As The Yarn Turns

Don't Panic

You know it's going to be a bad day when your husband calls to tell you he has a flat tire before you've finished your first cup of coffee. Worse he needs your help. You don't want to see me before I've finished my first cup of coffee. You have to be pretty darn desperate to want my help before my first cup of coffee. We got past that crisis but continued to have mini crises all day long. I was smart though. I decided yesterday might not be a good day to knit. I did get in some quality spinning time. I've been spinning some grayish brown Jacob wool off and on for a while now. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to make out of it. I like the heathery look of it. I'll show some pictures later. The spinning seemed to do the trick since the day got noticeably better after that. We went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last night. It was a fun movie and a great ending to the day. There's also a great preview just before the movie starts, at least in my theater. I won't spoil it for you. It even had a bit of knitting content and sheep shots.

Today I went and bought a couple of bushes and a small tree from the local master gardeners' plant sale. Then broke to news to Rick that we needed some holes dug. He took it well since the ground was still wet from the downpour we had last night. Then off to knit a bit with the local knitting group. I had planned to wash my fleece today but that will wait until tomorrow when we should have a bit of sunshine. I've also been knitting away at the edging of my Shetland Tea Shawl.

I'm enjoying knitting this edging. It's easy enough to memorize after a few times and is a very nice edging. It's also going a lot more quickly than I thought. I'm guessing that I've knit about 30-40 percent of the edging.

I'm off to do a bit more knitting.

by Sydney  |

Fleeced

Yes, I have my first fleece, or at least part of a fleece. This will be my first experience with a raw fleece so I'm excited. If the weather cooperates, I plan to wash it this weekend. Right now though, it doesn't look like it's going to cooperate. The plan is to do a cold water soak followed by hot soapy water soak. I haven't decided if I'm going to wash it in the washing machine or in the sink. The machine sounds so much easier. On the other hand, I'm not ready to pay for washing machine repairs if something should go wrong. I'll report back on the final decision and hopefully the document the process. Here are a couple of web sites that have some basic instructions on washing a fleece.

Running Moon Farm

Paradise Fibers

The fleece is a white Romney fleece from Julius the sheep that I bought off of Ebay from shepherdess03221. In its unwashed state, it appears to be a nice soft fleece and it has that wonderful sheepy smell. There's very little vegetable matter.

Keep in mind though that I'm a neophyte at judging fleece. I am excited about the process. Plus the fleece is small enough that I don't feel overwhelmed. While eight pounds of fleece sounds nice, I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. One thing at a time.

A follow up to my previous discussion on the errata for the Gathering of Lace book, for those that haven't looked back through the comments. Lucie mentioned that the first edition first printing of the hardback version does have all a lot of errors in it. Apparently the charts look nothing like those in the errata. Since I have the first edition second printing of the hardback version, many of those errors must have been corrected after the first printing. (I'm assuming here.) So thank you Lucie for solving the errata mystery. Go check out her version of the Shetland Tea Shawl and other lace projects. She has some beautiful knitting there.

I'm off...

by Sydney  |

Spindle Fun!

I've been eyeing some of the lightweight bead spindles lately. While I would like to buy one, right now I would rather spend my money on other things. Then the Spindlers list recently had a spindle swap. It's basically where people make spindles and swap them. Well I received the cutest spindle in the swap, just what I've been wanting. The bead appears to be made of polymer clay, perhaps. I really like it.

As you can see, I wasted no time trying it out. I'm seeing this tucked into my work bag. It also came with some luscious polypay/angora blend. I haven't tried spinning that yet. I did my first trial run with my old standby, bluefaced leicester. The nicest thing about swaps, though, is seeing the different ideas people have for their spindles. I guess we all get stuck in our own mental rut and seeing the different spindles people make gives me fresh ideas of my own.

In other news, I finally put the zipper in my Ribby Cardi. I've never put a zipper in a knitted garment before. It looked intimidating. Besides, just about the time I got to the zipper, the weather suddenly warmed up to the 70s and 80s during the day. So I decided the zipper could wait. Perhaps some handy little elf would put it in for me over the summer. Then suddenly the weather started getting down into the 30s at night. Seeing my only chance to wear the Ribby Cardi before next fall, I sat down and put the zipper in. It turned out okay. I think I'm going to finish the inside of the neck with some ribbon. Mostly because I think it will give it a more finished look where I've cut off the zipper to shorten it. Plus I'd like to do a finally washing and blocking. Otherwise it's finished. I like it. Now that I've conquered my fear of zippers, maybe I'll do another one. I'll post some pictures once it's washed and blocked.

It's going to be really nice to start a new project soon.

by Sydney  |