It travels

Yarn or Death was very happy with the first installment of her yarn. And it's still so shiny and pretty, I'm still a little surprised considering how hard the roving felt. Here it is sitting on my messy desk at work.
YoD is traveling tomorrow and is all excited about the number of hours in the car - knitting time, don't you know.
Tonight will be an Ash Ketchem junk food festival -- yay! -- the start of overeating season has arrived.
Have a wonderful Halloween/weekend!

Again, no picture

It's been really cold down here this week, which I love, being from a cold place.
While I plan to ply the blue silk/merino tonight, I may or may not have a picture of it to show before going to bed. But I did get all 8 oz. spun up last night.
So, a random thought from the past weekend - Apple Crisp. (Note, we made on big one, cooked it for 40 minutes, used Granny Smiths and Macintosh apples, added a dash of ginger, nutmeg and cloves to the apples, and a full stick of butter for the topping.) We generally try to roll out some new dish in our house every other weekend or so when the weather gets cold, this one was a keeper.
Thanks to Lori for inspiring me to share that one.

A picture of that silk and merino blend

Funnily enough, I usually have trouble getting colors to come out as vivid and bright as they are in real life in my pictures. Tonight, the spinning is shining through. Must be the silk, I guess.
It's so nice and soft, I want to get it all spun (8oz. really shouldn't take long) and see how it looks when plied.
Hopefully I'll remember to ask YoD tomorrow whose roving this is so I can give them proper credit.

No picture (yet); the new addiction

On the topic of 2 great tastes that go great together? Silk and wool!
Yarn or Death went to SAFF and had a great time. I'm jealous, because I miss going to things like the NH Sheep and Wool Festival. Raising sheep and other woolly things this far south seems, well, kind of mean to me as it's so hot. But anyway . . .
Before she was leaving she asked if I ever spun with non-animal fibers. I explained my spinning is really good enough for me to have ventured into cotton, hemp, stuff like that. But I'm not as dense as I look, so I said "if you see anything at SAFF that you really like, feel free to buy it and I'll spin it for you - unless you want to do it yourself." YoD isn't ready to start spinning, but I now have 8oz. each of silk/merino blend in summer sky blue (2 oz. of which I spun last night while watching the Colts and Titans) and some chocolate brown alpaca.
Before (15 years ago - that's scary, when did I get so old?) I'd worked with silk, but it was in brick form, and I got very frustrated and decided I hated silk.
I was wrong.
I'll post pictures of that silk/merino tonight. Maybe I can haul the wheel out onto the porch before the light goes away.
The pre-drafting is different than straight wool - the silk gets really smooshed down sort of locked together, so after pulling the roving into quarters, I then find it works best to fluff it out from the side, turn it 90 degrees and fluff it again. The roving goes from hard, squeaky and dense (do you know what I mean about silk fibers being squeaky?) to soft and cloudy and suddenly very shiny.
So, what's worse that suddenly discovering your taste for something wickedly expensive like silk and wool roving? Finding someone else insane enough to fund your problem. Even YoD saw the danger here.

Weekend before Halloween

Night pictures don't show colors very well, especially not these blues. But I'll try and get one in daylight.
I'm thinking of calling this one "Frost Flowers".
And we carved our pumpkin this afternoon. We stopped by the courthouse down town to see what the local schools had done to see if we could get inspired.
The pumpkin design was the little one's idea, start to finish (I just work here).

Another version of the Matrix

Snow with shadows is the colorway. Since I'm getting a little tired of doing the same pattern over and over, I'm going to mix it up a little bit this time. I'll use the leaf pattern at the edges and diagonal eyelet pattern for the main body of the shawl.

Some stuff (no pictures, sorry)

So I've moved past the neck of the linen stitch pullover - meaning I've cast on to close up the neck again, and once I get back down to just the back, I'll take another picture.
I have this idea for small knit messenger bags - using the linen stitch again for strength and stability - in wool. Maybe I'll play with that. Or maybe this should be where I learn to crochet. (I can hear Yarn or Death laughing as I type this.) Something maybe 10" by 12" with a should strap? I'll maybe play with that.
So, I hear that yarn I made for my sister in law has become a sweater! I'm hoping for a picture . . .

9

Happy nine year anniversary, hon.
It would be nice if we could spend it hiking in the Whites, but it sure beats not celebrating 9 years.

Once again, asking you to try and visualize this

Trust me, here . . .
These two plied together - sort of soft and misty looking. Like a foggy mountain-side.
Maybe it's something you have to see.
In my head, I'm picturing Mt. Chocorua on a misty late Sept. or early Oct. day.

Getting side tracked by junk food

Not really junk food I suppose, but I got onto a wristers kick. This started off innocently enough using up the black acrylic for the little one's costume, but then it turned into using up this ball, and now, look, I have some leftover acrylic wool blend from last winter . . .
The linen stitch is still coming along, and once that's a bit closer to done, the stars are getting dug back out.
Oh, and I have an idea for that left over fleece and some old t-shirts, but we'll see if that comes to anything. Sewing and me, not such good friends.

Making slow progress

So, the Iron Matrix is done. I did a better job of blocking than you might think from these pictures, I just chucked the poor thing down on the floor to take it's picture.


And here's the linen stitch pull over. Next row, I cast off for the neck.

Sad

I've mentioned this before, but our house came with a cat, Sneaky.
Sneaky was always an indoor/outdoor kitty. We didn't change that when we moved into the house. He tended to take off for a couple days every fall. We always worried; he always came back.

Sneaky has been missing now for almost a week.

Very sad.

Like he said, prepping for Halloween

JoAnne Fabrics for yarn for fingerless gloves, fleece and felt; $26.00.
Blank truckers hat at meshhat.com to glue the felt cut outs onto; $14.00.
Prepping for Halloween (what my husband called this photo on Flickr) . . .

You guessed it.

Priceless.

The small one has been told (in advance) that no, he can't wear the costume to dinner.

Look at this mess - and some not mess

Here it is - I even spread it out a little bit so you can see what's under the piles. It's really quite the mountain.

And here's the finished spinning. 2 lb. of Gotland and 8 oz. of superfine alpaca. It's hard to take a good picture of black fibers, but I think you can get a sense of how soft this stuff is.
It also comes in chocolate brown . . . . mmmmmm earthtone vest.

Done with the alpaca

That 8 oz. spun up really quickly, and it's so soft and heavy! I love it. 8 oz. isn't enough to do much though.
And I'm too tired to take a darn picture of it tonight.
So now what?
Yeah, I'm looking at more colors for the next color spinning project.
I'm in love with Ruby Merino from Copper Moose. Purple Orchid is lovely too. Together, perhaps not so much, and I've already done that last year. Maybe 1/2 lb. the Ruby or the Purple Orchid as poison with Plum and Navy. Sadly, CM doesn't do 1/4 lb. and it's not in my nature (or within my closet constraints) to stash fleece. . .

What am I doing???
My knitting basket looks like the Knitting Muse barfed in it; I can't buy fleece. I must knit, I must conquer my Don Adams fear of that stupid stars jacket and finish some things.
Yeah, that's what I'll do.
I promise, tomorrow a snap of that completed spinning and my train wreck of a knitting basket. They say you can be a wonderful example or a terrible warning . . . I'm veering into terrible warning territory these days.
:)

Ash

Here's the uncut fleece for the vest - I'm just going to make it a pull over. We have a mesh hat on order and I have some felt to glue the design onto it. I've made the fingerless gloves already (as you can see below) and he'll wear jeans and sneakers and his backpack. I think we can get Piki to stay on his shoulder, maybe with pipe cleaners.
Now we just need a poke ball.

Finally some pictures

So, here's the tunic - if you click on this to get the larger image, you should be able to get a sense of the design.


Poor Yarn or Death (formerly the Mad Crocheter) - she's fighting the good fight with linen. I told her she might not be ready to work with such a non-cooperative fiber as linen, because despite all the needle changes the gauge is still wonky. I told her maybe to try a different stitch, like linen stitch (it must have that name for a reason, right?). I think that if she plays with the linen and does some swatching, she might get the final piece of understanding hand (fiber content + gauge + stitch pattern). I've promised to show her how to do linen stitch in person, because as she pointed out "I've seen it described and it STILL doesn't make sense to me". Like knitting with beads; I get that.
And this spinning - it's the super soft black alpaca. I only have 8 oz. so it should be spun and plied by the weekend.
And for final fun - I get to go to Jo-Anne's this weekend to start putting together this year's Halloween costume. Yup, you guessed it, Ash Ketchem. My wonderful spouse managed to talk him out of wanting to go as Pikachu, and man, that would have been a tough costume to make!

White with blue, looking for a new lace pattern

Maybe I'm inspired by the fact that it's dyed blue, but I like KnitPicks Candle Flame Scarf Pattern. Probably double the size and work the beads up the center of the flames.
Not really branching out, is it?

More bad snaps - think this will go with white?

I'm thinking of a shawl, probably Bare fingering weight in white. These blues make me think of the shadows on bright clean snow. I got 4 of the lighter and one of the darker - for the darkest parts of the shadows - and now I just have to find the right lace pattern. I'm tired of the pattern I've been using for the Matrix.
Feel free to shoot me lace ideas or arguments about the color choices. I'm in love with these beads - I'm such a poor photographer, I really can't do them justice. They're so lively for little pieces of glass. Very fun. Once they're in the piece I don't think the difference in the 2 colors will be as stark as it might look when they're in the tubes.

No, really, I'm still working on stuff

What a busy fall it's been and fall doesn't really start until the 22nd. Here's the Gotland - washing is a challenge, this stuff felts if you look at it funny! - and the Iron Matrix. Not a spectacular picture, but I'm more than 1/2 done.