Socks and sheep

Sorry, no photos for a while, two of the three computers here are dead and the living one, Chris's iBook, hasn't got any photo editing software on it, nor does it have enough free space for me to start adding things he won't use. So all photos are on hold until we can get my iMac or the girls' eMac up and running again.

For the record, the iMac has been dead since just before we moved back in January, the fan keeled over and it overheated. Not sure if just a new fan will fix it either. The eMac, according to Apple's help pages, at the least needs new memory sticks, but it may be more than just them dying as well. Hopefully we will be able to get one (preferably both) fixed before long, as I really dislike using the iBook.

Anyway... this isn't a Mac blog, so onto the socks and sheep.

Socks - the cuff was looking really tight on them, and they wouldn't even fit Harley so the cuff got frogged. The heel is knitted, I did it before frogging the cuff to see if having it in place would help, but it didn't. I ditched the Razor Shell pattern and am now using the basic pattern for the ribbing of Knitty's Thuja (no link, sorry) instead. I also did a little increasing right at the heel to give me a few more stitches and it looks like it should be fine now. I am up to the third blue section of the stripes, having done the majority of the new cuff in the last two days.

Sheep - this weekend was the Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber festival. We drove down yesterday, it took about an hour to get there, maybe a little more. Not nearly as big as I was expecting or hoping for, but there was some lovely yarn and fiber to be had. I didn't feel like spending $20.00 on one 240ish yard skein of positively gorgeous yarn, though, but I did get three4 ounce bags of wool top to spin - one's a grayish black, one's a bright red and one's a darker red. I removed them from their bags when we got home, as they had been sitting in the sun with condensation inside the bags, they are airing out on the enclosed front porch. I am thinking I should have instead gotten some undyed merino instead, it was cheaper and most likely not as smelly. Oh well.

This is an insanely long post. Time to get back to the sock knitting!

My Spinning Pal rocks!

So it turns out that my Spinning Pal is Slightly Obsessed. She seriously rocks. The darker purple skein is from January - no extra goodies to show from then because they all got consumed rather quickly - she sent chocolate and caramel corn and ginger candies and lots of assorted teas from Trader Joe's and other places. I have since become addicted to their swiss milk chocolate bars, which I think makes her psychic because there was one in the package that arrived today, and we had just bought more last night. *yummy* There's also the super-cool journal which says on it's cover "she had not yet decided whether to use her power for good... or for evil" and it is so very me (and I always use my powers for evil ;) ). And there's also some yummy, yummy roving from Hand Painted Yarn that I will hopefully have a chance to play with in the near future as well.

Thank you, dearest Spinning Pal!

I finally sent my February skein yesterday and totally forgot to enclose a card with it. Thankfully I did put my name on the skein's tag I made for it. But um... whoops! I'll send my pal an email on Thursday fully identifying myself unless she gets the package before then and figures out who I am on her own.

Cotton candy... yummy!

The finished plied skein (severe close-up style).


The singles before plying.

(Both are clickable to larger versions.)

These two singles are the finest I've spun so far, and they each averaged around a worsted weight or just slightly thinner. Suffice to say, the resulting two-ply is on the rather bulky side, but I love it. I divided my roving (100% merino again) into two equal sections before dyeing itand ended up with about 8 yards more blue than pink, so I plied the remainder of the blue back onto itself. The cotton candy yarn is for my spin to knit swap person, it will hopefully ship tomorrow (and yes, it will arrive a bit after the February deadline, which I thoroughly blame on the move from hell).

I. Want. A. Spinning. Wheel.

The singles took roughly 6 hours, the plied took probably another 3.

I still have probably around 6 ounces of the merino roving left I think... I don't know when I'll get a chance to play with it, but this last batch is getting dyed in colors I'll like - purples, deep reds, and blues. I think. That is subject to change, though.

spinning and packing

100% mernio wool, Kool-Aid dyed while still in it's roving state, handspun by me on my Ashford bottom whorl drop spindle. 56 yards total (from 4 ounces of roving), varying from bulky to super-bulky, some spots still ended up overspun but it's a lot better than my first attempt.

This is my January skein for the Spin to Knit swap, for February I want to try plying, but it has to wait a bit as this entire house is in a huge state of chaos thanks to a very short-notice move. We are relocating (will be just to the south-east of Pittsburgh), and I have been packing almost constantly. There's still a ton left to do yet, and we have less than a week until we pick up the U-Haul, so I really need to get busy. It's very hard packing when you've got nowhere to put the boxes, though. On the bright side, it's become very easy to get rid of things we don't need/want. We have taken a ton of stuff to various thrift stores so far and still have more to go yet.

And now I should really get back to the packing so I can take apart the other bookshelves behind me to make room for more boxes.

Ooh... shiny!

Er... beyond tired, and about to go to bed, but I just switched to the new Blogger and wanted to see the new posting page and er, now I am posting random drivel about it.

I will hopefully take some photos of the recently spun yarn soon... once again I managed to overspin, but it relaxed some with a bath and weighted drying. It's not perfect, but for my second attempt ever, I think it's pretty good.

And now... bed.