I’m doing this again. It’s fun and you need to do it too.
It’s a great challenge to make sure I get in my spinning time. Or rather, make sure I get more spinning time. Anything to give me the excuse of getting more time to spin.
I can’t remember who’s idea it was, (Amy was it you?) but those of us on Rav decided we needed a team. We are team “Monkey Farts”. And because of that many of us have changed our Ravatars to Monkeytars. Here’s mine:
If you want to join us in the ridiculousness, you are absolutely welcome to. You just need to spin and be silly. The be silly part has nothing to do with the spinning, but hanging out with our group, being silly helps.
The goals I’ve set for myself are
1. to work down the list of the spinning and samples I need for the book and a pattern I need to do.
2. Work on Monkey farts.
3. Work on sweater yarn.
4. Finish up Diaper Tan, Lobster merino silk, and Pumpkin juice.
2 days into it I have work done for the book and the pattern:
These are a bunch of Navajo plied BFLs and Shetlands.
New Grafton spindles showed up at the shop and well…..I had to test the product
It’s a Grafton Fibership with a batt of my own making in BFL, silk and Alpaca. It will be a 2 ply lace yarn.
As for the goals of number 2 and 3 I have at least picked out the fibers and the pattern for the sweater. The Monkey farts is in Merino Silk:
and the sweater will be done in Ashland Bay Merino Tussah blend:
The sweater will be February Lady. There are a ton done on Ravelry already and I’m smitten with it. Of course I’m still working on Diaper tan Ariann. I’m about 1 inch from stopping the body and starting the sleeves.
I’ve made no progress on goal 4. Though I do need to work on the Diaper Tan before I run out. I have almost 1000 yards and I think I will need a touch more. And I keep looking at the others that I WANT to really work on. Work first right? Hopefully I’ll have some good productive spinning every day.
I haven’t had much for recipes for you lately. Things have been stagnant here in the new recipe department since the fruit revelation. Funny how one little thing can set a girl running back to the food she knows. So it’s been a lot of salads, green smoothies and rice dishes. Last week I made my first batch of Kombucha.
When I went in for a tattoo day 2 weeks ago, Jennifer had brought in a little SCOBY for me. I bought my jar and away I went to make my Kombucha. In case you don’t want to click the link, it’s a fermented tea drink. It tastes ciderish. We make it with less sugar than is called for and use Turbinado. In that way the Mother eats all the sugar out of it so we can still live a sugar free existence.
There is a lot of information about how to make it and Jen has some linked from her site. Here’s one site with videos The guy in that video is entertaining but boy does he use a lot of sugar. You can use a ton of sugar but you don’t have to. Though you need to use some. Mother needs the sugar to eat and live. Poor Sara was forced to drink my Kombucha that hadn’t had it’s final fermentation. It is good and ok to drink after a week without the rebottling, but it should be even better today though.
There is some knitting and spinning too. Actually I’ve been doing a ton of spinning though most of it is not recreational. This is the yarn I’ve done for the Goddess Anniversary Shawl knit along:
Because of a discussion in Ravelry….I decided I needed to start the shawl and did the first round just before the second round was posted. I think I’m just going to do chart D all the way through. Less decision making if I just follow one all the way.
That is assuming I actually keep going and aren’t halted by other work.
My Diaper tan/ hayfield merino Bamboo yarn decided that it really wanted to be an Ariann. My yarn is a little lighter than called for. It knits up at 20sts/inch instead of the 19 called for. I decided to knit a larger size than I wanted to compensate for it. We’ll see how well that works out. So far the yarn and the pattern seem to be getting along.
And that’s all. I’m feeling a little brain dead today and stringing anymore words into a cohesive sentence isn’t entirely possible. Let’s hope for some good sleep tonight
edit: My friend Gina just put up a new pattern. It looks beautiful!
Of course as a homeschooler, it’s never really out entirely. There is summer reading and a few field trips I want to take but the daily tasks are over until September. It will feel very free. Free until I find other tasks to fill it. Tasks like gardening and the general clean out I attempt to do every summer. This year the big project is organizing my sewing room into being a spinning weaving and sewing room. It’s probably not big enough for all that, but I’m going to try. I have a HUGE wall of cloth that needs to be sorted through and some needs to be gifted away and some I’ll just store. I already filled 4 large rubber maid buckets with polar fleece. I figured that was taking up the most space and it really was. It’s so fluffy.
Maybe if I take out some time to do more sewing, that will eat up the fabric too. I have a stack of skull fabric just itching to be clothing for the girls and I. Yeah, that’s the ticket, sewing isn’t for enjoyment, it’s to help organize. I bet if I spun up the fiber and knit some of the yarn, I’d have more room……I can see this organize thing falling apart pretty quickly and me taking a trip to my LYS just because.
Though I have been knitting and spinning. There is nothing ooh or ahh to show with the spinning or really the knitting for that matter but I took photos anyway.
On Hyacinth is Pumpkin Juice from Enchanted Knoll. Boogie Baby has claimed it and wants a hat, so it will be a three ply worsted weight:
On Suzie is some CVM I got from Amelia. I’m spinning it into lace:
My Enchanted Swallowtail is in the 2nd chart:
I started a tank top for 7goingon20. It’s for when she becomes 8goingon20 next month:
And I started with my Diaper tan Merino Bamboo a couple of times but didn’t like the patterns. Now I think I found one in Rowan 23 that will make me happy:
Let’s talk about that shawl. I know most of you come here for knitting and spinning so let’s talk about this happy little shawl. It all starts with the fiber and the yarn
The fiber is a combed blended Merino silk top from Ashland Bay. I spun it in a worsted style. If I hadn’t started it at 11 at night, I might have spun it from the fold with a long draw. It’s a heavy fiber and spinning it worsted makes a strong but heavy yarn.
The garment made from this yarn will not be likely to pill and the yarn is really tough.
I knew I didn’t have a lot of time to knit this. Well, I was giving myself 2 weeks and under normal circumstances that’s plenty of time to knit a sweater or a shawl. But in the middle of shows and shipping club, it’s difficult though not impossible. So I started in as soon as the yarn was dry.
I knit every little chance I got. At the end of the 2 weeks, I had added one extra pattern repeat for length and finished off the edging. All to the specifications of the wonderful pattern from Susan’s Forest Canopy Shawl. I chose this shawl because I knew it well and it makes a gorgeously simple shawl. Not too frilly but not too plain either. It’s perfect for most people.
I love the blocking of lace. Well, I have to admit that threading the wires carefully through here and there is a bit annoying as it seems to take so very long to do. In some cases it takes more than an hour to get a shawl set to dry.
In the end it’s really quite worth it. I love pulling out the wires to see the finished product. It all flattens out, the details pop, and the edging is crisp.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with this shawl. I’m glad I did it in blue. If it was in a favored color of mine, it might be a little harder to give up.
