Holiday stash enhancement

So, after all my agonizing over what knitting projects I was going to bring on vacation, and worrying about whether it was going to be enough, I probably just shouldn't have bothered.


I may have mentioned in the past that my parents' house is not very far away from Spunky Eclectic. On Tuesday afternoon, it was raining, so JoAnna and I went on a little mini-yarn crawl. First up was Amy's lair of wooly goodness, where I had a bit of a problem showing any restraint whatsoever.

Wool-flax in Lobster - I've been wanting to try this fiber blend for ages, and am really looking forward to it.

Some lovely, squooshy Targhee in "Bunny Kisses" and South African Fine in "Cowering Blueberry",


6 oz of some gorgeous Panda ("Winged Insects") that is destined to become a shawl,

and four cones of Cottolin for some weaving.

Then we headed up Route 1 to Romney Ridge Farm, a place I had never heard of before but which popped up on Knit Map. We had a fabulous time chatting with Kelly (the dyer/shepherdess) and I came home with some of her yarn in the colorway "Cranberry Bog".


In fact, it was so irresistible that I wound it up yesterday and cast on for an entrelac cowl.

Finally, we headed back home via Halcyon, where I picked up something that is going to keep me busy for a very, very long time:

I am sorely tempted to buy a couple kilos of Falkland and work my way through this book from beginning to end, trying all the variations she describes. I think it would make me a much better spinner, and be huge fun. But I've got to make a list of all the yarns first - I think it's going to be a huge number!

So that's it from the East Coast of the US. Hopefully next week I'll have a new cowl, and a few more posts before I head off into the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. Summer vacation sure is fun!

That eternal dilemma:

What vacation knitting to pack? After much deliberation, I think I've decided that this is going to be the holiday of shawls. I'm bringing these lovelies from the Tour de Fleece for the first shawl,

And this all wound up and ready to go for another.

Also a spindle and a bit of fluff (there's a whole bunch waiting for me in the States) just for something different. And that, as they say, is that. Will it be enough?

My inner Yankee is curled up in a ball in the corner of a dark room, whimpering

As the days hurtle by towards 21 September, Allison and I have been spending a lot of time trying to pull together some cool schwag for those brave folks who will be joining us on the Great London Yarn Crawl. And as she is currently on the North American continent, much of the recent outreach for donations over the past week has fallen to me.

This is, quite possibly, my worst nightmare. Ask people for things? People I don't know? You mean, send them an email completely out of the blue asking them to give me, some faceless Internet stranger, something for free? It gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it. This is so far outside my comfort zone, that I have managed to procrastinate for a surprising amount of time on some of these emails, only to be goaded on by Alli sending messages saying "Have you heard back from So-and-so yet?"

But here's the very cool thing I'm finding: for the most part, people are happy to help out, and very often quite pleased to be asked. It's such a lovely surprise to email one of my super-dooper fan-girl knitware designer crushes and have her agree to send us a signed book for a door prize. It's fantastic to email a local designer and have her offer to give us pattern coupons for the goody bags AND donate a pattern for a door prize. It's a serious thrill to see people getting excited about the event.

All of this is balm to my wounded knitter/dyer psyche because I've had a bit of a set back on that front of late. I've been working on a sweater, using some lovely Green Mountain Spinnery sock yarn I dyed a while back. At the time, I was paranoid about dyelots, so I did all the skeins at the same time, and felt pretty confident that I'd managed to get them close enough.

Except, well, no:


And in case it isn't glaringly obvious from that shot:


Excuse my French, but fuck me. And having slogged though the entire stockinette back of this project, my enthusiasm for ripping out and alternating rows to blend the yarns, or trying one of the other skeins to see if it works better is non-existent. This puppy is going on the naughty step for the forseeable future, and I'm starting something new. Something reasonable. Like a lace shawl...

Holiday

If it's summer, it must be time for Porpoise et al to head across the Channel for some good wine/bread/cheese and some athletic insanity. This year, however, it was just Himself participating in the physical endeavours, while the girls and I played in the sun, went swimming and ate ice cream. Once he recovered a bit from his exertions, there was hiking, tadpole/grasshopper catching, snowball throwing and lots and lots of eating things that were not terribly good for us (fondue with bacon and onions, I'm looking at you) (you too, Cote du Rhone). And there was spinning.

Of course, my husband vehemently insisted that "There is no spinning on Alpe d'Huez!". Clearly his traumatized legs were affecting his visual acuity, because look:

There certainly was spinning on Alpe d'Huez, although in the interests of clarity, I should make it clear that this picture was actually taken on the Col de Sarenne, next to Alpe d'Huez. Perhaps he was thinking of a different type of spinning...

I did discover two things about combing spindling with hiking.

1) It's best not to try to spin silk singles on an alpine mountaintop with a sheer drop off when you haven't spun silk before and are finding it a bit slippery and difficult to manage.

2) Plying while hiking is a much more successful project then singles. So definitely go for plying if you have the option.

There were a few other yarny-adventures while we were away. There was this cute little guy, spied by my children one evening after dinner,

(I believe that's a knitting marmot)

And then there was the realisation that I may have yarn on the brain when I mistook some scarves in a kiosk in Annecy as some lovely skeins on display.



But let's be honest - you all would have made the same mistake, right?

Tour de Fleece 2013: The Final Reckoning

The stats:
1615 yds/30.6 oz total finished yarn spun.
783 yds of 3-ply, for 2349 yds of singles.
832 yds of 2-ply, for 1664 yds of singles.

Total singles length: 4013 yds, 3.7 km, 2.3 miles spun over 23 days.

The yarns: top left corner is 607 yds/14.4 oz of 3-ply bulky black Shetland, spun from drum carded batts, from a fleece that I bought at Wonderwool Wales this past April. This was my second fleece-to-hadnspun-sweaterlot I've done for Tour de Fleece - my first was last year, and it was a total failure. I credit this year's success to the fact that I was able to borrow a drum carder, which made the fiber prep so much easier! The finished yarn is soft and squishy, and is going to make a really cozy sweater. I'm hoping there's enough yardage for a full jumper, but we'll see! Top down sweater knitting is going to be my friend on this one.

Circling around to the right side is my project specific spin: Hello Yarn Finn in "Winter Storage"

I split the multi-colored top into 6 groups and spun a 2-ply sport/fingering weight to knit Brenda's Now in a Minute shawl. I think I might have to cast on this week. It's lovely soft stuff, 590 yds/7.8 oz - I'm about 10 yds short of the amount called for in the pattern, but I think it will be ok. We will see...

Next up: I had to take a break in the middle of the never-ending Shetland spin to do something with color, so I spun up a bag of ends of my own Euglena Suffolk.

One skein of 2-ply, 229 yds/3.3 oz, and one mini-skein of chain ply from the left over singles. It's about 14 wpi, so fingering weight, and is going to make some seriously awesome green socks.

The final yarn, singles started on Thursday, yarn plied and finished on Saturday:

Spunky Eclectic Bluefaced Leicester in "Autumn". I bought this top in a whirlwind stash enhancing trip to Amy's shop in August 2009, and it's been marinating in my stash ever since. I've got one more braid left from that trip, so I think I'll need to be stocking up again next month when we visit my parents.

I managed to make a collage for every day I spun during the Tour, and I've uploaded them all to a flickr set here if you're interested.

My only TdF letdown this year? I didn't manage to get as much spindling done as I wanted to.

I only managed to get through 10 gr (of 78 gr) of cashmere carding waste. But I've made a good start on it, so I'm going to keep trucking!

So how did your Tour de Fleece come out? Did you meet your goals? And are you going to keep spinning? My wrist is due for a bit of a rest, although spindling is ok, so I think I'm going to get back to that knitting thing and start using up some of this new stash.