Why me?

Nothing I've touched has gone right today.

I tried to add new stuff & sync the ipod for the trip, my computer went haywire.

Tried winding a hank of Colinette Jitterbug yarn in to a cake, ended up with yarn barf to fix.

Tried to make the Youngest happy with a hotdog for lunch. Nope, didn't work either.

Sigh.

I still have to pack, clean house, get the Eldest out of school and say goodbye to him and the Youngest as I travel to Florida for a good 'ol hurricane in the background wedding.

I'm planning on doing a new scarf on the way down. I hope to finally have something to show for my knitting efforts on Monday.



See you then!

Making Tweed Yarn

Remember this colorway of roving that I blended together, the Midnight in the Garden one?

Well, I've been itching to try my hand at making a tweed yarn. So, I got out the ghetto hand cards (Dog slicker brushes) and using this tutorial from David and this tutorial from Abby, got to blending the Midnight in the Garden roving.

I had so much fun doing this. I made a bazillion rolags and took them with me to the folks' place this past weekend. I got about half of it spun up and guess what? I made tweed singles! This was so cool. I had been scared to blend the roving, scared of losing all that beautiful color. But I didn't.

The mohair disappeared, but all spread out it makes the rolag look iridescent like the film on a bubble. In the singles, it gives it a surprising sheen if held in the light a certain way. The base of the singles is now a pretty charcoal gray and there are little bits of orange, turquoise, lime green, pink and dark blue scattered throughout. When plied, I should have a pretty heathery charcoal tweed to show off.

It turned out so much better than I expected:

Click to enlarge and see the pretty singles!

Check out all the little bits of fluff in the rolag behind the bobbin. It was almost impossible to get a good pic of the rolag, this was the best I could do. It's amazing how in dull light it looks like steel wool. Looks much better here.

As for the "W" tank top, I finished the first side. As for the second, I had completed about half of it when I realized that I had made a huge honkin' mistake in it and had to frog back to the first wedge and that's where it stands now. I'm hoping that I can make some inroads on that this weekend on the really long drive we have to FLA.

Aren't the colors beautiful?

Up to You Know Where...

I'm up to my eyeballs (or as my Dad would say, up to my butt in alligators) with goings on this week, so I apologize if there is little knitting or spinning wise.

Here's what's going on:

1. My cousin's wedding is this weekend and is approx. 10 hours away from me in Clearwater, FL. So I'm doing laundry from last weekend's trip, packing and pre-cooking so the children don't starve while their Dad keeps them. Dad doesn't cook. I don't think he even knows how to use a can opener.

2. The big children's consignment sale is coming up and all of the items (all 300 of them) I'm selling are due bright and early on Tuesday morning. Each item has to be on hangers, ironed, and tagged. Did I put this off until almost too late? Why, yes, I did.

3. The Eldest's birthday is on the 15th so I've been trying to party plan. It's going to be a combination of Pokemon and glow in the dark Monster Mini Golf. I'm very unprepared for this, but I did get the place booked today.

In My Knitting World:

I'm getting start-itis again. Every time I think about taking a trip I start spending oodles of time going through Ravelry and my stash to see what I can do. Forget that I already have two WIPs on the needles, okay? oh, and that the baby that one of them is for is due any second now. Ack!

SO. Please forgive me! I hope to have tons of FOs for you after the weekend. Keyword in that sentence is hope...

Labor Day Weekend Fun

I hope that you had fun over the weekend. For me, it was a great, restful holiday weekend.

We went to my Uncle's farm (to hand deliver the Wedding Stole to the bride's mother) and saw some "Houseys" to use the Youngest's term for horses. He's got a bunch of Arabians that are absolutely gorgeous. This is one of the "babies" he has:

They are all like great big dogs. If you go out into the pasture you'll be surrounded and each one of them will be competing for attention. It's really very cool. We fed them pears straight off the tree while we were out there. It made us very popular with the four footed crowd.

The kids also spent their time exhausting my parents dog. Here's pic of her in her favorite resting spot, on top of the back of the couch (she's weird):

And something really cool was waiting for me in the mail when I got home. Two patterns from White Lies Designs: the Easy Lace Jacket and the Madeline Shawl Jacket. I won these in a drawing from the Sexy Knitters Club for doing a Knit a long over there. Way cool!

I'll have an update on the W tank top and some spinning stuff done over the weekend as well for you tomorrow. See ya then!