Fiber Fluff: Stalled on the Shawl

 Hi everybody!

I have two shawls that I currently have set up for working on. They're both stalled because life has gotten in the way of spending time on serious knitting. One is the Lady in the Woods pattern which I am making in magenta with a black border. One is the pattern that I've winged together as I was going along. Both are not complicated patterns. They're straight up stockinette stitch (well, technically the Lady in the Woods is garter stitch but that is boring).

I haven't done any spinning in a while. I'm going to try to get to it again today. I'm half way through a ball of grey alpaca pencil roving. The cop on my drop spindle is half full. I think if I focus, I can finish it off over the next two weeks. The hard part is going to be spinning the third ply for this yarn. It is 2/3 alpaca and 1/3 acrylic. I have no idea what the staple length on the acrylic is. The ball of chunky yarn (which I'm going to unspin and have roving out of) claims it to be almost 300 feet long. If the staple length is 300 feet, I'm going to have to cut it up to make it easier to spin. According to my research, spinning acrylic is a lot like spinning silk. We'll see if I need one of my light weight spindles for this or not. I'd like to use the same spindle for all the plies and then spinning them together to make the final yarn. Everything is in the same colorway, so I don't need to chain ply to keep colors organized.

The crochet preemie hats project is on pause right now. I have about 80 preemie hats done. I just need to get myself organized to figure out how to get them to the rural hospital in my area. When the big project was done through the spinning guild I used to be a part of, the hats all went to the big city hospitals. I didn't think that was fair once I realized that. So, I have to do a little planning to get these hats to local rural hospitals so that they have something warm and comforting for the little ones there.

Book sales have slowed down, but my yarn stock pile is still pretty hefty. I am still drawing from the yarn that was donated by kind souls. Some of these hats look pretty funky but they work up super quick. I am branching out from hats for micropreemies into hats for babies a bit bigger to use up the yarn faster. I keep telling myself it's slower by the hour but faster by the week. I am debating if I should make thumbless mittens for the babies to match their hats. The last time I did that, it went over really well. 

Fiber Fluff: New Shawl Pattern

 Hi everybody.

I have been stalled on the spinning front because I haven't been able to walk and spin as I like to. It is my goal to get back to the half ball of grey Alpaca pencil roving and finish spinning it over the next few weeks. This way I can free up the spindle to start spinning the third ply of the yarn I plan on making. That is going to be from grey Acrylic pencil roving. Which I was shocked to discover it was silky in texture compared to most Acrylic yarns. Technically, this roving that I'm using is a 'chunky yarn' but I'm spinning it. I have no idea how long the staple length of the fiber is. It could be the approximate 200 yards or it could be less. It's going to be an adventure.

I have been working on a knitted shawl in a pattern that I brained up last year. I am a slow knitter which is why I haven't finished it but it's a really simple pattern. It is knit in stockinette stitch with a garter stitch stripe every 4 inches. I casted on 4 stitches at the beginning. The right side rows are knit with a make-one increase after the first stitch and before the last stitch in a row. This gives it the classic triangle shape. The wrong side rows are all purl stitches. After 4 inches of work, you knit two rows to make the garter stitch ridge and then go back to stockinette. You start your garter stitch on the right side of the shawl, making those increases as you do in the stockinette section.

The color yarn I am using is garnet. It is a 50/50 wool and acrylic yarn. It has a nice feel in the hand and is working up fairly warm. Like all of the triangle shawl patterns I make, I knit until either I run out of yarn or until it is wide enough to fit the person I am going to gift it to.

Fiber Fluff Check In.

 Hi everybody!

I haven't made much progress on spinning right now. I've come to realize that I spin more and do so more consistently when the weather is fair and warm. The weather mocks me by being fair and bitterly cold. I want to go out and walk with my spindle and distaff. But, I have to wait about a month for that warm weather.  I pace a bit in my apartment but it isn't quite the same. My kick wheel is put away until I'm ready to ply the singles that I'm working on. I had two balls of grey alpaca pencil roving. One of them got spun up into a twisted and pigtailing single. Things look the same for the second ball of roving. I'm then going to ply it with hand spun acrylic roving. I found it at the craft store for a few bucks because it was on clearance. I have no idea what the staple length is. I'm really hoping it isn't 35 yards. If it is, I'll have to bust out a ruler and a good pair of scissors to cut it down to a uniform staple length. The thing about the acrylic roving that threw me for a loop (aside from finding it to begin with) is the fact that it feels like silk. 

If the roving feels like silk, how on Earth do they mangle it into the scratchy monstrosity that we're all familiar with? My plan is to ply the three together to make a yarn that is a bit more sturdy than my usual three ply laceweight yarn. If the acrylic experiment works out well, I may try spinning it with other materials. It's the same grey as the alpaca but it has a silver sheen. I know it will play well with the other singles as soon as I get them done.

I haven't done any embroidery in the last few months. I just haven't been feeling well and the frustration of getting my glasses adjusted properly made things harder. But, now I have new glasses and I'm going to pick up the needle and thread again as soon as I'm done cleaning everything for Moura.* Right now, I realized that I was measuring the progress I was making on Cuddle Bear's sweater wrong. I have another ten inches to knit before dealing with the shoulders and then the back of this sweater. I'm frustrated but I'm not giving up. Cuddle Bear is being gracious and patient, which is pretty hard for a 15 yo. 

Aside from what feels like an endless knitting project that I'm doing all wrong, I am working on the final batch of preemie hats. I have eight in the box, one on the hook, and about 24 more to make to hit my goal of 99 hats for the hospital. Apparently the big preemie hat program that I was contributing to was only giving donations to the big city hospitals. That made me a bit mad. I'm debating how to continue the project on my own and the logistics of getting them out to the smaller hospitals in the rural counties like the one where I live.

Aside from that, once I get hat 99 done, I'm going to start making scarves. I have to talk to the school social worker about how many she thinks they need. I figure I'll start with my kids' school district and branch out from there.

*Moura is the name of Filianism's season/month of purification and preparation for the Daughter's sacrifice. I've been spending most of it with a migraine thanks to these stupid winter storms. When I am not dealing with a migraine or its fallout, I've been cleaning like a madwoman. This deep cleaning got complicated when the bathroom sink started leaking. But that's a post for another day (and a bit more of a rant).

Working on a migraine, yay. /sarcasm

 Today has been beastly hot. It is currently 90 deg F in the apartment with all the windows open and the fans running full blast. It would have been worse if I hadn't opened things up. The high temp has me feeling awful and exhausted. It didn't help that my sleep last night was rotten thanks to this cursed heat and humidity combination. I got more done yesterday than I did today. I folded a ton of laundry. (I still have more to fold but no energy to do it.) 

I tried going on Keen but so far there's been no fish biting. I'm taking the approach that this is like fishing and eventually I'll catch something if I am patient enough. Honestly, though, it looks like Keen is just degrading. It makes me wonder why I am even attempting it right now. Not the bad policies, not the stupid political moves, or the sniping between advisors (which can get bitter in the back channel communication). No, there's just been no flow of business. I'm questioning the whole point to this exercise.

On the fiber front, I did a little spinning today. I had to wear an apron because bits of second cuts off of the roving were flying through the air. I didn't have this happen with the first ball of pencil roving. I'm hoping this is just a coincidence that I'm starting with the wrong end of the ball or something. I'm spinning grey alpaca fiber on a drop spindle that was dirt cheap and I honestly have no idea what the weight of it is. The first single is in a hank sitting on top of some magazines I plan to use in a collage at some point for art therapy day.

I have been wrestling with the badly written instructions in a Leisure Arts manual for how to do the faggot/fagot stitch. After a week of trying different things, I finally dropped the manual and started messing around with the yarn based off of what I saw in the picture. Thus, today, I have a half finished washcloth made in this stitch. It is a yarn-eater stitch and is like the bastard love child of a puff stitch and a v-stitch.

No progress has been made on my black and white sampler. It's been so hot that I just couldn't sit in the front yard and use the light bouncing off of the sidewalk to backlight my work to find the holes so I could stitch. And it looks like the one day it is going to cool off a bit, it'll be raining. So, that project is on hold.

I finished the back of the preemie sweater that I started. It is a six inch square. Now to make the front panels and the sleeves. It's a bit of a pain because I am using 'baby' yarn which is stupidly fine and an e-hook which is a bit of a strain on my eyes. I am thankful that I have my bifocals that let me read but it's a bit more challenging to do crochet on a small scale because these eyeglasses are smaller frames than my last pair. I have to find my cheap readers that work pretty good for this stuff. They're buried somewhere on the kitchen table.

Fiber fluff update

 Well, it's December and I've only got one present made. That's right, I've only made one present. We'll be baking cookies later on in the month. But, that's not the same as making stuff like scarves and toys. I'm panicking a little bit about what I'm going to give people. I was going to make my increasingly famous Apple Pie Moonshine but the list of people who can have it keeps growing smaller. I may just give out the recipe.

On the preemie hat front, I'm grinding away at making hats. The people who write these patterns and say they work up in fifteen minutes lie. They're dirty, filthy lies. It's more like a half hour regardless of hook size and yarn weight. It is vexing but I'm going to keep at it. I've lost count as to where I'm at right now. But I know that I'm not going to hit my goal of 100 by January 1. Those few months back in the summer when I had a mental health crisis really screwed up my plans for the holidays. That's typically when I'm working on making things for people.

Spinning is on hold at the moment because I'm trying to finish off this damn ball of yarn for the preemie hats. I'm a bit frustrated. I love the way the Alpaca fiber is spinning up. I'm sure that it'll be a beautiful yarn. But I can't make anything for myself out of it because I will react to it. Nothing is as disappointing as getting all that work done and discovering that you can't do anything with it.

I'm debating rebooting my Etsy store and slapping up some of my yarn hoard for sale. I've been considering spinning for production for a little while. I enjoy spinning and I know that I can spin for production level work by the fact that I have spun a mile of yarn in the span of a month. And it was good, fine weight yarn. On a drop spindle. Since I have a kick wheel, I can probably do double that in shorter time. I am just in the situation that I don't have a comfortable chair to sit in and do this work. 

Looking at the yarn offered up for sale by others and the cost of their spinning services, I find myself thinking I could probably undercut some on the price and still make a decent bit out of my hobby. And not be left with the question of what the hell am I going to do with all of this damn yarn that I have spun. I'm still deciding on this one.

Fiber fluff update

 Well, I had a bag of mostly felted fiber that I just gave up on and threw out. I felt like I was wasting precious resources when I did so but there was no hope for it. The least felted bits of it, I managed to spin some really slubby yarn out of it. I don't like it and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. There's not enough to make something big. I am debating the possibility of something like fingerless gloves. I just don't know if there's enough there for even that. I really didn't get much yarn out of it, though I did accomplish the heavier weight I was trying to spin with it.

I finished spinning the cotton-candy purple merino that I dyed and carded myself. My mother in law has a drum carder. I used it for the first time to card that stuff. It was an interesting experience. It again came out as a slubby yarn. I don't particularly like slubby yarns because I find them difficult to work with. That said, It still looks like cotton candy. I have to wet it and hang it. I'll probably do that while we still have the decent weather. I know that I overspun it. It's an uneven, slubby yarn but it was not only my first attempt at using a drum carder but my first project using a ring-distaff. I think I like the ring distaff for the mini-batts of fiber that you get off of a drum carder. I tried using it with pencil roving and it was an unmitigated disaster.

The alpaca pencil roving that I was working on is sitting in the bag. I have about a quarter of the first ball spun. I am going to spin the rest of that ball on the super cheap drop spindle that I started on. It may have been super cheap and it's lacking ornamentation of any sort, but it works ok and I think I might be able to fit the entire ball of pencil roving on it. The second ball of pencil roving (which is about the same size) is going to be spun on my kick-wheel. That probably won't be happening until after the holidays.

The baby hat project is up to 35 hats. I don't think I'm going to make my goal of 50 hats by the end of the year despite the fact they're preemie hats. When people tell you these hats work up in 15 minutes a piece, they lie. I finished off the really obnoxious ball of yarn that was making each stitch a different color because of how they dyed it and I had to use stitch markers to tell where I was in the process of making the damn hat. The current ball of yarn isn't half as bad. The color runs are longer so it works up like stripes and it's a lot easier to see where the increases are.

I'm stalled on my neon pink wingspan shawl. I've just been too busy with other stuff, like being sick for two and a half weeks. I'm working on trying to get caught up on a bunch of things. I am probably going to be working on that shawl in December or January at this rate.

Fiber Fluff: I like this ring distaff.

 I don't fully have the hang of using it, but I like this ring distaff. It's a little awkward to use but my fiber doesn't get clumped up or anything when I'm spinning as it has when I'm just holding it in my hand. 10/10 would recommend.

I'm stalled on the NICU hats right now because I've been so busy with other stuff. I'm trying to get more done this week. I'm not particularly thrilled with the yarn that I'm currently using but I anticipated longer color runs in that variegated yarn. As it is, each stitch is a different color and there's zero color pooling. It makes keeping track of stitches difficult because I get visually confused by it all. Thank goodness for stitch markers.

I have some sewing to do. I bought myself a pair of shorts and realized after I had gotten home with them that they were 'fashionably' torn. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the hole has no stabilization for the fabric around it. It's just torn. So, I'm going to darn the holes in it with some bright color that'll be easy to see and stitch on the black fabric. This is the second time that I've bought something that was 'in fashion' and it needed to be resolved. The last time, I bought a pair of boot cut jeans with no hem. It was super annoying.

Fiber Fluff: I have a new toy!

 My mother-in-law gave me a present for the 4th of July: a ring distaff! The vast majority of my spinning is done by hand. It's going to be exciting and fun to learn how to use this thing. 

My spite shawl is almost complete. I started knitting it when I was angry and have been working on it when frustrated or angry with some situation. It helps with the anger and I'm making something useful in the process. I plan on grounding the energies that are in the shawl/scarf (it's not quite long enough to be a shawl and I'm near the end of the ball of yarn). After that, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with it. I will, obviously, post pics of it.

I'm still working on preemie hats. Last weekend, Cuddle Bear asked me to teach him how to crochet and he made a tiny washcloth for his firetruck collection. Next we're going to make a simple crochet bell. He's super excited. I don't have a pic of it, but I sewed a pride flag onto a pink hat for Beloved and J.R. Bob Dobbs patch on the back of the hat. He's thrilled with the results. I'm just glad that he finally was able to find a baseball style cap that fits him properly. It's been a long time since he had a hat that fit him right. I'll try to con him into letting me take a pic of him in the hat in the near future.

As he said, "There is no Pride month, it goes all year, baby!"

Charity project underway.

 I don't have pictures of the pile of hats right now. But, over the last week, I made 10 preemie hats for the local NICU. My goal is to make 100 this year. Last year, the donation program was suspended due to COVID-19. This year, it's up in the air as to what is going on with it. Still, the year before I made approximately 50 hats. I'm making 100 to make up for the fact that I didn't get any done last year. I have been using the proceeds from a book designated for charity to buy yarn for these hats. If I still have money coming in from that book after I have hit 100 preemie hats, I am going to start working on stuff for the other charity that I make things for as part of the spinning guild.

They're called Warm Extremities. They take hats, mittens, gloves, and scarves to distribute to the needy. Again, the last time the spinning guild met, I had a box of good for them. I think the total I donated to Warm Extremities was something around 25 scarves and 10 hats. I will figure out the number I am going to donate to Warm Extremities after I hit 100 preemie hats.

I figured out why that luxury yarn I spun is so itchy. The skin on my neck is more sensitive than the skin on my wrist (where I wore a strand to see if I was going to have an allergic reaction to it). The guard hairs in the baby alpaca yarn is very soft but not quite soft enough for my skin there. It's frustrating because I made 3 different style of chokers to wear out of that yarn. So, I am probably going to stick them up on Etsy for sale. The luxury yarn is 30% Merino, 30% Tussah silk, 20% baby Camel, and 10% royal baby Alpaca fiber. It spun up really nicely but the Alpaca just doesn't agree with me.

I forgot about that fact because I gave away the Alpaca scarf that I had made (due to the fact that it made my neck itch like mad) about a year ago. The person who received it was thrilled to get something completely handmade and wears it whenever the weather gets cold. So, it went to a good home. I still have Alpaca fiber to spin up. I have a good amount of it. It is pencil roving that I am debating putting on my distaff so that I can just spin it with my drops spindle. Going around dressed in all black is cool, but I don't want grey Alpaca fiber all over my clothes, hence the distaff.

Fiber Fluff: Nothing's happening.

 I'm still working on the monstrosity. I'm up to the halfway point of finishing the final triangle. I don't know how I am going to keep this thing from curling up. It's so big that the weight of it might work when I try to block it out (by hanging on a laundry line) but I honestly don't know. I am a bit vexed with the fact that this project is taking forever. At the same time, I am half finished with the final section so I am going to work on it and complete it before I pick up that sweater I started for myself or start making things for other people.

Next weekend, when we see the in-laws again, I am going to bring the red fiber to run it through my mother-in-law's drum carder. I just don't have the spoons to sit down and card it by hand. And I am still trying to decide how I want to approach spinning up the alpaca fiber. I wish the weather would warm up because I could go out walking with my distaff and spindle. I don't have enough room in the apartment to do that and my attempted distaff stand isn't working with my kick wheel.  

Thanks to the monstrosity, however, I have nowhere I can put the kick wheel and get spinning right now anyways. This project is going to eat my living room, I'm sure of it.

Fiber Fluff: Indecision time.

 I am currently struggling with deciding what to spin out of my stash right now and what to use for it. I have some random blue-purple dyed Merino in a neatly rolled up batt. I have two balls of grey baby Apaca in pencil roving. At the same time, I still have some fiber that I washed that I need to pick and card from last summer. And I have a box of fluffy random Blue Face Leicester wool dyed a delightful shade of red to card. I want to do spinning but I just can't settle on what I'm going to work on. It doesn't help that I can't decide if I want to get out my kick wheel or use one of my spindles. I've been stuck in this state of indecision for about a month now. So I have gotten no spinning done at all.

I have a bag that I am making as a gift for someone almost done. I need to put handles on it. I'm trying to decide what manner of handles it is going to get. I didn't enjoy that ball of yarn and I wasn't impressed with the color pooling as it worked up. It is commercially spun acrylic yarn that is very loosely plied. While that gives it some softness in its hand feel, it makes the yarn very splitty and frustrating to work with. I got through most of the ball of yarn with the bag pattern. I still have about a third of it left and another whole matching ball that I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it.

I have started making a yellow sweater for myself. It's going to be a pair of granny-hexagons sewn together. It's just like the baby sweater pattern, just made bigger. I figure it'll be fun to make and wear. I don't really have any yellow in my wardrobe, so this could be a thing. It is left over acrylic yarn from the monstrosity. I only needed two balls of yellow for that section, not four as I had thought.

Speaking of the monstrosity, I am almost half through that final triangle. It's basically a big blanket now. A big, weirdly shaped blanket. The first triangle was half of a ball of yarn. Silly me, I didn't realize that each triangle was a double of the one before it. So, I went from 1/2 a ball of yarn to 1 ball of yarn, to 2 balls of yarn, to 4 balls of yarn. It wouldn't be quite so bad except I'm working from a 1lb ball of yarn per each ball. The final four balls of yarn are green. I'm not doing eight balls of blue and sixteen balls of purple to do the full color spectrum as I had initially planned with this project. If I had started this thing with the correct (smaller) sized hook, it wouldn't be this huge. I, however, made a tactical error and used a big hook.

Fiber Fluff Update

 I'm still catching up on embroidery projects from Yule. The kids love their unique bookmarks. I have bookmarks that I am making for others. When I get so far as having them done, I'll post pictures of them. I am almost finished with the Dune Fear Litany tapestry. I've taken it off of the scroll frame (which met its demise in the process of finishing the embroidery for the main part of the tapestry) and now I need to hem the edges and block it. After I get it cleaned up, I plan on getting it framed and hung. The question is where to hang it.

The monstrosity continues to lurk waiting for me to finish it. I have approximately two and a third balls of yarn left until it is done. This thing is huge. I can't work on it with out taking up the entire couch. When I am next dealing with it, I'm going to have Beloved snap a picture of me working so that you can get an idea of the scale.

I have been making baby clothes because Rocker Chick is expecting a baby girl in May. I have a full layette set done in bright rainbow colors. I'm seriously considering making a dress as well. I'm undecided. Most of the clothes that she has right now for the baby is 0-6 months. I'm considering the options of making things that will fit a larger baby into a young toddler. At the same time, I have to start thinking about what to make for Yule this year.

I haven't done any spinning in a while. I've just been busy with so many other things that I haven't had the time. Also the chilly weather prevents me from going outside with distaff and spindle and taking a walk. I suppose I could do some work with my support spindles. I'm undecided. I'm also dreading the amount of work that is going to go into cleaning up the pile of wool that I have waiting to be touched from the sheep study that the spinner's guild got going.

It's been a while since I have heard from the spinner's guild. I'm beginning to suspect that the group is going to dissolve because of the impact of Covid-19 on our ability to meet and do business.

Fiber Fluff Ramblings.

 I have officially begun my holiday knitting. My MiL asked for another nice scrubby washcloth. So I'm making her one that matches her bathroom. I think I have the right shade of red. I'm going to try to make two, if I have enough yarn. It's left over yarn from the red section of the Monstrosity. I have not done any work on the Monstrosity because the weather's been too warm and I'm at a point where the whole thing has to sit on my lap to be worked on. That is enough to be stifling, even with a box under it to lift the thing up a little so there can be airflow going about under the project.

I am in the progress of trying to decide what I'm going to make for the boys. They are in obvious need of longer scarves. I'm half tempted to do what I swore off of doing and making another illusion knit scarf. This time in the school colors with a paw print on it. Right now, they each have a scarf in school colors that from a self-striping yarn that worked up with big blocks of each color. The scarves, however, are beginning to get a bit short for them. The other option I am considering is making them each a pocket scarf one in blue and the other in orange. (Blue and orange are the school colors.) 

I am entirely stumped on what to make for Beloved. He's got hats, a scarf and matching fingerless gloves in his favorite color, and a random miser's purse (made from my handspun in his favorite color). I know that if I attempted socks, they wouldn't be worn. Because he wouldn't want to destroy them. Maybe I'll make him a bookmark. I do have punched paper bookmark blanks sitting around.

On the spinning front, no real progress of note has been made. I have to rearrange my spinning space. I am sitting in a chair with arms that isn't a problem if I'm using a supported spindle or a drop spindle. It is, however, making it challenging to use the kick-wheel because I can't draw out as much yarn as I'd like to at a single go with the wheel. I also need to find the grippy mat that should go beneath the kick wheel because it likes to try to get away from me as I work. I, of course, put that mat in a safe place. I've been looking for it and feeling like a fool for my difficulty in finding it.

Fiber fluff ramblings

 I've been lax in my spinning. The recent stretch of hot and humid weather really didn't encourage me to try to spin because I knew the fiber was going to stick to my hands. I gave up on the remaining half pound of the purple-blue-pink colorway because it was so felted that there were mats. I've put it aside to use as stuffing in toys or something. Now, I am working on about 8 oz of grey Alpaca. 

It's been a bit awkward going for two reasons. First is the fact that I am trying to spin at a weight heavier than what I usually do. I keep falling back into my habit of super fine, at which point the stuff drifts apart. I'm using my kick wheel and spinning it in the opposite direction than what I usually do. As a result, the yarn has less twist. This is not a bad thing if you're trying to get a fluffy yarn. It is, however, awkward because my bodily memory wants me to set it spinning counter clockwise rather than clockwise. Fortunately, the pencil roving is forgiving and I can get the weight I want relatively easily. I just have to stay focused on my spinning.

The monstrosity shawl is sitting in the project room right now because it is just been too warm for me to work on it. I've reached the point that it is large enough to cover the couch. I had initially planned on working the whole thing up in the full spectrum of colors. Now, I am stopping at green. I have no idea what I am going to do with this thing. I think it is heavy enough that blocking it may not be necessary. It is in acrylic. Ironing it to kill the yarn is going to be a tedious task but not as tedious as finishing this final triangle.

Despite telling myself I wasn't going to do it, I'm back at making washcloths. They're small and work up quickly. This makes them a good anti-anxiety projects, I guess. Beloved got me the cone of dishcloth cotton (4ply worsted weight) two weeks ago. I'm already half through it. My MiL requested I make her another acrylic wash cloth. I'm going to go stash diving later to see if I can find enough of the color I have in mind so that it matches the colors of her bathroom. I'm likely going to knit this because I have a feeling I lack enough to make a good sized washcloth out of it in crochet.

I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to work on Snuggle Bug's rainbow socks right now. I've got about half of the first toe done and I just look at it with this tremendous sense of disappointment. It's like having second sock syndrome with the first sock. Perhaps part of my problem with staying motivated to work on this and my other projects is because I'm mentally fatigued from all the effort that keeping the kids working on academics and entertained. I don't know. But, I know that I need to get back to work on some of this stuff or people are not going to have their Yule gifts. So, nose to the grindstone and all that.

Fiber Fluff & Ramblings

Shortly before Yule, we got a new landlord. This makes number four, if you're keeping score. It was a pleasant surprise when he and his crew got to work on fixing the building up. There's talk of enclosing the lower portion of the back deck so that it is storage area. We've been told to put the kids outside toy bin down in the storage area of the lower closet beneath the entryway. They repainted the floors of the entryway and the stairs. It looks like a whole new place. It's kinda nice.

Except for the muddy foot prints. Those have been driving me to distraction. As a result, I had Beloved pick up a Swiffer wet jet on his last shopping trip. I wasn't sure how well the thing was going to work on those floors. I am pleased to say that it cleaned things up nicely, despite the neighbors going back and forth over the walkway as I was working. I have a feeling that I'm going to be cleaning the entryway on a regular basis now because it really irked me to see things as a mess. It may be because I'm coming out of a mixed episode, but it bothered me. I have a bad feeling that this business is going to be like the snow removal from the steps and the walk, an operation handled solely by my household.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning over the last few days. I'm not hypomanic, I'm just still trying to catch up on the chores that fell by the wayside over the course of Yule and the half of last week that got shot to Hel by a migraine and general chaos. As a result of doing the cleaning, I am not getting very much done in my spinning or my other hand crafts. I started work on spinning a 1lb pile of fiber. I don't know who dyed it. It is wool. I think from here in NY. The colorway is called 'Plum and Berries' but I'm tempted to call it unicorn fluff. Lots of purple, pink, and blue in it. There's a faint trace of green. It kinda reminds me of the Unicorn Frappe that Starbucks had as a novelty drink a few summers back. Hence the desire to call it unicorn fluff.

I'm spinning a small handful of it on a drop spindle made from a drawer pull handle and a paint brush handle. It's pretty light. As a result, I am spinning stuff that is cobweb weight. I'm not going to spin all of it with this spindle. But I am going to do a good amount with it. I am going to try to set up my distaff (which I loaded up with about a quarter pound of this fiber) in a way so that I can spin off of it with my kick wheel. I'm not sure how successful I am going to be. I've tried this with various orientations. I'm beginning to suspect that I can't use a distaff with the kick wheel. That frustrates me because I want to start producing more yarn at a greater rate.

I am pretty sure I fell short of my goal of a mile of yarn for last year by several hundred yards. I still have two balls of plied yarn to measure. That requires getting the last skein I wound on to the niddy-noddy off. It's been on there since last November. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to manage. I still have to wet it and wack it to make the yarn bloom however much it will. I don't think it will be that much because the stuff didn't have a lot of halo to it to begin with.

I'm about half way through my sample of Horned Dorset fiber. I've been spinning it on my delgan and I plied it on my Ashford Student Spindle. Plying it was a pain in the neck because the stuff just didn't want to cooperate with me. I am going to spin the other half on a different spindle. It will be, I hope, approximately the same amount of singles out of the process and I can ply that to compare to what I did on the delgan.

Fiber fluff: Distaff day & Final Yuletide Project

Last night I finished this fancy table scarf's embroidery. It was a difficult project because the colored portion of the pattern was printed badly over the blue base which was supposed to align everything properly. I wound up having to hold the embroidery hoop up so that I could see where the stitches were supposed to go because having the project back lit allowed me to see the blue base layer of the pattern. I would have had it done a day or two earlier if it weren't for the fact that life got a bit complicated Sunday and Monday.

Distaff day was spent stitching instead of spinning. I've been busy catching up on chores and such. I have yet to measure how much I spun last year. I don't know how close I am to my goal of 1 mile of yarn. I have to do some measuring and some math. I think I may get to doing some spinning with my Scottish drop spindle tonight. (I can't spell the name or pronounce the name of it but I'll share a pic of it once I get the present project off of it, hopefully next week.)

Fiber fluff: Preemie hats!

The spinning guild has found a hospital in Elmira, NY that is in need of preemie hats. So, I have been making those instead of washcloths. I have a half duffel bag full of washcloths that I'm trying to get rid of. I keep bringing it with me to spinning guild telling people they can take one if they want one. I'm debating putting them up on Etsy and selling them. I have a lot of them and I don't know if selling them at $2.00 is worth the cost of shipping.

I'm making preemie hats. I have been using my doll Annie as a guide. Annie is the name I gave the doll that my parents bought to get me clothes to wear when I was born, as I was a preemie. I am also using a darning egg as a guide for the micro preemie sized hats.  Pictured to the right is the pile that I donated at the last guild meeting.

Also pictured are the three scarves I made for the homeless. I have started working my way through my yarn stash between these hats and the scarves. My goal is that by the end of the year, I will be down to one laundry basket worth of yarn.

Only part of my efforts is going to include making stuff for charity. I have a shawl project that I have been meaning to make for ages. I'm finally going to work on it as soon as I get this green one that I'm designing as I go along done. I'm a quarter of the way through that.

Spinning goals are stalled because I have been doing more knitting and crochet of late. Next month, however, I'm going to start spinning in earnest. Got to get ready for Tour de Fleece.

I have a new favorite yarn.

It's called My Favorite Stripe from Red Heart. The color saturation on this is fantastic. The striping works up great for scarves. I crochet one and then I knit one. Now I'm knitting another. It's just a lot of fun to have the yarn to the heavy lifting for the pattern. Right now, I'm just making another sampler scarf like I did in December. I'm not posting it as a Knit-A-Long because I honestly have no idea what I'm doing and I have misplaced my notebook.

I have another ball of this yarn. I'm going to use it to knit up a project that was last year's Knit-A-Long for spinning guild: That Nice Stitch scarf/cowl. It's a free pattern (last I checked) up on Ravelry. My plan is to donate the scarves I've been making and I don't need or find to be quite right for people on my gift list. I'm debating making hats to go with the scarves. I've been thinking about making scarves with pockets for hands too. But I feel good about making the decision to create stuff for charity again. I believe that most of the scarves are going to be fairly simple that I can knit with out concentrating too much. That way I can churn out more than one scarf in a month.

I have picked up the spindle again. I haven't loaded my fiber up on my distaff because it is a pretty small braid of it. So, I've been using my bracelet as a distaff for small sections. I'm using the Ashford Student Spindle to spin cobweb weight thread out of a grey-dark grey colorway from Winterhaven Fiber Farm. The fiber is a blend of merino(50), bamboo(35), and silk(25). I have 4 oz of fiber. I started spinning it with my turkish spindle. After I had two balls to ply, yule came. Then I made the mistake of putting the turkish spindle in a safe place. I still have the two balls of cobweb weight thread to ply. I'm not sure if I'm going to use a drop spindle for it or my kick wheel. I may go so far as to use my navajo spindle.

Spinning myth or reality? I don't know.

There's an old tale that says if you don't get your spinning done by Mother's Night (or Yule, depending on who is telling the story), Dame Hulda (or is it Frigga, it depends on who is telling the story) will tangle up your yarn. I tried to get all my spinning done by Mother's Night. That's the solstice evening.

I had some yarn that I hadn't plied sitting in a bowl. Wound into two neat little balls. They looked almost cute sitting in that bowl. As I was watching my eldest shovel a quarter inch of snow off of the side walk (this was before he caught the flu) out the living room window, I decided I was going to ply those two cute little balls of yarn into one cute little skein of yarn.

I had a devil of a time plying that. Corkscrews and pigtails in the yarn as I was plying it. Balls bouncing out of the bowl and rolling across the floor. It was a mess. I normally wouldn't have had this much difficulty. Still, I was there, the day after Mother's Night with a tangled skein. I suppose I should have listened to the old tales and finished that skein the day before.

Slams the REBOOT button on today.

This weather is bananas. High heat and humidity does not make me happy. And with all the pollen in the air my fate was to have an asthma attack this morning as I put the kids on the bus. Now it is + 75 degrees in here with windows shut and curtains drawn. It is sweltering in here and I'm trying to summon up the energy to get some dishes done.

Yesterday wasn't quite as bad but I was busy running errands all day. Still, I managed to finish the alpaca yarn scarf that I was knitting. This was fiber that I spun on my Navajo spindle and put aside for months unsure what to do with it. Well, let's call it a year, if we're being more accurate time-wise. It is grey and a very chunky heavy weight yarn. It will make for a very warm scarf when the weather gets cold again.

All this humidity has put spinning on hold until we get the air conditioner running. I have been debating spinning silk but my hands are rather dry. The irony of dry skin problems while you are breathing soup is almost as painful as the breathing process right now. I have decided to start finishing up projects that I had sitting around waiting to be worked on. This lead to my working on the scarf I started back in February (the alpaca one). I finished the shawl I had started last month. It was difficult going at first because I couldn't really see what I was doing. I'm debating if I'm going to add any sort of fringe or anything on the narrow ends of it or not.

I also finished up last week the huge granny square scrap afghan I was making for Beloved's birthday present. I made some good progress on the shawl I am calling amythest. It is in shades of purple going to white. It is a more shaped shawl than what I have made in the past. It is a heptagon (7 sided shape) with a split on one of the corners.Once I had it large enough to sit comfortably on my shoulders, I have begun working in straight rows to make it hang straight down from that point. I'm not going to make it any larger in diameter. This is not going to be a very large shawl. Probably more of a shawlette that reaches to my elbows.

I have a tablecloth that I'm crocheting out of the teal thread I won in the silent auction at spinning guild last January. That is light enough that I can work on it despite the heat. It is, however, rather tedious. I am still on the boring part of the pattern, though. I'll probably be working on that a bit later today when it is too hot to do much of anything at all. Right now, I am going to go wash some dishes, make some gazpacho, and set up some tea to steep in the sunshine on the back deck. Sitting in front of the fan had something of a restorative effect, I suppose.