was threading the heddle with a teensy tiny crochet hook that would only go into the heddle about 1 inch before it got too think not to mention the head being so small it would not work on anything thicker than laceweight yarn. So I made me a heddle hook to:
Ain't I crafty?

What I got goin' on

Knitting:

Scarf in linen stitch from my handspun.

Lace shawl.

Simplicity socks.

and of course the new obsession.

Spinning:On the wheel some nice roving that will become some nifty color shifting socks

On the spindles I have:

some pinkish/lavenderish silk
Some merino/silk
and some more merino/silk
Toddler Stuff:Abby's newest words: Uh-oh. Thank You. (bringing her total vocabulary to about 3 words besides momma, dada, and Jacob) The other word is Down.

Jacob's newest words: Fabulous. Shit (only once. Mom's fault). Delicious. Impossible. Dork Fish (repeatedly. Dad's fault). Tool (not the hammer kind. also Dad's fault). Adorable (looking at pictures of when we brought Abby home). Startled. Privacy. Herbivore. Pteranodon. Tyrannosaurus.

Which leads me to his imagination. I had dinner with a Pteranodon, a Tyrannosaurus, a dog, a duck, a cat, a bear, an owl and a goose all in one sitting and at one point I was a Pteranadon and a bear.

Goals:

Not so much into the resolution thing but there are a few things I would like to do this year and see no reason not to.

1. I would like to finish a few quilts I have in the works

2. I would like to finish a few bears I have in the works. Maybe make a few more.

3. I would like to get to a farmers market and sell a few things.

4. I would like to get my tummy into shape. I am by no means overweight but I have a bit of a belly from having the kids and it bothers me so I am going to try to fix it.

5. I would like to train myself to keep up with the housework so that I am free to do things like spin and quilt and knit without either a: feeling guilty or b: doing 2 hours of housework first. You'd think I'd have figured out by now that wishing for it won't make the laundry and dishes done and ignoring it won't make it go away.

6. I would like to try to be more social. I need to get out and make it to knitting on Fridays and spinning once a month. Not that hard, I just need to DO it. Besides getting out more will probably improve my mental health too.

Next up: teaching a new knitter.

How the #^&* do I block a tiny hat?

So as you all know I finished my Vine Lace Baby Hat for Abigail. I love it on her and she did get to wear it once before it got wwaaaaayyyy to hot for wool. But it still needed to be blocked. The delay was I couldn't figure out how. I have a little styrafoam head for blocking grown up size hats but I wasn't sure about the little heads. I saw Roxy at the Lamb's Ear and she had a brilliant idea - use a balloon. I thought, great I'll get some balloons and give it a try, however it later occured to me that this hat has little scallops that will need to be pulled into submission and that usually needs pins. Pins and balloons don't really mix. I decided it didn't really matter since it was too hot to wear and I could deal with it later. The next afternoon we were at the grocery store and I spotted melons and cantelope in all kinds of sizes and the light went off. So I measured Abby's head (yes I do carry a tape measure around, why do you ask?) and picked a melon that was close in size. So I was able to stick my pins in and now I'll have a snack for later.

She is a pretty cute little melon in that hat isn't she? Now I just need to wash the melon juice off of my pins and I am good to go. I have not put it on her to see how it looks since with the weather at this point I think that could be considered child endangerment.

Oh and have I mentioned my 8 month old is climbing the stairs now? She crawled for like 5 days before she was over it and wanted to stand. Once she figured that out (about a day, maybe 2) she wanted to go go go and started cruising along the furniture (time to lower the crib mattress). Now she is not only getting up to standing but wants to climb things - like the tv stand etc. The last few days the stairs were a fun thing for her when she could get to them (baby gates ususally up) She would get up a step and then slide back down but this morning I had one of those heart stopping moments - Abby was set down next to her brother to play I leave the room long enough to grab a grahm cracker (this takes less than 10 seconds) and Jakes says "Abby on a stairs" (she was no where near the stairs when I set her down). I run around the corner and sure enough, there she is, on the 4th step. A misstep at that height could be very dangerous for her little body. So I climbed up and sat behind her so she could continue to have her fun. She made it up 9 steps before turning around and reaching out for mommy. Needless to say the baby gates are up now no matter what.

Progress...but not fast enough

Getting there. I am starting to get the hang of the pattern on the lace but it is still slow going. I finally got smart and started using stitch markers to mark my repeats and inserted a life line (just in case) and I am just plugging away. I made all of the previous progress on day one and then took a full day off of that particular piece of knitting. I knit some more on it yesterday but was not feeling well so I didn't get through one repeat of the pattern, but most of it. Anyway here are some progress pictures of the lace:

Oh and I took the merino/tencel off of the spindle...the cop was full and I was on other projects. So I need to set the twist and keep going as I only have about 73 yards (not enough to get much done...) mind you it is all plied as I go so that takes up quite a bit more of the cop than it would if it were singles...so it just means smaller skeins in greater numbers.

Not So Fast

So I thought that lace would knit up fairly quickly, you know since it's so open and all of that. Well, apparently not. You see there are all of these charts that need following, and then there is all of the counting of stitches and things (cuz if you don't keep track and get lost you are pretty much screwed since tinking lace is not the same as stockinet stitch in worsted weight). Pretty slow going really. Also it sorta looks like a knotted blob of string until you stretch it out...sooo mayby this wont be done by this weekend, but I would rather have it take longer and have it done right.

5 Days

I have 5 days to try to get this:

To look like this:

See ya'll later. I am going to go learn lace. fast. now where's the wine? hmmm maybe I'll hold off on the drinking until I need it. Might need to think clearly for the first little while.