How I'm doing on my fleece

Sorry I am pictureless again ... blog slacker, that's me. Oh, and I changed the comments to not allow anonymous any more since it looks like a spammer found my last post.

So here's the story so far of my fleece:

1. Go to farm and spend idyllic hour or two with kids and farmer on an early spring day. Leave with glorious fleece in back and kids in love with farming.

2. Roughly sort fleece at home and wash it. Discover that a better job of sorting (by texture and amount of VM as well as by color) would have been helpful. Glad that most of fleece pretty clean and not grass-embedded.

3. Start carding and spinning long draw after becoming enamored with this video.

4. Spin up a bunch of wool, ply some of it with itself and some with dyed samples from the April Phat Fiber box. Love just looking at the yarn.

5. Notice that although I am enjoying fiber prep, I am not doing it very evenly. Find this discouraging since I was thinking I might get enough yarn of the same weight to make a sweater version of this Rowan pattern.

6. Decide to make a vest instead. Decide that next time I get a fleece, I will have it professionally processed so as to be more consistently prepared. Fiber prep most fun if it turns out the way you want. :P

7. Decide vest will be too warm too, and opt to make a bag so I can have some of my special fleece with me in all seasons. Start bag twice (first time took too much yarn, 2nd try way too big). Remember pretty bag pattern in Weaving Made Easy and make a version of that instead. Bag is almost done; pics once assembly finished!

8. Join Team Spindlers for the 2010 Ravelympics! This should be fun as well as give me a timeline for getting that last pound of fiber ready for spinning. Enjoy thinking about what that yarn will become.

When you have time, would enjoy having an update on your WIPs! Love, Cindy

Crafty progress

Greetings from August in Wisconsin! It's the time of garden delights, visits to our great city pool, assorted get-ready-for-school plans and anxieties, and reflection on the speed of summer. Thanks so much for the birthday package!! The kids loved the toys and I am head over heels for the lovely alpaca fiber! The top pictures are a recycling WIP; that's a 100% cotton thrift store sweater that was not serged together, price $4.99. It has huge sleeves and is a baggy style. I'm unraveling it and expect enough yarn for a vest or short sleeve cardigan for me.

The other two pictures show what I'm doing with my fleece: a bag to felt. The colored bits are from other sources but the natural color is form the Jacob fleece. The spinning has been great, and I liked the fiber prep pretty well too. If I get a fleece again next year, I'm going to get it prepared at a mill because the prep does take a lot of time and I'm not getting as consistent results as I'd like. The felting will hide my inconsistencies and give me something I can use year-round. I haven't decided if I will get another fleece or if I will join a local fiber CSA (yup, found one!) or just buy from one of our great local fiber sources.

Hope all is well in AZ! Love, Cindy

Take me out to the ball game

Hi Alene, Here are some pictures from the July 9 Milwaukee Brewers Stitch & Pitch event at Miller Park (you don't know how many times I had to stop myself from saying County Stadium :D ). DS and I had a great time. First time to Miller Park for both of us. Colorado Rockies won 8-3. I knit on my "Big Rectangle," as I jokingly call my Sonoma Mtn. Wrap. DS brought his knitting but didn't do any. He liked when I showed it off however. ;)
Crafting away on new designs and things for fall classes, love, Cindy

In progress

Knitting surgery

Hi Alene, here's an update on my Cactus Blossom sweater. The pattern is in the fall '07 knitscene magazine, but I made mine from the top down (an example of swatch avoidance). I used Cascade 220 Quatro for the main color and experimental variegated handspun (more green than my dig. camera is showing) for the contrast color. I did the yoke by hand and then made the plain stockinette parts at the some gauge on my Bond knitting machine. Then I grafted them onto the handknit parts with some knitting surgery I feel pretty smug about.



Knitting machines have a steep learning curve but once past it's easy to quickly turn out plain old st st. Other stitches, not so fast, and there's more finishing in most cases. When I first started machine knitting I wasn't sure how to answer people who asked "did you make that?" Of course I had but they assumed it was hand work. Sometimes I explained but that didn't feel right either. It still takes learning and thinking and creativity. It's not about speed for me: I enjoy machine knitting and like to give my body a change of activity. Now I only distinguish between machine and hand if it's a chance to show what knitting machines can do or to the genuinely curious. Should our little blog have readers who think it's cheating, I'll put on this surgery project and challenge them to a Chibi duel!

The next step for Cactus Blossom? graft on the sleeves (body in done) and then a bit more surgery because I've decided it needs to be a cardigan! Hope all is well in AZ. More soon, C

WIPs, part 2

Hi Alene! Here are some more of my works in progress. First, a cream-colored sample cabled mitten; next to it of some orange tweed for a "plain" mitten and my top-down sweater in progress.

We continue to be very wet here. I hear this is the wettest month ever recorded in my fair city, over a foot of rain and more predicted! Gardening catch-up and school are the big topics here. Need to get back to the quilt next week once school starts. Here are some non-knitting WIPs
(DS and I tried out salt dough "clay"):


























Yum, tomato sauce. Your house looks great. Inspires me to got some painting going too! Ciao, Cindy

WIPs, part 1

Hi Alene, great looking Works-In-Progress you've got there. And no, we haven't dried out yet. Still raining nearly daily and when it's not, it looks like it could any minute. Weird. At least we were spared the flooding west of here. And I know what you mean about the cat coming to the camera. In my case, it's usually a kid !

Here's one of my WIPs (two, I guess, if you count DD ;) . It's the quilt I am making for our 10th anniversary this fall. It'll be done by October although it is stalled now cuz it is big and warm in its mostly assembled state. Knitting WIPs soon. Cindy

UFO's- Progress?

Hi Cindy,

Hope you have dried out from the weekend. We have heated back up. The record today is 110 and we stand a good chance of breaking that. They are predicting a chance of rain for the weekend though; possibly the moisture from Dean will push far enough west to get caught up in our wind flows.

Margaret has been perusing my UFO's and she's concerned that I have too many WIP's to accomplish much anytime soon. I think she's trying to use occulmency to figure out what I was thinking when I started all of these or maybe she's trying to use her mind power to just get me to leave more knitting around so that she can "help".

You may have noticed the new sock project that appeared on my list last week. One website I love to poke around on when I'm bored is Knitting Pattern Central. They have tons of free patterns that are lurking out there on the web.

About 2 weeks ago I found the Bellatrix pattern linked from there. It was one of three Harry Potter themed sock patterns featured last month over at Socktopia. The others are Fawkes and Nagini. I've saved all three and will probably try them in the future. I've just started the cuff on Bellatrix. I always have to modify the upper part of the legs since mine are so big so I added an extra repeat on the first needle. Hopefully that will be enough. I am using the same yarn that I made MIL's birthday socks from. I had a lot left and bought another ball in case I want to make them longer. Oh, and I'm re-reading the series too. I found my book mark from the last time I read the whole series. It was the campground layout for the place we stayed in Moab on the way back to our wedding party four years ago. I'm about a third of the way through Chamber of Secrets.

Here are DH's socks. A couple of inches of progress since the last time I posted them. The endless stockinette is taking forever. I've had DH try them on but I have an inch or two more before I start the increases. He really likes the yarn though so he'll be happy with them. He wants to use them as zen socks so I need to have them done by the time Roshi comes for the 3 day. That will probably be at the end of November--three months. He's hoping to get measured for robes soon so he can have them by that time too.



Here is another new project I started last week. I'm planning that it will be a purse out of these two ribbon yarns. They are both Trendsetter Calliope that I got at Tuesday Morning last year. I thought to make a scarf out of them but nothing I tried was making me happy so I decided on a purse instead. I have one ball each of two different colorways so I mixing them, two rows at a time. It is simple mindless knitting that is great for in the car while commuting.

Looking at all these pictures you might think I have to pose Margi with the yarn. Wrong, she loves the camera and comes running whenever I get it out. I took one picture of the Bellatrix set-up and then there she was, ready to ham it up. The combination of yarn and camera really draws her attention.

Take care, stay dry and finish that ark (felted I presume?) Later, A