Half done?

Not even... but I'm working on it.

Here are four of the yarns I've been working on (each of which is only half spun). From the left they are SW merino sock, merino sock, alpaca/merino/silk sock and BFL sock.



They're all lovely and soft and I would like to work on them 24/7 'till they're all done, but for now spinning in the evenings and on the weekends will have to do. I still expect to have a shop update around the first week of October. If I'm diligent I can probably finish these four by that update as well as a couple more BFLs.

I'm getting very excited about digging into that stash.

In preparation for winter...

I have been dyeing lots of wool. About 2 1/2 pounds worth in the last week alone. I've been working on my techniques for dyeing merino. What I've dyed so far is drafting and spinning up nicely, but it's still not as nice looking as some of the rovings I've bought from other Etsy sellers. I've bought a few that were the same as mine have turned out (which spin up nicely), but there are still a few rovings I've bought from other sellers that are perfect -presentation wise. I'd like to begin selling more rovings at some point, so I'm working towards perfection (as much as is possible).

So far, I've dyed up one pound of BFL and 1 1/2 pounds of merino. I'm still working on spinning my last batch of hand dyed rovings, but I've been having issues with being faithful to any one color for very long. I have three different rovings that each have half already spun and plied. And sadly, I've another two new rovings that I just started spinning since this new dye batch.



I'm thinking that shop updates are not going to be happening anytime soon, but when one does happen, it will probably be my biggest yet. It will also probably be all yarn.

I'm wondering how long it's going to take me to finish up with this bin. I've been spinning a lot faster since I got the Minstrel, but on the flip side, my little one is in school now, and I have been working diligently on the house. I actually promised that I would not knit or spin whenever she's in school -at least until the house is finished. Even so, I imagine I'll be through with this bin by the first of the year.

One more...

Here's one more little sweater...


... for Finn. Finn is about two months old now. He was born on the Summer Solstice and is the second child (but first son) of my friend Kathy, in Wisconsin (who loves green). He's adorable and this sweater ought to fit him perfectly sometime around Christmas.

Knitted from Classic Elite Classic One-Fifty in the color 'ivy', it turned out great and was far less expensive than the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran the pattern called for (I'm not at a place right now where I'm willing to spend $50-60 on a baby sweater which will surely be puked on). Very fun and quick to knit, I'm sure I'll make this one again.



Now, I'm off to find an unfinished sock.

By the skin of my teeth...

... I'm finished with my Must Have Cardigan. It turned out very well, I'm very happy about it and I even finished it before my Ravelympics deadline (apprx. 9:00am tomorrow).

Now I must go. My house looks like crap (it's been neglected since 8/8/08- the start of the Ravelympics) and so do I (I'm very, very behind on my sleep).

As soon as I get the house back into livable conditions it will be time to dive back into the roving. My wheel has been staring at me reproachfully for days.

I'm very much looking forward to fall.

Food is better than wool...

... Well, at least today it is. I'm thinking I'm going to have to stay up late to get the cardigan done. Though I'm nearly to the part where I'm done increasing (about half way done) for the second sleeve and I think I can get it done before bed if I put on a pot of coffee and overindulge (just a little).

I had to take some time away from the knitting to put food back in the house again. So this afternoon my little one and I went to the natural foods store and got the makings for a wonderful dinner. My husband is working late tonight, and though I miss him and wish he didn't have to work so late, I also enjoy the nights he's not home for dinner, because then I get to make things that I really like to eat. I really enjoy eating healthy foods. He doesn't.

So tonight we got to eat this...


Sri Wasano's Infamous Indonesian Rice Salad from the Moosewood Cookbook.



Along with some Gypsy Soup, also from the Moosewood. It was great. Much, much better than knitting the last few inches of the second sleeve on my cardigan. Ha.

Oh, and here's some wool. Some very pretty 70/30 SW Merino/Alpaca sock yarn. I added it to the shop a couple of days ago and forgot to mention it.



More handspun will be on the way as soon as the cardigan is done. Cheers.

Ravelympics 2008

Guilt has set in. I've been doing a terrible job with the blogging lately, but I have been so busy with this....



This is my project for Ravelympics (specifically the WIP Wrestling event) which are during the summer olympics. It's a Paton's Must Have Cardigan. I picked up what I had done so far (which was about 1/3 of the back piece) on the first day of the summer olympics and I've been working on it nearly every day. By the way, when I say working on it, I'm not saying that lightly. When I pick this up and knit, I don't stop for hours. I'd be really sad if I failed to finish this on time. I'm so close.

The picture above was taken just a couple of days into the ravelympics. As of now, I have finished the back, both fronts, and I'm just a few short inches away from finishing the first of two sleeves. I have through Saturday (roughly) to finish it- I think. I've also blocked the back and one of the fronts and tonight, once I finish the first sleeve, I'm going to block that with the front that hasn't been blocked yet. If I cast on for the second sleeve before I go to bed, I think I can probably have it done by Friday afternoon. I've also planned on sewing up the shoulder seams and knitting the collar/buttonband while the last sleeve is blocking to save some time. Then I'll just have to set in the sleeves and finish seaming it up.

I'm not going to give up. I really think I can do this. Admittedly, I want to cry a little whenever I pick up the cardigan to work on it. However, seeing how much has been accomplished in such a short amount of time is amazing. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but I now know that I can knock out a sweater in under three weeks. I didn't think I could knit fast enough but now I know the truth: I AM fast enough... I'm just too lazy.

Whoa...

Time warp...

Ever since the new wheel came, I've been spinning...

And spinning...

And spinning.



And this is only about half of what I've done. I think that going without a wheel for what seemed like such a long time has really made its mark on my spinning speed. Thankfully, the new wheel and I are bonding very well (though my plying experiences have been only marginally better than with the Joy, so I know I'm going to be shopping for a WooLee winder very, very soon).

I've been spinning so much lately that today (for once) I don't even really want to look at the wheel. I think if I do anything crafty today, it will be to pick up a baby sweater I've been working on and finish it.

The home-improvements are still crawling along at a snails pace, though Paige is going to be starting all-day Kindergarten (new here in WA state) in just a few short weeks, and then I think things are going to start barrelling right along. Today's agenda includes finding boxes while I'm out running errands so I can pack up the books in the den.

Speaking of which, I'd better be off. I've got to get to the post office early today.

It's Finally Here...

Well, the Minstrel finally arrived...



Beautiful, isn't it?

It was the biggest pain in the rear-end to put together, as the instructions were the most poorly-written instructions known to man (I think it took me over two hours and I'm usually a whiz about putting things together).

After a few minutes of testing out the double drive I was off and running. First off, I started spinning some fine singles for sock yarn out of some reject BFL I had kept just for this occasion. After a while I grabbed my Amazon fiber batts from Fiber Monster on Etsy and I spun and plied this gorgeous 93 yard skein of worsted weight 2-ply.

I hardly ever spin anything heavier than DK weight, but I have to say...



... I loves it.

Sick of Socks...

Well, here they are...




... The monkeys are done.

Today I'm planning on digging out the only unfinished pair of socks I have left and resuming working on them. It leaves me feeling a little queasy. I should be excited that I only have one pair of socks left to finish (if I really work on them in every spare minute I may actually reach my goal of finishing all unfinished socks before the wheel arrives on Friday), but I don't even want to look at them.

Last night I found myself reading in one of the forums on Ravelry about different methods of color knitting (knitting with both hands vs. knitting with one/knitting with or without the use of a fingerthimble), and I realized that I have more of a desire to pick up my unfinished ugly Christmas sweater and work fair isle than I do to knit one more stinking pair of socks. I am going to pick them up and finish them regardless of how I feel right now (because I do want them done) but after they're done, I'm tempted to swear off socks 'till fall.

I also really mean what I said about the fair isle knitting, too. Last night when I was reading I came across a discussion about the Norwegian Purl. I'd never heard that term before, so I went straight to You Tube and found this video of it, and so I picked up my knitting and tried the stitch out left-handed, and it really does work very nicely. The only thing I don't like about continental-style knitting is purling and the Norwegian method of purling solves the problem for me. I'm really glad I came across this technique because I do love the look of fair isle and some day (hopefully not too far off) I want to do a bohus sweater, which I think would be undesirably challenging if I wasn't comforable with my two-handed fair isle knitting.

Aside from the knitting, I'm going to use today to catch up on my housework. My husband had the last three days off from work and my little one and I have been sick since Thursday morning. Today is the first day I've woke up feeling like myself and my little one still has a runny nose and cough. I can hardly see the floor of my laundry room.

Where's a good house elf when you need one?

It's almost here...

I think it's time for me to be cut off from buying any more fiber (for a while).

In preparation for the new wheel, I've been buying some fiber here and there, and I've really put together a fantastic bit of rovings (like maybe 10) between my own rovings and those from other etsy sellers. The only thing really bumming me out about these rovings is that I don't see how I can justify holding on to all of them. Normally, I always keep the handspuns made from Etsy rovings (from other sellers) for my own personal stash. It doesn't seem very cost effective to sell them and it's hard enough selling and shipping away the handspun I've done from my own rovings. I'm thinking I'll have to pick one or two for keepsies and then the rest are going in the shop.

I also ordered about 1 1/2 pounds of different fibers for dyeing and spinning (I really got to splurge big because of the generous fiber credit that came with the purchase of my wheel). So that should be a lot of fun. Though, I am going to try to make it through my pile of rovings before I dye and spin the rest.

Also, as of yesterday morning I placed the order for my wheel. Today I was sent a tracking number with UPS and my wheel is scheduled to be here next Friday. Would anyone care to guess how I'm going to be spending the majority of my time next weekend?

I'm stoked!!!! The not-spinning window of time is almost up!

Tah-Dah!

Here are hubby's socks. All done. I finished them late last night. I'd say I'm surprised they took me so long, after all they're such a fast knit, but that would be a lie. I know myself too well. I can have one sock in a pair finished and the other pair finished except for the toe, and if something else comes along asking for my attention I'll set them down and abandon them for 3 1/2 weeks.



Now that these are done, I'm going to rummage through my drawer of UFOs to cast on for the second monkey sock (I think I finished the first monkey sock back in May). After that, I'm going to finish my Vintage KAL socks. I should have had those finished a couple of weeks ago, but I pushed them further down the list to make room for Hubby's socks and the impromptu baby sweater he asked me for.

Speaking of baby sweaters, it's been a long time since I went all out and splurged on knitting books, but either late this week or early next week I can be expecting a whole lot of them. Knitpicks is having a sale through early August: 40% off their entire stock of books. Considering that most of the books I covet for my collection are all expensive (for me that would be $25.00 and up) I used the sale as justification to go a little crazy.

I ordered The Best of Interweave Knits, Debbie Bliss Special Knits, Selbuvotter A Biography of Knitting Tradition, Things I Learned from Knitting Whether I Wanted to or Not, The Opinionated Knitter and Knitter's Almanac. Seriously, this is a lot of book spending for me, but totally worth it. I don't think I'll be even remotely tempted to buy another knitting book for a long, long time. I think I made some pretty good choices, too. How could I possibly go wrong with Elizabeth Zimmerman?

Speaking of spending money... It's only a few more days before I order my new spinning wheel. The Joy was sold last Thursday and shipped out this Monday- all the way to Virginia, too. The lady who bought her was an absolute sweetheart to work with. I'm happy to say that the process of selling her the wheel restored my faith in humanity a little (I had faith before, but now I have just that much more). I'm glad to have the process almost done with and I'm looking forward to having the new wheel come. I have been preparing for its arrival by splurging on fiber from my fellow sellers on Etsy. Besides the few I've already gathered from Allspunup and FiberMonster, I just ordered yet another from Allspunup and one from FatCatKnits. They're all going to be beautiful. I'm stoked.

Well, until the wheel does get here I've plenty going on around the house. My daughter celebrated her 5th birthday on Monday and we're having a party for her this weekend.

We're still working on the house. My hubby has much of the outside of the house all spiffed out now- It's looking very nice. I'm going through closets and drawers, throwing things out and boxing things up for goodwill. I still have a lot to do. I'm so thankful to have the wheel sold, and I am (sadly) benefitting greatly from having it out of the house. I'm getting a lot more done than I would if it were here. I'm a little ashamed of it but it's the truth.

So off I am to do some more (I'm thinking there's still hope for me yet)!

I can't take it anymore....

Okay, that's it. I'm done with waiting. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the buyer I had for the Joy has gone MIA. The Joy is still here, waiting to be shipped. As of Friday I'm re-listing her for sale, but this time there will be a stipulation: I'm spinning on her while I wait for her to sell.

I'm just going to include the stipulation in my listing, and make sure that anyone wishing to buy her knows that they may have to wait 2-3 days for me to finish something up and get her shipped out.

Not having a new wheel isn't really bugging me, but having over 2 pounds of fiber waiting to be spun with no way of spinning it is.

P.S. As of Friday afternoon, the Joy will be available for purchase again. If you find yourself reading this and are interested in buying her, please feel free to contact me! =)

Fresh off the needles...

Just finished these today. These are the AllSpunUp handspun socks I've been working on. With a car ride to Poulsbo and back yesterday afternoon, I ended up having an abundance of knitting time and was able to get these done.

Also, my wheel has found a new home. I'll be shipping her to it on Monday. I'm very thankful to have had her, but I'm also looking forward to the new one.



In the mean time I'm checking these guys off and getting started on finishing the next UFO knitting project on my list:

#2. Hubby's work socks (currently about 60% done).

If I push it, I may be able to finish all of my unfinished sock projects by the time the new wheel comes. It's good I'm getting them done now. I probably wont want to pick up a pair of needles for 2-3 weeks after the Minstrel arrives.

Amazing...

I love summer in the Pacific Northwest. It's warm enough for t-shirts, but the heat is rarely uncomfortable. It still rains, but not enough to bother the spirit (the wind is a nuisance some years-but that's another story). The green things grow with speed far surpassing the speed at which I am capable of weeding, and it's just lovely....



I even have some delicate little strawberries turning red- I don't know if I will end up with enough strawberries to make anything yummy, still, if I see one single deer come near them this year I may have to buy a gun. Mmmm... venison steaks (with home-made strawberry jam?).



I still have not planted any annuals in the flower bed (shame on me) but I'm heading out later today to buy some. I'm really not the gardening type but seeing as we're trying to sell the house I'm going to give it my best shot this year.



The lavender is blooming everywhere I look and I'm encouraged when I see fuzzy little bumblebees swarming all over it. Lavender is so popular around this area. The neighboring town of Sequim is preparing for it's annual Lavender Festival next month and even if you're not particularly nutters about lavender the smell is really something you can appreciate. Walking into one of the stores on the lavender farms is an experience. The first breath you take when you walk through the door is intoxicating (in a good way).

Aside from the plant life I noticed that the snow is nearly gone from the mountains. I'm going to try keeping myself motivated to work on and inside the house through July and maybe if enough work is done by then, August can become a month of rewarding our household with hiking, fishing and camping. Mid to late August is spectacular around here, especially if you head out west and up into the mountains. The Olympic National Park is one of the many reasons I can't picture myself living anywhere but the Pacific Northwest.

The knitting is coming along well, if I get enough work done today I might be able to make it through the heel turn of my second sock. I've also been spinning (just barely) with a drop spindle, but it's very slow in coming. I miss spinning on a wheel. Badly.

The waiting begins...

I have only had an ad (for the sale of the Joy) in the paper for a day now. No calls. Seriously dissappointing... did I mention I'm not very patient when it comes to this kind of thing?

Yesterday morning when I woke up I immeadiately went to the paper-box to get the paper to check my ad and found that my ad wasn't there. So right off I called the paper and placed an ad (the old-fashioned way) as my online ad placement was unsuccessful.

This morning was a repeat of yesterday morning except that my ad was there. I was very pleased, except for not having a single call about the wheel all day long. I was hysterical every time the phone rang (I even threw myself from the shower, dripping, to answer a call).



Alas, day one is over, there's six more to go till the ad is over.

In all this time I don't think I realized how attached I've become to this wheel. I desperately want it sold, but in the mean time I keep entertaining the thought of getting it out because I want to spin so much. I've even been entertaining the thought that if it doesn't sell in a week that maybe I should just keep selling handspun 'till I make enough to buy the wheel I want to replace it with. It might not actually take that long when considering that the Etsy shop has been doing pretty good- at least when you consider how slow I am (some of the sellers on Etsy seem to be able to pump out gorgeous handspun like machines or sweat-shop laborers... as much as I love spinning I don't want to be chained to my wheel). If I get a yarn or two out every week I might even be able to afford the new wheel come mid-autumn.

My mind just keeps going around and around the situation. I've even thought about throwing my moral compass out the window and just buying the wheel I want, but I know it's wrong. I even know that my husband would ultimately let me get away with it (dissapproving as he would be) but I don't want to dissappoint him. For once, I think I'd also like to not be dissappointed in myself, which I would be if I bought a new wheel without selling the old one.

I hope day two of waiting goes better than day one.

On a better note, I'm getting a lot more knitting done. I hadn't quite put it together that the reason my knitting has been going so slow was because I've been spinning so much. The last couple of days I've been working on a pair of socks.

I'm knitting them with this handspun BFL yarn bought from Allspunup on Etsy. They're turning out really beautiful. I'm going to wait to post pictures of them untill they're all finished. I imagine I'll be done with them in another 2-3 days. After that I'll be finishing a pair of socks for my hubby.

I'm actually a little glad I'm so far behind in my knitting. As long as I can keep my focus on knitting, it should help me to keep my mind off of the other thing.

Taking a break...

I've been spinning like a crazy lady lately and here are a few of my latest efforts. This one is about 255 yards of handspun/hand-dyed 2-ply BFL fingering-DK weight yarn in deep olive greens, dark grey and plum.



The second is 340 yards of handspun/hand-dyed 2-ply superwash merino sock yarn. I love the colors: there's browns, golden browns and just about every beautiful rosey shade of pink from pale petal pink to deep magenta. If I had given this one a fun name it would have been Rosey Cotton Dancin'.



And this last one just came off the wheel late this afternoon. It's just over 275 yards of handspun/hand-dyed 2-ply BFL sock yarn in yellows, light greens and navy blue. This one really surprised me. When I first saw the roving after I dyed it I thought it was hideous.
However, it decided that it was going to turn out lovely no matter what I thought of it. Shame on me for judging it so harshly.




It also happens to be the last one off the Joy. I am taking a short break (hopefully short) from spinning while I put the Joy up for sale and purchase a new wheel. I hope the Joy sells quickly because I'm not known for my patience when it comes to spinning/knitting goodies. At least it should give me some time to work on the house and catch up on my knitting (I have loads of socks that need finishing).

I have done a lot of reading and asking around in forums and with all that information, decided that a Kromski Minstrel (with the mahogany finish- it's just too pretty to pass up) will be my next wheel. Wish me luck!

So much for plans...

I'm such a fickle person...

Yesterday, I was planning on waiting till I had the last yarn done before doing a listing. This morning my plan went out the window along with my patience, and I just decided to go ahead and list the 5 things that were ready (the two yarns from yesterday's post and 3 of the four SW merino rovings- I should be able to list the fourth one tomorrow).

The first yarn from the yesterday's post is aready sold... Get 'em while they're hot! =)

Soon...

Just a quick note to say that there will be a shop update soon. It will be my biggest update so far, which is good, because it will probably be my only update for the month of June. I might sneak something in near the end of June but I'm not going to push myself too hard, as my husband and I are trying to get our home ready to sell.

There will be this one- a gorgeous handspun navajo 3-ply sock yarn. It's very colorful and if I remember correctly there is about 380 yards here.



There will also be this one- A 2-ply handspun SW merino sock yarn (fingering/DK weight). It's beautiful, with blues, browns, greens and white. This one totals roughly 330 yards and is going to be very difficult for me to sell. It's very, very pretty.





There will also be another 2-ply handspun BFL sock yarn, in plum, olive green and dark grey (it should be on the wheel in another couple of days) as well as four hand dyed SuperWash merino rovings for sale (also very pretty).

Tentatively, the update will happen no later than June 14th. It should give me plenty of time to finish everything and allow for a sufficient window of drying time. I'm kind of waiting to get my new reading glasses before I do the update- my eyes have been giving me too much trouble to sit at the computer for that long without them.

Surprise

I have been with my husband for over eight years and it amazes me how often he can still surprise me.

Most of the time my husband treats my knitting with indifference. And sometimes even with out-and-out loathing. He sees it as something that takes time away from productivity around the house and from, well... him.

He didn't much appreciate the socks I've knit for him (he thanked me, but looked at them kind of distainfully at the same time- only wearing them when he's out of other clean socks) and I had pretty much given up on the idea of knitting anything else for him. Period. When suddenly, he threw me a curve ball.

A few weeks ago he actually asked me to knit socks for him for his work. He's entering into a management position and he wants to have 'nicer-looking' socks. In the stupor that followed his request I think I repeatedly (perhaps as many as 5 or 6 times) asked him, "What? Are you sure? Are you really, really sure that you want me to knit you socks?".

Sure enough, he really did. Then, just a few days ago, he tells me that one of his co-workers' wives was due to have a baby any time and he asked me if I would knit something for their baby. I can't accurately describe how busy I've been between spinning for the next Etsy shop update and getting the house ready to sell, but somehow, between everything else, I rose to the challenge.



This is the Ribbed Baby Jacket, from this book by Debbie Bliss. I found the pattern available as a free download on Ravelry. It's adorable, though I made a few modifications to the pattern because there were way too many things about the design that bothered me on a fundamental level (which, of course, I realized when I was already 2/3 of the way through the first time I knit it).

Also, when my husband first asked me to do this, we weren't sure if it was to be a boy or a girl, so I had bought yarn that could go either way. I ended up girli-fying it by embroidering little daisies on it with some left-over cherry tree hill sock yarn. Which I think turned out very cute.



I've really enjoyed this little knit, and have been thinking about knitting another one soon. I feel flattered that my husband asked me to do this, though I also kind of hope he doesn't get used to the idea of asking me knit things for other people. =)

Meme

I've been tagged by Amelia.
So now, after procrastinating for a few days, I'm finally getting around to answering it (though I'm not sure I'll be able to tag so many people in turn).

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

Graduating from high school (has it been 10 years already?) and working as a dishwasher/waitress/cook at Granny's Cafe. That first summer out of high school was one of the most beautifully, swelteringly-hot summers I can remember here on the peninsula- it was lovely.

2. 5 things on my to-do list today?

1- Finish plying the skein I'm working on.
2- Go to the Library and pick up another audio book to listen to: The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan (from the Wheel of Time Series). It's a wonderful series so far.
3- Go to the bank.
4- Trip to Walmart (not my favorite thing :() for plastic bins. Paige and I are re-organizing her room as it keeps getting progressively worse and I also have to reorganize my own stash- it's getting out of control and has been taking up most of the spare bedroom. In my defense, it isn't just yarn, it's yarn, roving, as well as all my spinning and dyeing stuff.
5- Return some video rentals (I rented P.S. I Love You, and while it was a good movie, I sobbed like a hysterical idiot to the point of my husband becoming uncomfortable and leaving the room- be warned.)

3. Snacks I enjoy...

I enjoy most things that aren't really good for me. I love chocolate, just about any kind of crunchy snacks (vegetables included), ice cream and home made cake (I grew up disliking cake because we only ever had store-bought or boxed cake mixes, but after I when to work for Bonny's Bakery and had real cake, I learned to love it and have become quite good at baking my own. I have the waistline to prove it). Also, being intensely addicted to candied ginger (I would- and have- eaten it by the pound- I'm addicted to the burn), I just recently discovered a treat that has become an instant favorite: candied ginger-style Turkish delight... Yummmmm...

4. Things I would do if i were a billionaire...

I would probably give most of it away (at least I hope that I would). What could one person possibly need with all that money? I would definitely take care of my family, making sure they all had debt-free homes. I'd like to make sure all of the children in my family were given the opportunity to go to college (I might like like to go to college myself, actually). I would definitely like to see the world, too.

5. Places I've lived...

I have lived only in Washington state. I've lived in Port Angeles for the last 22-23 years. I was born in Port Angeles, but while I was younger I lived in Aberdeen, Hoquiam (not sure if that is how that one is spelled- it doesn't look right), Tacoma and Olympia. We moved around a lot.

6. Peeps I want to know more about...

Maureen- Tag, you're it (If you choose to participate).

More...

It's amazing how things can be seemingly quiet for so long and then all of sudden- whoosh- things are moving along quickly.

When I first began putting my yarns on Etsy, it felt as if an age passed before I made my first sale. Now things are really moving. As a result, I've been putting in almost more spinning time than I'm comfortable with. Almost.

The shop has been empty for a few days while I've been working on this.

This is the first half of this (the one on top) spun up. It's another Navajo 3-ply fingering/DK weight- merino sock yarn. This half came out to be about 179yds. It has blues, greens, oranges, yellows and violet. It will knit up into lovely striped socks.

After the second half is finished, I'm going to be working on a custom project for someone and then I'm going to crank out a few more two-plies from these SW merino rovings.

This first one came out different than expected. The pink areas were the result of some dark grey dye. I was a little surprised, but it's still quite pretty and I'm very interested to see how it spins up.

This second roving is one purposely dyed, in hopes of recreating a roving/yarn from another etsy seller that I desperately wanted, but missed out on. If it spins up the way I hope it does, I'm going to hoard it for myself.

And this last roving, while very pretty, I'm not entirely interested in spinning myself, so I think this may be the first actual roving that I add to my shop (which will likely happen at the next listing).



Adding 3-4 hand-dyed rovings to the shop along with each handspun I list may enable me to have a least a little something in the shop in between wheel projects. I'm beginning to see that with getting the house ready for sale, I'm really going to have to rein-in my wheel time to make time for all that needs to be done.

I'm trying to keep in mind that once the house is sold and we've bought a new place, moved and settled in, I may have more time available to be at the wheel than I'm prepared for. So for now it might be wisest just to be content with doing a little less.

Heeeere fishy-fishy-fishy...

Just finished another skein. This one is 260+ yards of 2-ply fingering/DK weight BFL yarn. This is the first time I've worked with good BFL. I only ordered 8oz of it to try, because I've spun BFL before and (by comparison with this new stuff) it was awful stuff to work with. Now I wish I'd bought more. Besides, this BFL spins up superfast compared to merino, which might give me a fair shot at getting more yarns up in the Etsy store more often.



It's dyed in blues, dark green (which came out more of a blue-green) and orange. It reminds me of a happy little goldfish swimming in its bowl. So, of course, I called it 'Goldfish Bowl'.



I just listed it yesterday evening and I really need to get crackin' on the wheel. It's the only thing listed in the shop right now and it's lonely. I'm very glad that things finally picked up, but I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to start adding a few of my hand-dyed rovings to my shop just so it isn't bare. Mind you- I'm not complaining.

Exhausted...

The last few weeks have gone by so fast . It seems like my little girl just started preschool and next week is her preschool graduation. On one hand, I'm going to miss those few precious quiet hours that I had by myself, but on the other I think we just might get to sleep in a little bit more around here. (The idea of this thrills me- I've been living on barely any sleep for months on end and I think I've had my fill of it. It's time to have eight hours again.)

About a month ago I purchased a lovely bit of All Spun Up superwash merino spinning fiber, and somewhat impatiently, I managed to squeeze in enough spinning time to finish this skein for myself.



It came out looking very interesting. Almost like algae or snakeskin. It had barely dried when I began turning it into a pair of Monkeys. It's a beautiful pattern. This is the first pair of socks I'm working on for myself out of my own 2-ply handspun (I already have a pair of 3-ply handspun socks in the works) and it's encouraging to me to see how lovely it's knitting up.



These socks were a very special treat. I don't often spin yarn for myself- particularly not when I have a lot of spinning fiber and dyeing to do for my Etsy shop (right now I've got a pound of SW merino and 1/2 pound of BFL I'm trying to get through for the shop) but I'm glad I've taken the time for this one. It's so worth it to take a break from producing things for sale to make a little treasure for yourself.

Hummingbird

This week has proven to be surprisingly productive, considering the limited amount of spinning time I've had to work with. This morning I was able to list this skein...



It's 2.8oz and just over 262yds of handspun/hand-dyed, Navajo 3-ply merino sock yarn. It's slightly thicker than I'd usually spin a sock yarn (between fingering and DK weight). It's soft and lovely. I'm calling this striped sock yarn, which has a 3-color repeat pattern of magenta/violet, pale/dark blue and jade/myrtle green, by the name Hummingbird.

So with that yarn now listed (I have a whopping total of 2 items currently listed- Ha-ha-ha) I'm off to get some housework done early and to hopefully squeeze in some more spinning time.

Rustic Warmth...

I just finished this guy last night.



Just over 400yds of handspun and dyed merino, lightweight 2-ply sock yarn (that's a mouthful). I just listed it in my etsy shop this morning. It weighs 3.1oz and has beautiful colors. Mmmm... yummy.

Busy, Busy

Yesterday morning, when I was browsing through etsy I looked in one of my favorite shops, AllSpunUp, and saw this. I lost control. Before I even realized what was happening, I was ordering. It came in the mail today. I'm excited. A little sad though, too. I have a lot of things in line ahead of that one that need to be spun and listed, so I'm afraid the beautiful 'treat' roving is going to have to wait to be transformed into a pair of my socks.

In an effort to help myself feel better, I dug out the last 8oz of undyed merino and spent the afternoon dying it up.

This one is so colorful, it may be difficult to part with.



This one is also very pretty. It reminds me of a desert sunset (not that I've seen many, but I did see a breathtaking sunset once in the high-desert country one time when I was on my way to visit a friend in Oregon- anyhow, the colors were very similar).



I'm excited to see how these will spin up for me. I hope they'll make beautiful sock yarns for the etsy shop. I really need to get off my bum. At the very least I think I ought to be able to get two yarns in there per month, but it's been hard to do lately. I think I'm going to navajo ply my 3-ply sock yarns for a while, (I know that it's really all the same amount of spinning but it seems easier somehow) and do some two-ply sock yarns as well.

I will probably not have anymore yarns in my etsy shop until the beginning of next month. I have so much work to get done around here. I still haven't even gone outside to work at all (and to my dissappointment I've heard that we may get snow here this weekend). On top of all this, my husband has officially been given an excellent job about 50 miles from where we are now, and has given his old job notice. Now we must begin the job of selling our home and moving. I trust God, and I know this will be a good move. Still, being the sentimental type, this is going to take an extra measure of His grace.

Shame on Us...

For months now, the yard has been getting worse and worse. Until just the last couple of weeks, the thought of going outside to do anything has been entirely out of the question. For not really getting more than a couple sad dustings of snow, winter has been hanging on entirely too long. In fact, just at the end of March we had a brief couple of hours where it was snowing (but not sticking). That just isn't normal around here.

The last week or so, though, I've noticed that Boone- our Jack Russell Terrier, has been having an unusually difficult time finding a 'safe' place to pee in the back yard. The grass, in what seems like just a week and a half, grew to be between 12 and 15 inches tall.

So yesterday, my husband pulled out the lawnmower and got to work. Considering the height of the grass, his chore was not a pretty sight. I witnessed him unloading a torrent of obscenities at least once, as he removed Sadie from her chain on the back patio and 'escorted' her inside. It turns out that as he was passing by his beloved hound with the lawnmower, she playfully decided it was time to run around him in a circle (winding her chain around his legs) and tripping him, bringing him to the ground. In his attempt to catch himself he'd firmly planted one of his hands in a pile of her crap.

I'm not a very nice woman, I laughed so hard I almost peed when he told me that story.



As you can see the grass was crazy long. We really ought to have been out there sooner. I'm planning on getting out there at least a couple of days in the next week. There are many, many weeds to be pulled and a lot of plants that need some pruning.

I also have a lot to do in the way of indoor improvements. Most of my heavyweight chores still involve organizing and tossing, as well as deep cleaning and painting. I should have done so much more by now, but I've been so deeply involved with the wheel and finishing my seriously long-term works in progress that always seem to still be on my needles. At least I'm nearing my finish with these. I have one sock out of a pair to finish for the Vintage Sock KAL, one sock's worth left of roving to spin and knit to finish my homespun pair, and then there's finishing my Christmas sweater, then restarting the Henry. Then I'm free to start anything I want to.

I've been very good about not starting new projects, except for this little one. I knit this for my daughter this weekend. If only it were this easy to knit clothing for myself.

Done

The second half of the marine-colored sock yarn is finally done. It really shouldn't have taken this long to finish, but it just seems like every time I've tried to make time for it something else has come up. I think I have settled on the name Marina. It will fit this color. Originally I wanted to call it 'seaworthy', but I just can't say that word without feeling like a pirate.

I've just finished giving the yarn a bath to set the twist. Now I just have to wait for it to finish drying so I can take pictures of both the skeins together before I list them on Etsy. They should be listed in the shop by 10:30 Monday morning.

A quick rundown on this yarn:



Together the two skiens make 440+ yards of 100% merino, hand-dyed and hand-spun, 3-ply sock yarn. Together they weigh around 3.5 ounces. I haven't measured out the WPI yet, but it's a little finer than the Indian Valley. I'm guessing it will be around 18-19 WPI.

I faced serious temptation to keep these as well. The entire time I was spinning them, I kept thinking they'd be perfect for a pair of Cookie A.'s Pomatomus socks.

To kill or not to kill...

This morning I was going to make a joyful post. Yesterday I finished plying the last of some sock yarn that I've been spinning as a birthday present for a very dear friend of mine. I spent the afternoon dying it and it's finally done now. I told her what I wanted to make for her, since she is now knitting, and asked her what colors she was into right now. She told me purples and oranges. So this is what I came up with.




It's nearly 500 yards of 3-ply handspun sock yarn, 75% superwash wool/25% nylon, hand-dyed in purple and orange with a little bit of magenta in there, too.

Then this morning, after I had just finished setting it out and taking a few pictures of it, while importing them to the computer to write this blog, my husband's hound, made what might be her very last mistake with me. She stole my yarn from the table and mangled it.

It is so tangled. I am furious. I am so thankful that I put so many ties in these to help keep them from becoming tangled, and I likewise thankful that it appears to not have been torn or shredded at all. Still it may take hours to fix this mess.



For now I have locked the offending member of the household in her kennel (far safer for her right now than being in my presence where she, no doubt, would encounter destruction).

It's such a bummer. It was all done and now it needs more work. I was going to spend this morning doing the heel of the second Baudelaire, and now, depending on how bad this is, this may be what I end up doing instead.

I'm really trying to love that dog, but she's working so hard to become my nemesis.

Liar, Liar...

... pants on fire.

When I said I was going to pack up my wheel for a bit and take a break, I really did have good intentions. In my defense, it did stay packed up for a few days. Perhaps part of the burnout I was feeling with the wheel was because of my selling (or rather not selling) yarn on Etsy. I don't want to run a business selling handspun yarns, but I would like to be able to sell off some of them here and there to make enough to support my fiber habit, rather than putting extra strain on my family's income.

So, last weekend I was contemplating just going through the next few months until the listings on my yarns expired and then just kind of forgetting about it, when I came home last Saturday night to find that my Indian Valley sock yarn had sold. I was overly-excited about it to say the least. It was my first sale, and it felt very nice.

Charged with new enthusiasm, the wheel quickly came out again to produce more sock yarn and I have celebrated this week with knitting a sock from some of my own hanspun. The spinning job on this yarn was great, but I didn't like the way the colors worked together, so I kept it. It's still pretty.



I knitted this one from the toe up, to make sure I wouldn't run out of yardage. This sock yarn makes an extremely cozy, winter appropriate sock. Though now I'm affected by a combined version of second sock syndrome: not only do I have to knit the second sock, but I still have to spin the yarn for it as well. I'm confident it will be well worth it once it's done.

So, as far as the spinning goes, I have spun half of the yarn I need for my next listing and I ought to have the other half of it done by the end of the week. I haven't made my mind up about what to name this colorway, but I figure it ought to be something nautical (while thinking of nautical names I had a good laugh about the coincidental resemblance of this yarn to the team colors of the Seattle Mariners- it could make nice socks for a baseball fan).



So I'm hoping to have this one listed very soon on Etsy and soon to follow that will be a beautiful fiery-colored sock yarn.

This next week or two I'm also going to be spending some time working on more unfinished objects, and have even more knitting stacked on my plate once I've finished what's already in progress. I'm hoping to finish a sweater I'm working on for Paige as well as finishing the ugly christmas sweater once and for all. It's amazing how easily I get distracted.

In need of refreshing...

I feel I've finally reached a place where I need to step back from things and take a break, or I'm going to burn-out big time. I've been spinning and spinning and knitting and knitting and I just really need to stop for a while.

I'm beginning to think that God is sending me a message. I've become so fiber-obsessed that I'm not doing anything else or going anywhere else that isn't already a part of my daily routine. Two months have passed since the beginning of this year, when I first started writing this blog, and virtually nothing in my life that I want to change has changed.

I started to hit some hard emotions on Sunday, when we went to 'try out' a different church. The people were nice and the sermon was really good, but I felt like crying the entire service, which at the time I attributed to my being right smack in the middle of my monthly. My sweetheart of a husband is a wonderful man, and though he's not all that vocal about it, I think he loves God- he's the kind of guy that doesn't really strike you as a Christian, but then he pulls off some incredibly selfless act of loving-kindness and gives of himself 110%.

However he gets uncomfortable at our usual church because the people there are extremely friendly and they like to come up and talk to him and invite him to home-groups during the week and such- which he's made it quite clear he doesn't want to do. So, a few weeks back when I had to work a Sunday morning for his sister, he ended up going to church with his mom, and afterwards, told me he really liked it and thought it would be good if I came and gave it a try. So, this Sunday we all went, and like I said, the sermon was good and the people were friendly, but I just really wanted to cry the whole time.

Then yesterday, after dropping Paige off at preschool, I was driving down the road and felt like God was showing me that the reason I want to stay at the Vineyard (our usual church) is because all the people there are really on fire for God. They're passionately in love with him. Which is the kind of Christian I want to be. I felt like God was telling me that the problem I've been having, the wrong feeling I've been having about my life, is because even though I love God, I'm not in love with him, I'm not passionately on fire for God, and it's throwing my entire life out of balance. Right now, even though I love my friends and my family and I'm thankful for all of the blessings in my life, I'm not really enjoying any of it because I'm not spending enough time with God. I've let my relationship with him be pushed to the backburner, by things which are totally unimportant, and I'm not loving anything or anyone the way I ought to right now because I'm not connected to the very source of love- God Himself.



So this morning I felt like God was impressing on me, that what I really need to do, is to fast for a while, and spend the majority of my free-time in His word, while I regain my focus and the balance in my life.

I know it's good for me to have a hobby, and I know that God wants me to have things that I enjoy doing in my life. He's the one who put that love and creative energy in me in the first place. I'm sure it wont be that long till I'm spinning again, but I until I get some balance back and my peace about it has been restored, I'm going to pack up my wheel and take a break. I've a few socks on the needles, that I'm sure I'll finish over the next week or two, but the rest can of it can wait... for me... for a change.