Enjoying the weekend blues

I've finished spinning the fibers "enjoying the weekend" and "blue gradient" and picked out a simple knitting pattern.

It'll get progressively darker as I get further along because I started on the light end of the blue gradient.

I will still have some singles of "weekend enjoyment" left for my woven afghan too. I love the colors in this. I really need to learn how to n-ply so I can keep colors together.

My poor old house

This morning a road crew/gas crew started changing out the gas lines in front of our house. They're also moving our gas meter from inside our basement to a new meter on the outside of the house.

I got a huge kick out of 5 tough men in hard hats and tool belts being more fascinated with my spinning wheel than how they were going to move the meter outside.

That almost makes up for the fact that they have dug up my front yard, back yard, front side walk, back alley, and driveway and are now pounding on the foundation of the house so hard that it feels as if the house will tumble like a house of cards.

More than a nice scarf

Like I said in my last post, I thought two fibers plied together would make a nice scarf.
I wasn't wrong. After spinning and plying half the fiber (4oz), I thought I should knit some up just to make sure I was happy with it before I continued spinning it all this way. I spun and plied it very loosely and thicker than my comfort zone allows. I wasn't sure it would even hold together and I needed to decide if I wanted to ply all of it together or make sections of one pure color interspersed with the plied colors.

I shouldn't have worried. This yarn so SO soft and yummy and I love how the colors are turning out. If I had a couple pounds of this stuff I'd be making a sweater for myself. This was supposed to be just a test swatch but I couldn't sleep last night and got a little carried away.

I think I'm tempted to stop knitting up the merino/tencel and un-ply it to see if I can make it softer. It's too crunchy for my liking and I know it's from over plying because the singles I had left over are soft. I'm learning that it really pays to test knit my yarn while I'm still learning how to spin. I'll see what I can do with it once I've gotten this one finished.

And in this corner...

Fiberfancy's merino/bamboo/silk along with

Friendsinfiber's BFL/silk

together will make

A nice scarf.

I'm finding it very hard to find time to knit or spin lately. My 14 year old daughter has found out the wonderfulness that is the Beatles, and we've been enjoying their music, movies, and even the goofy Beatles cartoons I loved as a kid. She even has a favorite that just happens to be mine as well. I love that we both get along with each other so well.

I never did follow directions well

In my last post I told myself that I needed to pick a pattern and spin specifically for that, since I suck so much at knitting.

So of course I went on to knit something without a pattern.

This is the 2 ply lace that I spun for tdf this year. It's just the basic knit stitch and with 500+ yards I figure I should have enough yarn to make it a decent length. Hopefully the pretty colors will make up for my lack of knitting well.

Speaking of tdf, I won up to 10 patterns from KTLV! I figure it will be years before I'm good enough to knit any of them, but hey, I won something!

How much yarn could a non knitter knit if a non knitter could knit yarn.

A scarf that's only 26 inches long?

And I ran out of yarn before I could balance the end with the beginning, so if I were to keep it as a scarf type thingy I'd have to undo the last several inches to balance it.
Maybe I could sew it together as ear warmers?

I think my best bet, for next time, is to have a pattern planned and spin for that. Still I'll have to have a vague idea of how many yards you get per ounce.

The deconstruction of a scarf-type-thingy

This was once this

Which was once this

Which began it's life as this

It's always nice to look back and see how I much I can screw something up, don't you think?

No, I'm not really upset. This was a lesson I needed to learn AND, I got to use my little right side/wrong side sheep!