Fleeting thought

Heh. I've been trying to run a few mornings a week. My sister, in an awesome display of support, made me a mix cd to run to. I don't know how to run my mp3 player corvery well, so her songs are all mixed in. Every so often I get a song thrown in that just doesn't seem very familiar. What is interesting is that they all seem to be songs that, should I be making a movie of my oh-so-interesting life (hahaha) they would be songs that would play in the soundtrack while I am running! Go sis! Thanks for the awesome running music.

February already?!?

Wow, it's been almost a month. I've accomplished quite a bit of knitting and spinning. Not as much as I would like, but then when does that ever happen? I've been bad (as usual) about photographing any of it, and even worse about uploading the pictures. I'm doing more swaps, and so some of my knitting is the supersecret kind.

I knit my first project with handspun yarn (some I received in a swap on Ravelry) . . . And am getting ready to knit my first project with my OWN handspun :) Just have to get the socks off the needles, since I can't have more than one pair of socks otn. (My own rule, made to prevent myself from having 22 socks otn and having to buy new needles constantly!)

I had a pair of socks go holey on me. Dangit! I swear it's my Birkenstocks. So many people I know wear their handknit socks in them all the time, but all three handknit socks I've had go (as well as several storebought ones) have been immediately after a day in the Birks. I think I'm done with wearing the handknits in my Birks! I thought it just must have been a horrific coincidence after the first two, but these last socks were practically brand new! Worn maybe twice?!? Sigh. I have enough Smooshy to make another pair, I think, especially if I make them shorter.

On a side note, what do I want for my birthday? I have sooo much yarn, and fiber, that's not a good thing to ask for. . . Jewelry, well, a lot of that too. Anyone have any ideas? It's getting a little late, I guess, but maybe someone can help me. All I've come up with is a new pan, and that's pretty boring!

Back to the real world

Whew! The holidays are over, and the last-minute gifts all got done in time. I have been spinning up a storm, and knitting like crazy too. The Aran Sweater of Doom is FINISHED! Whoot! I should give something away for that. Hmmm, that's a good idea. I'll just have to decide what. Maybe I can get it off J long enough to get a pic (or maybe get a pic with him in it) and when I post the pic. . . We'll see if anyone actually reads this blog. Hehe.
Here are a couple pics of spinning I've done. I'm not going to go into too much detail, because some of it is supersecret :)

I think my consistency is improving. I am having so much fun with the different fibers and colors! There is a local spinning group starting up tonight, so my Traveller will go traveling for the first time since I brought it home. I'm excited to get out and meet some new people.

Not much else to say, I just wanted to put these pics somewhere, and my Ravelry page is too close for some of those supersecrets mentioned earlier :)

Ta-Da!

I feel so proud. . . I made a lightbox based on some directions I found online. I still need to work on it, and it's a little small, but it works! Overcast, grey day, but I got some decent pics. So, without further ado . . . BFL, dyed by Selah in the Autumn Dessert colorway.

BFL/Colonial/Wensleydale from etsy in a colorway called Sweet Dreams

Another BFL from Etsy, this colorway is called Send in the Clowns

I feel happy. Like the yarns are done now. I have had them completed for a while, just no satisfactory pics.

On the holiday front, Sharon mentioned that she'd like socks. So, I'm now on a frantic mission to swatch up some yarn that i found, making sure it fits her personality and then finding a pattern to use with it! The pattern I want to use, calls for size 0 needles, which made a pretty fabric, but a little stiff and unforgiving for me. I think I'm a tight knitter though, so I'm getting a better fabric with size 1 needles. We'll see if they meet the gauge.

Defeated by worm spit

OK, so who said that silk hankies spin up fast and easy? Easy, yeah, I guess, fast? Not so much. Maybe it's because I want to do a 2-ply laceweight? It's taking FOREVER to do this one ounce of hankies! I had to just give it up. Really, I can't delay the holiday gift spinning anymore.

So, today, I started the Creatively Dyed SeaCell/Wool for Sharon. It's pretty nice to spin, though it seems to want to be either a tiny bit thinner or a tiny bit thicker than what I'm trying to shoot for. I was hoping for something like a 2-ply dk weight. I can't seem to find that. I seem to find a worsted or fingering pretty easily (as I test before I let the single wind on). I guess it will be what it is, and I'm sure Sharon will have fun with whatever I end up with hehe. On the positive side, it's a fun mottled top, so I'm enjoying not worrying about what the colors are doing and just watching for what comes next.

On the home front, S's first birthday gift arrived today. How the heck am I supposed to make her wait a whole week to open this thing? It's HUGE! Guess I'll have to hide it tonight and hope that she forgets until I pull it out later.

Holiday gifts are progressing nicely. After my "vacation" last weekend, my sister claimed a project I was working on, so yippee! One more gift I don't have to buy.

Oh my. S decided that I needed to spin up the "Send in the Clowns" BFL that I found on sale. I figured I could make somthing bright for her, but wasn't planning on doing it next. I had figured on making it an experiment in Navajo plying (or chaining singles, depending on who you ask) but the color repeats are too short to separate the colors into long sections of singles. So I'm getting longer repeats of muddied combinations of neon-ish colors. It's interesting. Instead of getting yellow and pink, I get this orange-ish color. I guess in a way that's good, as it's not quite as bright as I had anticipated originally. I'm not sure what to do ply-wise now though. I separated it out to be a 3-ply, once I realized that it wasn't going to work for the original chaining intent. Now I'm not sure that will be nice either. Maybe a 2-ply with some nice barberpoling? I guess I'll wait to name the stuff at the end, maybe "Taking Out the Clowns?" Hehehe.

Haha, I've disappeared into the depths of my new spinning addiction! And it seems like pretty much every new yarn is my favorite!

After the initial practice attempts, I started with some Ramboulleit/cornsilk roving (? still learning all the terminology) which took me forever, and I started to think that maybe I didn't like spinning so well after all. Did I mention it took forever? Like 2 weeks of every free minute spinning? And there were tons of little knots. I had little blue fuzz carpeting around the wheel and chair. S had fun picking up the little blue fluff. And I ended up with a light worsted, I think a little underspun - it's very fluffy and I wonder what to make it into? I was thinking fingerless gloves for my sis, maybe, but I worry that it might not take that abuse well?

Then I decided to try a custom blend that I got from CopperPot on etsy. Wensleydale/Columbia/BFL, if I remember correctly. I fell in love. It spun up a thousand times faster - ok, well maybe more like twice as fast. I made a pretty 3ply heathered, about worsted or aran wt maybe? I didn't check wpi, but it's about 156 yds for 3.5ish ounces. Loved it, everything about it. It was a joy to spin, I loved looking at it, and dreaming about what to create with it.

That went well, so I started in on the BFL I just got from the Selah group buy. . . Autumn Dessert. I was a little disappointed in the colors of the top. I just wasn't feeling it, and wondered what I was thinking when I ordered it. I decided to try split it in two by length, then spin long color repeats, then ply, hoping I would end up with some sections where each color plied with itself and some where it barber poled with the other colors. This stuff spun like a dream! I learned some new way to draft, which makes things go much faster and very smooth . . . Maybe that was just my click moment? I was still not in love with the colors, though I like the way the colors blended into each other. Then I plied. It turns out I didn't offset the colors properly for the desired effect, so I get long stretches where the pink/green and pink/ivory barberpole and the yellow plied with iteself. I ended up with about 340 yards of a 16wpi yarn. Well, mostly, there are two or three heavier spots. What do you expect, it's my third yarn! FPS! Now I am in love. I just love looking at it. I like petting it. It's sitting on my kitchen counter so I can look at it and pet it several times a day. I want to wear it around my neck and wrapped around myself all the time! OK, maybe not really. But it is by far my favorite creation (knit/jewelry/etc) in a very long time!

I wonder if I am going to love each new yarn more than the last?

I started in on the alpaca/silk I got fsot on Rav. It's mostly creamy with little shots of royal blue. I'm trying for a 2ply laceweight. Figure this would be really pretty and etherial in something lacy. Plus I only have a couple oz, so this way I can stretch it a bit further. It's interesting spinning something akin to thread, but going well so far. I think I heard something about silk being easier to do this with (another reason to try it now, eh?)

I also figured out how to make a fun knitting row counter that a swap partner requested. You know, she posted a link to one, and I said, "Heck, I can do that!" I made one to try it out, and then the one in the colors for my partner. It's a pretty cool concept, but I'm not sure I like how heavy they are. I suppose the lampworked glass bead doesn't help. But it's so pretty!

I will get pics, but I keep telling myself I'm going to make a light box first. It's not like we don't have boxes filling the garage still . . .