A craft post - finally

Well, sort of a craft post. I haven't been doing much in the way of crafts lately. Mainly because of this little hellion, Razzie.

I can't spin because he's a fluff stealer/attacker/wheel demolisher. I also can't do much with finished yarns because, well, he's a cat and cats love to attack yarn. He carries off balls of yarn three times his size and kills them in dark corners. About the only thing I've been working on lately is my "I love scraps" afghan.

Procrastinators unite

This has nothing to do with anything I'm supposed to be working on, but it's so pretty I can't keep my fingers off it.



This is Brown Sheep yarn mill ends - black tone from, The Sheep Shed.

I love this stuff. It spins up to a really pretty heathery grey. I'm thinking of spinning a 3 ply yarn and making a hat/mittens/scarf set. I have some beautiful green mill ends too that I'll use with this.

Is there a wool intervention?

Last April I learned how to knit Intarsia. I instantly came up with ideas for knitting, not one but FOUR, afghans as Christmas presents. THIS Christmas.

Then a day spent surfing the web and I've rekindled my passion for learning how to hook rugs. BAM, I have a sudden brain storm for my mothers' Christmas present. THIS Christmas. Mind you the only hooked rugging I've done was latch hooking as a child. This step runner has to be classy and look realistic as the recipient does not appreciate anything remotely folk artsy.

These ideas and plans can not wait for Christmas's down the line, oh no! They HAVE to be designed and created by me in time to give this year.

Christmas 2013 now looks like:

One Intarsia Rainbow Dash afghan

One Intarsia Pinky Pie afghan

One Intarsia Apple Jack & Big Mac afghan

One Intarsia honkin' huge block afghan

One hand dyed, hand spun, hand hooked step runner (learn how to hook rugs first)

Four hand dyed, hand spun, hand knit Christmas Advent Wreaths (learn how to knit on dpns first)

Two or three hand spun skeins to gift to someone who doesn't think handspun should be sold for a lot of money.

I've said before that I need a wool intervention. Then it was to keep me from buying more fleeces. Now I need one to keep me from having all these "wonderful" ideas.

Here begins the overposting.

Ravelry has changed they way they do things again and since I don't have the money to buy the 'extras' that allow me to upload a picture directly from my computer, you dear readers, will have to put up with my daily tdf progress all through the tour. It's the only way I can post to the daily threads. Otherwise you can come back after July 21st when I will resume my regular off and on postings.



tdf13 countdown: 24 hours.

I pulled a stupid.

I certainly did. A combination of being over tired, in a rush, and having a kitchen that's inadequate both in space and useability has led to a broken dye pot. Yep, I broke the crock to my dye pot crockpot. And I was just two colors away from being finished dyeing for tdf13 too.

Grrr!

This means that I will not be able to find out if I can spin 3 pounds of fiber in under a month. Yeah, I was crazy to even try that but I did want to see how far I could get. But anyway....

This is what 2.55 pounds of my hand dyed, drum carded, fluff looks like.


I'm actually thinking of going back to the thrift store and picking out another basket as my regular spinning basket is too small now.

That's the one on the right. I had to pull all of my wips out of my old sewing basket (left and hasn't had any sewing stuff in it for years) just to give all this fiber a nice place to stay while it waits to become yarn.

To give you an idea of size, most of these batts are around 2 ounces, give or take.

In between carding all of these up I've been frantically trying to finish a scarf for my niece for Christmas and being on a Hercule's Legendary Journeys kick. I was busy having kids when it originally aired so while I enjoyed it when I happen to catch it on I wasn't in a position to watch it often. Now thanks to Netflix I'm seeing every episode (and in order) and having a lot of fun. I am so tempted to buy the dvds just for the commentaries. You gotta love Michael Hurst.

In training.

Last year I couldn't do Tour de Fleece (a.k.a. tdf) with everything that was going on/wrong. This year things are a little better and I've got my daughter helping me.

For Christmas I'd like to try to make these for family members. (For those who don't have a Ravelry account, they are hand knit advent wreaths). It will mean knitting in ways that I've never knit before and I figured hand dyed/hand spun would make them mean even more.

Of course it could just mean that I'll be sending family members lumps of unrecognizable wool. We shall see.

Since I need to do the spinning anyway I decided to make it my tdf project. Tdf runs from June 29th through July 21st, so right now I'm in 'training', which is another word for GET READY TO SPEND EVERY WAKING HOUR AT YOUR WHEEL! The last time I did this my wheel wasn't working (or I didn't have it yet, I can't remember) and did it all on spindles. This time I'm hoping I'll be able to spin about 3 pounds of fiber.

I dug into my fiber stash and found some super fine BFL, Colonial, and Baby Suri alpaca.


Pulled out some Country Classic acid dyes


Mixed them up


Weighed out the fiber


tied it up


And dyed them in the designated crock pot. This is one is spruce.

Normally I wouldn't be dyeing this fiber this way but since I have to blend fibers together afterward I decided to go the easier rout. I love the ease of dyeing in the crock pot.

I had to make the decision of how I wanted to prep them so I divided up one color (teal) and drum carded half then used my hackle to prep the other half.


And did a test spin of both before deciding that I wanted to card all 12 colors.


I also hired my daughter to photograph my progress for me. You can tell the difference in our cameras in all the above photos. That and she's willing to take them outside to get the really good shots. It's a small price to pay and it really helps me out by allowing me more time prepping and spinning. She was going to do it for nothing but I wouldn't let her.

As it stands today, I have half of the 12 colors dyed and in various stages of prep. I'm about to go put another color on the drying rack so I can dye more and tonight I'll be sitting at my drum carder again making nice fluffy bats.

Tdf13 teams I've joined:

Peleton
Climbers
Hopelessly over committed
Spin your stash.

Ashford
I think I got a little cared away this year.


What we'll watch during tdf, because my daughter will be doing her crafting stuff along with me while I spin:

Sherlock (BBC)
Star Trek movies (old & new)
Jungle cubs
merlin
jungle book
The Hobbit
My little pony
Russell Howard’s good news
Year End Review
Simon & Simon
Being human uk
Jack Benny on utub
Wild America
Short circuit 1 and 2
Kung Fu panda
Saiyuki (+ Gaiden if we can find it online)

The above is subject to change since we just signed up with Netflix again and Hulu plus for the first time.

I'm trying really hard to get my heart set on tdf this year. It's hard though with all the stuff that's happened and is still happening around here.

Teams joined: SHERlocked, Into the Whirled, Tardis, Stashbusters, and Peloton. I might join Hopelessly Overcommitted but it seems to me that by the time you get to the point you should join that one you are all ready doing to much in everything else.

Spinning: ITW's Doctor Who series. Snow Angles with an Ood x2, Mercy Hartigane, Bigger on the Inside, and Children of Time. Also, Pickin and Spinnin's Doctorin' Up the Tardis. Some undyed baby alpaca for "John's Sweater."

Goals: To spin and post every day.

Training: I have GOT to get the kids year end portfolios completed and sent out before the 30th of this month.
Organize my stash and figure out what I want to spin.
Decide on what teams I'll be spinning for.
Pre draft fiber before it gets too bloody hot to do it.

Mix and freeze: 28 batches of bread, 4 batches of rolls, 6 batches pie crust, 3 batches granola bars, 2 batches cookies, and 4 batches of pizza dough to freeze. Baggie up: 4 batches muffin mixes, 4 batches 'hamburger helper' mixes, and 2 cake mixes. Plan 93 meals and pre-make anything I can that I haven't all ready thought of so I'll have as little food prep going on in July as I can.

Get the house in a state of cleanliness that would let me ignore it, for the most part, for the month. Yikes!

Plan viewing list:
Sherlock series 1 and 2 (re-watch)
Sherlock Holmes movies 1 and 2 (re-watch)
My Little Pony (gods help me)
River Monsters (re-watch)
What ever Agatha Chrisie movies are on netflix (re-watch)
Stargate SG-1 (re-watch)
Stargate Atlantis (re-watch)
Doctor Who- last season (re-watch)
Doctor horrible (re-watch)
Living planet series
Serenity/firefly (re-watch)
Beatles
Star Wars trilogy (originals) (re-watch)
Star Trek (original) (re-watch)
Bones

tbc


Find some interest in doing any of the above.

Not much to say.

So, moving forward:

TDF time again, or almost. Time to take stock in my stash and try to narrow down the list of teams I want to join.

UPDATE:I have over 130 pounds of fiber (again)in various states of spinning readiness. I'll be joining the STASHBUSTERs group for sure.
For Ravelympics I'm thinking of getting my Summer granny square afghan finished, or putting a major dent in Andy's afghan. Maybe I'll work on both to keep from getting bored.

Spinning is a great stress reliever

FatCatKnits Sept 2011 fiber club- Country Roads
BFL 222 yards sport weight

Pretty crappy spinning job on this one but I just wanted to de-stress and not care.

Fiber Fancy All You Need Is Love Beatles club Jan 2012 coordinating braid.
Again, not the best spinning, but....

Superfine BFL 220 yards sport weight

Woolgathering's Club, BFL March 2012

BFL, 272 yards, fingering weight.
This has got to be one of the most beautiful colorways I have ever played with. I need to take it outside and get some decent shots.

On the wheel now is

Spunky Eclectic July 2011 club- Headache in Wensleydale. Again, I need to get this outside for a decent shot. Picture These colors on the bobbin. (hint- the purple is on the left)

Spinning and crocheting.

If you're a new spinner and you've wandered in here, take some advice. Spin with what YOU think would be comfortable. When I first started spinning, I had a spinning teacher tell me to not even try a wheel until I'd been spindle spinning for a long while. She said the wheel was too difficult and too fast. I've heard many spinners repeat this phrase, but I wish I hadn't listened to that part of the lesson. I believed her, knowing that she knew more about it than I. Now, after having my wheel working, I am spinning much better yarn than I ever spun with a spindle. Everyone learns differently. If you think you would enjoy a wheel better than a spindle, then by all means learn on a wheel. I still love to spindle spin but I've learned more about how to make yummy yarns on a wheel than I did with my spindles.

That being said, the above pictures shows how addicting N-plying has become.

I was given a bunch of baby/fingering yarn in pastel colors. I'm not a pastel kind of person but I didn't want this yarn to go to waste so I bought some matching yarn and started in on Attic 24's Summer Garden Granny Square afghan.

Here's a crappy picture of the first few 3" squares.

These things a freakishly addicting. I have no idea how big/small this afghan will end up. I'll just keep crocheting until I run out of yarn.

Well I'm nothing if not persistant

Or as my family likes to call it, stubborn.

After my last post, I figured out what I was doing wrong with my N-plying so, I decided to give it another try.

I plied two small skeins of New Scarecrow.

And one full 4oz skein from Spinfusion called Viola.

I also finished my Monarch Paws scarf

It's a little wonky but I still like it.

I've been a little busy

My spinning wheel FINALLY works.

This is Fiber Fancy's "New Scarecrow" in Merino and Tussah silk. I took it off the wheel to try N-plying because that's what I'd like to do with this yarn. Needless to say, I won't be ruining this pretty yarn with my N-playing (s)kills. For some reason, I spin even thinner on the wheel than I do with a spindle. My automatic spin weight seems to be fine lace for singles, which is annoying the heck out of me. I'd love to get some nice squishy worsted yarns.

I've set aside this scarf in order to try one a little less attention intense.

This is my Monarch yarn knit in the Cat's Paw Lace Scarf. I hadn't realized how much the tension had changed until I'd laid it all out like this. I probably should knit an entire project in one day so my knitting isn't drastically different in the middle. Hopefully with blocking it won't be so drastic.

And lastly, we lost a member of our family two weeks ago. It's taken me this long to be able to go through the pictures of him.

His younger years.

R.I.P. Echo aka old puppy.

14 years

The start of 2012

I knit my first hat.

I used Into the Whirled's Cerulean Dreams club in Romney. I knit it using this pattern but ran out of yarn about 10 rows from finishing so I had to top it off with some Black Welsh.
I'm rather happy with it as first knit hats go. I'm going to wash up and spin a bunch of white and brown llama fleece that I have laying around and use that to make a bunch more hats.

My daughter asked me if I made any New Years resolutions. I usually don't because I inevitably break them and then I feel disappointed in myself. On that note, the following pictures aren't proof of a resolution so much as a reminder to myself of why I don't need to renew my fiber clubs.

All of these are looking into a 22 gallon tub.

22 gallons of randomly purchased braids and bumps.

22 gallons of fiber clubs.

And looking into the same sized container, we see my handspun yarns.

I need more fiber like I need another hole in my head, but once the clubs start renewing I'll get all excited and want to rejoin. What I really should do is not buy anymore until I've gotten a lot of this spun.

Wish me luck getting THAT accomplished.

My first attempt at knitting lace

It's fun to do but something tells me I need a lot more practice at it.

When does your 'workplace' become your 'studio'?

Why do I love drum carders?

Because they take a compressed mass of mess and turn it into something soft and fluffy.

I was working in my workplace/studio..thing all day today and had to stare at this.

I've been hungry for peas, carrots, and red bell peppers all day now. Thank goodness I got out of there before I set the blue up to dry or I would have had to run out and get blueberries too!

Exciting news.. for me anyway.

Remember this post?

Well, that was all about this:

My mother received a nice sum of money that she didn't even know was owed her and was generous enough to share with several members of the family. After pondering long and hard I decided to use it like this.

Kaydessa Wool picker
Fancy Kitty drum carder
Card Weaver's Surf Board.

Can you see me doing The Dance Of Joy now?

The Kaydessa Wool picker is pretty neat in theory.

You put your compacted fiber in one end, drag the lid (containing multiple sharp nails) across the bottom (also containing multiple sharp nails), and as you do this you catch the fiber which opens it up to become nice fluffy mounds on the other end while all the vegetable matter (VM)is left in the bottom.

That's how it works in theory. The top picture is staged. You can't draw that much fiber through at one time. Also, that mohair was so compacted with tight curls that I had to pick it open with my fingers before sending it through so the picker didn't tear the fiber. The nice fluffy mound of fiber on the right hand side of the picker was hand picked once and sent through the picker twice after that. While it did help remove a lot of VM, there is so much of it in this fleece that I had to hand pick it once, send it through the picker twice, hand pick it again before drum carding it and still there was a pile of VM under the carder when I was done while the new bat contains too much VM for my liking. This is not the fault of the picker though. This fleece is terrible in it's amount of VM. So much so that I'm not buying from this local "award winning" shepherdess again.
Anyway, with a long fiber like mohair, the picker tends to pull and rip the fiber too much. I tried it with a small amount of merino/targhee x and it pilled terribly. I'm going to have to play around with this thing more to see what it likes to work with. I don't mind hand picking smaller amounts of fiber but, even with it's flaws, the Kaydessa wool picker will come in handy with 5 VM filled mohair fleeces to work with.

The Fancy Kitty 90/120 drum carder

This is what I thought I'd never be able to afford. It's taking some getting used to, and there's certainly more of a learning curve than when using combs, but it sure plows through large amounts of fiber in short order. In this picture I've carded some professional top, dyed by me, and some more of that mohair, also dyed by me. Orange and blue are not my usual colors but there's something about a drum carder that begs you to play outside your usual field.

I've carded two bats of this same blend and hope to knit some sock/slipper things with it.

My favorite purchase, by far, was the Card Weaver's Surf Board.

Please excuse the messy picture. It's sitting on top of my floor loom which was piled high with clothes sorted for an emergency trip out of state for a family funeral.
Anyway, I love this little thing. No more having to strap my work to my waist, or try to find a table or other surface that won't be needed for as long as it takes to finish a project. I LOVE this thing. There are a few things I would change about it but just the fact that it's light weight and oh-so portable makes it's well worth the money. There will be a lot more tablet woven bands around here now.

Lose a crock pot - gain a dye pot

When the lid to my 7 quart crock pot bit the dust, I couldn't just throw the whole crock pot away. "Crock pot" doesn't sell replacement lids, and the way the handle broke off would mean super glue could potentially melt into our food if I tried to glue it back on.

This crock pot has been relegated to the basement as a dye pot and I'm having so much fun using it like this.

6oz total of merino/targhee x, finn/dorst/targhee x, and some cormo thrown in for good measure.

I pre-soaked the merino/targhee separately because that was the only fleece of this combination that wasn't coated and was full of VM (vegetable matter).

I used Country Classics dye in the Bluebonnet colorway.

I dyed it in two batches. I wouldn't want to try to dye more than 4oz at a time in this pot. Then I dried it on the sweater rack...

and when it was barely dry, spun up a tiny sample skein and plied it with some natural white finn/dorset/targhee x. I love this little yarn and have decided that I need to dye more of this color and ply it with more natural white because, this dye job has been slated for plying with more of Fiber Fancy's Weekend Enjoyment. Hopefully it will be a scarf that looks like just the light blue end of this one.

We both like the light blue end of this scarf better and now I have enough of the light blue to make a whole scarf like that.

By the way, if you've never tried dyeing your own fiber, it's very addictive.

This is more finn/dorset/targhee x in pine green. I have merino/targhee x in raven cooling down right now so I can dye the mohair that's been soaking over night to become what ever color strikes my fancy this morning.

eta: This is VERY addicting and if it keeps up, I'm going to have an excuse a reason for buying more fleece.