fractions and divisions

Just wanted to show you how subtle the fuscia/black roving turned out (whew!) when it was spun - it's the one on the centre bobbin. Now I'm doing the last third which looks more like the first one and then it's plying time.

The other photo shows the weird thing which occurred this week in the backyard. The sun swung around low in the southern sky throughout the day, but the garage was between it and the backyard at that angle, so it warmed up the north 1/3 of the yard and melted every speck of snow there, (gradually, in a moving line from north to south). It stopped melting around mid afternoon when it either lost heat or the proper angle. Not sure which. Or both.

We've also experienced it raining in our frontyard but not in our back.

We obviously live on some sort of cosmic division line.

serious spinning

I'm spinning a sweater. I know I've said this before. And this other time. They will all get done. Really. The one above will hold my interest more easily because the wool is dyed in more than one colour and it's gorgeous merino from Crown Mountain Farms. The colorway is called Riders on the Storm.

I bought it because I wanted something with a fair amount of black and grey in it, but I hadn't counted on so much pink. I'm spinning a 3-ply, so when I went to divide my first 8oz I realized 2/3 of it had a very different look to it than the rest. Most of it looks like the top photo - lots of greys, some purple and light peach. The rest includes intense fuscia and black (middle photo). But, as always, everything evens out a lot in the spinning. The single on my wheel is using stuff like the top photo. I figure that the evening out of a 3-ply, coupled with the fact that 2/3 of it is more subtle, will make for a sweater I can maybe wear.

And I'm really stoked about the sweater it will be.

EZ love

I have never ever been a person who swooned over celebrities and I've even thought those who did were a few jelly beans short of a full bag, as it were. Until a few years ago when I discovered Elizabeth Zimmermann and her wonderful books about knitting.

Last weekend, on our way home from the walk in the woods I mentioned previously, we stopped in at a library across town I've never been in before. I can never resist checking to see what knitting books an unfamiliar library might have, and I did leave with a huge pile in my arms, but what made me gasp out loud was discovering they had a copy of the video series Elizabeth had done for PBS of The Knitting Workshop. I could hardly wait to get home. I have stayed up late every night since then to watch this thoroughly enjoyable woman and her cats wandering around as she talks about backwards loop casting on and percentages, all the while conversing with Meg who is off camera.

Then I remembered the wonderful green sweater that had been discovered a few months ago and saw in the Zimmermania group on Ravelry that Meg was planning on making a kit and if you signed up for the newsletter you could find out when it was released. I signed up for the newsletter at 11:00 last night. The kit for the sweater was released today. And it's available in the original yarn! And it's incredibly inexpensive. I had to.

Even though I have to live with the fact that I am now officially a groupie. And I'm short more than a few beans.

replacement hat

Pattern: Turn a Square by Jared Flood
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden and Cascade 220

I made a hat for my friend last year and apparently he really liked it and wore it all the time because when it dropped out of his pocket, unbeknownst to him, at the mall last week and was lost forever, he was very upset. I made him this one to replace it. I've made it once before. It's a quick and easy way to use up bits of lazy yarn you have lying around and Silk Garden is always fun, if a bit annoyingly fragile.

We're going for a walk in the woods today. It's incredibly warm outside and has been for weeks. No snow yet either. I've barely had any excuses to wear my handknits.

Have a great weekend!

pinky goodness

Pattern: Pikkuveli by Suvi Simola (not yet released)
Yarn: Cascade 220, colours 9470 (pink), 8901 (purple), and 9430 (green)

Here is the finished version of the sweater I've been test knitting for Suvi. What a gorgeous pattern. This is size 6, so it's a wee bit roomy on my 5-yr-old, but that's perfect. She can wear this for a long time. It was fast and fun and these colours never got boring. She loves it!

tests can be fun

I'm test-knitting a super cute cardigan pattern by Suvi right now. These sleeves are so fun to make. My 5 yr. old girl's tastes are all about pinks and purples, so that's what I'm using. The main colour is fuscia and the secondary is grape - I will attempt to better differentiate them in the next photos. They are far more saturated than I would normally knit with, but they were what seemed to work together from the selection my LYS offered in this particular yarn.

Have a great weekend!

2 mitts are better than 1

Pattern: Deep in the Forest Mittens by Tuulia Salmela
Yarn: Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift, colours 122 Granite and 01 Shetland Black

The bareness of the tree branches outside reminded me that I hadn't yet finished the mate to this mitt I started much too long ago. They're warm and a bit rugged and I love them. The yarn is gorgeous and I can hardly wait to use it again. Actually, I have several projects planned with the other fingering weight shetland yarn (2ply Jumper) - Jamieson and Smith, so I can compare the two. They seem very similar.

Fall. Trees. Mitts. It's all good.