I apologize right up front to anyone who visited my bog in the last month and found it redirecting them to some stupid, fake “anti-virus” site. My blog was somehow hijacked, and a script was inserted in every. single. frikken. post. Thankfully, my server host provided me with a SQL statement to run against my database to clean out the script. And I wasn’t affected by any of the other hijacking symptoms that were possible. I’ve backed up and upgraded, so hopefully, this won’t happen again. I have plans for backing up more often and keeping on top of making sure I upgrade in a timely manner.
In other circles, I completely failed at Tour de Fleece. I spun for the first three days, then I hurt my back and didn’t get my wheel out for the rest of the tour. On the upside, I did manage to get the singles for a 3-ply yarn spun, just need to find the time to ply it up and see if my experiment to try getting a specific type of yarn worked.
I’ve been knitting, working on a baby blanket for my niece, who should be joining us in October. I’m also working on designing a pair of socks. This isn’t the first time I’ve created my own pattern, but it is the first time I’ve done something more than just stockinette or ribbing. I’ve actually put some thought into it. It’s been fun enough that I’m already thinking of a second pattern for the first installment of the Mean Girls Yarn Club, Part Deux that I just received.
I finally just pulled out the purple sweater and ripped the sucker out. Now you see it…
Now you don’t…
One piece of advice. No matter how nice a sewn cast-off looks, I don’t recommend it if you ever plan on ripping it out. That took for…… ever….. But, once I got the cast-offs out I made quick work of the sweater with my ball winder. Only occasionally hit a few snags due to the alpaca in the yarn. The stockinette parts were much easier to rip out than the seed stitch borders. There were a few places were the yarn caught and broke, so I do have a couple smaller balls. What was really nice is once I got the yarn reskeined and into the bath, it came out beautifully. You would never know that it had been previously knitted.
Now, I just need to knit up a swatch to determine needles and size to be knit. New sweater here I come!
My mom called this morning to let me know that Comet had taken a turn for the worse over the weekend and that they put her to sleep this morning. Comet was a good, old dog, and we got to love her for 16 years. :(
Thanks to a few threads on Ravelry aimed at either spinning down stash or spinning for a lace project, I’ve been motivated to pull my poor neglected wheel out of my fiber room and do some spinning. I’ve even managed to finish(-ish) a couple of projects that have been languishing. On Monday night, I finally finished spinning the singles from those green merino/silk batts that were my first drum carding experiment. They went sadly unfinished during the Ravelympics, but there is an end in sight now. Here’s proof:
All that’s left is to ply it. I think I’m going to try making a plying ball to see if that works better than plying from a center-pull ball. The only thing I’m slightly worried about is that I know there are some spots where the singles are more than a bit thin. I’m already anticipating them breaking as I try to create a plying ball.
I have been contemplating ripping out my 2006 Olympic sweater. I had knit Knitting Pure & Simple’s Neckdown V-Neck Shaped Cardigan in Rowan Felted Tweed. Amazing enough I managed to finish it in the 16 days of the Olympics, thus winning myself a gold medal (unlike this last time when failed miserably). Here’s a terrible cell phone picture of it the first time I wore it.
It was a nice enough sweater, but it had some problems. The sleeves, although I had measured them diligently and multiple times, came out short. The confusing part there is they are the length of other sleeves I have worn (I had measured a sweater I liked), and yet when I wear it the sleeves are too short. The sweater length could be a little longer, too. There is way too much fabric in the underarms, and yet, somehow, not quite enough for the bust. I’ve also never been happy with the bottom portion of the sleeves — I didn’t switch from the circular needle to DPNs at the right time and there’s a section of knitting that is wonky with stretched out stitches. But, most importantly, I just don’t wear it anymore because of all of these problems.
I still have 4 unused balls of the Felted Tweed that I didn’t use when knitting this sweater. Not enough for a sweater on their own. But, if I were to rip out this poor, sad, old sweater to add to the unused balls, I do believe I would have enough yarn to knit myself a Tempest. This would be good, because I need a nice, simply cardigan that fits to wear for work. (I have my Ribby Cardi and my Mr. Greenjeans, but they both need repairs and are showing some age; plus both are raglans, which I am beginning to believe are not a good fit for me.)
I have been inspired by Deb’s recent reknit. I want to give this good yarn a happier future (and myself a wearable sweater). It might even give me something to blog about. 
No progress to see here; please move along. I have been so tired from slinging boxes at work the last few days that I’m unable to bring myself to even knit in the evening. So, my Ishbel and my spinning both sit where they were at the beginning of the week. The Ishbel may actually get finished since I just have the lace section left to do.
Tomorrow is for Stitches West. I’ve signed up for Janel Laidman’s Getting the Most from a Painted Roving. It goes all day on Friday, so hopefully, by the end of the day I should have some idea of what to do with the handpainted fibers I have slowly piling up in my fiber room.
I plan on just having lunch at the bar/restaurant in the hotel so that I don’t have to drive anywhere. Then, into the market. I’m not planning on returning for the rest of the weekend, so all shopping needs to be done during my lunch break and after class ends. This year’s shopping theme is going to be tools/books. I was in my fiber room cleaning it up so my BIL could stay the night and realized I truly do have quite a lot of fiber and yarn and no time to do anything with it. (And I just got into The Loopy Ewe’s sock club for this year and am considering signing up for another year of infliction sock yarn from the Mean Girls Yarn Club.) So, something will have to be truly amazing for me to think about getting it if it isn’t a tool or a book.
I also have the mission to buy a couple of skeins of sock yarn and a sock book for my MIL’s birthday, which is in a couple of months. She’s getting back into knitting and the pair of socks I knit for her has inspired her to have more handknit socks of her own. I think I’m going to get her a skein from Abstract Fibers and perhaps one from either Pigeonroof or Lisa Souza; I like the idea of getting her something rather local. The book I’m thinking of getting her is Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks. I think she’ll like the historical connection as well as the simple, but pretty patterns in the book.
I’m not entirely sure where my Ravelry name pin has gotten too; I’ll have to see if I can find it. I do plan on wearing my Brandywine shawl tomorrow so that I can show it off to Romi in person. See you there!
How are your Ravelympics projects going?
I can tell you that they are probably going far better than mine. I have yet to pull out the fiber I decided upon for my spinning project (the superwash Corriedale that was to become socks). Instead, I have been spinning some green batts that were the first to ever come off my drum carder.
I had received some very, very dark green with touches of red and yellow fiber from Deep Color in a swap several years ago (see the yarn to the right). It was one of those cases where I highly doubt my swap partner had read my questionnaire because I had listed green as a color I don’t like. (It wasn’t even until everyone was supposed to be finding out who their secret swap partners had been that I realized that my partner had fallen off the planet. Oh well.) So, I had this nice merino that just happened to be dyed a rather unfortunately color. I tried spinning some of it, but hated the color so much that it languished on a bobbin for almost a year and a half. I ended up using it as my first attempt to Navajo ply because I didn’t care if I completely screwed it up.
I had spun less than half of it, so I still had over 2 oz. of this fiber laying around. Then, I finally decided to get brave and try to use my drum carder. I bought an ounce of bright yellow silk from Spunky Eclectic; it was a color called Walking on the Sun. I blended the 2 together and got a much lighter grass green. The silk also add a great feel.
I have been wanting to practice spinning from the fold and these batts seemed like good practice fodder. Next thing you know, that’s what’s on my wheel. The problem? I started spinning it back in September, so I definitely don’t believe it’s eligible for the Ravelympics. My wheel got put away after I had spun only 1 of the 4 batts I had made because the new puppy showed too much interest in wanting to chew on the treadles, which I just couldn’t let happen to my beautiful Catherine. When I got the wheel out to begin working on the superwash Corriedale, I saw the silky green bobbin and couldn’t help myself. The Corriedale was forgotten.
At least my knitting is going okay… I think.
Time flies when life is crazy. International travel followed by the introduction of a new family member (see right) along with the stress of an archival collection move to prepare for at work has kept the days rolling by without note here. But, mostly, the addition of a puppy has taken up most of my time. There hasn’t even been a lot of knitting, and there’s been no spinning since we got her in October.
Her name is Lily, and we got her from a rescue that takes dogs out of kill shelters in SoCal and brings them north for adoption. Lily’s mom was the one actually rescued and then discovered to be pregnant. Mom was a white cockapoo, and there have been many guesses as to what dad may have been. The general consensus is either wire-haired dachshund or some sort of terrier. Lily’s nickname is Troublebutt — she’s 7 months old as of last week and has been having loads of fun finding news things to make a mess of.
With the Winter Olympics (and thus Ravelympics and the Knitting Olympics) about to commence tonight, I thought it was time to do some spring cleaning in the old blog. I’ve done away with the large gathering of dust bunnies Russian spam and installed a shiny new post. Of course, I have no idea if there’s anyone out there still bothering to read.
Now to decide on projects. For the Ravelympics, I’m on Team Suck Less, and my project is going to be to spin for a complete project. I just haven’t decided yet if I will be spinning for socks or a lace shawl. Decisions, decisions. I have some superwash corriedale from Spunky Eclectic in a pretty colorway called Soul Windows that would make nice socks. But, I also have some Dark BFL also from Spunky Eclectic in a colorway called Myrtle that would make a pretty Bitterroot.
For the Knitting Olympics, I’ve put my name in and said I’d be knitting an Ishbel shawl with some of my handspun shetland romney laceweight yarn. (Oops, signed up saying it was shetland, oh well.) I haven’t really done a lot with my handspun yarn because I sometimes upset myself by only seeing the imperfections in the yarn as I’m knitting it rather than the loveliness of the project. So, my challenge is to knit a project with my handspun… and actually finish it.
Fall is finally here! Now if only the weather would agree.
Please imagine wonderful pictures of the fun time that was had at the Monterey Wool Auction throughout this post. Someone… *cough*… okay, I forgot the camera at home inthe rush to get out the door.
Got down to Monterey, picked up my mom, and the 2 of us were dropped off at the fairgrounds by The Husband, who then went off to do non-fiber activities. Got signed in and got my auction number. Had to wait a little bit ot get a listing sheet as they had run out. Unfortunately, there were also some problems with the sheet in that several weights and prices listed were incorrect. Thankfully, they announced them as each fleece came up and I made sure to double check on those fleeces I was interested in.
I decided this year’s strategy was going to be pick out a couple of really nice fleeces and concentrate on them. One of the fleeces I picked out was also wanted by 2 of my friends, so we decided to split it because it was 10.5 lbs. Sadly, we were outbid.
The next fleece I was super interested in was one of the champion fleeces. I figured that I would be willing to pay up to $25/lb for it. It came up and turned into a bidding war between me and someone sitting up front. $25/lb came very quickly and I made a quick assessment — we hadn’t won the earlier, larger fleece for spliting, so I hadn’t spent any money yet, and I could go higher, but this would be it. I kept bidding. The price hit $30/lb, which I determined to be too rich for my blood. The audience actually seemed to collectively let out their breath when the auctioneer said, “Sold!”
There was really only one more fleece I really wanted. Thankfully, my friends who had also been interested in it, said it was okay for me to go after on my own. It was only a 6.25 lb fleece, which is a little hard to split 3 ways if you lose a lot to processing. I decided on my maximum bid and was quite happy when I won the fleece at a much lower price. It’s a very pretty variegated grey fleece from Hobbit Hollow Farm. I think it was a 1/4 blood. It’s been turned over to Shari at Morro Fleece Works for processing, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I think it’ll be a very nice sweater for me.
