This was such a fun week. I think that I’m just going to throw up some pictures of the main events because, well, don’t you just want to see what I’m making? Of course you do! Here we go. Hang onto your knitting needles and crochet hooks because I am moving fast!!
My Vanilla Dragon socks are done! These are knit from the toe up with an after-thought heel. The pattern is Vanilla Socks, and the yarn is MJ Yarns Simple Sock in the colorway Purple Dragon. Ravelry notes here. This is a free pattern guys!That Purple Dragon is fun stuff! I started a pair of Snowfling Mitts using the worsted-weight version of the MJ yarn with some black Malabrigo Rios. Hey, it is good practice before I knit these mittens out of my homespun yarn.I have finished weaving my first dish towel and started on a plaid version. . This towel is going to my cousin Ruth Ann. I need to have all the weaving done and off the loom by Easter so I can deliver her towels to her. My scleroderma support group meets tomorrow so I also got some more mitts finished to give away.On Wednesday I found the yarns that I needed to put together the kit to knit Exploration Station by Stephen West. The two yarns that aren’t wound yet (the newly found ones) are lace weight. I plan to just knit them double. How about that for a yarn hack!While I was at the yarn store one of my friends gave me a bag of Golden Retriever hair to spin for her. Hmmm… doggie yumminess. I’m going to try to convince her to blend the dog down with some soft wool to give the yarn a little bounce. This will be fun. Really.and look what appeared while I was knitting the Purple Dragon socks! I guess spring is on the way.OK, I know that this is a little over the top, but I was so anxious to see how this yarn would work up I cast on last night and started the Dream Club slippers. Fun! They are really cushy because of the Eye of Partridge stitch.
That’s it! That was the week. I also got some beads in the mail to make stitch markers, but you don’t really want to see an envelope from China, do you? I’ll just save that piece of cuteness for the post about those stitch markers. I also had a surge of energy/empowerment that led me to drive two hours in the middle of the week to a hospital up north so that I could get my medical records from all the lung and heart testing I’ve gone through the last two years. I sent an email to one of my doctors that set off a series of phone calls and now some new tests are ordered and I have a referral to a pulmonary specialist. As soon as I go to the clinic this afternoon I can pick up a shiny new inhaler to help me breath. Empowerment is a good thing!
Have a great week everyone. If you find yourself knitting at midnight, think of me.
Here we are again: not even one little finished object for the dang exhausting week. Every day was a whirlwind of activity, however, so once again I’ve decided to share the journey with all of you with pictures of the highlights.
I kept knitting on the Dueling Gradients Mitts that I started the week before, but the colors are changing really slowly in the yarn and I started to get bored. I played with the color placements and am thinking about doing a little Fair Isle somewhere in the mitt. I have more balls of this yarn and can introduce another color (or two) earlier in the mitt. I’m still thinking things over, so the project got parked. I’m considering a little rippage for this baby. Maybe I’ll put a band of Fair Isle above the thumb on this mitt and below the thumb on the next one. Hmmm…
This is my own simple pattern. Here it is on Ravelry.
While the Dueling Gradients are hibernating and growing up some new ideas I pulled out some Zen Yarn Garden Serenity 20 to make some mitts for the Scleroderma bin. These are the mitts that I sell to other patients in my support group for the cost of the yarn. Simple, lightweight, warm and absolutely mindless knitting.
Tuesday was Super Tuesday here in the United States. Along with 150,000 other people I went to caucus for my candidate that night, Yowza! What a night!
Purple Dragons for my feet. Take that Raynaud’s!!
On Wednesday I go to my knitting group at a local yarn shop and for some reason I wanted a little wild color along with simple knitting to take to that. Hello Vanilla Socks! These socks are toe up and have an afterthought heel. I keep seeing other people making these socks in their blogs and decided that I should jump on that bandwagon too. Look at how cute they are turning out! This yarn is from MJ Yarns and is Simple Sock Fingering Weight. This colorway is Purple Dragon and I absolutely love it! I bought some Purple Dragon to make some mittens too, but that is for another week’s post.
My son tells me that this is a self-propelled Howitzer
Yesterday I hit the road to return the materials from the Project Learning Tree workshop I facilitated for the school district I live in. How fun! I had to drive across town to historic Camp George West near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The old buildings of the base are now used by many Colorado State agencies, but they still have old armaments out on display.
It sure does fill like Spring, although March is traditionally our snowiest month. The plants in my garden are starting to come back to life. The prairie dogs are barking and playing in open lots across town. We’ll be seeing baby dogs before long; I always think that I should bring leftover veggies to these little guys but it is probably best to leave wild critters be, 🙂
How could I resist the cute floral tote and some flowers from the nursery! The rose will have to stay indoors with me but the pansies are the type that can survive snow so they go into the ground next week. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot! The major activity of the week has been weaving. I’ve been binge watching Shades of Blue and throwing my shuttle to make dishtowels. This towel is using a white weft, but the next towel will be plaid with the weft in the same colors as the warp. I just love this process; throwing the shuttle, creating the fabric and winding it onto the cloth roller is just a source of joy to me. It is a little hard on my hands so I only weave an hour or so at a time, Still, I should have the whole set of towels before long.
See: lots done, nothing finished! Even as I write this I am thinking about going upstairs to wind some more yarn and am fighting an urge to play in the stash to find yarns/colors for shawls. A whole set of shawls!!
This is so annoying: here we are at the end of another week and I have NO finished objects to show off. How can this be? The house is littered with projects that I have started or are planning to start soon… I tell myself that I’m just organizing and it will all come together soon. There’s no reason why I can’t have more than one knitting project cast on, right? As long as I’m in single digits I don’t have a problem! Seriously, that is a true statement: ask any knitter. I am reading books like crazy. Lots is going on, but I’m struggling to put together one theme that would be suitable for a blog post.
So, why don’t I just show you my week? Really, it will be fun. Here are all the moments of the week that prompted me to pull out the camera.
I found a tempting pattern for fingerless mitts with a hidden pocket (for hand warmers!!!) on Ravelry called Dueling Gradients. This Kauni yarn that I’ve been itching to try out should work great. The two balls actually have the same colors in them; the way the ball is wound affects the appearance. Sunday I cast on and started playing with the yarns and the pattern.Monday I wound off the warp for the dishtowels that I want to weave. Ugh. It is done.Tuesday I taught a Project Learning Tree workshop for teachers in the local school district. I had to sand down this 2 foot wide tree cookie for the teachers to use in one of their activities. Yikes. That was a lot more work than I expected, but look at those tree rings! This tree was 24 years old when it was cut down.Wednesday I headed to a hospital up north for pulmonary function testing. It’s official now; I don’t breathe as well now as I did a year ago. It’s almost a relief to get closer to the diagnosis: I really am out of breath (and not just out of shape!) On the way out of the hospital I bought this great figurine in the gift shop.and of course I visited another yarn shop. This time I went to Mew Mew’s Yarn Shop, and here is Mew Mew herself. How fun is that! She woke up from her nap while I was there and demanded attention. Mew Mew (and some new fabulous yarn) was just what I needed.Thursday I spent the afternoon getting the warp onto the loom with some cat assistance. This is called warping because you descend into a time warp that sucks dry the entire afternoon and leaves you blinking and tied in knots before it is over. Tedious and stressful at the same time. Cat assistance is not appreciated! How sad for MacKenzie.Today I finished warping the loom and then made these wickedly awesome stitch markers from some beads I bought at last year’s Interweave Yarn Fest. Wait! I did manage to finish something this week. The stitch markers are actual FOs!!
This evening I finished a fingerless (production knitting) mitt that I started last week and cast on another pair of socks. I now have four knitting projects in progress and a warped loom that I can start weaving on next week. Whew! There’s a lot going on.
Stay tuned for next week. I’m sure I’ll have something done by then. 🙂
I am still fired up with creative energy. I have been knitting mitts like crazy (boring… I keep making the same mitt pattern over and over in different color yarns. I’ll post a picture when I get a stack of them done!) and got the warp all wound for the dishtowels that I want to weave (yeah – that is another basically boring picture so I’ll just skip post it too…) and even pulled the loom out. I had to move the (sad, neglected and agitated) spinning wheel to get to the loom, and it was hard to not notice that the bobbin on the wheel was half full. I’d started spinning this yarn in early November but put it away when Christmas makes got in the way. The fiber is pretty cool; it is from one giant batt that I had bought last year at the Interweave Yarn Fest. No wonder that wheel is cranky! The batt was his birthday present and I never took the time to finish spinning it.
I sat down yesterday and finished spinning and plying the fiber from the batt. It made two big skeins of worsted weight yarn.
Looking good!! This yarn is pretty hardy – the fiber is a little on the coarse side. The upper skein is a little more orange then the lower one, but they both have a lot of character.See what I mean. I just love the play of the different colors in the final yarn.
I decided that it is a good yarn for outerwear. Since I just froze my fingers while shoveling snow after the last storm (The Snowpacolypse) I am really focused on warm mittens and mitts for my hands. Last week I bought several mitten/mitt patterns on Ravelry, and looking at this yarn I decided that it wanted to become Snowfling MItts. Seriously, that happy color would make rocking snowflakes against a dark background!! Off to dig in the yarn stash I went.
I found three different colors of grey homespun yarn that would work for the project. Here they are:
Contender #1. A nice charcoal yarn made from a sheep named Misty. It is a pretty good match in size but not as crispy a yarn as the colored one.This light grey yarn is extremely soft and squishy. It is from the last fleece of a special sheep named Lily. I love the color, but it won’t work for the background against the bright yarn. There is a big difference in the feel of the yarns too.Bingo! This is it. This black yarn is pretty crisp and hardy feeling and is almost the same weight as the colored yarn. The sheep was the Grand Champion at the Western National Stock Show one year. Beautiful color, long locks of wool, but not as soft a fleece as was expected. It is, however, the exact match to this colorful yarn.
I just put the spinning wheel away. Today he had lots and lots of exercise. Tomorrow I will wash the new yarn (maybe it will soften up a little?) and get the loom pulled out. Time to warp! Hopefully I’ll get the loom ready for weaving before that yarn is done drying.
Yarn, Books & Roses 