Spinning Away

Happy belated Easter! I survived my week without knitting. Maybe next year I'll have to modify and give it up for longer - maybe not. We'll see when Lent rolls around again. Easter was fun here - I made my nephews go on an egg hunt in the back yard. Holidays are so much more fun with kiddos around.Why yes, that is my Hidcote shawl in use. Still not great at the wearing of shawls, I feel all goofy and don't know how to move my arms, but I'll get used to it.And I have to say, that hiding eggs for toddlers is great - nice and easy. No worries about finding an egg in August that we forgot.

Just to get all the shamelessly cute pictures together, Friday I went out to play with the nephews, I love that it's getting spring-like enough to go outside a bit.

Mason likes to give the goats (who are very friendly and want lots of attention) kisses. He even tries to stick his head through the fence to do so. Cracks me up.

Onto the fiber. With no knitting last week, I was amazingly productive with the spinning wheel. Case in point - the Redwood Forest BFL. Finally done. Well, except for a good soak. I spent most of Friday night plying. Seriously. I spent about 6 hours plying it up. Oi. But, it turned out better than I had hoped for. Definitely a fingering weight (what I use for socks) pending how much it blooms during its soak.

I'll take a wraps/inch measurement after the soak. Should probably re-figure the yardage then too. As of right now I've got 570 yards. I'm pretty dang pleased. This won't be knit into socks however - it's not superwash and I'm not keen on a pair of handspun socks felting with the first wash. So I'll have to figure something else out. I still have some more singles left as well, not sure what to do with them. I might just take the easy road and 2 ply them, won't end up with much but I don't know what else to do. Hmmm.

I also managed to get almost the first half of the Air Fiber spun up. I say almost half, because I split it into 2 equal parts, but the first half didn't all fit onto one bobbin.

That's a very full bobbin. Had I tried to get any more on, it would have impeded the spinning of the wheel. So now I just have get the rest of the BFL single off the bobbins and get going with the second half. PS - it's really really thin!

Last Monday, I spent the night at Bridget's Seamus sitting, so I took along my spindles and the Terminus BFL. Yeah, haven't mentioned that in a while. A long while. Anyway, I managed to ply up the spindle full that had been sitting and waiting patiently for me to get around to it.

And then I wound off the spindle full that I had and started a new spindle full, which I'm hoping is the last spindle full. Today when I went to take the spindle out to photo - tragedy. Tuesday when I was carrying everything into the house, I had dropped the spindle box, straight down. I winced at the time, but didn't really worry too much. When I went to pull out the spindle off plied yarn today... the spindle came apart. The whorl and and yarn stayed behind and the shaft came right out. AAAAHHHH! Mom and I managed to put it back together and it wasn't broken or anything, just heart attack inducing at the time. Reminder to self, be nice to the spindles.

I also managed to get a lot done on the blanket for my soon-to-be niece. No pictures until it's gifted though. Need to keep working on it so it's done by her birth day. I plan on her being the only one of her siblings to get the blanket on time. Elliott was born earlier than planned, and I couldn't finish it before the shower the next day. Mason's blanket was delayed by a yarn shortage. So she will get her blanket on time.

Alright, onto the little bit of knitting I got done yesterday. I finished the first of the Rivendell socks, except for the kitchenering of the toe and sewing in the ends.

And then I got through the gussets of the second Interlocking Leaves sock.

I'm feeling the socks right now. Should crank out the Interlocking Leaves sock this week. And now that I've said that it won't happen.

And now I need to go eat lunch and go to work. Baseball game today, it'll be a cold one!

All Stop

So in some kind of weirdness, I decided that I will not knit this week. I know. Crazy. Here's the thing, I didn't give anything up for Lent this year, being that on WW, it's hard to give things up that you like when you're already restricting yourself. Makes for huge binges and what not, and I didn't want that to happen. And I had already put myself on a pretty serious yarn and fiber buying boycott so giving that up wasn't really an option either. Not much in the way of vices were left to me, so I didn't give anything up.

So then, in reading a blog, I saw that someone had given up knitting for Lent. And that just kinda blew my mind. I really don't think that I could ever give it up for the whole 40 days, but Holy Week? I can do that. So, no knitting this week. I am permitted to spin, and to crochet. The only crochet project I have, or am going to have, is the blanket for Perry Niece, who will be arriving very shortly, so I need to get going on it anyway. Alright, there, I have put it out for all to read, no knitting this week. Let's see how crazy I get.

So in the knitting that has been done since the last post, I finished the Monteagle bag. It's great.

I'll probably make another one, may even try to see if I can make it bigger. I'll get a picture with it stretched and holding something eventually, I'm feeling quite lazy today. So with one bag done, I cast on for another one. Using the Everlasting Bagstopper pattern this time around, the yarn is the same (KP CotLin) but in the colorway "Harbor" which is still quite appropriate.

This one, unlike the Monteagle, has a bottom to it. Very easy pattern, as my friend Meagan likes to say, "it's dummy knitting" and that's good to have every now and then.

The Rivendell sock hasn't progressed much since the last you saw it, an inch or two onto the foot, with an inch or two to go before the toe, so I won't bore you with a photo. Friday night, I cast on the second of the Interlocking Leaves socks. And put in a repeat on Saturday while watching the Michigan State/UConn game with Dad. I know, I willing subjected myself to a basketball game. What is up with me? I did not watch the second game. And can I just say, thank goodness it's finally baseball season! Go Indians! Back to the subject of socks, the impetus for finally getting going on this sock? The new Cookie A. book. OMG! So beautiful, I think that eventually, I will end up knitting every single pattern in the book. And the amount of information on designing your own socks - wow. I may even do that. But first, I have to finish the socks I've got going. Look at me, being all good and finishing things.

What's next? I won't show you the Mystic Waters shawl today - I put another 20 rows onto it last week, but once again, hard to tell. So maybe after I do another 20 rows. However, I did enlist the help of the couch to show you how behemoth the behemoth shawl (aka the Hidcote Shawl) actually is, now that I've retrieved it from blocking. Holy hugeness. I love it, I just don't know where I'm going to wear it. Maybe I'll gift it. I don't really know anyone who wears shawls though. Hmmm, tricky. I may just float around in it around the house, pretending to be some very wealthy and eccentric woman who can do what she wants. We'll see.

Last up on the knitting front, 2 weeks ago, I worked up another Thorpe hat. Used some bulky weight yarn so it went super fast, and then I didn't post a finished picture. So here you go.

I've been wearing it at work with all the cold weather we've been having. Have decided that I need to make a cowl with the remaining skein to match. I had never considered a cowl until Saturday, when at the LAX game, with the wind going and me already having a few layers on, and I thought "I wish I had a scarf" but then realized that the scarf would be too bulky and in the way, so the thought of a cowl came then. Maybe next week. Or maybe by then it will have warmed up and a cowl won't be necessary anymore. I'm just glad that there is no sign of the forecasted snow as yet. But it's still miserable for the scheduled baseball and lacrosse games I've got today.

Okay, that's it for the knitting. I really didn't think I had that much. Wow. Saturday night, I finally finished spinning the Redwood Forest BFL.

Tried to even out the bobbins as much as possible, we'll see how it goes when I get to plying it. I had thought I would do that tonight, but I'm off to puppy sit for Seamus so maybe Wednesday night.

Yesterday, after spending the day with Kaylee and company, I sat down and started spinning the first shipment from the Elements Fiber Club. March's installment was Air, and it looked like this:

I opted to spin it fine (even though I was really hoping to spin up something a bit heavier just to change it up from the BFL) and will do a 2-ply and hopefully get enough yardage for a little airy shawl, which I think will be appropriate.It's really hard to get the color, what with it being dreary out and the color being so light. It's actually coming out really pretty, and I never would have picked the colorway for myself, which is I guess, the beauty of being in a club and not getting the choice.So in continued bad behavior news, I came down to this scene Saturday morning.I don't know what's up with Miss Maddie (maybe she's upset because Mom is away) but I don't even know where she got this stuff. That's one sock and the alpaca leftovers from the November Ruffle. What's odd, is the other sock and the Cascade laftovers were found in the dining room Friday night on her little rug. I don't know where she found them, they were all together, and, I thought, tucked away. It's baffling. What else is she hoarding? And some leftover spun singles from my room were found in the family room earlier last week. She's behaving very oddly of late.

In real life, please keep my brother Tommy in your prayers, as well as his platoon/battalion, he's deploying to Afghanistan today.

What a Week

Last week was... I don't even know. I think somehow the time/space continuum got a little wonky on me. It went so fast. So here's my attempt to re-cap. It was still spring break at school so the work schedule was definitely off (I think that's the main reason that I'm off on my conception of time). Tommy arrived home on Tuesday evening while I was at SnB, where, by the way, I sewed in the ends of the Hidcote Shawl!!!!! Happy dancing ensued! And then yesterday I went to Ellie's to block it. See the blob o' knitted lace?

Become the beautiful shawl that it is. Amazing what a good soak and some pins will do for knitting. Close-ups on the 3 different motifs:Once more, let me just say yay! I feel so very accomplished when I look at it all finished. The first major lace project I've ever finished - I don't count the Luna Moth Shawl because it's much smaller than this, and the pattern was the same throughout. But anyway, because I was finally done with the behemoth, I decided to continue along the Path of Finishing, and pulled out a project that hasn't seen daylight in many moons. The Mystic Waters Shawl.You might not be able to tell that anything's been done from that picture, but I assure you, I put on 20 rows, and am nearly done with Chart D. Very slow going, I now remember why it got put aside. The rows don't have any repeats within them, you have to look at the char from stitch 1 all the way across to the last stitch. Oi. Makes for a very wide chart. With the behemoth, stitch markers were placed every 20 or so stitches to mark out the repeat sections, and as it grew you got more repeats across, made it easier to just knit. With the MW, you don't have that luxury, yet. I think they start a few repeats in like 2 charts. So we shall plug along.

And just so we can get all the knitting out of the way, I picked up another hibernating project to work on during practice, the Rivendell sock. I ripped out the sock that I had - the one that was the second attempt and still too small, just to refresh your memory - and re-cast on with 3.25mm needles. Worked the cuff, and then switched to 3.0mm needles for the leg. And I am happy to report that it fits! Finally! So as of yesterday, I am through the gusset of the first sock. Happy dance.

I also got going on a market bag - I had this great idea to make a bunch to be beach bags for the vacation this year. This one, is the Monteagle Bag from Mason Dixon (the second book), with some KnitPicks CotLin yarn in the colorway, Surf. Very appropriate.I'm almost done with it, and sadly I'm thinking it's way smaller than I was hoping for. So the next bag will be a different pattern. I've got enough yarn to make 5 (maybe 6, since this one didn't take much). It looks like a blob of hot mess right now, but it's actually really cool. The different stitches are all kinda weird when you're doing them, but then look so cool when they're done.

So that's where the knitting stands. Onto the family bit now. So like I said, Tommy came home Tuesday, I hung out with him and his friend Jack that night for a little while. Wednesday, Paul and the boys came out for dinner (Mama Roberto's is so good, and so not WW friendly). Thursday was uneventful. Friday I met everyone at the Fish Fry after work, by everyone I mean Mom, Ellie, Tom, Paul and the family. Afterwards, we hit East Coast for some more WW unfriendly goodness, and then went to Willoughby Brewing Company with Jack and his girlfriend Jess. Good times ensued. And let me just say, that this has been the worst week for me since I've been on WW - too many points everywhere! Oh well, it was a special occasion.

Saturday, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Richard came over for the requested lasagna dinner, and Paul, Peggy and the boys stopped over after the Disney show they went to. The photos are pretty self explanatory.We got Tommy to put on his dress blues (we'd never seen him in them, so much photo taking took place).Notice that I was wearing my new November Ruffle. Love it.

We managed to have the whole family present briefly - even if it was via the internet. After everyone left, the fun really began. Because of his imminent deployment (he leaves for Afghanistan next Monday, but I don't want to think about that), Tommy brought home all of his fancy electronic stuff. So we are once again the cool house on the block. He showed us how to play Rock Band. Let me just say right now, I suck. I will need some serious practice. With the Wii as well, but that went a little better. And now for the fun stuff, Mom, Ellie and Tommy doing "Last Train to Clarksville". Good times!

Pleased to no end

I am ecstatic! Remember the Hidcote Shawl? Yeah, the behemoth of lace knitting? Well, here it is:

As of right now, it is exactly 3 rows and the bind off away from being off the the needles! Then it's just a matter of sewing in the ends and blocking it and this bad boy is done. I still can't believe it. I finally forced myself to pick it back up last week, knowing that I had just over a chart left to do. And I did a few marathon sessions with it, and tada!

The reason I picked it back up? I told myself that after the "green season" was done, I needed to pick up the UFO's and finish them. And I am. Example:

That's the November Ruffle. Done. Except for blocking (which will be done tonight). Yay me! Seriously, all this finishing is a bit nutty for me. This weekend was good for all things fibery though. Saturday was a Nora-thon on Lifetime. A few Nora Robert's movies and I get all kinds of things done:

That's the first of the Interlocking Leaves socks and the second bobbin of the Redwood Forest BFL finally done! Yay me again! Although, I am obviously not very good at equally dividing fiber as yet. Hmmm.

There was a little bit of starting that happened last week. After knitting with Meagan and Debi on Monday, I cast on for a little felted bag, the pattern was given to me verbally by Debi.

Doesn't look like much yet, but she made one for Meagan's birthday gift and it's adorable, and I want one too. So I'm using the Mauch Chunky (or as I like to call it, AKA Jim Thorpe) yarn that Meagan gave me for my birthday and some big needles and away we go.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

And so is Maddie, but then again, she's always pleased with herself.