Category — Spinning

I spent the majority of last weekend doing a whole lot of…not much. Which was exactly what I needed after at least a month of being overbooked. I’ve had a run of really cool stuff to do, but it was all back-to-back activity, and my Myers-Briggs Introverted self was only too pleased to spend the weekend without agenda.

I did manage, however, in the midst of planned inactivity, to spin up some yarn by request. My dance teacher and friend, Asharah, likes to have shadowy colors, and she has asked for a pair of handspun, handknit arm warmers/fingerless mitts to wear when she dances. I found the fiber while at Maryland Sheep and Wool, at the booth for The Drafting Zone. (I don’t know if they have a website, but their phone number is 301-464-5738.)

The producers of this fiber call it “Pewter”, but to me, it looked like moonlight dappling in shadow, so that’s what it’s become in my head — and it was clear to me that Asharah would like the colors. For myself, I loved that it has 30% silk and 70% merino.

Yarn-in-progress — roving in the foreground, bobbin of singles in the mid-ground. (el-cheapo basket that looks like an arse in the background.)

I am completely in love with the sheen of silk. While this fiber shed EVERYWHERE as I was pre-drafting and spinning, while spinning it slid through my hands like…well, silk. And when I was done plying, I had approximately 180 yards of wool/silk blend yarn, roughly sportweight.

If this turns out, post-swatching, to not be enough, I have another 4 ounces of the same fiber to spin up. My hope, though, is that this will be enough for the short fingerless mitts she wants, so that I can use the remaining 4 ounces to make her some thick-and-thin yarn that she can use on a belt or some other belly-dance type accoutrement.

More images of this same yarn are over on Flickr; but for now, I leave you with my favourite model, Brutus, who is debating whether he will allow me to dump out some more of my stash and submit his image to StuffOnMyCat.com. (I’m betting…not.)

And also the beginning of block trois.

I have got to get better about documenting what I’m doing — I think I may have knit the first block on size 9 needles instead of 8s, which is what these are — I had to dip into a new ball to complete the last three rows of the six repeats of the second block, there, and am hoping that won’t be a trend for the rest of the blanket. I had a bunch left over from the first ball, but it may just be differences in yardage from skein to skein.

Also, I’m way behind on my projected/intended two-blocks-per-month to be done in a year (theoretically), so I need to catch up. 2 down, 3rd begun, 7 to go before the end of May. My trip to CA should give me the knitting time I need for the catching up, though. The question remains whether my fortitude to knit only on Lizard Ridge will last the trip.

I am so loving the color changes, though. I’m wondering how some of the subtler colorways will knit up, and whether I’ll want to do some mega-contrasty alternating skeins or not.

I spent last evening’s stolen spinning time playing with a bright yellow dyed silk cap, given to me Saturday at MDSW by Robin Russo at The Spinning Studio. (Where the drool-inducing inlaid Vermont spinning wheels lived, and don’t think I didn’t have a moment where I wanted to drop everything I was carrying and beg them to let me take home the mother of pearl one…)

Robin was perfectly lovely to me, when I asked how one prepares a silk cap for spinning — I’ve never spun with 100% silk before, and when I asked, she said, hand me that yellow cap out of the bin and I’ll show you. She promptly DID show me, and then gave me the yellow cap as a gift, saying that it doesn’t sell well as a color. (Admittedly I’d just purchased that stack of caps from her in blues and greens, but still. I was very touched.)

So in practice I spun up the yellow cap last night, all except the last layer, which I pre-drafted and is sitting at home waiting for me as I type. I initially was thinking disparate small skeins of silk laceweight, but now I am wondering if I will spin it all up as one skein with long color blocks. There is only the one yellow cap, and then I have two each of the green and the two blue colorways, so I must ponder. Anybody want to weigh in with suggestions?

~dugga dun, dugga dun~ Footloose and fancy free!

All I need now is Fozzie and a Studebaker.

I managed to get the rotating header images up to 14 for now; every one of the header bars include photos (or in most cases, mega-crops of photos) that I’ve taken myself, of places I’ve been, projects I’ve done, etcetera. I hope as time goes on that I can keep adding to the inventory up there. I am inordinately pleased with the sit-and-click satisfaction, seeing the banner changing all the time. I like this much better than one static header.

Holiday preparations continue apace here at GeekCentral. The upcoming weekend is Shopping Weekend, but it’s also the weekend my dad, newly retired to North Carolina, will be here visiting a sick friend and filling in to play the organ at said friend’s church. He’s staying at our house for the first time, and I am in full-on panic-cleaning mode — or rather I would be, I guess, if I hadn’t become utterly obsessed with the WordPress blog upgrade I’m busily using as Procrastination Tool Numero Uno.

Once the kinks start really getting worked out around here and I can post images without breaking the fragile new threads of this here blog, I hope to show you the tragedy of last week, when my beloved Clotho (that’s my Kromski Minstrel spinning wheel, for anybody who didn’t know) took damage in the form of a chip out of the wheel rim. She seems to be okay, if a bit cosmetically lowered, but I’m hoping maybe I can find a way to fix it.

What are you folks up to, in terms of holiday prep? (if any?) I continue to read with awe, admiration, and not a little envy as Amanda Soule talks about their family’s winter preparations. I’m also spending a fair portion of time surfing over at Etsy, and the other item of considerable research and discussion for me right now is Steampunk, specifically as it relates to costuming. (I won’t be offended if you have to go look it up — I’d never heard of it until a few weeks ago, and Googling the term is what sparked the costuming style obsession.)