Catching Up

Yeah, it's been awhile (again). I'm still here, don't worry, and I'm still doing all kinds of fun stuff, it's just really hard to find time to take good pictures and then write up a decent blog post to go with them... Anyone with a full time day job and a toddler should be able to relate! Plus, Jack has taken a liking to my iPad (which he calls a "book", adorably), which means I really can't work on blog posts until he's asleep. But enough excuses, let me show you what I've been up to.

I went to France in September (without my husband and son) for a class I took at UCLA, and while I missed them a lot I had a great time. I can't wait until Jack is old enough for us to go as a family. There wasn't a lot of knitting-related stuff on my trip, but I did get to see a lot of cool stuff in Paris, and a few things in Normandy. Here's Mont St. Michel up in Normandy:

It's a monastery that looks like a castle, mostly surrounded by water. It's very cool, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're ever in the area.

I did Spinzilla at the beginning of October, and here's what I ended up with:

I ended up spinning 2152 yards in the course of one week! The fact that it was a competition definitely helped, but I also spun it all woolen, which is super fast (in relative terms, of course). Compare that to the ~1300 yards of worsted-spun singles I finished over 3 weeks of Tour de Fleece, and that gives you some idea of how much faster it is for me. I'm now making myself a sweater from some of my Spinzilla yarn--I was going to save it for NaKniSweMo next month, but I couldn't wait!

I took a small break during Spinzilla to see Clara Parkes herself on her Yarn Whisperer book tour:

And of course Jack had to sneak in ;). Clara is at least as entertaining and engaging in person as she is in her writing, so if you have a chance to hear her talk about yarn anywhere, take advantage of it! I also ended up with a "claramel" of my own to bring home, and I hid it away so I wouldn't eat it too soon. I will have to take a picture when I finally taste it (I was dying to ask for the recipe, because I love making caramels, but I of course was too shy).

And there are the most interesting things I've done in the past two months. I hope you're all enjoying the cooler weather and the knitting opportunities it provides!

 

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Summer Wrap-Up

Yeah, I've been meaning to post a "Tour de Fleece Wrap-Up" for about a month now, and it's been long enough that I decided it's now really about what I've done with the rest of my summer.

I did finally finish the Seawool I originally started spinning for Tour de Fleece 2012:

I ended up with 1300 yards of a laceweight-ish singles... No wonder it took what seemed like forever to spin! I originally started spinning this in 2012 with the goal of getting around 400-500 yards of a fingering weight singles for a shawlette, but given the lighter weight and much greater yardage I ended up with, I elected to reallocate this yarn to a more appropriate pattern: the Citron Grand. I should have enough yardage to do 9 sections, so hopefully it will be big enough to be a comfy size.

I worked on my handspun Citron Grand at the Dodgers Stitch-n-Pitch game:

And guess who was sitting right in front of us? Barry Klein from Trendsetter Yarns (and of course I'm too shy to say hello, or to take a picture!).

I'm now into the 5th section of the shawl, but as of a week or so ago here's how it was shaping up:

I'm a bit surprised at how the yarn is striping in the shawl, because I didn't feel like there were really long blocks of color in the roving. I really like it so far, though, and I'm enjoying the color clarity and stitch definition of the singles. The rows are now getting long enough that I've got a good bit of autopilot knitting in between increase rows, so hopefully I can sneak in some more rows here and there and have a finished project before I know it.

We also took a family trip to the Renegade Craft Fair, which was fun (and, thankfully, overcast, so it wasn't completely roasting). I got some handmade soap, some hand dyed roving, and some delicious food truck gelato. Jack even almost let us get a good picture:

My little boy is growing up so fast you wouldn't believe it. He's too active to want to look at the camera long enough to take a decent picture these days, so I end up with a lot of blurry photos, or pictures of the back of his head. I still think he's the cutest thing ever, though.

Enjoy the last few weeks of summer, and happy knitting!

 

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Tour de Fleece Update

I'm making some progress on my spinning for Tour de Fleece:

I've just got a bit of this fiber left:

I'm very much hoping that I can finish this spinning project before Sunday so I can play with my new alpaca fiber, but we'll see.

My goal for this year was just to spin at least a little each day, and I've already ruined that by getting sick and hurting my wrists, causing me to take a few extra days off. I'm trying to do a better job of taking breaks to stretch so I don't hurt my wrists more. Lesson learned, I think!

In other news, my son has learned to lounge on the couch:

Adorable, right?

 

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Progress (at a price)

The boys in front of Griffith Observatory, where we hiked last weekend.

I've made good progress in the first week of Tour de Fleece:

It's surprising what can happen when you actually make time for something! It hasn't been without a cost, though... The time I've spent spinning has mostly come out of sleeping time, so I've now come down with some kind of cold in the middle of summer :(. And going from no spinning for an entire year to spinning for, on average, an hour a day for 8 days in a row has done a number in my wrists, and I had to take my rest day one day early. But I spun some today to make up for it, and I'm now almost done with the first half of my roving:

The roving is Sea Wool from Creatively Dyed, and it's been in my stash probably since the summer of 2008 when I first started spinning, so I'm honestly not even sure if you can get this stuff anymore. It's a wool and SeaCell blend (which is mostly tencel, if I remember correctly) and it's pretty much like spinning any kind of wool/tencel or wool/silk blend, with some nicely blended parts and a few places where you get a glob of the silky fiber that doesn't draft well with the rest of the fiber. The colors in the roving are gorgeous, but with the amount of light-colored fiber it's all ending up a little more muted in the yarn.

Anyway, I'm spinning an approximately-fingering-weight singles, S-spun (because of the two times I've knit with my handspun singles, the Z-spun singles fell apart and the S-spun singles knit up nicely), with a worsted draw at roughly a 4:1 ratio on my Spinolution Hopper. I originally started this spinning last year for Tour de Fleece with the idea of knitting up a shawlette I saw in a knitting magazine last summer... But we'll see if that's what this yarn wants to be or not when it's finally finished.

I can't wait to finish this spinning project (which, at my current rate, might actually finish up in another week), because here's what I have waiting to be spun next:

More about this fiber later. Happy spinning this week!

 

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Tour de Fleece 2013

Okay, I realize it's been so long since I posted here that I've forgotten when you last heard from me (and I'm scared to look it up). Here's the little munchkin that's been keeping me so busy:

He's one now, and walking, which is fun but at times tiring.

Anyway, I also have not done any spinning at all since last year's Tour de Fleece, so I am determined to change that. My goal is to spin at least some every day, with hopes of maybe finishing the spinning project I started for the last Tour. I made some progress last night, and here's my bobbin of last year's spinning plus last night:

And here's the remaining roving to be spun:

I will locate the label and let you know what this is before I finish it, I promise! We've started watching Downton Abbey on Hulu while I'm spinning, and after the first episode I'm kind of hooked. Hopefully this keeps me motivated to actually spin every day, so I can watch another episode.

And I'm realizing that I need to stop worrying about having the perfect pictures for long, detailed blog posts, and I need to start just posting something so you don't think I've disappeared!

With that said, happy spinning (or knitting)!

 

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