Tuesday, August 20, 2013

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!