Ready...Set...GO!

Yes, I have been knitting like a crazy woman. No, I haven't finished everything that I said I'd finish...and I only have 10 days before I need to be back at school. Ack! Where did the summer go?!

But, I need to cast on for the Ravelympics 2008!

Project: Cardigan to Love by Lynda Cyr
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Green Line Worsted
Color: Dusk (purples!)
Gauge: approx. 18 st/4 inches
Needles: size 8 for the lace, size 9 for the stockinette

But a spectacular equipment failure has set me back several hours already!

I swatched last night at Purlescence's Knit Night. The yarn was a little stiff and it felt like a lot of lanolin or spinning oil was still in it. But I thought it was okay to work with. After a brief water bath, it was soft and supple and I was pretty close to gauge.

But this morning, after an early morning rise (no, not 5 AM for the opening ceremonies), I started. But after finishing 2 repeats on the lace, I realized that I was heading for an injury if I continued to use the yarn in this form. The more I knit, the stickier the yarn felt.


And, take a look at this! See the dye on my hands? It only took a couple of rows worth of knitting to get my fingers this color. (It's very hard to take a picture of your hand stretched out in front of you - sorry!)




Into a water bath all 5 skeins went! Now I'm waiting for it to dry so I can wind it and re-swatch.








Meanwhile, there really has been other knitting:

Exhibit A: Adult-sized hat to match the scarf that The Hubby knit
This one is a seed stitch rib (thanks Sandi!) in the round. The scarf doesn't exactly match (Broken Rib stitch), but it coordinates quite nicely.
Yarn: Fiber Fiend's worsted wool
Color: Woodland
Needles: Size 9




Exhibit B: Socks (in progress) - this is my "purse knitting" that comes out whenever I have a few minutes.






Exhibit C: Twist (really!), 98% finished, just waiting for the collar to be knit, a full blocking, and some pewter clasps.

But - runs outside to check how the yarn is drying - I want to work on my new sweater NOW! (This way I'll have 2 new sweaters for the beginning of school.)

Doesn't hurt that The Hubby and The Dork are heading to family camp tomorrow AM early and won't be back until Wednesday night. I can stay up and knit as long as my hands hold out!

Oh, and speaking of The Dork, Mari gave me this awesome T-shirt the other day! Thanks, Sis!

Okay, gotta go check on the yarn again!

Notes to Self:

My Tour de Fleece challenge is finished! All 16 oz. of fiber have been spun and plied and I've learned a lot in the process. Of course, I want to keep spinning other stuff now.

Note 1. You like to spin. Doesn't really matter how the end product turns out, you are a process spinner, as you are knitter and crocheter. However if you spin with intention, you might surprise yourself.

Exhibit A:
Crown Mountain Superwash Merino, 8 oz.
Color: Layla
3-ply, worsted weight, 325 yards
Divided into 3rds, top, middle, bottom
Comment: more muddled color & slubby than I thought it would be. Also overspun.



Exhibit B:
Lisa Souza blue-faced leicester, 2 oz.
Color: Berry Poppins
3-ply, aran weight, 80 yards
Divided into 3rds lengthwise, and pre-drafted
Comment: tried to intentionally match last year's spinning of the same fiber. I think I did pretty well, but it ended up being a little thicker.

Exhibit C:
Grafton Corriedale batts, each 2 oz.
Colors #1, 5 & 9
3-ply, light worsted weight, total of 325 yards









Note 2. Batts must be spun from the fold in order to align the fibers in a spinnable fashion. Until Sandi told me that, I wasn't enjoying this fiber. Now...I think I need to get more batts in the same color so I have enough for a shawl! I love these colors, and think I'll call the combination "Purple sunset".

I also, for the first time, played with the ratios on my wheel and found the one that for me, produced a perfectly balanced yarn. It had less than a half-twist in it before I set/whacked it.

Note 3: Before you wet-finish by whacking the heck out of the wet yarn, make sure you tie the skeins securely, so when you rear back with the yarn over your head and accidentally drop it behind you, you don't get a tangled mess.




Note 4: When you try to salvage the disaster you've created by laying out the yarn so you can rewind the hank, don't sit down on the ground with the dog outside. She will think it's an invitation to play, or to roll in your wet yarn!

If there was a videocamera around, it would have been a candidate for America's Funniest Home Videos. The Dog rolling in the yarn, tangling herself, me trying to stop laughing long enough to untangle her before she tries to run off...




Note 5:
My guys are now both knitters! The Dork decided that he would like to make himself a sweater. Specifically, a hoodie with a zipper. After looking through my books and Ravelry, he chose to make an Adult Tomten, using some stashed Noro Kureyon (discontinued color #55). He has swatched, we've done the basic calculations and cast on. Wish him luck! He'll be working on it while we're at the SF Giants' Stitch & Pitch game on Tuesday.

Halfway

through the Tour de Fleece and I'm a little behind! [So why am I taking the time to write a blog post, huh?!]
Anyway - there has been progress and learning!

Part I --
Crown Mountain superwash merino
Color: Layla
8 oz. = approximately 250 yards of 3-ply worsted weight.











Part II -
Lisa Souza Blue-faced Leicester
Color: Berry Poppins
2 oz = ???





This one, I'm spinning very intentionally, trying to match last year's spin of the same fiber. My prep includes remembering to pre-draft the fibers, as they were pretty tightly braided. I didn't remember to do this with the Crown Mountain, and I'm not entirely happy with how it came out.

Part III - 3 Grafton batts (pictures later).

Back to the wheel!

Spinning!

See, I really was spinning! This is almost one-third of the original 8 oz. of superwash merino. In 2 evenings I filled this bobbin. It feels really good to work on this, because I haven't spun since last February. I'm aiming for a 3-ply worsted-weight yarn that I have no idea what to do with yet. But it's purple!


Do you like my spinning studio? Right now, it is after 11 PM and it's 84 degrees inside the house. It's much nicer to sit outside in the evening with a bit of a breeze. There's not a very good breezeway through my house, and the air quality has been pretty poor. With Dear Hubby's sinus infection and breathing issues over the last week, having that poor air inside is causing havoc in his lungs. Can't open the window in our bedroom, even with the HEPA air filter, because it can't keep up with the crud in the air. He was happy playing with the dog, but had to go inside after only a couple minutes.

This spinning time has also given me a chance to make a bunch of phone calls to girlfriends I haven't talked with in months. Love my Bluetooth headset, and plenty of cell phone minutes that I pay for and never come close to using up!

All the pictures in this post were taken by The Dork who took a photography workshop at the Summer Nationals, specifically dealing with fencing photography (high-speed, poor lighting conditions), and he practiced some of what he learned by taking action pictures of The Dog and some of my spinning wheel in motion! (she's about to take off after her ball...)

Next bobbin...

Le Tour de Fleece

Okay, I've entered! I've needed to get back to spinning, and as my knitting mojo has deserted me for the last couple days, I'm going to start Le Tour de Fleece. Basically, my spinning goal is to spin and ply at least 16 oz. of fiber before July 27, the end of the Tour de France.

Stage 1 (I started a day late). I have an 8 oz. bump of Crown Mountain Superwash merino in the color Layla - purples, of course! I sat in my backyard last night, on the phone with a girlfriend and just started spinning. It felt right to be spinning again. Yes, I used my phone headset to leave my hands free! Pictures later...

Between that bump, purchased last November, 3 Grafton batts bought last month that I intend to ply together, and another 2 oz. of Lisa Souza BFL I got at Stitches West in February (matches the stuff I got from her last year), that should take care of the 16 oz. challenge. There, of course, is still plenty more fiber in the box that I can choose from.

Now you see it...

The first set of disappearances is that of a delicious brioche & blackberry bread pudding that my Dear Hubby made for dessert tonight. We had half of it, as you see in the picture (forgot to take a "before" picture).

now you don't!


In less than 5 minutes it disappeared, when I walked briefly outside to take some garden pictures.


Here's the culprit!

I thought about blaming The Dork because he was coveting it, and acting like it was going to disappear momentarily. However, we had just finished discussing the matter, and had agreed that he could have some for breakfast tomorrow.

I'll have to take some of the blame for leaving it out though.

The 2nd set of disappearances is that of about 3 boxes worth of junk that was in front of my crafting bookcase. The boxes were a convenient landing place for laundry that needed ironing or dry-cleaning, yarn that needed putting away. Okay, so I haven't ironed the clothes yet, but I did get the huge pile of magazines sorted, inventoried, and into magazine boxes.

A couple boxes into the recycling bin, a couple bags for Goodwill, a large stack of stuff to take to the used bookstore...(anyone want any cross-stitch magazines from the early 90's?). It's not quite the way I want it yet, so no After picture. However, you can see (and get to) all the books and one of the two shelves of magazines which had been completely hidden.

Part of the problem has been that my knitting mojo has deserted me temporarily. Once I finished the Grumpy socks, I've been trying to find something that keeps me interested. I've tried and ripped out a sock in Koigu 4 times now because nothing that I try looks right. I have to rip a few rows out on the Susie cardigan that I'm making for our housemate because I have an undiscoverable mistake in it and haven't had any brain power to figure it out. I can't muster up the energy to get excited about finally finishing my Twist, or my Ribby Cardi, which I really, really should do.

But I need something small and portable to work on, because I've been spending some of my time at the Fencing Summer National Tournament, which is taking place at the San Jose Convention Center (through Thursday). There are over 3000 fencers in town for this major tourney! If you're interested in watching some of what my Dork boy does for fun, go over sometime during the day. They start fencing around 8:30 AM, and stagger the start times for different events.

He is NOT fencing, though! He didn't qualify in his division. But it's fun to watch and cheer on the fencers we know, and he's been coaching some of the younger kids.

Oh, and Happy Belated 4th of July! Dork and I went to Nationals for a while, then out to the San Jose America festival a block away. The fencing club had been asked by the local NBC TV station to put on a demonstration, as part of the festival. It was tied into the Olympic coverage that they're starting to heavily promote. Some of the kids were filmed sparring behind the Weather Guy, while a few of us parents tried to prevent oblivious people from walking into their strike zone. Gotta love those Lookie-loos who are so busy watching the cameras that they fail to watch where they're walking. NOT!

I'm back!

Had a great time at the American Library Association's conference last weekend. Several good seminars, 6+ hours in the enormous exhibit hall, lots of author sightings, the Newbery and Caldecott Awards banquet, book cart drill team world championships, estimated 22,000 attendees...

Also included: time spent with family. Dinner with my in-laws (including SIL and niece), breakfast with my parents, sis and her kids. These are my sister's: A is 10, S is 8, G is 4. And of course, there is The Dork. He was staying with my parents because The Hubby was in New Hampshire at a separate event, and I wasn't going to leave a 16-year old home for 5 days!



And there was Disney's California Adventure, which was do-able because we only had about 5 hours to spend there. I would probably have been disappointed in trying to get to everything in Disneyland and not succeeding because of the time constraints.



The new Toy Story Mania ride is Awesome, even though I clearly do not play arcade games very well the first time around! It's a fun combination of a ride with 3-D games. The Dork did a great job on the blue side of the car. Me, on the red side, not so good! If the lines hadn't been so long (between 30-40 min.), we might have tried again and again and again.


Just for Mari: you found Tigger, I got Minnie to hold my sock!

I wanted to get both she and Mickey together, but he was heading in for some lemonade. It was over 80 degrees in the sun, and I can't imagine how hot it was if you were one of the characters!


There really was knitting involved with this weekend! Maureen, to answer your question, there are a lot of knitting librarians. I saw 4 others at the conference, and I wasn't really looking. Several more said that it was a great idea to bring their knitting and that they would next time. At the public library, my boss gets several staff members together around once a month to knit or crochet.

I finished the pair of Grumpy socks for me. The 2nd sock was cast on in the airport on the way down on Thursday, and finished on Sunday afternoon. Somehow, I managed to get an entire pair of socks, women's size 7, stockinette, with 3" ribbed 4x2 cuffs out of a single skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, 50 g. Hmmm, that means I have to do something with the 2nd skein I bought...

Bedtime sounds better right now, though! My goal in the morning is to reorganize my knitting books and patterns. It'll have to wait until I know if The Hubby needs to hide out in the bedroom all day tomorrow. He's not feeling well - and we'll blame it on the unnamed airline that he took getting home from New Hampshire. Let's just say that it took over 24 hours, due to a delayed plane, an unintended overnight in Los Angeles, having missed the connecting flight. No wonder he's gotten sick!