How I spend (some) Friday Nights

Drive by random posting, it's Fiber Arts Friday. And Crystal and I are washing fleece in the bath tub between studying. The fleece in there at the moment is her jacob fleece she got at SAFF in October. Somehow, in the past year, I bought about 20 lbs of fleece total. Most of it is still unwashed, but I'm working my way through washing it and processing it between doing math homework and reading Pride and Prejudice.

Now I only have 2 holes!

So, I found my other sleeve, it was in the closet! Frankie or Spooky (Kait's bunny that is currently staying with me) must have dragged it back there. Now, instead of an extra armhole, there are just the proper body and neck holes. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that I got an angora bunny back in September. If you read my mom's blog, you might have seen it, but in case you didn't here's her bad haircut picture:



She's evil and occasionally makes an attempt at sorting laundry.

But I found my sleeve like a week ago and sewed the second sleeve on earlier. Now all it needs is a good washing and blocking and it's ready for a photo shoot.

Sometime last month, I was looking through my stash and found the yarn that Robin gave me for my sixteenth birthday. I really like the colors and I've had it for over two years now, so I went looking for an interesting pattern to go with the hand-dyed-ness of it.



I started the Hourglass socks from Knitty Fall 08. So far, the pattern's great. I love the stitch pattern. It's got cables, twisted stitches, and lace all at once, so it's really interesting. That picture was taken two days ago, I've already turned the heel and started the gusset.

ironically lost

Ok, so I've been knitting the Gathered Pullover from the Winter 2007 Interweave Knits for forever. I'm knitting it out of the roving I got back in 2007, when I went with Elizabeth to the Michigan Fiber Fest. That was a really long time ago. According to my Ravelry, it was almost a year ago. This sweater has been put on hold several times, once because it was summer and I didn't want to knit woolly things, another time because I put it somewhere and forgot where it was, and then again when I lost the magazine.
But I've finally knit all the pieces, and I've been working on finishing it since last weekend. I sat down intending to sew in all the ends and finish sewing on the sleeves tonight. This is as far as I got:



Notice anything missing?

I am not crazy. I KNOW I knit two sleeves. I am absolutely sure of this because I knit them two at a time on two circulars. I'm sure of the two circs part, too, because I borrowed needles from Mom, I only have one set of #7 needle tips. So why am I down a sleeve?

Summer!

Summer's here!! School's out, and has been for a few weeks. So far, I've been busy with stash enhancement, dying roving, carding batts, and doing some knitting and spinning. At the end of May, Threadbear had a Summer Stimulus Sale. We went up because it was also the last weekend they had the Cookie A trunk show. I ended up walking away with two sock patterns, a braid from Interlacements, and a skein of Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn in the color Ruby River.



I love the colors in the braid and I had a really hard time deciding which one to get.

Then, that next Friday, we went up again for their Friday night spinning group. Elizabeth had never gone and they were having the same sale as the weekend before, so it was the perfect time to go. We sat, knitted, I spun a little, and also bought more yarn.



This time I got Pagewood Farm's Chugiak sock yarn in the color Meadow. It's really soft and the base reminds me of Cherry Tree Hill's Supersock.

On the last week of school, I started another shawl.



It doesn't look like much right now, but it's the Icarus shawl from Interweave Knits Summer 2006. I'm knitting it in an alpaca lace weight that I bought from a booth at the Fiber Expo last fall. It's fairly easy mindless lace right now, but I can't wait to get past the first chart.

The first week we were out of school, I didn't do much but dye. That's about all I did for a couple of days in a row, getting ready for the Fiber Arts and Animal Festival in Marshall on the 14th. It was a small event with only a few booths in the parking lot of an ice cream place.



I dyed all of those rovings, save one or two, in a few days. We didn't sell a ton, but it was fun and I got to sit and spin all day.

A few weeks before that, Mom had listed some of the batts I had carded and a couple of rovings I dyed in her store so I could pay her back for some shoes. Now, she made me my own section on her etsy site. Everything that didn't sell at the thing in Marshall has been listed on there.

Last Wednesday, I started another shawl.



This is the Janet Lace Shawl from Knit Picks. I really like knitting circular shawls, it's all knit stitches with no purls. I started it at knit night at Barnes and Noble that night.

We went there hoping we could snag Elizabeth and head over to a new yarn/fabric shop, Fabrications, in Richland. They were open later that day because there was a farmer's market in the parking lot of the shop complex. We were slightly rude to our knitting group, but hopefully they understood the call of yarn. It took forever to find (who knew 33rd turned into 32nd if you drive on it long enough), and we got there right after they were supposed to close. Fortunately for us, they stayed open longer than they were supposed to and we could buy yarn.



I got more lace yarn, two skeins of Elegant Yarn's Daphne. I love looking at this yarn. I always end up peeling back the sides of the skeins to see the gradual color changes that go through it. I have no idea what these skeins are going to grow up to be, but I'm sure that I'll find the right pattern, eventually.

Seeing as this is probably the longest post in history, I'm going to end it now. What to expect next time: pictures of the Alpine Knit Scarf, handspun, and probably a new project.

Ignoring the fact that I have a bazillion other UFOs that I haven't posted (or finished) yet....



I started something new. But, I swear, I had no choice. Seriously!

This is my final project for English. Well, not just this, I also have to give a presentation. It's the Alpine Lace Scarf from Victorian Lace Today and my project is on the history of knitting.
You see, for my English final this year, we had a choice of two things we could do. We could either write a research paper and give a 5-10 minute presentation on it or we could make a 'product' like a model of an old building or a replica of a famous painting and give a 10-15 presentation on the architecture or the artist's contributions to society. Since I can't paint, sculpt, build, and hate writing papers, I asked if I could do my project on knitting. After persuading my teacher that I would be able to find the minimum three sources, she agreed to let me. So, now I'm knitting this shawl out of the bamboo that I spun. I started knitting on Thursday but I still haven't finished spinning the yarn yet. I started knitting it before I had all the yarn because I realized that I was wasting all this time I had at school. So, I wound up all the bamboo I had plied already on Wednesday night and cast on during Physics class the next morning.
At first, it was going really slow, but after the first chart repeat, I started to be able to see where the stitches should fall in the next row. The picture that I have up top is from last night. I'm actually a few rows farther than that, about to start the main center pattern.

Spinning Break

All right, so I haven't posted in a while. But I've been doing things like hanging out with the Zombie Prom Date Knitters, spinning, and buying yarn.

When I came home from school on Wednesday, Mom told me about this cute wheel she saw on Craigslist. So, we went to see it to see if it was a working wheel. We were able to get it spinning, so it followed us home.



Mom thinks that it was probably built for decoration only so she calls it the toy wheel. After she did a little work with her dremel, I started spinning up a braid I bought from the Yarn Hollow when we were at the Fiber Expo in Ann Arbor last fall.



It's an 80/20 blend of merino/silk in Rita's zen colorway.



Then, we took the Toy wheel with us to Threadbear's spinning night on Friday. They were having their spring sale and I bought silk!

First, I bought Artyarns Regal Silk



In the store, they have the Ruffle Scarf from Scarf Style knit up in silk and I really like it, so I think I'm going to make one with this. Then, we stopped there again, and I bought more silk.



This is Jade Sapphire Maju, I bought two skeins in that color. On Friday, I was having an argument with myself. I couldn't decide if I should get the blue and brown one, which would go with a lot of stuff I already own, or if I should buy the really bright and colorful pink stuff that would only match my socks. I finally bought the blue and brown one. But when we stopped by the store again on Saturday, I ended up walking out with the really bright stuff.

Then, on Saturday, we went to the Spinning Loft in Howell partly to see if we could fit the little wheel with a new flyer or bobbins. I also wanted to see what lace yarns they carry because I'm knitting a shawl for my school project and didn't have anything in my stash that fit well and when we were at Threadbear, all of the yarns they had weren't quite what I was looking for. When I didn't find what I was looking for at the Spinning Loft, Beth, the owner, suggested I spin for my project. Then, she suggested different rovings/threw stuff at me. It took me forever to decide because all of her suggestions were really good. I finally picked out three colors of bamboo.



And Carina was very nice and let me borrow her Majacraft Rose for spring break. I started spinning on it right after she brought it over.



It treadles really nicely and makes a nice lace weight, especially with the lace whorl. I've been just randomly grabbing different colors, so there won't be any striping or order to the colors.

Another one of Beth's suggestions followed me home, but not for this project.



It's Karaoke, a soysilk/merino blend. The color is called Rainbow and I'm thinking it would make some great socks.

Next time...

Right now, that giant is drying on my mom's bed. It's so big, we had to fold it in half and block it like that. My parent's bed is a queen size so, next time Mom says I can't knit anything bigger than that, which according to wikipedia is only 60 x 80 inches. Definitely gotta keep that in mind next time I pick a large project.