A few random bits for Wednesday
A crocheted bedroom, courtesy of my morning commute.
The London version of a snowman, courtesy of my kids and the appropriately wintery weather over the weekend (ETA: it's snowing again. Wheee!)
What the...?
This winter has been fairly mild in London, mild enough that the daffodils have started poking out of the ground, and snowdrops have made their appearance. That mildness came to a crashing halt this week (snow shower on Tuesday? Really?), and culminated in the dire information that it was -4 degrees Celsius this morning when we woke up.
Now, those of you living in places with actual winter (I'm looking at you Chicago!) are saying "Minus 4 degrees? Pah! (after quick Google conversion) That's only 25 Farenheit! You're not even below zero. Suck it up cupcake!" Please grant me a bit of leeway, seeing as how I've spent the last 22 years not living in New England, and indeed almost 9 of those years living in southern Arizona and Texas. In any event, it was freaking cold. It made it very difficult to get out of bed, but getting out the door was easier because I had a new snuggly scarf to hide in.
Yet another Lacy Baktus, this time using some Finn handspun in "Shaking Leaves".
This is one of the few times I've ever spun a yarn for a specific project. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make this scarf from these colors, so I split up the yarn so that I would get more-or-less even width stripes across the entire length of the scarf. I started off, and things were going well...
Stripes are looking good so far. I knit to the middle of the scarf (by weight) and started the decreases. As I got closer and closer to the end, I started thinking that perhaps I hadn't been spinning as evenly as I might have hoped - the yarn was thinner, and there seemed to be alot left in the ball. I got to the end and had a big chunk of yarn left - riiiiip. Back to the middle, knit up half of the leftover yarn length, then start decreases. Rinse, repeat.
Finally I ended up using up most of the yarn,
but the even stripes thing? Not so much...
Bah!
I am comforted by the fact that no one will ever notice this except me (unless I point it out), and by the incredibly warm squishy goodness around my neck. Since I'm off to go take a bunch of photos outside today, this should help!
Technical details: more details on spinning the yarn are here. I used US 8/5.0 mm needles.
The trick is to start them young
Tuesday night, the principal at the girls' school called to say that Devil's teacher wanted to talk to me the next day. After some gulping and panic, I went in to Dev's classroom Wednesday morning to discover that her teacher wanted me to brainwash indoctrinate demonstrate weaving to the class. They are learning about materials, this week textiles, and Dev had mentioned that I had a loom. I said I would be happy to show off my new toy, and she said "Do you knit too?"
Hahahahahahahaha! Yes, I knit. And spin as well. Over-the-moon teacher + captive audience of 6 year olds = a porpoise with a golden opportunity.
I must admit, I may have gotten a bit over-excited: Himself came home last night to a table piled high with fiber and spindles and yarn...I ended up bringing the following: unwashed and washed fiber samples, of various sorts, two spindles, a bright orange skein of handspun, a just barely started hat so I could demonstrate knitting, and the loom with Boo's christmas scarf on it. Everyone got a little chunk of fiber so they could try twisting it into yarn. I talked about washing fleece, and carding before spinning. A bunch of them had Grannies who knit (why is it always grandmothers?) they smelled unwashed fleece with suitable expressions. And finally, everyone got to take a try at the loom.
Which is why Boo's scarf has a nice tight spot in it now. Easy enough to fix, but boy did they have a good time. As did I. A good morning all around!
Teasers
For tomorrow's update...
Fibers this time around include BFL Wensleydale, Shetland and Texel. Mmmmmm....
Something's different around here...
Last night, in response to being stressed out by events more or less beyond my control*, I started playing around with the blog layout. It is still a work in progress, but I'm liking it so far. I am going to move all my patterns to a separate tab along the top, and off of the sidebar in the next coupld of days. I will eventually probably customize the colors a bit more, maybe change the background picture to something more fibery or (gasp!) put together a real header for myself one of these days. It's a work in progress...;-)
I'm also prepping an update for the shop. It's been grey and cold, and I think that influenced my color choices quite a bit this time around...both sympathetically and in rebellion against. Update should be live tomorrow sometime, but you can check out a teaser post on the blog here.
And do I have knitting to share! There's a finished shawl, a handspun scarf, and a couple of cute critters. A few need to be held back until they reach their destinations, but there should be something new and off the needles on here this week. I have also firmly committed myself to sitting down and spinning tomorrow (more Falkland for the handspun-colorwork-sweater-that-will-never-end) because, well, March is coming, and I need to get cracking now that I've run out of yarn halfway down sleeve 1!
Let me know what y'all think of the new design, and what you'd like to see more of - I'm always open to suggestions, and I love knowing that you're out there!
* Nothing of health or job or family concerns, more along the lines of if-I'd-been-an-actual-adult-and-taken-care-of-this earlier-we-wouldn't-be-in-this-unfortunate-but-thankfully-only-potentially-disappointing-and-not-dire-predicament.