What colors make you happy? For me, it's bright vivid colors. A bright cheery red makes me break out in huge smiles.

I've been having so much fun lately blending different colors of roving and then spinning them up to see what I get. Want an example?

Check out this roving here:


A blend of Coral Red, Turquoise Blue and a Gold. The gold is really neat. One minute it's gold and the next a real subtle green. It completely depends on the light and which of the two colors are next to it.

I've blended it twice (by putting it through the hackle) to get a less pronounced striping effect. I really like it.

Here's what it looks like spun up as a single:
The color is a bit bright in that one. Here they are together and a little less bright:

I'll be pulling out those couple of slubs when I ply it. Even with the slubs it looks pretty neat. This colorway would be a fun one to do as an art yarn as well.

I can't wait to see what it looks like as a plied yarn!

How dumb was this?

All this week is basketball camp from 6:30 to 8:00pm. I have to sit there for an hour and a half while the Eldest goes and has fun. Granted, I don't have to deal with the Youngest while this is going on since his father will be home (yeah!) but an hour and a half is a long time without something to do.

I should know, since I did it last night. We forgot all about the camp yesterday. At 6:17 I happened to look up at the clock and suddenly remembered. I must have said every bad word in the book in mass panic. The place where it's being held is about 20 minutes away. I literally grabbed the keys, my purse and the boy and we raced to the minivan and left.

Did I grab anything to do? No. I spent an hour and a half watching little boys do drills. Not real exciting. So I decided to remedy that tonight by taking the baby sweater with me. But.

I did something really dumb. A month or two ago I needed the needles that were being used for the terracotta baby sweater on another project.

Remember this?

Did I write down what size they were before removing them? Um, no. Now I have no idea what size to use for the sweater. I tried to figure out what they were used on so I could backtrack and couldn't figure that out either. I'm usually so good about writing down this kind of stuff.

I'm going to try out the size fours or fives or maybe sixes tonight and see if I can get it to look like the rest of the sweater. Not a smart gal at all, am I?

That was rhetorical, so please don't answer. Okay?

My First Knitting Group

I joined my first knitting group this past weekend. It was low-key and small, but surprisingly fun. There were only four of us, but a few more are in the group that couldn't make it.

The four of us that did make it were so different from each other. It amazes me the way a hobby can bring together people from all walks of life that would probably never associate with each other in their everyday lives. Without knitting, we would never have even crossed paths. That is so cool to me. I can't wait to go again. I won't make it this weekend, but I hope to go the next.

I took along my Anthropologie Capelet I've been working on. It's an easy, relatively mindless project that can be worked on around others (unlike the wedding shawl I'm slogging through at night.) I got so hooked on it that I finished it up that night:

Please excuse the blurriness of the pic if you click to enlarge it. The 7 year old photographer was very put out at my making him do a photoshoot and was barely able to stand still long enough to take the pic.

This one is much clearer:This capelet was done on size 11 needles and the yarn used was some of my own handspun, the first ever spun on my spinning wheel. I absolutely love the colors. I love pinks, peaches, oranges and corals together.

I had about 200 yards (give or take) and didn't have even an inch left over from this project. As a matter of fact, I had to modify the pattern to save yarn by giving up a row or two and I had to rob Peter to pay Paul by snipping off the leftover bits after weaving in the ends and splicing them to the yarnball to finish the sweater up. Nerve racking. I was sweating over possibly not having enough yarn to finish the project. It's not like I could run out and get another ball for it you know.

A quick note about the broach that you see here:It was in an old jewelry box that belonged to my grandmother. It could be hers or my Mom's, I'm not sure. But it sure is perfect for this capelet! It really adds to the vintage-y feel doesn't it?

Spinning Wheel Cozy

Yesterday was an all-time low in dealing with two year old tantrums. The whole day absolutely sucked from the time we got up until we threw the Youngest into his bed in disgust that night. Someone please tell me they grow out of this?

He was quite funny today though. We went into a used sports equipment shop and bought a bike for the Eldest. Well. The Youngest wasn't going to stand for his big brother getting one and not him, by golly. He marched himself over to the men's mountain bikes (the costly ones) and tried to get on one. He stood right there in the middle of the store and demanded one. It was a hoot. He already has a fisher-price bike, but try telling anything to an independent two year old. They don't reason well at that age.

Anyway, by the end of the day (yesterday) I was too frazzled to knit or do much that required thought. But I desperately needed something different to keep me occupied and I found it.

I made a Spinning Wheel Cozy! A few years ago when I was heavy into sewing handbags and totes, a friend gave me some beautiful upholstery fabric and that's what I used for the cozy.

The new Spinning Wheel Cozy!

I googled up a basic tea cozy pattern and sorta used it. I took careful measurements of the wheel and started cutting fabric. Most of those measurements went out the window of course. It started looking way too huge. So I pinned and cut, and then pinned and cut again before I started sewing. There is no lining, but it is hemmed. I left the hem a little long so that I can tuck the fabric up under the wheel.

Why did I make one? You try having a wheel sit on the floor in plain site of a very precocious 2 year old brat and a 10 month old puppy. It'd be destroyed in no time. By covering it, it's "out of site, out of mind." It kinda blends in with the wall color I have in my dining room/office. No one has even looked at it twice since it's been covered. Yeah!

Have a great weekend!

Samples and techniques

Yesterday I showed you a pic of the "Lemon Sherbert Swirl" colorway. I spun it up (approx. fingering wt.) a tiny sample of it and this is how it turned out:

Click for detail

Much prettier than I expected. I like it anyway. The problem is, I never wear yellow. Makes me look sickly and washed out. I'm pale as pale can get, glaringly white even, so I don't know if this colorway is for me, but it was a dream to spin.

A fun thing happened yesterday. I taught myself a fun artyarn spinning technique. Most of my yarn has been "artyarn", albeit unintentionally. This time, I did it on purpose.

The technique came from the latest issue of Spinoff magazine. It's a core yarn. The technique is a bit tricky. You have to spin your wheel counterclockwise and use a handspindle that is spun clockwise. Your core yarn is on the spindle and your singles are on a bobbin on a lazy kate. You ply them together then stop and push the singles up on the core. You are not twisting the two together, but wrapping the singles around the core. It's a juggling game at first, but turns out very neat:

Click to enlarge for detail

I do have to warn you though. It eats up your singles like you wouldn't believe.

The tiny bit you see there is all I have, just a few yards. I have no clue what I'll ever do with it, but it's an interesting technique to learn anyway. The first thing my husband said when he saw it was "It'd make great dreadlocks!"

Mixed Bag

Today is kind of a mixed bag posting. I've got several things going on that I want to share with you:


Got a couple of new roving colorways for you:

The dark on is "Midnight in the Garden". A blend of wool and mohair that has all the colors of an English garden swirled with black for depth. I've got 2 oz. of it. I'm hoping to get my etsy store up and going and this will be up for sale on it. I'll let you know as soon as I get my act together.

The second is "Lemon Sherbert Swirl". It's strictly wool, no mohair. It's mainly a very light yellow with swirls of turquoise, orange and small hints of pink. The one you see is the only one completed so far. Do you like it? Should I do more? I may just spin this one to see how it might look spun up.

Knitting WIPs:

Baltic Sea Stole:

Not coming along as fast as I'd like thanks to only being able to work on this late at night. I messed up with the bead diagram that I have, so I changed it to echo some of the waves in the shawl. I like it just as well as the original diagram. The diagram was obtained through a nice Ravelry person.

Anthropologie Capelet:

This is now my mindless knitting project. I'm using some handspun that I made from the Spunky Eclectic roving that I got when I ordered my wheel. About a third of the way finished. I'll have to fiddle with it a bit to get it to work. The yarn is thick and thin, not bulky like is called for in the pattern.


And last thing to show you (and it's the last time I'll force you to look at it, promise):

The cedar chest is finished! Didn't it turn out great?


Here it is stuffed with stash. No, not all of my stash, just what I could get to fit in there. :)

Just Messin' around

If anyone noticed anything a little strange going on today, it's cause I've been messing around with adding a banner.

Any comments? critiques? anyone care? :)

I may be fiddling around a little more. Please be patient with me. Thanks!

Uggly Roving and Dyepots Galore!

You thought I was kidding about the dyepots didn't you?

8 different pots

This is what I got for my efforts:


A nice hodge-podge of colors to mix and match. They were produced from kool-aid and Easter egg dyes. The purple, green and small orange in the middle are mohair. The rest are anonymous wools from sheep shed studio. I'm going to mix them with some black to add depth.

While I was busy with dyepots, this is what was going on in the living room:

I think they must've been sick or something. I'm not used to quiet cooperative play in my house. Maybe the tent city had something to do with it. Oh, and yeah,that's Cessna. She's still kicking, so far so good.


This mixing and matching with the hackle is very addictive. It makes the artsy side of me very happy. I took a bunch of little pieces of fiber that I've been saving in a quart jar on my desk and mixed it with some gray/black/white roving last night when I was supposed to be knitting on the wedding shawl.

Here's a closeup of how it looks on the hackle:

What did I get out of it? Well, most people have Ugly Batts, I have Uggly Roving!


I spun up a little and loved what I got. I apologize for the poor pic of the singles. My camera hates macro stuff.

DIY! My new toy!

This weekend I found a new DIY project to tempt me away from all other responsibilities. I made a Hackle.

What the H*ll is a Hackle you ask?

It's a tool used for combing out and blending fiber which is then pulled through a Diz to make roving for spinning. That's it in a nutshell.

First, I'd like to thank Travis (who is married to the Yarnzombie) from the blog The Land for coming up with this idea which costs about $10 bucks to make. Brilliant. They have a couple of videos at The Land that show you how to use the Hackle along with the how to for making it.


What you need for the whole project:

Combs or hair picks
Board
Self Drilling Screws
Drill - If you use a screwdriver it make take you two years to complete
Diz or Button
Crochet Hook
Board
C Clamps

I made one modification to the project and that was using combs instead of hair picks. That way, I wouldn't have to cut anything off at the bottom. My hubby already gets really nervous when I start these kind of projects. I can't imagine the apoplectic fit he would have had when I went for the jig or circular saws. :)

It's very simple. I grabbed a large vise while working on the project and put the board in it to hold it steady. Then I placed a comb on the edge of the board and used masking tape to hold it steady. The masking tape also helps to keep the screws from traveling all over the place while your drilling and it helps cut down on the scratching and/or splitting of the combs. Then just grab your drill and screws and go to town attaching those combs to the board.



The length of the board is up to you. The longer the board, the longer the piece of roving that you will end up with.

Here it is complete and clamped to the table with the C-clamps:

Here's the button that I grabbed to use as my Diz and the crochet hook used to pull the fibers through the button holes:


Now why on earth would you want to do this? Here's one example for you.

Here's some roving that came in a grab bag when I placed an order at Sheep Shed Studio. I love grab bags, you never know what you'll get. This, though, was fugly and matted. It looked like the hair that comes off the rear end of a mangy dog:

Yuck!

How does it look now after putting it through the Hackle?

Lovely

I'm dying to play with blending different color fibers now. I've got some roving (some wool and some mohair) soaking in the sink now in preparation for dyeing. I'm going to dye 8 different batches of color and then play with the new hackle.

Spinning epiphany and a Knitting FO!

Spinning:
I had a minor epiphany today while spinning. I have been spinning with the short draw technique for a while, but I've not been very pleased with it. So I did some research on ravelry, google and youtube. I love the youtube videos that you can find for spinning. There are some that explain things and there are those that just show.

I read up on the long draw and tried it. Disaster. Couldn't make it do a thing. I watched the videos of it. It worked a little better. But the epiphany came when I loosened the scotch tension so that it wasn't pulling the yarn up onto the bobbin until I "helped" it along with my left hand. I also learned when to tighten my fiber holding hand and when to loosen it up. Wow, what a difference it made. I'm now spinning softer thinner yarn! Very cool.

Knitting:
I apologize if I've had few FOs lately. I know they've been few and far between, but that happens when you have kids around during the summer.

For the record, I'm soooooo ready for school to start. Aug 7th is the date for the Eldest to start and the Youngest will begin pre-school just a few weeks later. I can't wait.

I do, however, have a FO for you today. I know that I said that the Kitty Pi would be distraction knitting only, but it turns out that I can't knit the wedding shawl with the Youngest around. It's just too complicated and the Youngest is a huge distraction.

This is a good example of the kind of distraction he is:

The cats are ready for school too. Their tails are sore.

But there is some cuteness to be found. Especially at naptime:

Sound asleep with a trader joe's balloon for company

So, Kitty Pi was complete as of last night.

Inverted Kitty Pi

When upright, all you see are the pink sides, not the white and blue stuff on the bottom. but only because I ran out of the white and blue.

1 out of 3 kitties approves.

before, during and almost finished

The cedar chest is proceeding slowly, but fairly well. Want to see what it looks like now?

First here's a couple of befores:

Before w/ Stripper on it

After Stripping

And here it is now:

After one coat of stain

Big difference huh?

I sanded it down again and have applied a second coat of stain. I'm ready to start the polywhateverthane next. I've also been working on the lid and I'm almost ready to thane it too. I've got some rough spots to sand down and restain on it first though.

I can't wait to get this thing finished and put my stash in it!

The Knitting Want List

There's so much that I want to accomplish with my knitting before I die.

Here's my want list:

I want to design a custom sweater.
I want to knit well enough that I can get gauge - both stitch and row, every time I pick up a needle.
I want more time to knit.
I want to be the knitter that can make a sweater that fits her every time she sits down to knit a sweater.
I want to be free of extra WIPs.
I want people to be in awe of the finished products.
I want to design a shoe. No, really.
I want to learn how to write a pattern that will fit multiple sizes. (No clue on that one).
I want to knit fast. then faster.
I want to be a better blogger about knitting.
I want to work with all types of fibers.
I want to knit with what I spin.
I want to have the money to knit what I want, especially silk and cashmere.
I want to knit things that have no deadline.
I want to be able to knit without a lifeline being a necessity.

I should have done this list in January, but as a New Year's resolution, it would fall way short. I need time, more time! One day, I will have accomplished everything on the list and then the list will morph and I'll still be left with a list. It'll just be a new list. I hate lists.


Anyway, I have two new WIPs to show you. This now makes for about 6 unfinished projects.

The first has a deadline. My cousin is getting married in September. So, I am making her a wedding shawl. It's the Baltic Sea Stole. I'm doing this with SRK Ovation, a kid mohair and silk mix.


The second is something that I've been wanting to do for a while now. The Kitty Pi. I'm using all of my beginner hand spun for it. Most of it is singles that were incredibly bulky. So bulky that if they were plied with anything else they'd end up being ropes. I'm also adding in a few leftovers from other projects and some of the hand spun yarn that I made early on as well. I don't have much more to do and it will be a great mindless knit to go to when I'm about to scream from looking at all that lacework.


Oh, and just for smiles, look what I found in the Living Room toy box today:

Dog Crisis

At the end of last week we had a dog crisis. Cessna,

Wishing the photographer would go away...

a 16 year old (that's right, 16 years old) spaniel mix who is incredibly cute, has a couple of slipped discs. She was walking like she was drunk and she was in so much pain her back was arched like a spooked cat's. I found out that this is the fetal position of the dog world.

This lead to a major dilemma. There were three choices:

1. operate
2. drugs
3. euthanasia

At this point the important thing is quality of life versus quantity of life. It would be crazy for us to operate on a dog that is 16 years old. Not going to happen. I decided to go with the drugs. At best, its only a temporary fix. Her spine will never be fixed and she will be in pain again. I don't want her to live in that kind of pain again. It won't be long before we have to put her down. I'm gearing up for it. She's been in our lives as long as we've been married. We rescued her from the pound about a month after the wedding and that was almost twelve years ago. So sad.


To offset the sadness, how about a 9 month old puppy?

Silly puppy

News tomorrow about two knitting projects!

Really Quick

Just a quick drop by to let everyone know that I'm off to the lake for the holidays! See you Monday!

Have a Safe July 4th!

Redneck Weekend

Finally I get to tell you about our "Redneck Weekend".

On Saturday, the Eldest and I went to DukeFest. He is a huge Dukes of Hazzard fan, so I took him to the celebration and after we got there, I got taken to the cleaners. So to speak. I was nickeled and dimed from the moment we went through the gates to the time we left.

It was held at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Now, let me say up front that I don't do Nascar. Not interested, never will be. But, I was impressed at the size of the place. It was huge. The festival was held in the middle of the track and was tiny comparatively speaking.

We met Roscoe P. Coltrane, sherriff of Hazzard County. He was incredibly nice and still funny. While we were in line to see him though, the Eldest got sick. There was so much sun. It was intense and there was no shade and no place for the poor kid to go to be sick in private. Just portapotties everywhere. So he walked off to the side and was sick all over the place. I felt so sorry for him. He was a trooper though. He refused to leave, there was still way too much he wanted to do and see. I dumped water on his head to cool him off and poured more down his throat and he was fine.

While there we saw Bo Duke (John Schneider) twice. He stood about 10 feet away from us and both times I missed getting a pic, dangit. Let me tell you here and now that the man is mighty fine. I didn't much care for him 20 years ago, but now? He's aged to perfection.

We did meet Adam West, the original Batman. Very self-centered and egotistical. He was charging $80.00 for an autographed pic of him. I can't think of anyone who is worth that. And then, when we finally got a pic with him (he charged for that too) the bozo didn't even look at our camera. The Eldest was impressed with him anyway, even if he was wearing a peach colored "grandpa" shirt. Batman is one of his heros and he loves to watch the original Batman movie.

Lee Meriwether (Catwoman) was there as well and entirely sweet and gracious. I only have a profile pic of her. I've decided that I want to age as gracefully as she has.

What do Batman and Catwoman have to do with the Dukes? No idea. But the original Batmobile was there.(Notice the Batman shirt on the Eldest? He couldn't wait to meet Batman and see the Batmobile.)

There were also mullets galore. Oh, and rednecks wheeling around huge car parts (like hoods) to be signed by the stars. Weird if you ask me. But to each his own. Eldest loved it all anyway and that was what counted. I wasn't there for me anyway. He came away with a new baseball cap and a smile and the day was pretty good over all.

We did some carnival rides there and looked at a bunch of General Lee cars and then it happened. For some reason I started feeling jittery and panic-y. I told the Eldest we were leaving right then. It took an hour to get home and I was so sick by then I was crying when I went in the front door. Mild case of sun poisoning or heat stroke, not sure. This was followed by a massive headache and chills. Not fun, but we're doing just fine now that we're in the shade again. :)

The Secret is Out!

The Secret Project can now be seen! Meet "Mini Minnie":


This was my Mom's B-day gift. She's a Westie (the toy, not my Mom) look alike from Alan Dart's Perfect Pups series. The pattern is Sirdar #2101. Done on size 6 and 2 needles, but I substituted Bernat Boucle and Bernat Softee Baby yarns for the suggested Sirdar yarns.


I found a dollar store collar that looks very similar to the one that the real Minnie wears. It's red with white paw prints on it. You can get a glimpse of it here:


But details are everything in a gift. Check out the tag that I had made for this:


The Youngest wanted this toy so bad! He kept crying for "Minnie" . He got to her a couple of times when I wasn't looking, but it was so cute. He sat down and kissed her over and over.

I have to move this past weekend's doings to tomorrow. But I promise, it was Redneck heaven. Hmmm...

Step Two of the Strippin' Saga: The Chest

Yes, I missed a day of blogging. Sickness will do that to you. But now, I'm back and strippin' away for your pleasure. Today I'll show you how to strip your, um, Chest.

As I said before, this cedar chest was an old find of my Mom's. Turns out, it's older than we thought. The original tag is still stapled inside it. It's a Caswell-Runyan Treasure Chest originally purchased for $24.95. The chest was produced in a factory that was open from 1907 to 1956ish. It looks to have been made sometime in the 3os or 40s. I've compared it to all the old ads that I can find and those two decades come closest to the look of this chest.

Here it is just after I began applying the gel stripper that I used. You'd think that after several years of blogging that I would learn to take a good before picture prior to beginning a project, wouldn't you?

Before

After

See that little piece of painter's tape? Yeah, bad idea. Part of the front was splitting and coming up. I put glue behind it and then made the mistake of listening to my Father in law who said put tape over it to hold it down. Um, no. Instead of holding it down, it pulled it up further. So. We put it on it's back and put this God awfully heavy vise thingy of the hubby's onto the top of it. That worked. It doesn't look like there was ever anything wrong with it.

I've filled in a few tiny spots with stainable wood filler and will be sanding that and then I'll be able to start the staining. It already looks way different, no?

Wait until you here what the Eldest and I did on Saturday. More on that tomorrow! Oh, and the Secret project will be revealed then as well. See ya!