Caught Me Red Handed

Important Note to Self: When deciding to experiment with Red food coloring and roving, it would perhaps be best if one chose to wear gloves.


In the never ending quest for a roving in my favorite color, I headed to the Wilton's food coloring in the cabinet and picked out the color Red Red. I don't know about the roving yet as it's still on the burner, but fingers color nicely. I know I'll be the envy of all when they see the luscious red that my fingers have now become.

Dye from the Garden

My Mom has spent the whole summer canning food from the garden. Hours and hours in front of a hot stove with two pressure canners is not my cup of tea. She, on the other hand, thinks I'm crazy for spending so much time knitting and spinning, but to each his or her own right?

Besides getting free food for the winter that she throws my way, another off shoot of the project is pulp that I can render for making dye. She made jam from some blue berries and I got the pulp.

I started the rendering last night:


Just dumped the berry pulp in the pot and added some water to it. I boiled it for about 20 minutes and then strained it off into a glass bowl. I would have used plastic ones, but I really didn't want the bowls turning blue, ya know?

I'm going to freeze it until I have time to experiment with it. Neat huh?

While we're on the subject of canning and growing garden-y things, check this Lima bean (in the South we call it a Butter Bean) plant out. This plant, when it came home from school in May, had only two leaves. Now does it not only have more leaves, it has a bloom! My Mom thinks it'll only be a false pregnancy, but who knows? We might have a miraculous Butter Bean conception!


Now on to things yarny:

Progress is sloooooowwwllllyyy being made on the Baltic Sea Stole. See?


If I pick up another project that has a deadline, would someone please shoot me? At this point, the bride will be having her 50th wedding anniversary before this is complete.

I got busted by the fiber cop.

Yesterday the Eldest learned to ride a bike! Just one month before his 8th birthday. Yeah!

He also, a little later, had his first bike crash and got this lovely memento of the event:

His first, (but not last) bike injury!

Ouch! As he crashed, the handlebars scraped his ribs and he came screaming over to me with huge tears in his eyes. Hopefully this won't keep him from getting back on the bike. It's hard being seven, isn't it?

I spent the whole weekend being a big bully by making him get on the bike that he was so scared of falling off of in order to teach him how to ride the stupid thing. We celebrated his learning by taking a trip to the store and buying him the Transformer I promised if he learned how to do it by yesterday evening. This is a child that learns better if he has a goal to shoot for and the Transformer was it.

***

I also got busted by the fiber cop (husband) while I was away. I had ordered more fiber from the Sheep Shed Studio and was hoping that it would come in by Friday so it could be squirreled away with no one being the wiser. No such luck. The box came in on Monday and I had to fess up that I had placed another order. Oops.

In the box was a grab bag and some black/white roving. I plan on dyeing up most of it, but not this:

Click for detail.

This is the most fantastic oatmeal colored roving that I've seen. It was part of the grab bag. I'm keeping it "as is." There's 14.4 ounces of it. Hopefully I'll have enough when I'm done to make a small sweater out of it, at least a tank top. Love it.

EZ complaint

I would like to state to the world now, that I am not enamoured of Elizabeth Zimmerman's patterns. Please don't throw rocks my way before you hear why.

I was working on the February Baby Sweater today. I got to the part where I had finished the sleeves and then stumbled on a little part that says: knitting up 4 x 7. Anybody had trouble there? Yeah. I thought so. It can't be just me.

I agree that she was a genius and a prodigy and years ahead of her time. I'll give you that. However, she kinda sucked at patterns for those that need a bit more explaining. Why didn't she just say "Pick up and knit 7 sts. on each side of the two sleeves (28 sts. total)"? I figured it out after much internet research, but really, would plain knitting english have hurt her when writing the pattern?

Roxie, the 10 month old puppy, had a milestone today. She had her first appointment at the beauty shop. It was kind of a shock. She went in looking like a ratty little puppy and came out looking like a mature Chinese Crested dog is supposed to. The fur on her face had silvered underneath the moppy stuff that we were used to looking at.

Roxie feels glamorous now

I'm up at the lake until late tomorrow night and my camera batteries have gone caput. So if I miss tomorrow, you'll know that I'm traveling back home and have nothing to show you anyway, huh?

I did get a pic of a boy who wants to go fishing though:

The Feltness Protection Program Now In Effect

I've decided that the wool that is leftover on the hackle after you have removed your roving is not that great for spinning. You're left with tons of tiny slubs that won't draft worth spit cause all the staple that's left is too short. You might be able to use it with something that will spin cotton, but on my wheel, it just won't do. Now, if you want something artsy that will stick out and look kinda cool, you're golden. I will save some of it for that, but the rest? What can you do with that?

I was catching up on blog reading (I'm woefully behind, it's downright embarrassing) and I went to Samurai Knitter's blog and found a great post on making felted catnip toys. AHA!

So I got out the wool, some large Glad containers, hot water, dawn dishwashing liquid, some white vinegar and added two boys to the mix. The boys are optional, of course. Following Samurai Knitter's instructions, I got this:

The balls are not great, but it was fun and gave us all something to do. I made a catnip tea and soaked the balls in it and they're drying in a safe, protected place to dry. Why protected? Because of this:

Widget the Catnip Fiend

This is the cat that goes Psycho for all SPICES. It doesn't matter if it's catnip, pizza seasonings or black tea that you drink. It's all crack to her. She can get downright violent upon occasion too.

She was nowhere to be seen when we started this project. But when we brewed the catnip tea and the smell began wafting up through the house vents? Lo and Behold, Widget appeared! The above pic was taken at that time.

I haven't been able to keep her off the counters since. Thus, the balls are now in the Feltness Protection Program until they dry. Then she can go Psycho all she wants with them.

I need danger pay

Well, the result I got (unblocked as yet) when I plied some of the singles was sooo not what I was expecting. The red in the yarn became much softer, and it almost has a tweedy effect, especially since I couldn't get out some of the little slubs that are in there.


I should get danger pay for writing the blog. It almost cost me my life to take that picture just to show you the yarn. The blood sucking mosquitoes just about sucked all the blood out of me.

We are prisoners in our house in the summer thanks to those little beasts. There's no way I can let the kids go in the backyard to play unless they are completely covered in chemicals. I hate it. I can't even kick them out of the house when I get aggravated with them. Not fair, not fair, not fair...

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: