Travel Knits

Okay, so before I run away again (this time for vacation up to my parents cabin), I thought I'd post some finished objects and progress pictures from the things I was working on while I was traveling the last couple of weeks.

First up are the finished Lorna's Laces toe up socks in Bucks Bar:



I bound off the second one a little too tight, but since I'd already cut the thread and woven in the ends, I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try to go back and fix it or not. They come up almost to my knees as they are, though, so I could also just choose to fold them down or something. For some reason I'm really not in love with these socks, though, so I might also just hang onto them for a gift or donation. *shrug*



And there's the second washcloth I made from the Euroflax Linen. It ended up being a fraternal twin to the first because I wasn't paying as much attention to the pattern when I started knitting on it and made the first row of squares a couple rows too short and ended up having to improvise a bit to get it to come out the right size.



That's the toe of my first Sockapalooza sock. I'm actually almost to the heel turn on it now, but forgot to take a new progress picture this morning when I was out taking pictures with Gnorm.



And finally I brought the Foxfire Baby Camel and Tussah Silk with me so I could participate in the Spindler's Spin-in-Public day (first Friday of every month) at the airport in Minneapolis during my layover. I think I'm doing okay with it, but it isn't quite as even as I'd like and I think it might be underspun, but it could just be that it needs to be livened again. I still have more than half the original bag to spin and it's already quite a bit of yarn, so I'm hoping to get enough out of it to do as a two-ply that will end up about fingering weight for a shawl or scarf.

While we were in Kansas City, Cate and Sara invited me along to go to Cottage Fiber with them, which was well, well worth the trip. Cate got some pictures that I'm hoping she'll get a chance to post soon. It's a great, great little shop tucked in an out of the way studio space and it has undoubtedly the best selection of spinning fibers of any shop I've ever been to (which admittedly is not many, but even Cate and Sara were impressed and they've been to that most holy of fiber events - Rhinebeck!) and some really beautiful old wheels. I really can't recommend this shop enough - if you ever find yourself in Kansas City you really really need to check them out and pet all the gorgeousness yourself!

I managed to escape with only a very small stash enhancement (modeled below with Gnorm):



The ball of roving is about 2.5 ounces of cashgora in a really rich red/orange/copper colorway (Cate got the other half of the ball) and the little packet has 4-5 beautifully dyed silk hankies with some amazing copper accents. I've never spun silk from a hankie, but the owner of the shop (who's name I didn't get; terribly bad manners, especially since she opened her shop up special just for us!) gave me some quick instruction and I'm looking forward to getting it started. Maybe if I end up with enough of it I can ply some if it up with the Foxfire.. I realized after we left that I forgot to get some of the amazingly soft angora bunny roving she had, though, so I will have to call and see if she'll mail me some.

Oh, and my fiber swap pal - Elsje - got her package and appears to like it, so that makes me very happy! It was really hard not to hang on to all that fiber, but I'm glad she likes it. The fiber swap packages were all supposed to be sent off by the 5th, so I'm really hopeful that mine will show up today before we hit the road for the cabin!

In one last bit of mailing news, I'm shipping Gnorm off today to his next destination and all the goodies that I've picked out for my next pal are neatly tucked into his box awaiting delivery to the post office. If you missed what I got from Stephanie, I posted about it all over on the Knitting Gnome Swap blog a couple days ago. I really really love everything she sent - especially the tea which is really honestly truly my favorite and she had no way of knowing I even knew about Market Spice (I lived in Seattle for three years between college and grad school) - and I'm bringing the Yarn Pirate yarn with me to the cabin just in case I finish my Sockapalooza pal's socks so I can start right in on some lusciousness for me!

Another quickie..

Gnorm arrived from Kirkland, WA while I was in Kansas City! I was afraid that would happen, but I think things will work out okay. I'll get a chance to take him around a bit today and tomorrow morning before packing him up and sending him off on his merry way again tomorrow afternoon.

I'll post pictures of my recently finished items, and a progress shot of my Sockapalooza pal's socks hopefully sometime this evening. I did some minor stash acquisition with Cate & Sara in Kansas City, though, and there's a photo of Gnorm checking it out in the post linked above. It's truly gorgeous and I'm contemplating looking for another lightweight spindle so I won't have to wind off the Firefox silk & baby camel to start the cashgora! And I also need to contact the shop owner and see if she'll send me some of the angora bunny fiber that I meant to grab, too.

Gotta run!

And it just keeps coming..

This was a shot out our front door this morning:



You'll notice my husband - who is 6 foot 2 inches - and our PT Cruiser on the other side of the snow berm that's built up over the last week from the plow and shoveling. Judging from the walk, we had about 4-5 inches overnight. We came home early today and there were another 3 inches or so, and it's still snowing. They keep telling us it will stop.. I'm not sure I believe them.

In the meantime, I've been less than motivated on the knitting front, but I did pick up the Baby Camel Tussah Silk Top that I got from my Secret Pal*:



I had to go back to this picture:



to be sure I had actually made some progress. I mean, I know I had, but it was sort of hard to tell without having a prior progress picture as a mark.

* My Secret Pal from SP9 seems to have been attacked by Real Life(tm). She started a new job about the same time the swap started and that seemed to suck up all her energy and time. I haven't heard from her since getting an email during the last week of the swap in February asking me to re-send my mailing address as she'd mislaid it. I did, but never got a final package or another email revealing who she is; because I know what it's like when Real Life(tm) attacks, I've not wanted to pester her and risk making her feel guilty, but that means I have no idea who she is. :/

As promised..

I didn't manage to do it with natural light, but here's a picture of the first of the baby camel/silk tussah top singles:



I tried to get it from a couple angles as it's sort of shiny and the flash does funny things. I also wanted to get a shot to compare the lighter bottom whorl from Pixel with my top whorl from Cate. The bottom whorl has a longer shaft, so I'll have to remember to try to spread the singles out up the shaft so it doesn't get too "bottom heavy". I also managed to get two shots of what I assume are the makers mark on my top whorl.. I don't recognize it, though, and keep forgetting to ask Cate who made it! Oh, and I believe Pixel did the carving on the bottom whorl, which is really quite lovely.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to draw this stuff. The silk seems to want a long draw, but then I end up with unevenness in the yarn, so I've been working with a shorter draw, but then I get occassional clumps where I draw a bit too much. There's lots of this, though, so I imagine by the end of it all I'll have figured it out. I'm also giving this quite a bit of twist; I don't know how much crimp camel has, but I know the silk has none and I don't want the yarn to fall apart when I try to ply it.

And the progress to date on the Peek a boo sleeve:



The sleeves are going much quicker than the front/back, which is very nice. This is getting set aside for the moment, though, because these:



.. have an earlier deadline. It was really difficult to get a picture that showed any of the clock detail. I'll have to try with natural light and no flash to see if that makes it better, but by the time I managed to get time to take a picture in natural light, I suspect at least one of these will be finished. I'd be a little farther if I hadn't had to rip back through three of the calf decreases because I didn't read far enough in the directions and didn't start the clock where it should have been the first time. Even so, this is going pretty quick, even on US 2s.

Bed time.

Hopefully I'll be able to find time tomorrow during daylight* to take pictures of the following:

• The first singles from the baby camel/silk top roving I got from my Secret Pal. I found one of the spindles I was given a while ago by Pixel that was light enough that I thought I could give it a go. It's a bottom whorl spindle, so I had to remember how to do the half-hitch thing, and the shaft could use a once-over with some fine-grain sandpaper, but I was still able to get a decent start on it.
• The first of the largesse stockings. I cast on for it Sunday and except for some adventures in spacing the calf shaping decreases due to slightly larger row gauge and completely forgetting to start the clock pattern at the appropriat time, I'm finished with the calf shaping and the clock.
  
• The first Peek a boo sleeve, to date. I worked on it through Friday and it's about half finished I think. The stockings will likely go faster than I suspected they might, though, so I'm not too concerned about finishing Peek a boo in time for the intended birthday.

Tomorrow night I also need to package up my last package for my Secret Pal. I've rather enjoyed spoiling her, but I can't go into it more until she gets the last package. *smile*

* This is, unfortunately, unlikely. I'm in meetings from 8 until 4 straight, without even a break for lunch, and I suspect that the last half hour there might be spent trying to put out whatever fires might have erupted during the day. I will try, though.

Y is for...

Yarn!



(What did you expect?!)

In particular, *my* yarn. This has been a very exciting week.. I've been spinning for over a year, but just learned how to ply this summer. And I have yet to actually make anything with anything I've spun & plied. You see, I have this unnatural fear of cutting my plied yarn. I think that somehow cutting it will undo the magic that makes it yarn and it will come all unraveled. But yesterday I had to spin the yarn for the Breed Swap and then *gasp* cut it into 1-yard lengths. The above is a shot of the yarn after a quick dunk to let things relax. I'm happy to report that even though I didn't take a picture, cutting the yarn did not, in fact, make it unravel.

So now I'm all charged to finish the grey merino so I can make something with it. I have one skein plied already and waiting for me to finish the rest. The singles from the second spindleful were on my spindle for so long that they became de-energized and I didn't want to try to ply them that way, so I dunked them to re-energize them.



I'll probably ply this up tonight and then start spinning the last bit left - which might be another full spindleful, but I don't think so. Then I think it will be socks.. it's superwash and I had 4 ounces of it, so I think if I do toe-up socks, that will work out nicely.

And now that the holiday knitting is finished, I'm happily working away on a special request from my "little sister":



These are done in KnitPicks Essential (which means they're machine washable; the last pair of pink socks got accidentally washed and .. well.. yeah) and I'm using one of the six-stitch patterns from Sensational Knitted Socks - waterfall lace. The recipient has tiny little feet, so I'm making them pretty small, but the lace is pretty stretchy, so they should still look good when she wears them.

I'm hoping to deliver these in two weeks and also to pick up the yarn for the largesse project (stockings with clocks from Folk Socks, I think) which will need to be finished by early February. I also need to finish Peek a boo by the end of February.

Oh, and I ordered yarn (Knit One Crochet Too Angora Soft in Moss & Light Moss) from Webs annual year end sale to make Celtic Icon from Inspired Cable Knits, so between that and the two sweater kits I already have, I think I'll have more than enough to keep me busy for awhile!

X = 2.37

Whee!!

Guess what arrived yesterday?



SQUEE! That is 2.37 pounds of processed Clun Forest lambs fleece. I send just over 4 pounds off to be washed and processed and wasn't sure just how much I'd get back after washing and processing. (See how I worked that into my X post? Aren't I clever? *smug*)

It's much whiter than I expected - the fleece were dirty and still had some guard hair in them when I sent them to Blackberry Ridge, so the color surprised me.



Looks like a lot, eh? Each of those little bundles is about 2.5 to 3 ounces, except the little one on the top. (Jali was very intrigued by the fleece, but once she got a sniff or two, she pretty much left it alone.) It's not so overwhelming when you realize that a full two pounds of it got parceled out into 1 ounce packages to go to the Breed Swap. *smile* I'm a little torn about sending so much of it away, but in seeing just how much an ounce is, I'm equally excited that I'll be getting 32 1-ounce samples of different fleeces like that from the other participants!

Along with the 1-ounce samples, I'm to send 32 locks and 32 yards of two-plied yarn. I held back the fleece I washed to pull the locks, but haven't actually pulled them out yet; I'll do that this afternoon most likely. Spinning the yarn, though, meant I had to get the merino singles that I had on my spindle off:



That is 309 yards of merino singles, which I need to wash to re-awaken the twist so I can ply. In order to figure out how many yards I had, I had to measure my Pex niddy noddy, which turns out to be 80 inches for a full wrap. Slightly larger than a 2-yard niddy noddy, but if I decide I want to make it a 2-yard one, I can cut down the Pex. I didn't measure the small one, but I suspect that it will come in just over a yard.

It also turns out that my estimation of how long it takes me to spin 64 yards of yarn is *way* off. I spun this last night:



It's about 20 yards of singles, or 10 yards of two-ply, out of about .2 ounces. So today I'm working through a .6 ounce chunk (that little ball on top in the pyramid picture), which should give me the yarn I need for the swap. Then I'll pack it all up (in the box that the roving came in, most likely) and run it down to our post office to ship it off to the Breed Swap organizer.

I have about 2.5 ounces left to keep for myself (and I'll get an ounce back when the breed swap supplies come back) and I'm contemplating spinning it up and dyeing it. My friend Carol does period dyeing stuff and I think it might be fun to try some with this fleece. Of course, I might get impatient and try to dye it with Kool-Aid first!