Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Actual Knitting Content!

I've been knitting a bit! I'm making another pair of my Making Waves socks using this wonderful yarn I bought at YarnCon in the fall.


It's Turtle Cove Farm's Turtle Feet; colorway Standing on the Shore.

This yarn is really wonderful to knit with and the colors are so deep and enchanting, I feel like I'm snorkeling on a coral reef, not standing on the shore.

I also decided to take out an earlier effort to make the best of this Rowan Tapestry.

First it was a simple garter stitch scarf, knit the long way. Then, it started to become an oversize entrelac. Now, I've decided on just a normal-scaled entrelac pattern and I hope to never frog it again. This yarn really likes to stick to itself, so it's a bad candidate for frogging.

And there's been some weaving.

This is a piece of cotton cloth from which I'm going to sew a messenger bag. I had a cone of 8/8 cotton (knits at worsted weight) hanging around a while. The black stripes are Tahki Cotton Classic. I'm still thinking through all the details of the bag construction, so stay tuned for that.

Have you all noticed (well, Northern Hemisphere Dwellers, that is) that the days are getting longer? I'm eager for spring this year, even though there might be a lot of upheaval for us. We're hoping to buy a bigger house, still staying in the Madison area. We've been in this house for 13 years, which is longer than I have lived in any one place in my whole life. I'll add that I am not the only one in the family with pack-rat tendencies, and you can imagine what we're up against. Getting a loan? Piece of cake. Packing and moving? That's another thing altogether.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Spin Spun, Almost Done


A non-spinner would probably be unimpressed with this photo. A little pile of natural brown yarn? Big deal.

Well, yeah. It's about 420 grams of fingering weight 3-ply yarn that I've been spinning on and off over the course of nearly 2 years. Is that nuts or what? Of course, I've done a lot of other stuff along the way.



Right now I'm trying to decide if I should keep going on this and get a whole sweater's worth done, or if I should use it with a natural white fingering weight factory-spun yarn and make a nice Faroese-style stranded design.


Here's the obligatory coin shot. Hmm. I'm leaning toward a nice two-color stranded design because it would be fun to spin some of the other fibers that have been building up in the last two years.

In Other News
I've resigned from my position at Knitcircus. It's been an incredible learning experience for me and lots of fun along the way. My family is hoping to move to a bigger house this spring/summer (the grant-gods, willing) and we have a lot of work to do to make that happen; like, 2 full time job's worth of cleaning, sorting, purging, and packing for at least several months. And I think my kids need some more of my attention than they've been getting. The younger son has had behavioral issues at school and at home that I can't continue to gloss over. I'll still be helping out with Knitcircus here and there: maybe doing some of the photos, definitely designing an occasional pattern. Stay tuned!