ready for next weekend

My yarns are labelled and inventoried, including the merino/sea cell pictured here. All the rest are also previewed in my flickr photostream. Come visit - Sunday at the Castle in Boston!

back to the dye bench

IMG_0897
Originally uploaded by kismet09

It's good to be dyeing again. All of this will be for sale at Bazaar Bizarre. I'm about 20 skeins into my dyeing, with about 30 to go. I missed it a lot and am glad to be back to the dyepot. The new setup is also making it so much easier to get stuff done. Yay!

workspace!

1108-bench2
Originally uploaded by kismet09

Among other things, since i last updated, I:
-- sold a house, bought a house, moved to Maine
-- started a new job at the U of NH
-- broke the top 100 in competitive Scrabble
-- was accepted to Bazaar Bizarre

That last one has finally motivated me to get my dyeing back in action. We moved into the new house about 2 months ago now, and today, I finally had things more or less in order to get to work. We bought a kit to build a work bench from Home Depot, and refitted it with longer legs, which means I can do all of my dyeing without bending over and straining my back. I worked for about 2 hours today, with no soreness. This is almost a miracle.

I threw out all of my old dye storage containers at the old house, but found some perfect tupperware-esque containers in town. I now have six stock solutions to dilute and combine to my heart's content. I'm trying to be a little more scientific so that I might be able to actually recreate colors once in awhile, but I admit that my last two skeins of the evening involved dumping small remnants of all the other colors into each other to finish things up.

Pi Progress

piprogress
Originally uploaded by kismet09

This shawl is great for baseball and Olympics watching - I barely have to look down. With all the tiny remnants of yarn I'm using, though, I do have to join in yarns every few rows. I'm knitting the old and new yarn together for 4-5 stitches, and then knitting the rest of the round. When I come back to the spot with the join, I pick up one of the stray ends and knit it together with the active strand for another few. Hopefully, this will save me from weaving in too many ends by hand. the colors look kind of weird next to each other here, but I think it'll all blend okay by the time it's completely done.

a shawl to be

0808-remnants
Originally uploaded by kismet09

I found my tupperware of remnants! These are little bits of almost all of the fingering to sport weight yarns that I've dyed for woolarina. They will become a pi shawl. I started yesterday, and it took me about 45 minutes to finally give up trying to start it in the round on dpns. Instead, I knitted the first couple rounds, including the first increase round, on two needles, then moved to the double points. I can fuss with it to make it look like it was joined from the beginning later. This should be a good, mindless knitting project to keep me occupied during our move. Due to timing of buying and selling, we'll be in a rental for a month, with no cable or wireless. I'm going to guess that I'll get a lot of knitting done, or possibly go crazy.

even further north

BadgerIsland
Originally uploaded by kismet09

As it turns out, we'll be moving about a mile north of New Hampshire, to Kittery, Maine, in less than a month! This is the view from a restaurant on Badger Island, between Portsmouth and Kittery, where we ate freshly caught seafood on one of our house hunting excursions.

knitgoods

knitgoods
Originally uploaded by kismet09

So, we're moving again -- Woolarina North is heading further north, this time to New Hampshire! Since it's summer, and since we're moving, all of the scarves, hats and mittens have been packed away in preparation. I'm in the process of packing my stash as well, and am glad to report that it hasn't grown in commercial yarn since my move from MD to MA three years ago - I have one new Tupperware full, but it's all stuff that I've spun or knit.

Spring means...

No leaves on the trees yet, but nice weather, sun and a breeze - perfect conditions for hanging newly-finished handspun yarns out to dry. All of these guys - plus lots of Woolarina Handpaints - will be for sale at the Cloverhill Yarn Shop booth at Maryland Sheep & Wool next month.

dye day - march 08

This is the first bunch of dyeing I've done in the new year, and I took advantage of hauling out the supplies by getting a dozen skeins and three bunches of roving dyed up. I tried to do some spring-friendly colors, but as always, things tended toward the deeper, darker colors most of the time. Included in this batch of dyeing was about 700 yards of merino/silk, destined to become my next Clapotis.

ping

malabrigo metro mittens complete. The inspiration was Subway Knitter, but I made the pattern up from scratch with the help of Ann Budd's pattern template. My actual pattern details can be found on Ravelry. The malabrigo worsted was fantastic to work with. next up: an iPod cozy that I can connect to my timbuk2 strap. stay tuned!

xmas madness

i can't post any pictures here, in case the readers are the ones getting the gifties! they are over on ravelry, though, if you want to find me there. so far, i've finished three pairs of wristers, a couple of hats, and a calorimetry. having a few hours off today for a snow day helped - i actually got some ends woven in for a change.

four hours of my life

 Most of the time, the yarn that I purchase, dye, and reskein is completely perfect, no knots, no tangles - I just transfer it from one skein to another. This time, not so much. I love the colorway, browns and reds and rust, very autumny. I loved the yarn, too, at first. But, after four hours of untangling, excruciating yard by excruciating yard, I kind of hate it. I will put it in a box somewhere, and hopefully, someday, I will forgive it. It was going to go to woolarina.com, but after all of these hours of work, I feel like I should further tame it by knitting it myself. I don't know what it'll be yet, but it's okay - I probably won't look at it again until next fall.

I have finished three hats in the past three weeks, most recently a beanie out of Plymouth Boku, a new self-striping Silk Garden clone. It took about 2 feet less than the full skein of yarn. I'm almost done with another hat out of Plymouth Jasper, but it's going to take about 10 yards more than a full skein. Having to buy a second skein was a good excuse to spend some quality time on yarn.com today.

extra extra

This Cabled Newsboy Cap was a fun little knit, even though I don't love the high-maintenance-ness of using a cable needle (and haven't learned to cable without one yet). This is my own handdyed roving, which I then spun and knitted up into this Stitch n'Bitch Nation pattern. It has been a good project to work while watching Red Sox baseball.

I added a few stitches (using a k10 instead of a k9 in the plain sections) and one extra repeat, but otherwise stayed fairly true to pattern. I like the way it fits, although it's not quite a winter hat and not quite a baseball cap - I guess it's good for this in between weather time. All that's left is finding the plastic mesh to firm up the brim, and sewing everything up!

progress

fiberlove always languishes in the summer, and this one was no different. but now it's cold again, and the needles are back out. what i've worked on lately:

--hat for a trade on swap-bot.com, which is on its way to finland
--two hats for woolarina
--a bunch of new woolarina yarns, most of which were already sold at crafty bastards, but there are nice brown and multi-wine sock skeins left, plus some rovings.
--spun 200ish yards of superwash that i dyed, which is slowly becoming wrist warmers.

i'm also starting to conceptualize xmas gifts. i'm coveting Michelle's Japanese Vines and will probably work up a bunch of handspun hats for the family.

in the rest of my life, the main themes are continued competitive scrabble (i'm the highest rated female in MA right now), much enjoyment of the vegetable season and the meat csa, and the end of the boy's dissertation in sight.

that's what i got. time for some baseball.

Dashing

0307-dashing1
Originally uploaded by kismet09.

I feel like I've been posting yarny things, but I guess it's all been messing around at ravelry.com, and not here. I have been knitting, dyeing, and spinning a bit -- not as much as usual, but this wrister is one thing I have to show for it. The yarn is handspun. It's one of the few yarns I've dyed and spun where I wish I had some kind of template to go back to, because I'd love to make more. It's about a dk weight, which made it perfect for the knitty Spring07 Dashing pattern. This was a fun, easy knit, and the thumb opening is pretty unique and useful -- I might have to steal it for future projects.

internal stash enhancement

My yarn diet is going well - I've only purchased yarn once, and it was for a chemo cap/birthday gift for my grandmother, so I think it's allowed. This is not to say that I'm not finding alternative ways to continue to acquire yarn, though. Most recently, I'm participating in a Magic Yarn Ball Swap (so fun! want to do it again!) and also decided that it's about time to repurpose my first-ever sweater, which I have worn all of once. Since I'm not brave enough to wear it in its current state (as pictured here), and it's probably illegal, somehow, to wear a deconstructed sweater in public, I think it'll become a bulky cardigan of some kind.

Finished Fake Isle!

 

Yesterday, this hat was a pile of roving, and today, it's a hat! I started around 10am yesterday, and finished it around 9pm (with breaks for food and Scrabble, while also watching about a dozen episodes of How I Met Your Mother on DVD). I came across the pattern at Spunky Eclectic, while stalking the owner of said site, who is a yarn swap pal for an upcoming project. The fiber is the same stuff that Manos uses to make their yarn, which I ordered forever ago, and which just arrived recently. I don't think I'll work with the fiber again -- soft though it may be, it was felted to the point that even pre-drafting was only moderately helpful, and I had to fight with it a lot as I spun, which made a mess of my consistency.

In any case, the roving is variegated, but I pulled out a bunch of the darkest parts (since I had to predraft the heck out of it anyway) and used the dark as a contrasting color, and the lighter hues as my main color. I swatched (for a change), settled on size 6s, and then worked the hat up from there.

I was surprised how addictive the fair isle was. It's a simple repeat, simple enough that I could memorize it as I went around, and stranded knitting in the round with two colors came pretty easily to me, since I can vaguely knit continental (since I can't purl, the in-the-roundedness of the hat was key). Going from circular to dpn was challenging, as my floats got a little wacky, but I think it'll work out. I love the fair isle band that goes across the middle, because my knitting does pull in a little in the fair isle sections, and that actually makes the hat fit more snugly on my big old head.

I'm addicted. I think I might jump into anemoi mittens next!

Grenada Knitting

I'm leaving for Grenada on Sunday, for work, and I'm at a loss for what to bring, knitting-wise. It's going to be warm, so I want something light and/or small, but I don't have anything on needles right now that fits that description. Similarly, I don't know what book to bring for vacation reading. In both cases, I should start things so that I know whether I'm going to like them, because if I don't, they're all I'll have with me. With books, at least I could buy something else once I got there. With knitting, I have to commit to a single project. If only I could justify one more Clapotis, which is my favorite travel knitting, but since I've already made four...

I'm considering the rabbit-proof fence scarf or the foulard, both from Morehouse Merino. I have so much lightweight yarn right now that both have good potential. I just worry that the patterns will be too mindless. I could start new socks, but I have bad luck getting excited about socks. Something fair isle seems too complicated. Hmm.

jaywalkers!

I like socks the same way that I like exercise - the reward once done is so worthwhile, but the effort to get moving is more than I can usually muster. Thus, these socks have been on needles since June, the first one mostly done since July, and only today are they (mostly) finished (with a couple of ends to weave in, and a hole to close up). Thanks again to Karen for the dye swap o rama yarn!

In terms of stats... it's knitpicks' color-your-own, which comes in 440 yd skeins. Because my feet are of ridiculous proportions, this means that a pair of socks knit to four inches above my ankle bone used up all of the yarn, plus some leftover other yarn to finish up the toes. Gauge was 7.5 sts/inch on the stockinette sections, on size 2 needles. So yeah. Having big feet = always running out of sock yarn, even when I get it in large amounts. On the bright side, though, they fit me, which is more than I can say for most women's socks out there, which I stretch to get over my feet, and whose toes thus wear out much more quickly than I'd like.

dk superwash added

One new category, six new yarns -- check out the DK superwash yarns at woolarina.com!