Been spinning

Here's an overbright shot of my handspun for my Winter Knittyspin project. The plum is Morehouse Merino, the handspun is from a Spunky Eclectic BFL roving.
The are gorgeous together.















I did forget about the 'plumping' factor that happens when you set some yarns. [Plump when you cook 'em].
So my handspun is just slightly bigger than the millspun.
I may have to change my designery plans slightly, but that's what makes all of this so much fun.















Tomorrow I jump the train to Toronto to meet up with Miss Amy, and a bunch of talented people for the photoshoot for our follow up for Big Girl Knits. It's going to be fab and fun!

A little B&E with a Daisy #9

The electricity went out here the other day.
Me, I've only got the garage door opener & every door is locked.
One window was open, but we have screens that don't allow easy popping out. They have little levers that need to be flipped up.
The levers are on the inside.

So, MomGyver sifts though her purse & comes up with a knitting needle.

I still had to tear the screen, but the needle made a much smaller hole than my finger & was still & tough enough to flip the screen latch.

Plus all the contact with the metal screen made not a scratch on these needles.

Tencel convert

I bought some gorgeously dyed Merino/Tencel
blend from Lynne at her workshop. I also bought some BFL in the same colorway.

Spun the BFL- dreamy& gorgeous.
Spun the tencel/merino, not at all freaky like I had been lead to believe. Was a little slippy, but the sheen, ooooh baby, it's like glass.

Of course I had to ply them together.





Here's a better shot that shows the sheeny tencel blend. The merino/tencel seems to want to be thinner than the BFL too.










Here's a strand and you can really see the play between the lofty BFL & the slick tencel.

I am in love.

Orangina -how to wear it

While the photo in Spin to Knit and in KnittySpin of my scarf on a bench is lovely, it sure doesn't show how to wear it.
Here's my handy dandy nudie half mannequin, doing her modeling duty.

Does it make more sense now?

Lynne Vogel rocks my world

Remember waaay back before school started, I took a Lynne Vogel workshop?

The theme was Spinning for Knitting Color, the result was (as with every Lynne Vogel class) to have my little grey cells shuffled like cards.

And yes, it was as mellow as this photo seems.

I have only a couple of knitted samples, but the concepts that she taught around the knitting have me hunched over my spinning wheel like Gollum on the trail of my precious colorways and dreaming of drum carder.






We did a bit of intarsia. Retarsia in my hands.
I chose the brightest of my handspun yarns and
tried to make them balance out in grid.












I'd like to add that I'm 43 years old, have been taking knitting classes for 10 years & have just recently had this knitting class revelation.
Even if you don't like to knit with fatter yarn, use it in knitting classes because:
1) you can actually see stitches
2) you can keep up and finish the class exercises

Now I only use worsted or fatter in classes - Brown Sheep is my favorite.





Enterlac was up next. Which I quite liked except for the flaccid five - those stitches to use when doing side triangles.











This bit was done with some of Spunky Eclectic's BFL roving in the Aztec colorway, plied onto itself.

We did color blending by carding and color blending by plying -I've got some projects going that I'll show sooooooooon.

We had a birthday!

There was Harry Potter cake















A sweet vintage Batman Mego from Uncle Benny

















A wee guitar that the girl had to rock out with














A trike from G'pa & G'ma

3 is good.










But wasn't this just last week?

I'm LOST

Lost Season 2 - shhhh, I'm only on episode 8.
10 skeins of Morehouse Merino* in plum for a jacket for winter Knitty. Guess what I'm been doing???

*To be augmented by some handspun from spectacular Spunky Eclectic roving.

Knitty, knitty ,KNITTY!

Fall Knitty is up!

Check out my project over at the land of KnittySpin - it's a teaser from Shannon Okey's new book Spin to Knit.

We'll start with school, or not

Life report from everyone's favorite deer in the headlights....
I'll go backwards.

Isobel started second grade. All her girlie friends from last year are in the other class, which makes her very sad. But she loves her teacher, and so far it's mutual.













Here's her first grade photo from last year for comparison.

I'm having those usual mama worries that the teacher won't "get' her & she'll have a miserable year & won't learn anything. Really, the only consistency in my life is my neurotic worry.



Meanwhile in the boy's school life I should have been worried more.
We started an arty based preschool that he and I both loved the feeling of, and we'd just do a couple hours 2 days a week.
The second day he seemed fine to leave for a while & even said "ok' when I told him I was going to go do some work and be back.
I left & returned in less than an hour.

The school director meet me in the parking lot to tell me that 1) Henry is fine & 2) Henry had managed to leave the school looking for me and NO ONE NOTICED. A neighbor called to say there was a little someone in the parking lot looking for his mom.

The director made all the appropriate horrified noises - never happened in 20 years, have a safety expert coming in, etc, etc.

Long story short, of course we're not going back.
Mama will do some preschooling at home & we'll try at Isobel's old preschool after the wee man is potty trained, a preschool that's less arty, but has doors that 3 year olds can't open.

This is me

Back in a couple of days, once school calms down!