Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Seventy-five

The current NEWT is now up to 75%, just in time to get the points in the House Cup game. I had to finish the Stilwell





and spin up my fleece





PHEW!

The jumper is longer than 'standard', and used about 1.6km (1800y) of yarn. (It weighs a kilo). The fleece turned into just over a kilo of yarn, 621y of 2ply and 660y of 3ply. Total singles spun: 3222y.

The knit meter has passed last year's spin total, and the knit total is looking beatable  :)

hehehehe.


So, to finish my NEWT I have to turn that fleece-yarn into a hat, skirt and legwarmers, and finish off the Phi. I have started the shawl, in fact I've done about half the rows, but that's not halfway, because you start at one point of the triangle and end up on one long side. So the rows are getting longer.

I may have bought a little more yarn ;)

onepinkplum's pic
Got this Madelinetosh worsted MCN from a raveler, seven skeins in the color Ink. Liking blue a lot lately.

Also caught a Wollmeise update, and got some white, black and green Twin. Can't have too many of the basics.





Or maybe you can. I seem to have about a hundred skeins of sock yarn... perhaps I'd better do a Sock NEWT next time, see if I can do 7 pairs in 4 months or something... Or maybe I'll buy a sock-knitting machine :) hehe.


Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Two old favorites

One of the school mums (her daughter is in prep with my son) recently shaved her head. She's having chemo, and when chunks of hair started to fall out she whipped out the shaver... and a hat.

That's when she found out that store-bought hats are not all that warm on a cold day :)

She told me one day, partly joking, partly asking, that I was welcome to make her a wool hat like the one I was wearing, if I liked. Hehe. So...

This is the third Paper Moon I've made. The first was for a 20's party a while ago; I searched for "cloche" and found this. The second was because I loved the first one; it fit really well, and I wore it all the time. This one, however, is in Malabrigo Rios (colorway is Paris Night) and I'm afraid I'm going to have to make another one in Rios for myself. It's so soft.

The other hat I own that I wear all the time is Wurm. It's a pretty common, simple pattern, but the texture of it really makes it thick and warm. I made this one with the leftover skein from Byron's Zigvest.



I also joined a challenge on Ravelry, where we have to set "cardioknitting" goals and meet them for 12 weeks. This was my walking project, simple pattern, worsted weight yarn, and it's seen a few kilometers :)





Now, I'll have to find something else. I've started "Phi". It's a simple pattern, but the yarn is much finer, so we'll see how we go.

And now I have to go to a school art show, which I have been trying to ignore for the last few months of "reminders" (I must have gotten five copies of the order forms for the dinner menu). I wasn't going to go to Yet Another Fundraiser... but apparently they've been talking about it at school a lot and telling the kids to invite their parents, and now Byron is all excited. He doesn't just want to go, either; because he's heard that I can buy things. Sigh.




Saturday, October 12, 2013

More dyeing

Can't seem to help it. Hehe.

This one I called Cucurbitas. The class was about pumpkins :) Here's one repeat of the stripes...

Orange. But with lots of green for balance. Hehe.

This one should be interesting. I made a variegated yarn with 5 colors, as you see at the top, and then turned it into a long skein and dipped it into dark brown.

What I need now is a time-turner, so I can knit all these yarns into socks to see how they work out :)

I finished this yarn, too, which is a 2ply Polwarth. Never spun polwarth before, but it's a lot like merino, soft with shortish fibres.

And now I'd better knuckle down and work on that NEWT, because I have about 2 weeks to finish up to 75%, and then only a month to make lots of things up.

Well, after I finish these two hats, anyway... NEWT soon... :)





Saturday, October 5, 2013

Glow sticks

These socks are not mine

They're ShaylaMyst's socks, which she's making from her handdyed yarn. I thought the yarn was cool, though, so I made some :)

I got a hold of a limited edition of blank sock yarn from Bendigo Woolen Mills. Hope they have more of it, because it's nice stuff, cheap, and will likely be popular. I acquired ten :)

so there might be a bit more dyeing to come. hehe. Anyway, I wanted a dark yarn that would have short little shots of color. So I balled up a skein, and then made it into a big skein, wrapped around a chair and a gate post outside. It wrapped around 20 times, so my skein was about 16m around. Then I tied it in 6 places, so that it wouldn't tangle up when I had it in a pile.

I picked the yarn up by the ties and hung the yarn into my dyepot of navy and black, making sure these 6 spots were out of the dye.





Then I got out my small dyepot and, one by one, dyed the blank spots








Then, of course, I had to string up my long skein, and rewind it into a  manageable size :)




It has about 120 shots of color, so it should make socks with about 60 streaks each. Called this dye job "Glow sticks" ...lol. (The Astronomy class is about meteor showers)

Then I dyed up some fibre, since I had the dye out. Before I knew it, it was half-spun :)




Oops :)



I recently finished a few other things, too. This spin, which is merino/camel

Not sure I like the colors. Pretty sure I hate spinning camel, though it's soft. It's like angora - soft, fluffy and likes to make lumps!

Also, this roving hat for Jasmine. She picked the fibre and we split it into thin strips. Then I just knit a hat without spinning the strips. It works well, and the hat was very soft, but the colors... well, Jasmine likes it, anyway.





 I felted 4 inches out of the circumference, which made it fit a little better. LOL. Also made these silly little covered cedar balls

Ten, all together, just being silly and using scraps of sock yarn. Also finished these Pumpkin socks

The colorway is called "Pumpkin Patch". The yarn isn't very nice; it was a cheap wool/nylon single-ply I found in Spotlight, and thought I'd navajo-ply into a thick sock yarn. They're a bit too big, but very warm and thick.

As for the NEWT, I've finished with my 600y of 2ply from the fleece, and am now working on the 3ply. Not sure I'll have enough fleece to finish 600y of 3ply, but I'll spin it all and see. Here's some yellow 3ply.



My NEWT jumper (Stilwell) is up to the armpits! I have to finish it (and the fleece) by the end of the month to get my points for 75% (good old deadlines get things done). Then I just have to knit a shawl, hat, legwarmers and weave a skirt (!)

Is that enough stuff? Hmm... I may have cast on two hats and a sock this week... hehehe.











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