Monday, April 23, 2012

Late, but present!

I promised once a week. I missed last week, for which I truly apologize. Here I am now, though. On a Monday no less. Sharing pictures with you. That's pretty cool, doncha think? When last I left you, dear blog visitor, I was showing you the spin to come. Well, that's finished now. That lovely merino from Rogue Adventures turned into this:


4 ounces and 245 yards of sport weight-ish super soft, super sproingy yarn. I have no idea what I'll use it for, but my original plans to put this in my shop have flown out the window. This yarn stays with me.

I then put some polwarth/silk from Into The Whirled on the Wheel. This colorway is called Children of Time:

And it spun up like this:


This is still in singles, waiting to be plied. I'm hoping for better yardage. Merino makes me work for it. Polwarth not so much, and silk makes everything better.

 And then, as I am ramping up my spinning productivity, I immediately put this on the wheel:


This is 4 ounces of Romney, which is a longwool, which makes it feel sort of wirey. I doubt it will be next-to-skin soft, but it does allow me to spin pretty thin, so who knows, maybe it would work for a shawl of some sort. 'tany rate, the colorway is Sea Beginnings, it's from Fiber Fancy and that's where I am.

 How has your yarn adventuring been?

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Once a week!

I did say once a week, right? I didn't say which day. *cough* *scuffs foot*

Hi there! I'm back with a weekly posting.

I have been knitting and spinning for the last week. I don't have great gobs of things to share with you, but I did make some progress.

For my 40th birthday (don't ask me how I got that old; I don't know either), I finally broke down and bought myself an electric spinning wheel. I bought a Vespera from Heavenly Handspinning, and though we have had our disagreements, we're getting along pretty well now.

The first yarn I spun was half of  a bundle from a Mixed Blessings club from Fat Cat Knits. It was a panda blend (sw merino, nylon, bamboo) in a colorway I dubbed Como no, cebolla? (*Why not, onion?) We started like this:


And ended up like this: 130 yards of fingering weight, chain plied.



Next up on the spinning queue?

This merino in the Lakes colorway from Rogue Adventures:




In the knitting world, I am still working on the Tradisi shawl from last year. I know. *hangs head* But it's much closer to being finished.

And in dyeing news? Well. This all went in to the shop today:

Thanks for swinging by!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Well, hey there.

You know? I haven't been around here much. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry about that.

Slowly but surely, I'm getting my act back together. I keep saying that and it keeps not being true, but this time I mean it.

Basically, I think I overstepped myself. A podcast and upping my productivity and trying to keep up with my knitting -and- spinning -and- attempting to go out and have more of a life than what I could find on my computer?

Too much at once.

So I scaled back (or slacked off). Now it's time to come out of hibernation.

No guarantees that I'll be back to my tri-weekly posting schedule, but I will promise once a week at least, for now.

Starting today!

Ive actually finished a shawl this year. I know, not stunning for some of you super knitters, but I'm pretty impressed with myself.

It's the Elizabeth R from this year's Shakespeare in Lace club. It's a beautiful, golden merino/silk blend fingering weight yarn and 375 yards of pretty.





Not the greatest picture ever, but the color's fairly true.

Shawl #1 of 2012 complete! Go me!