What I did in September

You know I'm busy when it takes me a week to get to the progress report for the previous month, and it's even worse when half the FO's I finished have not yet been blogged about.

Knitting:
Manly socks (blogged!) (in October - whups!)
Top-down Summertime tunic
Gathered Pullover

Spinning:
Fiber club leftovers
Hooray Sheep! at Yarn School (picture but no details here)

Dyeing:
3 lbs assorted fibers in one swoon-inducing swoop

So now my longest-standing WIPs are my doomed Ravelympics project (which has actually seen some action recently), the Sock Yarn Blanket, and the Duck Replacement, which has been hiding in the back of the stash closet because I.Hate.Intarsia. But I have new socks started!

Project Polygamy anyone?

FO: Diamond Waffle Socks

I don't think I've actually mentioned this project until now. Chalk it up to the craziness of September and the lack of internet service at my home for going on 2.5 weeks now (do you hear me Com#^&%? Fix it!).

Pattern: Diamond Waffle Socks by Danny Ouelette
Yarn: StR lightweight, "In the Navy", originally purchased for my mystery design project back in February, which is now being test knit and hopefully will be ready by the end of the month.
Needles: Knitpicks Harmony DPNs, US 1/2.25 mm
Start/finish: 8/29-9/30. I got distracted by other things along the way there...but they made it in under the wire for the Sock a Month knitalong.
Comments/modifications: This is a nice manly sock pattern. The only things I changed were the cast-on (I used Judy's Magic CO), and I made the leg short because I was worried I would run out of yarn. Of course, I had plenty, but now the leftovers can be a square or two on the SYB.

Boy that's blurry. Sorry!

This is the second Eye of Partridge heel I've done, but the first that I actually really like the look of. The variegation in the yarn sets off the texture beautifully. And it's nice and cushy too. I also really like the band of garter stitch along the edge of the heel flap. It's a nice touch.

OK, one more Christmas present down. I'm hoping the recipient of said sock likes them!

Yarn School

Where to begin? Oh, ok, maybe with this...

Or this,

Or this.

Suffice to say, I had a good time. Friday was dyeing and fiber prep. I've got more photos here if you need more details on what I dyed, but Friday morning was a whirlwind. I did 3 lbs of fiber in 3 hours. Of course, it makes a huge difference when you have a Dye Fairy around to mix up the dye and do all the rinsing for you. Clearly I'll have to train my kids to work a salad spinner and put them to work.

Then we headed to Alpacas in Wildcat Hollow for lunch. I almost took this guy home with me,

but settled for some unwashed locks and processed roving instead.

Friday afternoon, I was introduced to hand carding and drum carding, and got to try real woolen spinning. Whee! I made some mini-skeins from hand carded rolags, and then spun up a batt that I made on the drum carder.

Definitely fuzzier and loftier then my usual spin.

I spent most of my time spinning up the 4 oz that Adrian stuck in our goodie bags into this:

Some incredible Corriedale, dyed with brown, burgundy, chartreuse and orange. Sounds horrible in print, but the top was incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately I threw it on the wheel too quickly to get a picture of it, but there may be some over at the Yarn School Flickr group.

Saturday was the big spinning day. We had demonstrations on different drafting techniques, plying, spinning novelty yarns. Nikol and Jennifer also talked about raw fleece and how to pick a good one, and got one corner of the gym very sheepy smelling with piles of fiber all over the floor. I was intrigued enough to get some hand cards to play with, but I figure I can hold off on a drum carder for a while yet. Between the goodie bag, the alpacas and the dye lab, I have enough fiber to last me for quite a while!

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the goats or bunnies (some pictures here) who came to visit on Saturday, but they were very cute and very soft, and thankfully I didn't have too much cash left by that time. Sunday morning I was up at 6:00 am to head back to the airport in Kansas City. I got back here, Ironman picked me up with the girls, and we dropped him off at the international terminal to go to Peru. It was a great trip, if exhausting, and I'm so glad I got a chance to hang out with some other spinners and try some new techniques. If we're still in country next year, I might have to think about going back.

Back soonest

I've got to go to Harveyville, KS for a few days. Back soon, with much fibery goodness and a bunch of FOs to share (I've been a busy knitter, not so busy photographer).

What I did on my Hurrication

I was home all last week due to Hurricane Ike, and managed to fit in a bit of knitting between kid wrangling, cleaning up the yard, getting poison ivy and making toast over the gas burners on my stove when we didn’t have power.

I now have the completed pieces of the Estes vest (Rav link), ready to be assembled. This has been a really fun knit - I used some worsted weight yarn I got from Carroll in our Knit Night destash a couple of months ago and doubled it to get gauge. I did the fronts first because I wanted to do some adjusting of the pattern. The vest as pictured in the magazine was pretty short, so I wanted to add some length to it, and I had read on Ravelry that the pockets as written were very small, so I wanted to make the pocket openings a bit bigger. Both problems were solved by starting the pocket openings as directed in the pattern but knitting another half repeat before starting the waist shaping.

And again, another example of the joys of blocking. The pattern calls for steaming the pieces, but I wet blocked, and I’m very happy with how it came out. Before blocking the texture was a bit too exaggerated. Now it’s just right, and look at the difference it made in the size of the front! I was a bit concerned that the whole thing was going to be way too small, but it came out just right. Trust the swatch Porpoise, trust the swatch.

It’s been a long time (read: more then 15 years!) since I’ve done any serious cable work, and I’d forgotten how fun it is. Plus with bulky weight yarn and no sleeves, it goes really quickly! I finished one front piece in a day before the hurricane (mental health day where I stayed home in front of Buffy with my yarn - bliss), and got the other front and the back done over the course of the last week in the evenings. Now I’m itching to get to some other cabling work, and I have grand designs on a couple of child sized Aran sweaters. I only used 6 of the 10 skeins of this yarn so maybe there’s enough for a sweater for one of the kiddos.

The last week has also been a great source of stash enhancement for Ironman. I think I’ve mentioned before that he does woodworking. Well, my mother-in-law, Mermaid, arrived last Monday in time to enable him in a major way. She is a wood sculpture by profession, and the two of them have spent the last week driving around scoping out the brush piles on everybody’s curbs and swiping interesting wood. they dropped me off at work one morning last week to take care of some cells, and drove through the Museum District, a very tony part of town, and came to pick me up with several very large logs strapped to the roof of the car. Apparently folks were very entertained by the sight of two people pulling wood off of the streets and taking it away with them. In any event, the final touch on this vest will be handmade toggles from either Crepe Myrtle or “Ike wood” (an as yet unidentified hardwood that looks maybe like some kind of nut tree but we haven’t been able to figure out what it is yet). One light, one dark - any suggestions?