Closet Clean Out

Closet stash diving day 2: found 3 bobbins for my Majacraft wheel, although the yarn on them was an almost total loss. I think I can salvage some of the pure angora, though.  Underneath the brown romney on one bobbin was some wool / soy silk that I had been sampling. Pleasantly, I found the matching roving over the weekend. Good to know I have a bobbin already started.

Found the bag of cormo I was looking for, it has some moth damage but should be about 80% salvageable.  When I put it with the bag I have set aside, there should be plenty for my winter OWL.  I think there is another bag of it somewhere... I will leave that stash dive until tomorrow.

Big surprise, found four missing skeins of finished yarn in perfect condition. Two are matching yellow ingeo. One is a dove colored merino & silk blend and one is a graduated gray to purple 3 ply in blue faced leicester that I designed, dyed, spun & plied. That one I had been thinking of recently; I think it will look well as the center of a circular shawl.  I just need to find one where I can bind off when I run out of yarn without any buckling. There is no skein tag, but I think there is about 400 yards.

Also found a crap ton of red heart acrylic and 6 cents as well as the pink silk sliver I was looking for and some green & yellow dyed merino top I had forgotten about. The pink silk was an experiment in dyeing from a workshop many years ago.  I had relegated it to "purely ornamental status" but I think I can use it in a class this term.  It will be interesting to spin and see what I get anyway.  The green / yellow / blue merino is actually from a different dyeing class (with Nancy Finn) and my inspiration was Kiwi, my indian ringneck parrot. She is still with me and the top isn't getting any younger; I may have to spin that up too.  Maybe into a parrot hat.

And I found *another* half pound of cotton sliver.  Will it ever end?  I am trying to get it all into one location, but continue to find so much I will need a bigger box quite soon.

Stash Thursday

Some beautiful blue merino roving / top I picked up at Lambtown last year.  Not a fantastic picture, but the fiber is really lovely. 

Hopefully at some point I will stop posting about stash fiber & start working with stash fiber!

Stash Monday

Today is the last day of vacation. Maybe I will finally  take an hour and get the spinning wheel back in working order.  There is stash to be spun! 

This is some yak roving that I got at Lambtown last fall.  It is grey-brown and amazingly soft.   I suspect I was thinking I could spin it on my charka, but a featherweight spindle would work well too. 

Stash Thursday

I love naturally colored wool and I love superfine fleece. Cormo  wool is the best of both worlds. This is 5 oz white & 2.5 oz natural grey roving from Cormo Sheep & Wool Farm (blog here)  It is certainly not enough for sweater, but would make a nice vest or hats or shawls or mittens.

Stash Thursday

Amazingly, I am actually knitting a project with this stash yarn.  It is a skein of hand dyed, local grown, local processed alpaca.  I am making Celestine for my Ravenclaw knitting house.  It is a very fiddly project, but interesting, and I am practicing some techniques I don't usually use, like picking up & knitting to add a section.

Stash Thursday

I photographed part of the stash yesterday and organized it on my Ravelry page.  The idea is that if it is taring me in the face, maybe I will use it!

Today's selection is some of the fiber I have acquired from Red Fish Dye Works.  They have beautiful, reliable fiber & color. I just realized that two skeins of sock yarn escaped the camera, I will have to add them later.  One is blue and one is orange... I sense a pattern emerging.

Merino / Silk handspun 4 oz

80 Merino / 20 silk 4 oz

50 Merino / 50 silk 4 oz

Silk yarn, 2 ply 120/2

Silk yarn, 2 ply 120/2

Knit Blogging - Year One

This is my 365th post. A year of blogging spread over a much longer span. Knitting projects started, worked, completed, abandoned, resurrected. Relationships come and gone. The never-changing presence of cat hair on my... everywhere.

Knit on CeCe at lunch time (and I think some more, tonight). The pattern is starting to flow and the emerging fabric is quite lovely. Went poking around in bags last night and found several (!) skeins of sock yarn in varying stages of metamorphosis into socks, found two incomplete shawls, found the yarn for the Rug Project (the reason I wanted to learn to weave). Those were just the things I had forgotten about - I saw several other projects that have been on the periphery for a while know. A shawl that needs only a knitted-on border, balls of yarn for an afghan I planned, they yak / silk set aside for weaving scarves, a bag full of washcloth yarn. It may be time to haul out all the yarn and divide it into kits - putting yarn, pattern and needles all together - so I can have an idea of the things that are in progress. Surely I have enough sock yarn alone for a do-it-yourself sock club.

Got my deductible back from the car insurance company today (it must have been in my mailbox since Saturday). Splurged on dog biscuits (for them) and lemon chicken & brown rice (for me) for dinner. Tomorrow I have a short day at work, so it is off to get car repairs so I can pass smog and finally get my 2011 tags.

High Fiber Content

My haul from Newton's parking lot sale last weekend: From Left to Right:

• Firsa the cat - 13 years old and still the center of attention
• a cone of 20/1 100% viscose (I bought 2 cones, and they are huge), destined to be curtains.
• a cone of sage green mystery fiber. It strongly resembles 20/2 cotton, dyed green. I think it will match well with the white & brown cotton that is already in my stash. Dishtowels, here I come!
• 3 cones of rayon chenille (one in graphite & 2 in porcini) that might someday be a simple plaid or striped scarf.

I also got a book on weaving Huck / Huck Lace that looks very interesting. I certainly have enough cotton & viscose to go to town! This is the yarn for my next sweater project, Cece from Chicknits. It is cotton & viscose plied together, which gives it a lovely sheen and drape. Linda at Knit N Stitch has quite a bit of it, in 6 or 8 colorways. They are each quite subtle, but all lovely. This one is blue, gold & aqua. I think it will look cool and refreshing.

And, sadly, Mr Whiskers died in the night. He was at least 7, maybe 8, so he had a good long run. He was a good piggy though, and will be missed. This picture was taken about a year ago at his one and only adventure as a show pig (see the ear tag?).