Today is Phase Three

Gosh, last night I went to bed at midnight and I didn’t wake up until 11am! I never sleep that long, but it just goes to show that I wasn’t imagining being really tired last night.

I have a thing. As long as I don’t have to be up and out to do *stuff* I can do whatever I like until I have finished my coffee. So I am currently reading Facebook, reading my bloggers and gently poking a bit of knitting I started yesterday. In about half a cup I will go and shower, get dressed and attack the blanket with a darning needle and some yarn. It’s a lovely day outside so I am hoping I can get pictures of the FO (finished object) to post later.

Back to the knitting. Since I couldn’t take the blanket to the course yesterday, and they give us an hour for lunch, I needed something easy to take with me to pass time. My treat for finishing the blanket was to start Dandelion in my handspun. I admit I started it early, BUT oooohhhh! This is SO exciting, I am knitting with yarn I MADE! Also it looks good!  I’m about halfway up the back so far. Pictures of that also to follow.

 

All Change!

I decided to update my blog theme. The other one was a wee bit boring.

I hope you like this one. I have been looking for days, the same ones over and over, with different colours, layouts levels of pinkness… There are SO many pink themes! I am not sure why.

It’s not that I am adverse to pink in general, it’s just not a colour that springs to mind when I think of myself.

In case you’re curious, all the yarn on the picture comes from the same place. It’s all  sock yarn from The Natural Dye Studio.

Domestic Goddess Failure

I need to tidy my stash, it was OK then projects got stuffed in there, yarn got yanked out. patterns got looked for… and well it’s a mess.

I don’t have that much yarn. I *know* Ravelry says I have 54 items and I *know* that’s not all of it listed and I know there’s at least enough to make a sweater in one yarn.. or two, but really, it’s a modest amount, a mere drop in the ocean of GoD lady’s stash (she has 16 million boxes I *swear*). It’s only about 120 balls/skeins MAX.

Right now I can’t even tell what’s in there.

Today I had good intentions I picked all the bits off the floor and I vacuumed the living room and then, I stuffed all the bits off the floor on to the shelves and put away the vacuum cleaner….

Maybe if I make a pot of tea I’ll feel more like it?

A Break for Blogging and Crumble.

I’m having a wee sit down, not that I’ve done much really today, but I forgot to eat and I’m starving. I am being naughty and having some pudding. I made apricot and nectarine crumble last night so I’m warming some up to have with some coffee.

I have a list of things to get on with today. So far I’ve had a look at GoD Lady’s socks and emailed her my findings, and started plying some of the merino singles. Once that’s done I shall endeavour to work out where I am on the Gloves of Doom (and maybe do some work on them if I’m not at the grafting point). I also need to measure the Green/Blue/Yellow yarn, which is now dry, then I may wind the merino to a skein and  wash  and set it.

Must remember to eat again later, and not just pudding.

Lots and lots

It would seem I’ve been a bit busy since I last posted. I plyed my singles, the yarn’s almost dry, I made another 2 lots of singles and plyed them, that yarn has just been washed and is hanging up, AND I reskeined and measured Skein 2 (76 yards).

Once my head worked out that, yes, my swift WILL change angle, so I CAN use it parallel to the floor, it made winding the yarn off the spindle go MUCH faster. It’s amazing how you don’t always work these things out sooner, the skein’s not very neat, but it’ll get redone once it’s dry – there’s always that bit at the start that’s looser as the yarn pulls the swift in as you wind.

My friend didn’t manage to get the merino for me so I’ve ordered that online. Hopefully it will arrive before I manage to finish the fibre I’ve got here.

On top of doing all that I also managed to cook a tasty supper. Adapted from this recipe – I omitted the onion and added bacon.

All in all a very productive weekend.

I think I forgot to mention

There’s more actual yarn. I have another skein of the creamy merino, which I am really quite happy with compared to the first one. It’s better plied, still wraps to 9 per inch, so I guess for the moment that’s my default. I’m not worrying about trying to change that and to be able to learn to do different weights yet. I think getting any yarn even and consistent is what’s called for first, and also I’d like to have a quantity of the same yarn to knit something with. I also have one skein of the green/blue/yellow yarn plied too. I don’t have measurements for the length of either of them yet. GBY yarn is in the bedroom where I hung it out of the way to dry, and I just haven’t got round to reskeining and working out the yardage for the undyed merino yet, although I should poke myself with sharp sticks to get that done as I do have 2 more lots of singles to ply.

Today GoD Lady is at Woolfest, and I couldn’t be more jealous but, being lovely, she has offered to do some shopping for me. If she can, she will get me more of the undyed merino – we don’t know if Texere will have those big bags with them, if not I will just buy it online again – and she’s been given a budget of a few pounds to find me some fibre she thinks I will love, which she can spend regardless of finding merino. Either way I get more fibre which makes me happy. Next year I WILL have a job and I will be able to go to Woolfest and buy everything… well maybe not everything, but lots.

Yarn

So This is my first *real* yarn.

There’s about 181 yards at 9 wpi – bad pic as it was taken with my phone which has a crappy camera.

Some of it could have used more twist, but I’ll know better what I’m looking for the next time.

More on plying

I was just too tired last night to say what I wanted to.

I now know why you don’t ply 2 skeins from the same swift. Even though you think you’ve wound them with the same tension etc they end up all over the place, with the vagaries of twist and stuff. I was saved from disaster as I used the tension mast from my ball winder to feed the singles through. It’s possible that with 2 swifts and the tension mast I’d do better. I know normally people ball up yarn for plying, but soooo much winding. Also I need some kind of Lazy Kate, the old box from my bike helmet with slots cut into it is a bit too wide and a shoe box (which I was loathe to part with anyway, as I keep SHOES in them) was too narrow, and that exhausted my available box options. As I was plying, I tried to keep the yarn at a point where when I let it go next to itself it didn’t spiral together, or at least not too much, and once it was skeined it seemed to balance, but it’s a pretty loose twist and it’s entirely possible I could have got away with more. This is only my second week of spinning though so I can’t expect the know everything all at once, especially just through trial and error. More reading required.

I set the twist in the bathroom sink, first wetting I used a bit of shampoo, as that was what I had to hand, thought the book said washing up liquid. I rolled it dryish in a towel then rinsed and rerolled (fresh towel)  it’s looped round a coat hanger to dry but is getting moved about to dry it as evenly as possible. Once it’s dry I’ll rewind it – umbrella swift to daisy – then measure it so I know how much I ended up with and to get a tidier skein. It seemed much more than 200 yards while I was doing it, but I had had beer for the last bit, so my perception may have been off.

I’m hoping I can scrape enough yarn pennies together to buy another bag of tops, as 800g of yarn might just be enough to knit something substantial, no matter what the WPI end up at, and I’d really like a garment as opposed to an accessory out of this.

Busy Bee and Surgery

I can’t believe it’s been over a week since I last posted.

I have had my visitor come and go, been to the cinema, made brownies, been over to friends for drinks, helped other friends move house, been to the Meadow’s Festival and had my hospital appointment. I have also started a shawl four times, frogged it four times and thrown yarn (admittedly back in to my stash and not across the room).

I am having knitting fail, it’s worse than losing your mojo. Not feeling like doing any knitting I can deal with, I have lots I can do instead, but WANTING to knit and having nothing you pick up go right makes me very cross with myself. Right now I have doubts I could even manage stocking stitch effectively. It’s depressing.

I have had too much nature. Allergies and sun rash, much husky voicedness.

I saw a new doctor (although he assured me we had met before in 2006 when he was a student – I assume his name is in my notes, and not that he remembered me (unless I have particularly memorable lady parts)). He seems nice, is very interested in endometriosis, it’s causes and treatments, and also runs a pain clinic specifically for gynae issues. I should be going in for some surgery about eight weeks. I’m not going to go into gory detail here, but I will be having a laparoscopy to remove endomeriosis deposits and endometrial ablation – if you want to look these procedures up then on your own head be it, I don’t want any complaints though.

Post funk.

Things are poddling along. Benefits now sorted out, although I’m not sure I cancelled a standing order in time, so may need to poke HA for a refund at some point. Feel I can now relax a little. My biggest chore now is to catch up on the laundry – if the EU had a laundry mountain to go with their butter mountain & milk lake of past years, people would look at my flat and think it was being stored here. I frogged the grey gloves, because I had dropped a stitch waaaay back on the increases, and with the slipped stitches it seemed easier to reknit them that try to work it out.

More yarn to wind, I got more grey to make hat/scarf to go with the gloves, although I managed to order Aarni instead of Maahinen… it’s natural undyed from the same sheep so the colour matches so it’ll be fine. I also have my NDS precious lace to wind.

I’m hoping my lace head sorts out soon I could do with having something pretty to knit as well as something practical, especially as I have all this lovely yarn to use. Maybe I have too much choice, hence my inability to start and stick with anything.

When I started knitting again, I was determined not to have a big stash of yarn, I was going to buy yarn for specific projects. I was going to knit them and move on to new yarn and a new pattern. Then I started planning in advance and bought yarn for *future projects*.. then I changed my mind and bought yarn for something else, then I’d just see yarn I loved and bought it and, slowly but surely, I ended up with a stash. I now have a specific area just for all my knitting paraphernalia.

Insidious stuff this yarn.