The thrill of spinning, the agony of skeining

A propos of my angora craving, I spent yesterday afternoon carding up two batts of bfl/angora and bfl/silk, making singles of each and plying them together. I ended up with a little less than 2oz of sport/worsted weight. I'm trying to decide if I should dye it and then make something out of it, or just leave it as is. It's so soft...I really want to make gloves out of it, but I don't know if I have enough.

The agony part of the procedure was winding the plied yarn onto my swift. I guess I wound a bit too swiftly, because I didn't notice that a loop had wrapped itself around the upright part of the swift - which is coated in beeswax so that it's less squeaky. Argh! I had to take the skein of the swift, then unclamp the swift to get the yarn off it. Of course, the skein fell off my arm and tangled itself up immediately. I spent an hour yesterday untangling it, and left the rest for this morning. It's finally wound up, but argh!

I think that today I'll finish up my sister's curtains. I'd pinned and ironed everything out, but for some reason just didn't hem them. My craft room is not that big, so having the curtains across the futon really clutters it up. Of course, the huge bag of quilt scraps in the middle of the room probably doesn't help either!

I still haven't been to the hardware store to buy paint for the craft room...DP doesn't want to live in this house long term (just a few years) so I don't know if I want to spend time and money to make the room into something I like if I'll be leaving it for someone else. Still, even if I don't paint the walls, I will be making new curtains. When I was spinning in there yesterday, the curtains were really bothering me. The ice blue really sucks the energy out of the room.

Perfect buttons

I found these buttons for my Juno...I'm so excited! We have a silver maple in the backyard, and I think it's bark goes well with the yarn.

Here's a pic of the finished sock from Wednesday:



The second sock is still just a toe, because I didn't get home until 8:30 last night, and I was too tired to knit :)

I'm trying to find some good fiber to spin...Squoosh on etsy has great stuff, but I'd like to try something new. I'd really love to spin something with angora in it; my angora socks are getting threadbare.

Socks soar on size 1.5s

I finished the first green/purple sock for DP last night. Since it's on size 1.5s and only 64 st around, it almost finished itself! He tried it on and loved it, even the garter square toe, which I was afraid he might find too bulky. I'm doing these one at a time, so I'm crossing my fingers that the second sock matches the first :)

His only minor complaint was that the sock felt thick...I think it's because his favorites are made out of Schaefer Anne and are as thin as dress socks. I have another skein of the Anne for his next pair of socks, but I think I'll wait on those til the summer.

I started the toe of the second sock on the bus this morning, and I'm about 45% done with the square. (My bus ride is 30 minutes, but I don't like to knit for the second half of the ride because the bus fills up.) The toe yarn, Claudia Handpainted, is amazingly nice. I'm surprised because the last pair of socks I made out of Claudia were so horrible on my hands...they were black, so maybe the dye process made the yarn harsher. The limeade yarn is like silk, and it's only 2 ply! I think that I'm going to end up with another skein or two, to see if it's generally pleasant or unpleasant to work with.

Ugh - bugs

A propos of my infested handspun, I decided to go through all of my fiber. I have most of it in plastic bags and the bags in a rubbermaid tote, but I was afraid of what I might find.

Sadly, the creatures had attacked. I had to throw out two fleeces - one down breed (can't remember which) and one shetland. The shetland wasn't actually a good fleece to begin with, so I'm kind of happy that I had a good reason to chuck it out. My angora and the silk and cashmere were okay, but one bag of linen had to go. The bison fluff was also unscathed...I don't know what I would have done if it was corrupted!

What this makes me realize is that I've been hoarding fiber - buying a beautiful fleece or some roving and being too scared to actually spin it. I decided to start spinning more and using my handspun. If I don't, the only winners will be the bugs that are munching it up.

I also decided to pull out my drumcarder and combine some of the more interesting fibers in my stash. I have a Louet Jr. drumcarder, so I really can only make .5 or 1oz batts, but for this sampling, it was fine. I combined silk, cashmere and Finn, mohair and silk, Finn and Cormo, Cormo and cashmere, and I think a few more...maybe some BFL? I make .5oz batts, spun them up all on one bobbin and navajo plied it. I made a garter stitch triangle out of the yarn, and I decided that the Finn/silk/cashmere blend was the best. Before I put the carder away, I cleaned it up the best I could and sprinkled pennyroyal oil on it. I know that it's poisonous, but my drumcarder was bug free, even though it still had fiber tufts on it, when the rest of my stash was infested. I may make up some wormwood sachets as well, just to be on the safe side.

Finally

I finished my sil's socks:



I'm pretty happy to be finished with them.

I also finished a pair of slipper socks for DP's best friend:



For some reason, I could not get a non-fuzzy pic of them. They're made with Blue Sky Alpacas organic bulky cotton, and they're super soft.

I started working on the LotR sock club installment, Hobbiton. Unfortunately, the amount of cabling has injured my right arm, so I'm taking a break from them. I started a plain stockinette pair for DP:



I'm pretty happy about the toe. I used Cat Bordhi's garter stitch square toe, but instead of casting on one side of the square, I cast on one stitch, increased up, then decreased down. It made for an extremely sproingy square with no hard edges.

Hooray for socks!

Curses

I was past the waist on a cardigan for me, when I discovered that instead of knitting with two US8 needles, I'm knitting with a US8 and a US9. Unfortunately, my gauge was gotten on US8. Argh. I'm not sure how far back up I should rip...I do have wide shoulders, so I might not rip everything out. Doggone.

I haven't finished my SiL's socks yet. I hope to get them done during the Super Bowl. My sister and brother in law will be coming over, because my mom is coming up to watch their baby. My sister's very excited about being able to do grownup things for a few hours.

In other news, I got the birth announcement for my best friend's baby, Caleb. She had the baby with zero problems, but I haven't called her because I figured that she'd be busy learning how to take care of a baby at home (he's 3 weeks old). I'd forgotten who my BFF is! She called me yesterday on her way to Kmart and Babies R Us: she had to buy some ink and a crib mattress for her mom's house. She'd also been to the airport to drop off a friend who'd been visiting. That woman has the most energy of anyone I know, and can multitask more than two octopi. I love her!

I'm famous

Well, not really. Today I got a packet from Interweave Press, asking me to grant them exclusive rights to my pattern in Handwoven from 1987. Ideas about copyright aside, I was 10 years old in 1987, so there must be another person with my name out there. What's crazy is that if I do a google search for my name, the only results that turn up are me. Who is this other person? DP said that I should have requested a copy of my pattern to check for errata :)

I also got my December heating bill: $300!!! I called the gas company and asked if I could get someone to check my meter, and they said no way. I think something's wrong, because I keep the house at 60 degrees and our furnace is only 5 years old. You can bet that if my bill had been too low, they'd have been over here asap.

I'm about a third up the cuffs on my SiL's socks, and boy is this yarn splitty. I think that if I wasn't doing cables I wouldn't have a problem, but it makes me dread the cable rows.

I discovered a gross bug infestation in one of my bags of handspun yarn. I had to throw the whole bag away: 3 skeins of alpaca, 1 skein of linen and 1 skein of silk. Thank goodness I keep my yarn and fiber in different places and bags. If I had to chuck everything out I'd be quite peeved. I'm now afraid of what else might be living in my stash.