Stuck

I have found myself in a bit of a rut recently, hence the general blog silence. Sadly, this is not only a fibery rut, but also a major career rut that I'm trying to work out. There is more to be said on that, but I'm not quite at a point to lay down my thoughts on virtual paper, so it will have to wait. Instead, I will give you some images from our Easter weekend in Edinburgh.

We went hiking on Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park.

 

Girls in gorse

We saw some interesting people on the Royal Mile.

 

Weirdest spinning outfit I've seen yet

I bought a bit of yarn,

and a new ring.

And I knit most of half a sock in three days.

Life goes on...

Good mail

Yesterday was one of the first real wintery days we've had - rainy, chilly, grey and windy. Let's hear it for London winters! But I arrived home with two whiny children in tow to find a very large package waiting for me. Inside the package was a metric buttload of pretty fiber.

First there was a pound of this:

HYFC Timber Romney, September 2010. I was so taken with the photos of this fiber online that I ordered four more bags before mine even arrived. I have visions of handspun garter stitch sweater in my head.

Then there was October's fiber club:

HYFC Burrows Rambouillet, October 2010 offering. This fiber is so gorgeous, and it reminds me of the sea on a stormy fall day. Greys, pale green, pale blue, dark grey, brown. It is stunning. I still haven't spun up my first Rambouillet, which was also a fiber club installment. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this but it is incredibly soft and cushy, even in top form.

Then there was the big deal - my Shelburne Falls Hat was randomly selected for a prize in the 4! Oz! Challenge spin/knit-along this fall, and my prize came in this big bag.

One bump each from Adrian, Amy and David. Let's take a closer look...

First up is Corriedale in the colorway Twenty Ten from Spunky Eclectic.

Lots of oranges and pink, with some darker blue and brown thrown in. Totally not colors I would have picked out for myself, but totally amazing.

Next is Happy Dance Shetland from Hello Yarn.

Happy Dance indeed! I love shetland, and I can't wait to spin up these gorgeous colors. Dev might even go for this yarn - she can not get enough pink. Still (as an aside, I know she's my daughter because I distinctly remember her arrival, and I'm pretty sure they didn't switch her at the hospital, but where did this pink thing come from? Or is it just a little girl thing? Will it pass eventually? Please?).

Last, but certainly not least is the Southern Cross Fibre offering: Cairns Polwarth.

I'm not sure where to begin except to say that David could not have picked a colorway I would adore more if he'd known me from birth (the colors are much better in the first picture of all three). And Polwarth! Excuse me while I go have a little lie down until the blood returns to my brain.

I want to thank all of the people involved in the whole Challenge - the dyers for doing what they do so well, and the moderators Stacie and Maryse for organizing the whole thing. It was such a fun experience to spin with a design in mind and actually see it through to the finished project. I can't wait for next year!

Weekender scores

I managed to make it out of the weekend with only one skein of yarn:

Artist's Palette Smoothie Sock, to make some socks for Himself in gratitude for taking over when I abandoned the family for two weekends in a row. Not bad, right? Only one skein. Well, only one skein of yarn. There was a bit more rampant consumerism on the fiber side of the equation:

Superfine alpaca/BFL top from Fluff-n-stuff

Natural dyed pencil roving from Artisan Threads

Cashmere waste (!)(Like anything cashmere could be waste!!!) for £5/bag, also from Artisan Threads

1 kilo of raw Gotland Fleece from Well Manor Farm

I managed to resist buying "The Haapsulu Shawl" after my Estonian Lace knitting class, but only because I couldn't find any yarn in the entire marketplace that was fine enough. However, I now think that I have enough wool-based items to play with for a long, long time. Thank goodness I'm not going to any more knitting events until (maybe) April!

Summertime, and the blogging is absent

Sorry about my unplanned hiatus. I've spent the last two weeks in the US with family, and the last two days trying to shake the jetlag before I get on yet another plane (this time for work). But I do have lots of finished objets to share with you.

First off: I did manage to spin up my yarn in those few days at home between trips. I ended up with 96 yds of bulky/superbulky superwash merino,

and about 175 yds of somewhat overplied Targhee.

About 91 yards of the merino became this,

and 170 yards of the Targhee became this,

which still needs the ribbing redone on smaller needles so it doesn't fall off quite so easily. The patterns are written and off to my wonderful test knitters, and I hope to have them available for release soon. Along with some better pictures!

I also managed to finish 99.9% of the mind-numbing stockinette on the Aran Necklace camisole. And then I ran out of yarn. Thankfully I was in the hidden section of the hem, and I had some DK weight random cotton lying around.

Last night's bout of jet lag-induced insomnia meant that this baby has it's hem sewn down and is blocked and drying on the guest bed as we speak. Hooray! Of course, autumn has arrived here in the UK (unlike in New England where it was ludicrously hot) (ok, it wasn't Texas hot, but it was hotter then England!), and it's not likely that it will be warm enough to wear on it's own, but that's ok. Especially since the armholes dip down below bra line on the side. Hmmm...

Finally, I finished my first pair of socks in a couple of months. I kind of lost my sock mojo at the start of the summer holidays in July, but 7 hour plane rides do allow for some concentrated sock time. I can only show part of these, since they're a design that I'm submitting, but they were great fun to knit. I liked the yarn alot too - Cherry Tree Hill Supersock merino. I think the colorway was "Blueberry Hill", which I liked. US 1.5/2.5 mm needles, 8.5 stitches per inch.

I wrote this up and sent it off to Sock Madness for next year, so the picture is deliberately obscured. Just in case you thought I was doing some drunken knitware photography.

So, two weeks vacation and no blogging means three completed original designs, and one summer tank I can't wear until next June. But there's a lot going on this fall - the iKnit Weekender is in a couple of weeks, and yesterday on my bike ride I hatched out a great and completely insane plan to knit sweaters for six people in my family (including me to be fair), four handspun, one cabled, one colorwork, by next March. Methinks that any Christmas knitting to be gifted has already been knit this year...

A wee bit of fiber to tide you over til the Tour...

So I'm full in to the rush of knitting six different versions of Annis by July 7th, but really the deadline is July 3rd, because that's when the Tour de Fleece/Tour de France starts. My goal for the TdF is to spin up at least three of the seven lbs of Hello Yarn Fiber Club I have sitting around. Here's the status of the pile as of March:

Since then, there has been two further shipments (one more pound) added. So Something Must Be Done.

But, as I said, there's some scarf knitting to be done in the meantime. So here's the last spinny bit for a while: Dev's Mermaid Yarn, spun from top that she dyed herself, destined for some sort of top-down yoke sweatery thing.

Spun/plied at 12:1, short forward draw, about 300 yds from 8 oz. That's some dense yarn! But there's a lovely pink bit showing up there - I'll have to figure out how to get it front and center on the sweater.

I split the top in half lengthwise and spun two bobbins starting from opposite ends - as you can see, one end was a lot darker then the other, and I wanted to try and minimize the dark-to-light variation. It was a fairly easy spin - a bit of felting/sticking in spots, but I predrafted a bit to loosen up the fibers and it went smoothly. I plied pretty tightly in order to get some good bounce in the finished yarn and then soaked in warm water. In fact, I put the yarn in warm water and forgot about it until the next morning, so it got a really good soaking...

So that's it on the spinning until the prologue. I'm thinking about going in chronological order, starting with Mollusc Wensleydale (August 2007!).

I even have a plan for this fiber: laceweight singles to make an Anne Hanson shawl. Either the Honeybee Stole, which I already have the pattern for, or one of the Raven ones she's done. After I finish that, I've got 8 oz of Insect Wings(somehow I don't have a photo of this fiber, so I'm pointing you towards the HYFC pool) to do up. Not sure what form that will take though - anyone have any suggestions? After Insect Wings is some more Norway, and then Five Plum Pie. And then Sour Fig. If I can get through those, I'll be a happy camper! And there will be space in the bin for April, May and June's installments (1.5 more pounds - ulp!).