Pacman Rug

Here is the beginning of the newest project. That whole no new projects until my brother-in-laws afghan gets done worked out real well didn't it...

Here's the deal, I'm working the Ten Stitch Twist with a whole bunch of handspun longwools that I had in my stash, along with spinning a bunch of my friends wool for it.  So my basement is really cold and has tile floors, so it needs a nice squishy wool rug for the floor. I have a fairly large stash of course(ish) longwools, some already spun, some still as fiber, but I figured this would be a good project for them.

The plan is to work up a reasonable amount and then throw it down and use it while I spin more yarn. The fact that it only has 10 working stitches was a big draw. I was thinking about crocheting a rug, but I'm not very good, and I didn't feel like learning a whole new craft for one project, though I'm sure it'll happen some day.

I'm not sure if this rug will ever get "finished." The room it's planned for is, I think, about 12 feet wide, so I certainly have plenty of room to work with. I do want it to be a rather large rug, but mostly it's just a home for all my courser handspun yarn. We'll see how it goes.

Merry Christmas...so many things done!

Merry Christmas to everyone out there! I know it has been a while since my last post, but wow so many things have been going on. Between the many jobs, child, husband, house, and life, there has even been a bit of crafting going on. Here is at least an update of what went out today.

 Here's a bit of the play by play in the Everything is Ducky Convertible Mitts. I knit them in a natural merino yarn, and then dyed them to look like ducks. I just had to add in some button eyes and it all went swimmingly!

Here's Alcazar all finished. It's been a process, but it's done now. The new owner is a lovely girl who really seemed to appreciate the effort that went into it. It's good to have that one off my to-do list!

Here's a nice hat that I threw together in literally 2 days. The Everything is Ducky Mitts and Alcazar were for the oldest and youngest daughter of some family friends, so of course the middle daughter had to get something as well. Here mom said she was into the slouchy hats, so I grabbed a bunch of yarns I had around, including that Triple Berry Jam Thick 'n Thin hand-spun from the 2014 Tour de Fleece and knocked it out.



Now I am in that great in between place, where I'm not sick of knitting, I have plenty of WIP's to work on, and the next "deadline" I have is the end of July for next year's fair and then my brother-in-law's wedding in September.

I ordered yarn for an afghan for the wedding, but it's on back order, so I still have a while to get some other things done before that starts. Any suggestions on what I should work on next, a scarf for the DH, the Red Riding Hood cape for the tiny one, a hat for myself? Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Alcazar

Oh I will miss you! This is such a beautiful sweater, but I felt it was a bit too trendy for me at this point in my life, so it's going to Tiny's 16 year-old summer babysitter.

I'm not sure how it is really going to turn out; I'm not sure this girl knows how/where to take measurements. She gave me hers, and they were very similar to mine... she's a size 2 and I'm an 8. But I am knitting according to the measurements she gave me. Worst Case Scenario: I have to keep this one and try a smaller size for her, oh darn.

The body is actually quite easy. It's top-down with saddle shoulders, and then knit-in-the-round. Appropriate decreases and increases, but pretty basic.

Then you get to the flounce. It's not HARD, but 8 row cable repeat on top of a 12 row, short row dart repeat with the short row darts between the 6th and 7th row that is being joined to the bind-off of the sweater body. Not something you can knit in your sleep.

I was reading the pattern with my knitting group last night, and while I got many supportive groans and eye rolls, one even suggested that I stop knitting the pattern...

Well it took a few minutes, some math, and a bit of paper, but I think I got it figured out. But still, not for knitting in your sleep.

Anyway, according to revelry, I think I've been working on this about 6 weeks, and I'm certainly making progress, but I keep finding little bits of time, and instead of knitting on this, I cast-on new projects, because that is really what I need right now.

We'll see how much longer it takes to finish this, since I start teaching science and math after school programs this week, so time is going to get even tighter... and I only have this and two other projects to get done by Christmas, though one is already started. But yeah, certainly don't have way too much on my plate these days.

Oh, also, I have plans to clean my Prelude, because.... it's 1! Yay, it's been about a year since I got my wheel, and oh my, the amount of yarn that has been made, but between yarn coming from animals, oil, and just life, it is time to give it a wipe down.

The DH helped me get some wood cleaner specifically for woods treated with tung oil, so we'll see how all that goes. In the meantime, thanks to the good folks at Paradise Fibers, my stash will be ever increasing, and I will try to do a better job of posting about the great new fibers I'm getting!

Fiber Club Win

So now I remember why I didn't really knit while I was working full time. I'm still knitting and spinning, but between working 4 jobs that I get paid for, plus homeschooling Tiny, keeping up the house, and being the new librarian at church, finding time to post has been difficult.

But, I got a new shipment from the PF Fiber Club a week or so ago, and I was in love. I was also sent some natural mohair and shetland, but this dyed merino was so amazing I had to get more.

It's by Becoming Art, who is apparently a local to PF indie dyer who has become their in house dyer. Yay for all of us, these colors are awesome!

This colorway is called Time, Time and is reported to be one in a line of Alice in Wonderland inspired colors (is it just me or are Alice and her friends popping up all over lately?).

This is the first time I've actually bought anything that was featured in the Fiber Club, though I certainly have plans to do so in the future. This color was just too amazing to get stuck with just 4 ounces, I needed more because I knew I was going to want something big out of it.

The plans for now are to fractal it in a sock/fingering weight and tackle another shawl from Malabrigo Book 4. It's going to be a while before all of that gets done, but now I have what I need to do it!

Hodge Podge Spinning

I have a couple of things on my wheel right now, and by that, I mean I have three bobbins, each with a different kind of fiber on them.

Bobbin 1
     100% alpaca that I dyed myself... and kind of felted. Yeah, it's not so fun to spin, though not terrible if I fluff it out before I start for the day. Hopefully will end up in the Celestarium shawl one day. Need to be a bit darker first.

Bobbin 2
   Alpaca/Merino blend, all natural and hard to see the differences. It's a roughly 66/33 split, but I'm blending them myself, by holding strips of each together. We'll see how it goes, hopefully pretty well, though it is kind of a pain to try to keep both kinds of fiber in all parts of the yarn.

Bobbin 3
    Milk protein top and silk cloud. I had small amounts of each of these and found that they were both difficult to spin on their own, so of course the solution is to spin them together.

There's really nothing to see at this point, but I'm venturing into blending on my own. I'm sure there are better ways to blend top, but this is how I'm doing it for now.

Adventures with a Ball Winder

I need one soooo badly!

A friend of mine let me borrow his ball wonder the other week. Wow, it was so great! I caked all my handspun and a few commercial yarns as well. It was so quick and easy, though it was a bit loud.

I guess the next step is to try the method I saw on Pinterest where you wrap it with a stand mixer. I keep putting it off for some reason. Apparently it's very quick, but I can't seem to feel that it wouldn't really help the noise factor.

 

This one isn't mine, it's from geocachingknitter.blogspot.com, but you get the idea of how it is supposed to work. But it looks like that will wait for another day...

Braid Dying

Today we're going to go back in time a bit and go over how I dyed that yellow alpaca that did so well at the fair.

I figured it was only 3.5 ounces, so if there was ever a good time to experiment with alpaca this was it. I was going for a variegated yellow-orange fiber. I knew I wanted the whole thing to be on a base of yellow, so I just threw the braid into my crock pot and then added the dye.

It probably would have helped quite a bit if I had soaked it first, but it came out basically orange on the surface.
I washed it, let it dry- while still in the braid. After it was dried I pulled out the braid and decided that there was more white than I wanted. So I braided it again, which left different sections exposed, as you can see below.

It went back into the crock pot, washed, dried, and spun into this!

 

It didn't end up quite as variegated as I had hoped originally, but there is still some white and a bit of orange in there too. It probably won't become a standard method for dying, but it was fun to try.