Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was very fun for us. We joined a gym and got started  learning our way around the place. On Saturday we dyed eggs with the kids and I just couldn't let the leftover dye go to waste. So I grabbed some wool and a handful at a time I used up the rest of the dyes. I did manage to burn myself rather well with some boiling water, but in the end I got a wonderful pastel rainbow of wool. I still need to process it and spin it but for now it is pretty to look at just as is. We had dinner in with good friends and opened a lovely bottle of wine.

Sunday we got up to see that the Easter Bunny remembered us and we ate our dyed eggs. Later we headed to brunch with Ron and Julie and then came back to our house for a visit. While the kids were resting Brian got to play his video game and I finished up some spinning. Overall I think everyone had a pretty good weekend.

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.

I don't know why I am still surprised by the changes that happen to colors when I spin but here I am surprised again. This is the ball of singles spun from the rolag in the previous post - next to a spindle full of the white singles it will be plied with.

The colors are dark and rich and I really love them. I knew in order to keep them that dark I would have to ply it back on itself or leave it a singles but I wanted to make the 'same' yarn I had before to compare end results better so I went ahead and wound the singles into a plying ball. As you can see this lightened it up rather well.

Finally the finished skein of plied and set yarn. In the end it was much closer to the desired result I was trying to achieve with the first set of rolags that came out rather orange. I really like that I got a bit more of the rainbow effect I was looking for and who knows what changes will happen to the colors when I knit or weave it.

I had a very nice weekend with my family. We went out to dinner on Friday, and spent Saturday morning lounging around the house. We had a Saturday afternoon visit and dinner out with Grammy and Grandpa in the evening. On Sunday we stayed home. The kids played (with toys), Brian played (with his computer) and I played (with wool). We cooked a very nice dinner of crab cakes and Cesar salad together on Sunday and after we all went for a long brisk walk. All in all it was a wonderful weekend!
Sunday morning the kids and I made Calm Jars. I saw this project on Pinterest and thought it was a wonderful idea. I got them each a mason jar and let them fill it with various glitters and fun shaped bangles. Then we filled them with water and glued the lids on.

The object is when you are upset and/or having a fit to shake up the jar and sit and watch it until the glitter settles. It is just about the right time to let emotions settle too.

I am spinning a second set of 'scrap' rolags I dyed with food coloring. This time I wanted to see if I could get more distinct colors and try to get the blue dye to take better. I gave the blue dye a 3 minute head start from the red and yellow. Here is a (crappy) picture of one of the rolags (the other two are already spun)

 

The result of the dye in the rolag is much like I expected but it is spinning up very differently than I thought it would. Over all this is a dark yarn whereas the last one was a light yarn. I will post that once I am all done with that. Today's projects will be to finish that spinning, comb some wool, spin a different set of singles to be plyed with the dyed rolags, and make some boxes for my storage cubes.

Better than I thought.

I was a bit disappointed with those rolags from my last post. I thought I was going to get more individual colors, less blending and certainly more in the blue and green colorways. That was not to be and as you can see in the post below, the rolags came out looking, well, sorta pukey. I didn't chuck them though, I went ahead and spun them up on my drop spindle, and as I did the colors started to become a bit more distinct and in the end I liked what I had. Then I had to decide how to keep the color transitions. I had two options: The first was to ply it back on itself in a Navajo ply that would give me a three ply yarn but cut my yardage down to 1/3 the original. The second was to ply it with something else and that is what I decided to do. I grabbed some scraps from my combing project and whipped them up into singles. Here are the two singles wound into a plying ball ready to go.

 After plying and setting the twist I am happier with the yarn than I thought I would be when this all started. I have a little skein made from scrap wool that might otherwise have been tossed or used as stuffing for something. As it sits there are 54 yards here so really, more yardage than I thought I would get too.

All in all while messing around with some scraps I gained a bit of knowledge on how to make a multi-colored yarn that I really quite enjoy and a few insights into making the dyes behave the way I want also.

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.

Knit one stitch

I have a goal from this year separate from any resolution I may have made. My goal is to knit at least once every day this year. I also aim to post a picture of said knitting to my blog but no promises on that one. Because today is the second of the year there will be an offset so i can show the previous days' knitting each day before I start to knit. More details on this project tomorrow.

End of Year Rush

The end of the year is always busy for us. The first week of November is Abigail's birthday, then Thanksgiving, several other family birthdays, then it's time to countdown to Christmas. Now that is done I have a couple of weeks to get ready for Jacob's Birthday, hence my lack of posting or even reading of other blogs. Also there is the fact that my phone is being a brat thanks to the latest update (Gingerbread I think) and getting photo's onto my computer is an ordeal. I guess I could start taking them with the camera again and have halfway decent resolution again.
I have completed many projects and am looking forward to posting pictures of those and a few in the works also. For now I am on a kick to get my house cleaned up to have a fresh start for the new year and I have an appointment to play Transformers with Jake, so TTFN.