FO: Homage to Hello Yarn

Of all the Christmas presents, these were the hardest to give up, by far!

Backs

Palms

Pattern: Norwegian Snail Mittens by Adrian Bizilia
Yarn: Handspun BFL in natural brown and "Norway" (dyed by Adrian as part of the Hello Yarn Fiber Club)
Needles: US 00/1.75 mm (hoo boy!)
Gauge: ~ 9 stitches/inch
Start/finish: 8 November - 6 December 2009
Comments/mods: I've blogged about the spinning here. The 2.5 oz of brown BFL I originally spun up ended up being too thick as a 3-ply, so I spun up another ounce quickly and 2-plied it, getting ~70 yards. That worked perfectly. I ended up having to spin up another ounce later (72 yds) but didn't finish it all off. Let's say ~120 yds of the brown.

I didn't use up all of the Norway I'd spun either. As you can see, the stripes didn't match up as well as I was hoping, but I refused to let that bother me. Otherwise, I would have been splicing and swearing about small bits of handspun gone to waste and so on. I think I probably used two thirds of each skein, so maybe 3 oz total? Again, since I didn't measure the yardage, I have no idea how much I used. I'll have to measure the leftovers and weight them to get an estimate.

The pattern was great fun to knit, although I have issues with using sport weight yarn on miniscule needles. My bright blue metal size 00 dpns are now bent and tortured from the effort of trying to knit with this stuff. I adore the stripes on the palms. Maybe even more then the snails...

It's a very good thing these were a bit tight around the hand, otherwise my mother-in-law might be going home with very chilly fingers. I hope these beauties enjoy life in Vermont!

ETA (30 Dec): my MIL wore these yesterday on our poorly planned hike in the rain/sleet/snow and her hands stayed dry and warm enough that she had to take the mittens off. There's something to be said for teeny tiny needles I guess!

FO: Veil of Isis, the details

Now that all the Giftmas knitting has been gifted, I can actually get my brag on about some of these babies. Some have already been displayed, but here's the first of the secret projects.

Pattern: Veil of Isis from BadCatDesigns
Yarn: Indecita Baby Alpaca, fingering weight, purchased in Cuzco by Ironman way back when, a bit more then four skeins, but I don't know the yardage
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm
Gauge: it's lace. Who cares.
Start/finish: This was my Ravelympics 2008 project, so I started August 8, 2008. Finished November 5, 2009.
Comments/mods: The Albatross is finished, long live the Albatross. I decided that doing my first beaded anything would be a good challenge for the 2008 Ravelympics, and doing an entire lace shawl in two plus weeks would be a serious challenge. I was right. The beads slowed me way down, but I still don't think I could have gotten the whole thing done without the beads. Lace is hard, and when the rows got up in the neighborhood of 400+ stitches each, things slowed down even more...

The pattern is not for the faint of heart, as it requires being able to read your knitting and figure out where you are both within the row and within the pattern. The pattern is charted, but not for the entire shawl, so it takes some paying attention to keep things going. That being said, the pattern is fairly intuitive once you get into the swing of it. And the results are beyond gorgeous.

The pattern calls for five repeats of chart B, but I did four. I used size 6 black seed beads that I found at the local Houston bead shop. Hundreds of them. And a very small crochet hook. I got one tube of beads to start, which had ~600 beads in it - those were used up about two thirds of the way through. Suffice to say I lost count and there are a metric crapton of shiny little black bits.

Unblocked the shawl was 38 inches along the diagonal and 28 inches along each side. I messed up a bit with the blocking wires, and ended up blocking it in a slightly circular shape, but it ended up about 50 inches in diameter.

This baby went to my sister-in-law, who is possibly the only person I know elegant enough to be able to use this. She seems to be enjoying it so far.

It's December 23rd, and my Christmas knitting is (almost) done

Behold. One pair of (unfelted, unsewn - that's todays project) Felted Clogs.

This brings the list to:

Person A - done
Person B - done
Person C - done
Person D - done
Person E - done
Person F - done
Person G - done
Person H - done
Person I - still not done, but this one isn't due in the States until mid-January, so I've still got some breathing room there.

Now the only people left to knit for are my poor neglected daughters' heads. The Nemo hat is on the ribbing finally.

This is the last time I knit a hat for anyone in fingering weight yarn...

I can manage to do it, I've also got this lovely stuff for a hat for Devil.

It's pink, so the chances she'll actually wear it seem pretty decent.

How's your Christmas knitting going?

Fiber Friday: Cheating

Soooooo...I know I said I wasn't going to do any spinning until I was done with the Christmas knitting, and I wasn't, but my windfall at Stash last week got the better of me. Once I'd finished the next-to-last Christmas present, I broke down and started in on this:

I've changed my mind about the composition of this top. There may still be merino in there, but I think there's also some silk - there are white bits scattered throughout that tend to not draft the same as the other fibers. Maybe it's tencel - it's clumping in a manner similar to Air - but in any case, the singles are turning out beautifully.

Slightly tweedy, with turquoise and royal blue and yellow and green and white. I'm spinning this on automatic - worsted inchworm draft, singles ~24 wpi. Brainless default spinning. There will be enough time for purposeful spinning next month...

And just to show that I'm not slacking on the last present issue:

One skein of Green Mountain Spinnery Double Twist, and some recycled red yarn left over from my Gathered Pullover. In progress, and halfway up the foot. Thank goodness these things are fast!

Windfall

Last Friday, I was early to pick up Devil, so I stopped in to Stash to say hi to Ali. When I walked in the door, she looked at me, pointed to a large blue bag sitting on a chair, and said "Free fiber". That was all I needed. I walked out ten minutes later with this:

That's about 2 lbs of assorted fibers, most of them things I've never spun before. Diane was clearing out her stash, and had dropped off a bag full for anyone to take. I ended up with:

Some lovely soft multicolored top, maybe Ashland Bay?

A pile of silk hankies dyed in green, teal and pink.

60% Lamb's wool, 40% blue fox (!). Given our regular nocturnal visitor, this may have to become something for Ironman.

A merino/possum (!) blend.

The remnants of a Spindlefrog sampler. As far as I can tell, this contains some silk, some mohair, and some wooly stuff that might be cashmere or camel or angora or alpaca.

Last but not least, a bagful of wool/silk batts in green and blue and white.