Logo! Logo! Logo!

I am very excited about my new logo, designed by my lovely knitting and spinning compatriot SpiffyJenny. We talked about a logo for the first time waaay back in December, but with the craziness of the holidays and various and sundry other things, we didn't finalize anything until last week. Today she emailed me the final images, and I am thrilled.

I love what she came up with, from my seriously garbled and uninspired ramblings. It's this kind of thing that makes me appreciate graphic designs skills even more then I did before.

The dyepots are cooking

Sadly, I have spent much of the period of time since Christmas sick or recovering from being sick, including being on antibiotics for the first time in about seven years. But over the last week the energy has come back, and I've got some new pretties in the works.

This time around the inspiration is (in no particular order) George R. R. Martin, woodland amphibians, and nanometer size particles. We'll see which ones actually make it into the shop over the next few days.

I'm hoping to have everything dyed and photographed and packaged by 1st February, so check back in that day to see if the update has gone live. Til then, happy spinning!

Can't blog, too busy knitting

My plan was to celebrate the end of this week with a finished sweater for my mother-in-law. Instead I'm pulling together a care package to send to a knitter/spinner friend whose house caught on fire this week. She's not sure if she's going to have any stash left, so I'm pulling out things from my stash left, right and center to send to her. And doing a couple little things for her wee ones as well. So the sweater, lacking only one seam to be a FO, will have to wait a little bit longer. I think Mermaid will be ok with that...

Weaving projects 2 and 3

After my initial foray into the wonderful world of weaving, I quickly warped up the loom again, started weaving and then...took a two week break. Last Thursday I climbed back on the horse so to speak, and finished up Scarf #2 before moving on to Scarf #3 - handspun variation.

Here's Number 2:

The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Blue Violet - I bought two skeins of this a couple of years ago for a pair of knee socks, but never got around to knitting the socks. Now it's been transformed into a wide scarf that I Love. I wear it every chance I get. I'm so pleased with it, even though my selvedges are still not what one might hope for - they've improved though!

Emboldened by finishing off one project, I promptly warped the loom for Dev's handspun scarf (she'd been asking about it). That was Sunday. Yesterday, thanks to some concentrated time with John Luther and a couple of animated features, I managed to finish, wash and trim this little beastie.

Warp is handspun Shetland in the colorway "Happy Dance" from Hello Yarn. Weft is some pale blue fingering weight 2-ply recycled from a Goodwill sweater bought long ago in a galaxy far, far away. I was dubious about the weft color (I managed to talk her down from Bright Electric Blue), but I like it in the finished project.

And what's more important, Dev likes it. She was anxious for it to dry so she could wear it to her first Big Girl School Visit this morning (aka "assessment"), which went swimmingly.

I think maybe I'll warp Boo's scarf tonight...this weaving thing is addicting!

Christmas spinning

The loom did not come as any sort of surprise, and I was so excited by the mere prospect of weaving that three days before Christmas I had the girls pick out some fiber from the stash that I could spin up for scarves for them.

Dev chose some Hello Yarn Shetland fiber that I got from my 4 Oz Challenge prize in 2010, in the colorway "Happy Dance". It ended up like this:

212 yds/4 oz, 10-14 wpi. I spun this using a point-of-contract draw (i.e. using the twist to pull fibers out from the drafting zone). I ended up with something very squooshy and soft and lovely. After I spun this up I got a bit concerned that it wouldn't hold up to being warp, so I did a little research on how to spin strong warp yarns, which I applied to Boo's scarf yarn.

Boo chose HY Merino in "Overfond".

256 yds/4 oz, 8-10 wpi. I spun this worsted (inchworm drafting), with lots of twist, and I'm much more confident in its ability to hold up to weaving strain.

At that point, I was so hopped up on the spinning-for-weaving idea that I jumped into 100 grams of wool/silk blend that I got in a trip down to Guilford to George Weil.

95 yds/100 grams. Very smooth and dense and gorgeously shiny. I can't wait to weave this up! But I need to do some stash diving to find the right weft yarn for it. Hmmm...

I've also been working on the River Run Pullover again, now that I've got a firm, final, finish-or-be-damned! deadline on it (aka Himself's birthday). I spent yesterday on the couch, recovering from my wicked plague, and working one repeat of the sleeve.

Ooof. I'm not sure it will ever be done!