Dangit, I forgot

this little bad boy, Allons-y Ramboullet (90% sure that's spelled wrong) in Woodland Hike or something, I can't find the tag.  

Isn't it so pretty?  I'm spinning thin again because I need this roving to last awhile.  

Happy crafting!

Post, this is a post

Okay!  I have done stuff.  

Here is a thing I spun:

It's merino (non-superwash) Frabjous Fiber in Carnival.  I think it's about a sport weight and have no idea what the yardage is.  

 

Masks!

I ordered polyester chevron tape and a couple rolls of elastic from May Arts Ribbon and am now prepared to make masks for the next two years.  

 

Here is another thing I spun:

Nest in Good Intentions, superwash merino, two-ply, probably heavy fingering weight-ish.  

 

Sock Yarn Blankie

is coming along nicely.  I lost my crochet hook and then I found it.  

Quilts

are making good progress.  One is completely done and the other one has binding attached and I'm working on sewing it down.  Update!  I finished and washed and dried both!

 

Cowl

I'm going to make a cowl out of the yellow and gray completely unbalanced yarn.  I remember searching for a pattern and finding one, then thinking I wouldn't have enough yarn, then finding another, but it was so late at night that I can't remember what that final pattern was.  Update!  I picked a pattern! 

There is a baby

who is a boy, who will be born in December, who requires a quilt.  One of the quilts I'm finishing is a boy quilt, but I may make a new one.  

 

Lion Quilt

is completely pieced except for the outside gray pieces, which I haven't cut out yet.  I last saw the paper templates for the edges a couple of months ago, and have looked and looked and haven't found them yet.  So not sure I'll be finishing that this quarter.  

Happy crafting!

And finally, a quest.

And now here is a blog post I've been writing in my head for 14 months. 

The Yarn Harlot wrote, wisely, several years ago about how you can tell a hand knitter by their utterly mismatched accessories, and until now I have embodied that exactly.  How does a person make 20 projects spanning mittens, neckwear, and hats and have NONE of them match?  Like, at all?  Okay, I have a shawl that looks okay with a pair of mittens, if you don't look too closely. 

Well.  No more.  Because I'm going to make projects that will complete a set with already-existing objects.  It's genius.  (I just misspelled genius on the first try.  Okay, two tries.) 

Contestants:

These mittens.  They are nice and bright without showing all the grime that immediately gets on one's hands as one navigates winter in the snowy North.  They also kind of go with a handspun shawl I made a couple years ago that is screaming pink and orange.  They are also not yet worn through at the thumb, which is more than I could say about SOME mittens (they know who they are).  And I have half a skein of each of these colors left that could make a very nice colorwork hat. 

This hat.  Have I not introduced you to Spooks yet?  Spooks is my head model, so named because the children find her spooky.  That may have had something to do with the fact that their father immediately, upon meeting Spooks, stuck her on a broomstick, turned off all the lights, and lit her from below for the children to come upon after their bath*. 

Anyway, this hat is from my handspun Nest merino something or other, and there's half a ball left that could make some lovely fingerless mitts or part of a cowl, paired with a solid.  That pattern is Norby, which I don't find makes a super-warm hat for the depths of winter, but does make a very nice fall hat.  

Hat not pictured, but if you've spent time on Rav, you'd know it.  It's that Easy Ombre Slouch Hat that fades nicely from one color to the next, and it's in Loden and Neutral Slightly Darker than Off-White, and it is possible to order more.  That was a gift from Mom, and it may be my favorite hat and it's nice and warm and soft.  

And Surprise Mystery Contestant, All New Things!

For Christmas, this happened, this being Ankara Green Malabrigo Rios.  (Thanks, Mom!)  My stars, it is so pretty.  The photo is not exactly correct, it's more of a greeny turquoise, and I love it and my choice is probably going to be something two-color-brioche (is that redundant?) and something necky and maybe some colorwork hand things.  

If I excel in 2020, there will be more than one matching set of things in which I can leave the house not looking like a proficient yet colorblind knitter.  There will also hopefully be more than just two finished quilts, and a bunch of other stuff, too.  

Wishing you the best for 2020.  Happy crafting!




*

Aieeeeee!

Tour de Fleece

For the past 16 days, I have been spinning, plying, unspinning, respinning, washing, skeining, and reskeining yarn as part of the Tour de Fleece on Ravelry.  Here's some of the stuff I've done:

This is Frabjous Fibers, superwash merino in Persephone.  I divided it into three parts and will make a 3-ply.  Am spinning pretty thin, hoping to get about 400 yards of fingering weight.  No idea how that will work out, because I've never made a real 3-ply before.   

This is the Nest superwash merino, One of a Kind #9.  It's a 2-ply, and I spun less thin, then plied on the looser side.  Then I got all grumpy, because I wanted it plied tighter, and I had lots of philosophical discussions with myself about where the sweet spot is for something being plied the right amount vs. overplied, and then I just went for it and ran it through the wheel again, and after washing (the picture was taken before washing), it hangs straight and it's so beautiful and soft and I loooooove it.  This is the kind of yarn that will probably become a nightmare to behold once it's knit up, but I don't care, I love it. 

567 yds

This is BMFA shetland in River Rocked.  I plied the daylights out of it and then it was all twisty and... super twisty, so I ran it through the wheel again to take twist out, and I washed it and then reskeined it and I now love it and this is exactly the sort of yarn I've been coveting.  Yay! 

528 yds

Okay, this is BMFA Mango Tango in Polwarth, fiber I've had for many years.  I had a bobbin of singles left over, plus a little more fiber that I'd put aside because I just couldn't PINKORANGEPINK anymore.  So I picked it back up, finished up the singles, and then Navajo plied it.  And then I realized I'd been overplying everything (noticing the theme here? this is the wheeee part of the learning curve)  and I took a bunch of twist out (painstakingly testing every single section and wondering if maybe I'm just not cut out for spinning) and it came out well and I'm happy with it.  

 
This is the Mayhem shawl, created entirely by following the written-out directions.  I didn't have to understand any of it, I just did what it said, and lo, here it is.  You can probably see in the picture how wavy gravy the overspunness made the finished shawl.  Ugh.  But also, oh well, I'll wear it and it will be fine.  I used nearly every bit of the yarn and stopped a few rows short of what the pattern called for, but I think it looks okay.  The finished edge doesn't look significantly narrower than the top edge, unless you're looking very closely, and if you are, the biasing will distract you. 

The baby quilt in progress that I posted a bit ago now is a finished top with borders, just waiting to be basted.  Perhaps I will do that tonight, unless the spinning bug won't let go.  

Happy crafting!

Baby Quilt Bonanza

Seems that a couple of the quilting blogs I follow regularly-ish have fallen off.  I suppose it would seem that mine has, too.  For right now, that's because quilting has fallen off.  Not by my choice, and once the new shape of everything is solidified, it will probably pick back up.  We are shifting big pieces of things around (jobs, school, schedules, everything) and right now the only thing I have energy for during quilting/spinning time has been listening to music and running up my losing streak record at Free Cell.  (Nineteen.  Nineteen.) 

BUT.  I've finished a skein of yarn and two baby quilts, and I managed to take pictures of them before they were given.  The next quilting deadline is in about a month, and I don't really have the fabric I need, and I really don't have the money to get the fabric (see above re: massive shifting), so fingers crossed that all will fall into place soon.  I've sewn bindings on planes, but never with kids along, so hope to avoid that.  

Baby Quilt #1 (actually #3):

Mostly Connecting Threads Squirrel Park charms, Squirrel Park border, Connecting Threads yardage for backing.  

The back, with its little vintage bunny:

I don't feel like fighting with Blogger about where my pictures go, so here is the finished yarn I was talking about:

Polwarth fiber, dyed in True Blood Red from BMFA from a while ago.  There are associated numbers (ounces, yards, whatnot) but if I try to find them right now I'm sure I'll wander off and not come back to the blog for a month.  I had been planning on posting this for sale on Etsy, but then Etsy demanded my bank account information, and I'm not sure that Etsy and I are far along enough in our relationship for that sort of sharing.  Anyway, this is laceweight, over 600 yards if I remember correctly.  I will probably take the plunge with Etsy at some point, and if you're dying to give me money in order to get this yarn, let me know and I'll scootch that item up my to-do list. 

Baby Quilt #2 (actually #2):

This quilt is for a little baby boy.  I've knit baby boy blankets before but have never made a baby boy quilt before.  Blankets strike me as so much easier than baby boy quilts.  So many more decisions have to be made for a quilt.  No, let me rephrase that: the same decision has to be made eleventy-seventy times, namely: is this boyish enough?  Is this boyish enough?  Is this boyish enough?  

If you do not think this is boyish enough, please do not tell me that.  This is a mix of fabrics, some grays from a FQ set from some designer or another, I think it was Moda (I know, I know, stop with so many helpful and specific details, orooni) that I used for the Block O-hio quilt, plus lots of Connecting Threads.  Plus random-birds.  Plus old Hawthorne Threads stuff.  Boyish stuff.  Yeah. 

The boy quilt, reclining casually

 And finally, vintage munching bunny:

Is that bunny boyish enough? 

I'm just going to keep going, because it seems dangerous to stop at this point.  

Oh shit, is this really ugly? 

This work in progress is way more impressive than the next baby quilt (another boy one, with 11 of 42 squares up on the wall) so far, so here are the 59 squares I have for the Must Applique Now Quilt.  How many do I need?  Dunno.  More.  Am repeating background fabrics, not focus fabrics, so far.  

Hlkjasfdklj.  I hope your summer has been more productive than mine.  

Happy crafting! 

Purple Handspun

I've finished my third skein of 2-ply!  

Before washing:

After:

 With a quarter:

I wound it off the bobbin onto an acrylic quilting ruler again and came up with an estimate of 876 yards.  

It's listed in my Etsy shop (here!) and I listed it as over 850 yards because despite counting the number of wraps twice, I dread the possibility that someone buys it and then runs out because I didn't calculate it right.  Because there is no more where this came from.  

Again, despite being a 2-ply, this is a laceweight yarn (4.2 oz, 850-ish yards).  I really need to figure out how to spin thicker. 

This time I plied the singles immediately after finishing the second bobbin, and they were definitely energized and it was definitely harder to ply.  In the future I'll try to let them rest for at least several days.  

If it sells, I'll get some more fiber and start in on the next project.  BUT, the baby quilt list just keeps growing (5 and counting) and I do not have a big (or even small) pile of baby quilts yet, so it would probably be better to tear myself away from the wheel for a bit.  The first blanket is due in June, which is not too far off.  

Happy crafting! 

FO: Woodland Baby Blanket

The Woodland Baby Blanket is finished!  Mom-to-be declared it a great match for the woodland-themed nursery (a happy coincidence).  

These are pre-washing pictures.  I used white thread to piece and then quilted with brown thread on the top and white on the bottom.  The complimentary colored squares were all from stash. 

Yes, I'm standing on the couch. 

A tiny bit of yellow showed on the left and not the right of the expander strip.  Good thing I'm not OCD. 

And post-washing, with daylight and small helping hands:
 

I quilted straight lines along the edges of the horizontal brown sashing and then around the other sides of the squares, just lifting the needle up and moving to the next row down.  Then I cut all the connecting threads and buried the ends and there were 19 squares x 4 corners and 12 squares x 2 corners + am I seriously still working on this + am I SERIOUSLY still working on this = maybe I should have just backtracked a couple of times and called it good, but it turns out I can't because maybe I am actually a little tiny bit OCD, despite aforementioned captions to the contrary. 

Anyway, I think the ends-burying took longer than the actual quilting, which was annoying.  I switched to a larger-eye needle after the first evening of ends-burying, which helped a lot.  

Woodland Baby Blanket
Finished Size: 45"ish x 37"ish (forgot to measure)
Batting: Hobbs cotton
Thread: C&C poly


In other news, we hit the Sheep & Wool fest last weekend and I used up some of my precious spending money on some pretty darn plain-looking wool yarn, sheep-colored. 
 

But the possibilities for colorwork that these represent are very exciting indeed.   I've got a bug to knit little colorwork mittens for the little hands in my house with winter coming up, and I was feeling a cold little foot this morning and then got a second bug to knit a parade of little wool socks, too.  If only every day were sit-around-and-make-stuff day.  

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it Up Friday.  

Happy crafting! 

Black socks, pretty socks

DONE LIKE DINNER:



These took me seven months. And yielded more support for my hypothesis that it's difficult to get the motivation to work on black socks. When I gave them to Other this morning, and suggested perhaps that someday he might like some gray socks, he reacted as if I'd suggested he drive the car into the side of the house or eat a tin can sauteed in asbestos. No way.

Sigh.

I'm delighted to have my 2.25 knitpicks nickel-plated dpns back, though, so I cast on a new pair of socks in BMFA Scaponia, lightweight:



I don't understand why this color isn't more popular. It never stays on the site for more than one round, and I suspect it only ever comes back because I request it. I'm thinking of nicking the basic color scheme for a quilt some day.

Speaking of quilts, forward progress has resumed after my sewing machine (who shall hereinafter be known as "Sewey") returned from a second trip to the shop. I used its absence to move forward on the Giant Quilt of Giants back, doing the math, establishing a design, and beginning to cut pieces for it. I should really start stippling Cartoon Pinball, but have to admit that I'm a little nervous for my first quilt-for-sale. Will probably practice on some swatches before committing to quilting that one.

Let's just go ahead and re-name it Yarnday.

Instead of tending my knitting blog, I have been off gallivanting around and experiencing some Major! Life! Changes! recently, the least of which was a milestone birthday for which I, in what is becoming a tradition, received a honking pile of gorgeous yarn.



I'm practically jealous of myself.

That's two Zauberball Lace skeins in the middle, Brombereen on the left and Fuchsienbeet on the right. Then on the far left is Malabrigo Lace in Water Green, three skeins. Above that is Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Strawberry Lemonade, and immediately below that is Noro Kureyon Sock, colorway 219. On the far right is River Twist from Mountain Colors, colorway Whitewater River. Below the Zauberballs is a skein of Malabrigo Twist in Indecita, and below that is Socks that Rock Silkie in ST-1.



Ah, and here it is again, the cheeky vamp. This was discovered on a trip to WEBS, and it was a shock, because if I'd known that WEBS stocked STR, I wouldn't have kept away for so long. Wonder when that happened.

I went a little crazy taking pictures of the Hazel Knits, too:



Doesn't that look good enough to eat? I've got ideas for every skein except this one -- what could possibly be worthy of such gorgeous color? I've got to think of something that I will use every day, no matter the weather. And that will not be exposed to direct sunlight and that won't be subject to too much wear, so that it lasts forever.

I'm also excited about this little gift:



that I suspect will take stockinette sock knitting to whole new levels of speed.

The problem with this glorious bounty is that I want to cast on every single skein NOW NOW NOW, but there's plenty on the needles already that needs attention. For instance, there's Ms. Shawl:



who is just now ready to start on Chart 2, the first of the edging charts. Of course I read the note about how to eliminate repeats of the main section *after* completing the entire repeat I intended to make the last, and of course you're supposed to stop a little early so that the numbers match up for Chart 2. Doh. So that's all frogged and back on the needles and ready to go again.

Then there are two SIPs:

Jules:


and Gentleman's Shooting Socks (for Other):


Oh, and hey, last time I was here, I promised lots of FO shots of socks, so here they are:

Sock Knitters Anonymous May 2010 Mystery Socks, by Cookie A


Classic Elite Summer Socks Solid, colorway Aster, 3 balls


Acorn Socks


Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sock Candy, colorway Chocolate, 2 balls


Pyroclastic Socks


Sunshine Yarns Soft Sock, colorway Grassroots Overdye

And a bad flashy shot of Snicket


Koigu PM, colorway 1115.

Phew.

so...

Hey! I just flipped through my camera and I have literally no photos of knitting that I can show you right now. And that is kind of a bummer.

I do have this:



Which is a very lovely pile of swag that I got from the International Traveling Hoar Tin (tm?), which is essentially a nice way to trade yarn we don't want but that is still nice and worthy yarn. I've been "needing" 3 skeins of variegated Koigu for a pair of Diamond Patch Socks, a pattern that my dear Mom got me a couple years ago for Christmas, and which I promptly looked through, concluded were some Master-Level Uber-Knitter socks, and then hid from myself. Someday I will make those socks, and that day just got closer because here is a nice pile of three skeins of Koigu.

There's also some sportweight sock yarn, a set of five buttons that actually match (three more than any of the button sets I currently own, for some reason), and a lone stitch marker of awesomeness.

What I'm doing these days is pretty much:

a) frantically finishing schoolwork and yet another round of applications
b) freaking out over how incredibly close Christmas is, and how incredibly soon I'm leaving town to go be around the majority of my knitted-gift-recipients
c) reassessing my Christmas Knits list and concluding, over and over again, that there is no fat left to trim
d) working even more on the schoolwork that will not end
e) sleeping
f) considering with trepidation the need to order more yarn for gifts that are on the Christmas Knits List Bubble
g) indulging in dreamy reveries about all the things I'm going to knit just as soon as this Christmas knitting is done
h) knitting.

Progress is being made. Mom's Steering Wheel Cozy, matching Gear Shift Cozy, and matching Short Shorts* are done, blocked, and ready to be wrapped. One other gift is done, three are in progress, and one is waiting in the wings. When I list it out like that, the un-done part seems like a lot and I feel like I need to sit down even though I'm already sitting down. So perhaps we should move on.

The things I'm planning on knitting after Christmas include an Amanda Hat in green malabrigo left over from my My So-Called Scarf, Wavy in fingering-weight Woolen Rabbit and Sundara, striped (although this pair of yarns might go better in a linen stitch or even woven...), an Old Shale Smoke Ring in some KP Bare sock yarn that I dyed with soda ash before I found out that soda ash basically destroys wool, rendering the Bare probably unfit for socks but still nice for something else, and mittens with owls on them. Among other things.

I've noticed that not only do I not have knitted woolen items that appear to be part of a set that go together, nearly everything I have that I've knit clashes violently with everything else I've knit. Doesn't seem possible that so many things could all not match - shouldn't you reach a point where you've come full circle and run out of colors? - but yet, that's where I am with it. So my black Coronet hat (knit before Ravelry) gets a lot of wear. This year I'm going to try to turn over a new leaf of if-not-matching-at-least-coordinating-for-the-love-of-Pete. We'll see how it goes.




*with Fun Fur, of course, the kind with the little puff balls every 2-3 inches

In which I nearly Kinnear Ysolda Teague, but decide that I'm not a celebrity stalker and also I couldn't get my camera out fast enough.

Dude. I went to Rhinebeck.




And what do people do at Rhinebeck?



They take pictures of sheep to post on their blogs. (Check aaaand check.)

Other & I went on Sunday. There was not, in fact, a trail of bodies leading directly to the STR booth, but maybe we got there late enough that the dead had already been carted off. The booth was pretty wonderful, and I'm lucky that the only BFL sport they had was a variety of browns, because otherwise it would have been significantly harder to talk myself out of them. I did do a very good job of not gathering up a big pile of STR and burying my face in it for all those wool+vinegar fumes, if I do say so myself. It was very exciting to see all that Blue Moon in person.

I got some Corriedale from Wild Apple Hill Farm -- "Coral" is pictured below, and I got another skein of "Natural," which I wish were called just "Sheep," because that's what it is.


At the booth, I tried to convince myself that this was not pink -- no, no, it's a light red, see -- but in this picture, its pinkitude is undeniable. So be it. It is pretty.

My other purchase was some Malabrigo Sock in Solis:


And yes, it is probably kind of silly to get up at the crack of dawn, drive miles and miles and miles, and out of thousands of skeins of yarn, pick something that I could easily get off of the internet. (And theoretically at a LYS, although I've never seen this colorway at any of the ones I've ever gone to.) I overcame that very rational argument with the power of Sweet Holy Moses, This Yarn Is Gorgeous And Mom Said I Could Pick Out A Christmas Present Here. Merry Christmas to me.

I have plans for it - oh, do I have plans - but I cannot reveal them until several other things have been revealed.

Overall, I'm very glad we went. I've never before lived anywhere particularly close to any of the major fiber festivals, so we felt the need to jump at the chance to go when we could. It was cool to be in a place where handknit accessories outnumbered machine-made ones, and it was the perfect time of year to be outside at a fair. It probably won't hurt not to go to another one for awhile, because the allure of spinning is getting harder and harder to ignore.