Alert! Alert! Alert!
Stalker Angie is coming to Dallas this weekend!!!
Any of you DFW knitbloggers (or even Oklahoma or Louisiana knitbloggers, if you’re up for a roadtrip) who want to hang out and go to yarn stores and knit and even spin while our beloved stalker is in our midst, leave me a comment or an email, so I can fill you in on the plan details!
WOOT!
Spinning!
I’ve been a busy little plying bee this week . . . and I saved up a bunch of spinning pictures to show ya!
I plied the red singles that I showed off last week . . . it didn’t turn out too badly!
plying still needs work, but is getting easier!
I also split a hank of corriedale roving (colorway called pine) and spun it up and plied it . . . even better!
this skein was perfectly balanced! yay!
There was a teeny tiny bit of one bobbin left over, so I navajo plied that little bit just for some practice.
Navajo plying, in my opinion, is hard. But I love the results — for some reason I’m able to get a more balanced 3-ply than I am a 2-ply.
And of course, I couldn’t keep from spinning up some of the merino that was in my sampler pack . . . I spent about an hour or more predrafting to try and get smaller singles.
this electric blue color refuses to photograph in focus!
So then I Navajo plied the whole whack, and came up with some pretty cool yarn!
Ta-da! Spinning Tuesday!
In other news, I had my first-ever physical therapy appointment today (for my stupid back, which is thrown out at the drop of a DPN) . . . it went really well! My therapist is super-nice, and I have hopes that going twice a week will really help. A highlight: at the end of the visit, Physical Therapist Michelle used an ultrasound machine on my back muscles, and I cracked her up by asking, “Is it a boy, or a girl?”. Hee.
No real news with respect to the kitties, except that as of 5pm today, they seem to be AWOL! Hub‘s theory is that the mama cat decided that they are ready to experience “real” food and may have moved them closer to the food source (one of the neighbors down the street puts out food for them, we think). In any case, we haven’t seen them at all. So Hub sprayed the yard with some really noxious stuff (to kill the fleas), and we are going to see what tomorrow brings.
When I said it was time to cast on for another sock!
Believe it or not, it’s my first time knitting Koigu, and seriously, y’all, it’s like buttah. And I’m also using my ebony DPNs for the first time . . . the combination is so lovely that it’s making me a little woozy. Seriously. (as in “seriously spoiled” . . . I have a feeling that the scratchy Lion Brand sock yarn in my stash will never see the light of day now!)
Also, why are the letters starting to wear off of only the “S” and “E” keys on my keyboard?
do I really use these two keys that much more often than the others?
No progress on the feral kitties; thanks to everyone so far who has asked/commented. We kind of took tonight off from trying to catch them, but will likely get back on track with it tomorrow. We did dust the deck yesterday with diatomaceous earth, which is supposed to kill the fleas on contact, and this afternoon I noticed zillions of tiny white dusty kitten pawprints all over the deck! So cute.
So, just to prove that it’s not “all spinning all the time” here at Skittermagoo now that I have a wheel, I have some finished socks!
trekkingXXL, color 100
These have been in the works for quite a while now; for some reason I had a hard time motivating myself to work on them. It wasn’t the yarn, ’cause I love the way it transitioned from one color to the next . . . not to mention that in general I lurrrrve the Trekking. I’m still not sure what was holding me up. In any case, a finished pair of socks means one thing: time to cast on another sock!
In other news, Hub and I have been trying to humanely trap the feral mother cat and her five feral kittens who have set up house under our backyard deck . . . this morning we set up the trap with sardine bait, and momcat went in, had a snack, and came out without tripping the switch. Hub checked the trap, and was able to trip it, and set it up again. Again, the kitty went in, ate, and came out without tripping it. So, at least she’s not scared of the trap!! We’re going to try again later, and hopefully position the bait closer to the little plate that trips the spring — hopefully that is the problem, and not that she is some sort of magic weightless cat.
Have I also mentioned how much I love the new version of Moveable Type? With very few exceptions, it has caught the comment sp@m that had been vexing me before the upgrade.
Ah, here I am, having neglected the blog again . . . this seems to be quite the pattern with me lately. (Lately? If by “lately” I mean “in the past year”).
This week’s distraction? A new addition to my office/fiber/knitting room! We moved into our house a year or so ago, and are slowly furnishing it, one piece at a time. I’ve been needing a desk or some other horizontal surface for a while now . . . someplace to charge the laptop, keep pens, and pay bills and such — I’ve been using the dining room table for this purpose, and it’s just difficult in a way — it never seems like I have all the bits and pieces and USB cables and such that I need at any given time.
So, without further adieu, here’s the latest addition to “my room”:
Yay! A red desk! We got it at IKEA, and for the most part it was very easy to assemble. Gotta love it when that happens!
And since Tuesdays are for Spinning, I have a bit of that for you, too . . .
This is a bit out of the “almost solid” sampler from Spunky Eclectic . . . it’s a wool blend, and the color is called “redwood” . . . this picture is a bit washed out from the flash, but I think you get the idea. This is the thinnest yarn that I’ve spun yet, and the most consistent. My plan is to ply it later this week (I have two bobbins of what is supposedly evenly split roving — it doesn’t look so equal on the bobbins, though, so we’ll see).
I’ve also been knitting, but been too lazy to take any decent photos! Whoops!
Wow, I don’t even know where to start . . . this week has been busy, and I’ve also been holding out on y’all on some other stuff . . . not on purpose, of course, but just that I haven’t had so much time to blog, and, well, you know.
Knitting!
Yeah, I’ve been knitting! I’ve mainly been working on socks socks, and more socks . . . but this week I finished a pair I’ve been working on for the pirate (y’all may remember a devil’s bargain I made several months ago where I traded sock knitting services for some of her abundant stash):
early-era socks that rock, color called “heart throb” Isn’t it funny how two skeins of the same dye lot striped/spiraled so differently?
I knit these on size 1 Addi Turbo DPNs, and they were a joy to knit! Yeah, even though the pirate has rather sizey feet. One pair down, three to go!
Gardening!
Just less than a week ago, my first ever homegrown-by-me tomato finally ripened!
This is what I did to it:
this photo is not retouched at all!
Then I ate it.
It was DELICIOUS!
Tuesdays are for spinning!
Okay, so I know it’s not Tuesday, but the first of these pics was taken on Tuesday — does that count?
Green Merino
Merino is a lot harder to spin than the Romney stuff I’d been working with before, thus the uneven thick and thin thing . . . but it’s all good! If anything, it’s (in Teri’s words) “arty”
I plied it* today, and washed and hung the skein to dry.
Here’s a particularly good-looking section:
*do any of you spinner-types have any tips for getting an even amount of yarn spun onto two separate bobbins? Both times I’ve spun singles to ply, I’ve ended up with a LOT more on one bobbin and ran out on the other one.
In other spinning news, I’ve been buying fiber . . .
I found some Lornas Laces roving at my LYS (they actually use it for needle felting classes, but I bought some to spin):
I also found some sparkly stuff there.
And I received my order from Amy Boogie today, too (wow, that was FAST!)
(I ordered a couple of sampler packs so that I could try a variety before I buy absolutely everything in here online store)
Confession Time
The pirate did it, and so did NanC . . . I’m not immune to peer pressure, so today I inventoried my sock yarn stash (I also had to organize a bit to make room for all the roving!).
enough for 73 pairs, if I counted correctly!
Ahem. Clearly I have a problem when it comes to sock yarn.
Does anyone remember Maryland?
Yeah, it’s a blur to me, too. I was recently reminded that I didn’t ever share pictures of my haul, so here it is, almost a month later.
I concentrated on buying yarns that I can’t get here locally . . . (more on this in a minute)
The Socks That Rock (yes, we DID plan on hitting that booth first thing after the festival opened on Saturday morning, and our planning totally paid off)
I realized after I took the photo that I left one skein out. ooops!
The Koigu:
mmmmm, koigu
One lonely skein of Cherry Tree Hill
I can get CTH locally, but this is a color I had not seen in any of my LYSes
I also got some Euroflax Linen
And some Morehouse Merino
And last but certainly not least, the Brooks Farm
The thing about Brooks Farm? Well, this one is actually local, sort of. Brooks Farm, the farm, is located about 30 minutes South of where I live, but they don’t sell yarn to any local stores, nor did they sell direct until verrrry recently. And they don’t have a storefront, nor will they let people come to the farm no matter how local they are. So, I can accurately say that I had to go to Maryland to buy “local” yarn. How funny is that?
One note on the Brooks Farm yarn? Now I totally understand what the fuss is about. It is quite possibly the softest most luxurious yarn I’ve ever laid hands on. I have no idea what I’m going to knit with it, but I’m leaning towards doing another Clapotis (against my better judgement, but the yarn seems perfectly suited).
And lest I forget
Two weekends ago (I know! I’m sorry!), I engaged in a bit of kool-aid dying fun with a few of my knitgrrrlz — how fun was that! I meant to photodocument and blog the entire process, but I was so caught up in the fun and koolaid fumes that I totally forgot to take even one picture.
Here’s the result of my experimentation . . . the top skein doesn’t look anything like that, actually — I don’t know why some colors photograph fine and others don’t, but it’s kind of a brownygreenyyellowyorange combination. Hub says it looks like squash or autumn.
squash and orangey-yellow. yum!
And what’s on tap for the rest of the weekend? Well, more knitting and more spinning, of course!!