Okay, it's really the Trip-Trap Jacket from Vivian Hoxbro, but it sure looks like a histogram plot to me:
In fall 2007 I announced to my co-workers that I was going to SOAR and that I would be away for a week. The nurses I work with thought it was a great idea. They also thought it was a great idea to leave tracings of their feet on my desk with color suggestions for socks. I made them wait a very long time.
These are Terri's feet. She got Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Let me tell you, while I was knitting these, all I could think was, "I need some more of this yarn!"
I used my own 'vanilla sock pattern' and whipped these babies up in no time. She loves them. She said, "They feel cushy on the bottoms of my feet and they're warm."
She also is learning to knit her own socks. They're moving forward slowly, but they are lovely and I can't wait for her to be able to wear her very own, handknit socks.
This is Pam. When I asked for a picture of her socks, in situ, she sat down on the floor of my office and posed.
I left her socks on her desk and paged her, saying "What's on your desk? Someone must really love you." She came back immediately and put them on. I don't remember her yarn, but the colorway was called "Party". Perfect for Pam!
She wears them frequently and makes sure I know when she has them on.
Both of these women were so appreciative that it will be easy to knit more socks for them in the future. Let's hope it won't take me 2 years to get to it, but don't hold your breath ladies.
Even though I'm not keeping up with the blogging, I am keeping up with the spinning. My goal for this Tour de Fleece was to spin and swatch samples for an entirely handspun sweater. Here's the polworth fleece I have from Rovings. It did come from my stash (I bought it in October 2003 - so it's well aged). There is the tiniest bit of veg matter in it. Just enough so that it's fun picking it out - not a nuisance.
I'm doing virtually no pre-drafting. Even though this stuff has been hanging around for over 4 years, there's been no compaction. The one problem I came across is that it's in the bag upside down. It spins easier from the other side. Rather than dump it out and re-package the whole thing, I've been grabbing a couple of armfuls and tearing it off from the larger supply. I flip it around and spin from the other end - dreamy. If you've never purchased from Rovings, go now. Get some of the natural colors and see what I mean.
One of the reasons this roving got put on a shelf was because it was tricky to spin. A couple of years ago, I didn't have the confidence that I could make it into a beautiful yarn, so I stopped. The fleece wants to be spun on the fine side and it really likes the long draw style. My usual style is inch-worm. I spin inch-worm mostly because I can lean back on the couch and keep the fiber supply to my left and the yarn from the wheel right in front of me. With the long draw, I need to sit more forward and keep my arms free-swinging. It's a little more work, but the results are very nice. What's on the bobbin is essentially a day and a half of watching the Tour de France.
So, I spun up a small sample skein and using the Judith MacKenzie McCuin method, menaced it with a kitchen sink plunger. I couldn't quite remember how to do it, so I filled a sink with hot, hot water from the faucet and added a little soap. The other sink got half filled with cold water. I dropped in the skein and went to town. Then I switched it into the cold water and swished it a little. Then, back into the hot water for more plunging. A final rinse in the cold and a squeeze in a towel.
This morning - it's gorgeous. It is a light, springy yarn that has lost much of its fuzziness. Without knitting it into a swatch, it's hard to tell what it will do, but I am very happy with this result. Now it's on to more spinning and a larger skein. I want to have a serious supply of plied yarn before the end of the race. It's a good thing the mountain coverage was so long this morning - I have a lot to do!
(You can click on any of the pictures to make them bigger.)
This is my third year in the Tour de Fleece! I had a hard time coming up with my challenge this year. One of my big goals this year is to spin enough yarn for a sweater for myself. I bought an entire fleece from Rovings way back in October 2003. I tried to spin it then, but didn't like what I could do with it.
So, since it's been 4.5 years, I figure I should be able to make it do what I want now. I'll be spinning and swatching for a cardigan during this year's Tour. Since I have a whole, natural colored fleece - there should be plenty for playing. I also have bits of fiber that I want to play with to see if I can make it do what I want. Should be an interesting 3 weeks.
Up until a couple of days ago, the Tour group I signed up with only had about 6 people in it. I was looking forward to reading all of their blogs and seeing their progress. Today, I read Katherine's blog and see that more than 55 people have signed up. How amazing is that?!?
Apparently, I cannot even manage one post a month. However, since it seems that spring has finally come, I promise to come out of my cave a little more often. It's been a very long winter and lately a cloud has come over me in the form of a jackass employee. I'll say no more, but send good vibes my way - I have a feeling I'll need them in the next couple of weeks.
Am I the last person to post pictures of the amazing March Year of Lace kit? It came while I was gone on a business trip and was piled in with the rest of the mail. I was sorting through everything and saw a small white envelope and thought, "Now what can that be?" I think I actually squealed when I realized what it was. I handed it to hub and said, "Hand this to me and say 'Merry Christmas' in a big happy voice." He obliged. I think Amy and Sandra were channeling me when they chose the color.
I've been intimidated by the hank of yarn (it's teeny, tiny silk) for the last couple of weeks. I signed into Ravelry this morning and saw that someone had already finished hers! Plus it was her very first lace project!! I had to get it out and wind it up. I'm happy to report very little dye crocking and only two knots in the skein. I can live with both.
I'm searching around for a needle and I'll be swatching this afternoon while we watch cycling on TV. {As an aside, the Cameron Shawl is currently in time out. It seems that every time I think of placing a life line and then think "in a couple of rows" I screw it up. I don't have the heart to rip out 17 rows right now, so I pull it out and look at it every couple of days and then put it away again.}
As promised, knitting content. Not just knitting content, but
extremely pissed off knitter knitting content. Can I first tell you
that I have 27 rows completed? That's not a typo. Twenty-seven rows. In three days.
The Ornaghi Filati Merino Oro I'm using is giving me trouble. I cast on with Addi Turbos - fast right? The problem is the join. The yarn is so fine that each stitch lands in the tiny space between the needle and the cable and gets stuck. This made me fight the yarn and have to pick every stitch over the canyon. Plus it made me really cranky.
I hate these socks. Seriously, the pattern is clever, but not one that should be attempted unless the feet they are for happen to be nearby. I think I have knit this one sock at least 3 times.
After my problems a couple of weeks ago, I finally got the circumference right and went to town. When I went to Threadbear, I only took these socks, so I wouldn't be tempted to knit on anything else. I was at the point where I needed to put in my waste yarn for the heel when I got there. I got talking to Amy, knit in the waste yarn and knit up the leg. After about an hour, I measured the sock to the paper, but there was something wrong.
I had put the waste yarn in wrong. Somehow, I had mis-counted and there was no way the toe was going to lie flat if I left it that way. Ripped again. Put the waste yarn in the correct spot and knit back up.
The week before Thanksgiving, I put the heel in and was thrilled that I had one finished. Rinsed it a little and left it to dry. When I checked it against the paper drawing of my sock pal's foot - it looks a little too long (about 3/4"). I can't knit anything else until I finish these socks - the guilt overwhelms me. However, I hate these socks so much that I can't knit on them. I need to take a big girl pill and just finish. I can't wait to get them on their way to my sock pal and out of my house.
As an aside, Socks that Rock has held up amazingly well for all the knitting, ripping, and re-knitting. What a great yarn!
This is the Three Sisters Jacket from Cheryl Oberle. I bought the kit from her at Stitches last year. The yarn is gorgeous and varied as she hand-dyes each skein herself. I started it last February right before my unfortunate fall. I got gauge perfectly and set to making the largest size of the pattern. I ran out of yarn. I ripped out my gauge swatch and knit that into the sleeve - still ran out of yarn. Due to the individuality of the yarn there was no way to get an exact match.
In discussing this problem with my fiber posse at SOAR, one of my suggestions was to buy another skein and rip out both sleeves. That way I could knit from the yarn I already had and mix in the new skein. They looked horrified. "Why rip? You're a spinner, make some yarn that you like and use that." I knew I couldn't match the color, so that wasn't a problem - I'd just look for something contrasting.
When we went into the Rovings booth, I saw this. Jillian said, "That's what you can use for your Three Sisters Jacket." I must admit, I wasn't sold. It's RED for crying out loud. Then she said, "You can spin a fat single and use Kathryn's method for swirls*. How cool is that?" I had to admit, that was a pretty good idea.
So the roving came back to the condo and I couldn't keep my hands off it. This is one of the small batches they do (you can either get a whole kilo of a colorway or one of these little batches of 500 grams). I asked if they could split this is half and the woman told me that her dye pot is big enough for 500 gm and it's one of a kind. So, no she wouldn't split it up. After further consideration, I was okay with that, figuring there's a lot of potential sampling I could do. Plus, there's lots left over even after I use it for the jacket.
I dove in and came up with this. Although I plied it, it gives you an idea of how gorgeous this roving is when it's spun up. The lighter colors look very peachy in the roving and I was concerned that there would be too much peach and not enough of the red. My fear was unwarranted. The peach blends in beautifully and the dark reds really come to the front. My next experiment is to see how fat a single I can spin and if I can get it to match the grist of Cheryl's yarn.
* I'm still working on a post synthesizing Kathryn's class. There's so much to think about.
PS for Sara - We were doing 2 smaller turkeys this year and didn't think they could hold enough stuffing for everyone so we put all the stuffing in muffin tins. They were supposed to be individual serving sizes. Unfortunately, when we de-tinned them, they crumbled. Next year, we're thinking we'll add a couple of eggs to the mix.
I need a break from my spindles. Guess where I was this weekend ... Threadbear. I love this place. Seriously, there's no better yarn shop on the planet. I went over on Saturday because Jillian was teaching a Big Girls class. Could I pass up the chance to hang out with Amy, Matt, and Rob? No, I couldn't. We ate, we laughed, we knit, we watched Project Runway. It was extremely good. I did not want to return to my family, but you can't stay in Neverland forever.
Did I buy anything? Well, I had a gift certificate and it was burning a hole in my pocket. I've been thinking about knitting a bag for my Knitting Tarot cards. I knew I wanted something soft and luscious. Problem solved when Rob threw some Blue Sky Alpaca Silk at me. In my color, of course. Then I just had to pick something contrast-y to go with. I think purple and orange are my new signature colors.
It's my copy of The Knitting Tarot. I have been waiting for this for years! Literally, Amber and Megan have been working on this project since 2003. I began following their progress when Mac at Pesky Apostrophe mentioned it way back when. They bought a hand press and have printed the cards and book themselves. They finished all the printing earlier this year and were waiting for the book binding.
While at SOAR, I got an e-mail saying the sets were on sale. I didn't waste a minute. I was drinking my Jillian-made espresso, waiting to go to breakfast and I clicked on over and placed my order.
I can't even tell you how beautiful the set is. The book lies flat when you open the pages. I would guess this is helpful when you're doing a reading before you become completely familiar with the cards. Sassy made me sit down and "do" a reading for her. She very patiently waiting while I looked up the cards and read the text to her. I think she would have made me put on a cape and a turban if we had them.
As an added bonus (as if the beauty of the book and deck aren't enough), because I ordered early enough, I got this magnesium cut that was used in the printing of the set. Is it prophetic that it's a spindle? It's the cut used for the Ace of Spindles.
The Ace of Spindles is a call to meet need with your knitting basket. Take out, or begin, the project that may start a chain reaction. ... Keep it simple, make it work, and hand it off, in thanks and support.
Could it get any cooler??
Can I read the tarot? Nope, but it's on my life list of things to do. Shortly after I ordered this set, I found a book on Amazon to held me with the Waite-Rider cards I bought before Little Big Man was born (he's 16!). Can you believe I put my hands on that deck within 5 minutes of getting the book from Amazon? I think if I start with the lessons in the book, eventually I will be able to do readings for all my fibery friends with The Knitting Tarot.
