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!

How is it Thursday already?

This is posting much later than I had planned. Oh well. Busy busy busy. What's happened in the last week? Hmm, FB game in BFE on Friday night. Early morning JV game followed by soccer on Saturday. Event every night this week. Worked in the Clinic Tuesday and today, staff meeting yesterday morning. Like I said, busy.

There has been spinning and knitting though. First up, I've plied close to half of the Terminus, as seen here on the niddy noddy.
Close up on the extreme thinness of this yarn (so proud of myself).
And skeined up. It's about 160 yards at this point. Jut gotta keep plugging away....
To stick with the spinning, I decided to reward myself for making it through half of the Terminus by letting myself play with some other fiber. I watched the video of how to "ply on the fly" and gave it a whirl with this Mountain Colors 100% Targhee in the colorway Alpine.
I'm going for a DK to worsted weight yarn and I think I'm doing pretty well with it. The technique is a bit fiddle and I feel like all thumbs at times, but practice makes perfect.
Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Alright, now we move on to the recent acquisitions. Saturday after work, I swung by KotS and Kate had gotten this in:

OMG! So very amazing and wonderful and pretty. Had to have it. What is it? 8 oz. of BFL from Frabjous Fibers in Redwood Forest. Drool. Yeah, had to move it away from certain knitting/spinning pals on Tuesday night because they were about to felt it with their drooling.

Got this in the mail the other day, it's Merino Wool Top hand painted by ForestFiberWorks on Etsy in Fallen Leaves. I found in on one of the first chilly fall days we had and wanted some spinning project that would fall-ish. It's very nice.
Onto knitting. I cast on for the Serpentine Mitts by Miriam Felton last week to have something easy to knit at SnB. Finished knitting the first one (but for the thumb) on the bus ride out to Conneaut on Friday night. Did the thumb and what not Saturday evening. Love it.
Cast on the second one last night. If you'll recall this yarn is the Sheep Shop Yarn Meagan got my for my birthday. It's fabulous. Need to hurry and finish because it's turned cold here in NE Ohio.

As for other knitting, I started this hat as my easy project for the premier of Amazing Race on Sunday (more about that in a separate post). It's the Kurbis Hat pattern. Very quick and easy, and adorable to boot. Finished it last night.
I had made a leaf to attach from a different pumpkin hat pattern I'd seen, but it ended up being way too big for this hat. Wanna know the best part about this hat? It's the first toddler/child hat I've made that doesn't fit me!! Success at last!

One more acquisition to show, I ordered a bunch of stuff from KnitPicks (they were having an amazing sale on their sock size DPN set, I just couldn't resist) most I won't show because it's boring yarn for presents, but this I will:
It's their new sock yarn "Imagination" all of the colorways are named after fairy tale characters. It's been on back order since they debuted it (I want at least 2 other colorways that won't be in for another month). This is Wicked Witch (oh so appropriate for this time of year). It's amazing. It's a 50% merino, 25% alpaca (mmm alpaca), 25% nylon blend. Love it. And you really can't beat the price. Now if I could just find enough hours in the day to turn it into socks....

I Learned a New Trick

And I feel extremely clever. Yesterday, I got around to spinning more of my Terminus BFL. So much more that I filled up my cute little spindle.
So I wound it off onto my waiting "bobbin" (it's actually the tube that Theraband comes on - I'm finding that my AT supplies are sturdier than TP rolls) and proceeded to watch a video on how to Navajo ply. Navajo plying is a method of making a single ply into a three ply finished yarn. Up until this point, I've only done 2-ply yarn. It was a bit rocky at first - those first few yards won't be knittable, but I go the hang of it. And I LOVE the result.I'll have to work on a getting good pics of the yarn itself when I get some more done. But seriously, I'm so proud of myself. And I love the result so much that I may never go back to 2-ply. The next step is the ply-on-the-fly technique, but baby steps...I had a director for this photo shoot. She's very helpful.I've made some knitting progress in the last week. Finished the fourth chart on the Hidcote Shawl last night. Started the second ball of yarn as well. Will have to switch to a longer needle in the near future.
I also finished the first chart on the Mystery sock. I'm showing it off because I'm not too sure that it will end up being gifted. I might possibly like them too much... Yeah, I'm a selfish knitter like that.
I love the way the leaves are floating along. And the orange is growing on me. Maybe because it's starting to feel like fall, and actually is officially fall today. Thoughts of pumpkins and apples and candy corns starting to dance in my head.

And last up, knitting friend Meagan gave me my birthday present Saturday night when she came over to make Christmas cards. (Yep, Christmas cards, she's much better about being on top of things than I am)
Miss Maddie was very upset that she was not allowed access to the outdoor shoot.