The things I have neglected to show you.

That sweater from my worsted yarn.

The pattern will be free with the purchase of the worsted weight yarn I dye.

And the Shetland mittens:

This mitten was done using my Shetland Sampler and has been done for quite some time. In fact I finished them the same weekend I showed the beginning. I have kits ready to go in fiber and yarn. I’m just testing the yarn now to make sure it works up the same. So far so good.

My goal is to have all of these ready for SPA in a couple of weeks.

Food here isn’t always super healthy. Sometimes we like to go for somehting a little naughtier. With Superbowl weekend coming up, I wanted to try out a fried mushroom. I had a bit of batter left so I threw in some onions too. While I think it’s a good batter for mushrooms, the onions weren’t quite right.

1/2 cup Corn flour
1/2 cup Rice flour
salt (to taste)
garlic powder (to taste)
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
6 ounces Beer or cold water
Small mushrooms - washed and dried - if you don’t have small ones, cut up the big ones so they’ll cook through well.

Heat some oil to 375F - about 2-3 inches in a pan will work.
Mix the batter ingredients until smooth. Drop in the mushrooms and stir to make sure they’re coated completely. Gently drop the coated mushrooms into the oil - turn once to make sure all sides are brown. Drain and serve hot with ranch dressing.

If you’re vegan you know ranch isn’t exactly on the menu. To make a vegan ranch dip. Plop a package of silken tofu in the blender. Add a couple of teaspoons of soy milk and a packet of ranch dip mix. Blend thoroughly. It’s good stuff and Vegan.

I need to come up with a few more Football snacks. These days we don’t have a big party but it’s still nice to have the food as if we were having a bunch of guests (so long as I remember not to make enough for an army).

KNITTING:
I can’t show you anything just yet. I spent the weekend finishing up some socks for a local version of Sock wars, “Battle of the Soxes”. I didn’t feel like I’d be able to participate with all the dealines I have in February so I volunteered to create a pattern. I have a sample done in 2 weights now. The game starts this Friday and then I’ll be able to show off the socks.

SPINNING:
I need to work up a larger sample of some energized singles for a posting here. I got way laid by making boucles. I took a picture of an old Boucle I did….

And now I want to make a ton more. I’ve been dyeing up special for some funky boucle type yarns. I’m not sure what I want to make with the final product. All I know is that I want a ton of this boucle. It’s not a full boucle either. I should get out some of the others that are loopy and fluffy the whole length. This one is fluffy and loopy in spots. Which means it has just enough plain spots that I can knit with it without wanting to gouge my vital organs with my needles.

B could be lots of things. Blue faced Leicester, Border Leicester, Batts, Bad yarn…..But again I avoided the obvious fiber choices.

There is Baby Boogie:

Lots of B but still not the one I kept thinking of. Sorry Baby Boogie.

You might have thought with all the Boxes that went out yesterday:

that it might have been B for Boxes. Still that’s not it.

Just one B word kept popping into my head and I had to use it.
Burpee
Not so full of gas, that I’m Burpy. Burpee the seed catalog.

The catalog came in right around my birthday and I just happened to have some birthday money that needed to be spent on plants. Normally I buy from the local guys but Burpee had a few variations that Johnny’s didn’t. So I bought seeds and a few extras that I’ve always wanted like cool row markers. I missed having my herbs inside this year so I started a few Baby plants.

We’re all eager to have some of these plants ready to eat. And if you’re wondering what my “greenhouse” is… It’s a plastic lettuce container. A great way to recycle and it works wonderfully for a small bunch of plants.

Not everyone is able to come out of the gate and spin like a pro. It takes practice and time. To prove that, I thought I’d show off some of my first yarns. I cleaned out a cabinet in the livingroom a few weeks ago and threw all the yarn into one box. In that one box there were some of my first yarns.

This one is my first ever yarn:

It’s hard to tell how not wonderful it is. Notice that it’s 2 different colors. Plying 2 different colors together is easier than one color because you can see the twist better. Which you can see the twist was way better in my first yarn than in the next one:

Honestly, this plying stinks. There are a few small perfect sections in there and the rest is woefully under plied. So under plied in fact that some of the yarns are just neighbors instead of being any resemblance to plied yarn.

And this one you can see it’s evening out and the plying is better.

I’m not sure what is up with the strange multicolors. I’m guessing I was trying to use up ends while I was trying to perfect what I was doing.

And here - I was trying to make low twist singles. I achieved low twist…so low in sections that I don’t know the yarn has stayed together. It certainly isn’t usable for knitting or crocheting. Not that I’d use it.

I achieved low twist…so low in sections that I don’t know the yarn has stayed together. It certainly isn’t usable for knitting or crocheting.

There were a couple of plain brown skeins in the bag with these but I just couldn’t get them to photograph well at all. They had underplied and overplied, undertwisted and overtwisted sections and some just plain bad yarn. Still it was all my first and I love it all. The green and white sits in my regular stash where I can see it often. The rest will go into a bag again to serve as a sort of time capsule for myself.

My friend Sara is working on making thinner yarns and is getting better. I was going to just send her some small tips on spinning fine yarn but then I thought they might be helpful to everyone.

You all know the rule the thinner the yarn the more twist it needs to hold together. Sometimes getting it to have enough twist before the bobbin yanks it in is half the problem. Especially if you’re working on an Irish tensioned wheel. You know the problem. You’ve got some thin yarn and your getting excited and all of a sudden there is just too much pull on it and it SNAPS.

This is what you do:

Do you see the path the yarn takes? That’s my leader and you want the yarn to follow that path - If you have hooks on both sides, you can just hook it through the hooks. It goes from the bobbin to the right side then to the left side and then out of the orifice where you are going to spin. You will need to change the path as the yarn goes up the bobbin. If you find that there is still too much pull and it’s still not working, you can always lace it back and forth again. Bobbin - to right to left to right to left and then back out the orifice.

Another helpful thing is to have a thicker core on the bobbin. You can buy the pretty bobbins that have the plastic or wooden cores that are larger - or you can make your own. Buy a piece of foam pipe insulation. It comes in different sizes for different sized pipes - you want one that will fit snug on your bobbin. And you want to cut it so it fits in snug and you have to be careful not to get yarn stuck in the sides but it works really well.

The whorls and bobbins need to be on a higher speed. This depends on your drive system and your wheel. Remember to set it so that you have more twist and less pull in from the bobbin. Which is just the opposite from what I was saying about low twist singles.

Your fiber needs to be pre-drafted well. Obviously if you’re using a well prepped fiber then you don’t need the predrafting but you do need to know the fiber you are using. Some blended batts just aren’t going to be suitable for lace spinning. There are lots of pretty batts out there that have several fiber types in one batt but that aren’t thoroughly blended. These aren’t necessarily made for lace spinning. Especially not if you are just starting out with your lace adventures. Pick something that is all one fiber type or one that has the different fibers very well blended. You will be happy you chose the right fiber otherwise it can feel like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

That’s not to say you can’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole. Experimenting and trying to do something that isn’t easy or something you are supposed to be able to do is half the fun sometimes. My only suggestion is that if this is your first foray into lace spinning and it’s not working - take a look at your fiber. Something else might be easier. Once you’re able to do the easy stuff and have the technique down, then go for that square peg.

My best advice for spinning good yarn is to enjoy yourself. If you are fighting with it, walk away or try something else. You don’t want to get in a fight with your wheel. I hear the vocabulary of some of the wheels rivals a sailor.