October

I seriously haven’t finished many things these last months. I spent all of August and much of September working on two sweaters, which are still not done. One is Fern & Feather, and the other is Boxy. According to my calculations (which I’m keeping, because this is my next NEWT project) I have done 2400 yards of knitting, and neither of them look very finished yet. F&F is going to be long-bodied and short sleeved. Boxy is short-bodied but very wide and flappy :) with short sleeves, but only because they start at the elbow. You’ll see, hopefully by the end of November.

Apart from that, there have been socks and spinning. Nothing awesome, although I really like the colors in this Wren & Ollie sock fibre that I tried:

I made red/orange socks out of Wollmeise, that I ended up hating, but Byron took them off my hands. They’re made with my new 64 stitch cylinder, and fit his skinny legs much better. Did I mention that he’s the same size foot as me, now? I donated about 7 pairs of my socks to him, as he suddenly decided he loved knitted socks and wore the same ones for a week! I finished some green ones (mine) and two pair for Mum. I have purple ones for her still to go, but don’t like how the contrast “purple” worked... so I might frog those toes.

I haven’t actually been finding SCF inspiring these last months. But I just started a prize-fibre I got, which is purple and blue, and will work quite well for some handspun socks, I think, on the new 64-stitch.

July

July was mostly about spinning, of course, but a few other things got finished.

This Astrid, which was my NEWT project (along with spinning all that yarn)

And then there was this Mission project - a bunch of Hedgehog sock yarn in speckley colors going from pinkish to greyish. Loved all the knitting (it was all stockinette, as I just did a wrap and turn at the start of the purl sections) and the speckles were kind of fun. There are all sorts of colors in there.  But in the end, the purpose was a cowl, and it just doesn’t keep my neck warm at all. And it’s not the loose shawl-type thing I expected when you pull it down, either. I guess I can fix it, but fixing things... that tends to get put off indefinitely.

Tour de Fleece 2018

Practiced some 2ply this year, and improved it, I think. I’m not generally very good at 2ply, but I’m following some good advice, and twisting it more, not worrying so much about balancing the z-twist and s-twist. Half of my 8 skeins were 2ply! I still prefer Nply, though.

This year, for the Tour de Fleece, I bettered my PB and spun 6330 yards (5778m)! I started off with this pile of fibre, thinking it pretty ambitious

but by the end, I’d actually done an extra.

The rest of June

The NEWT is going along nicely, although I only have a few days left to finish it. I should be alright! Back in June, I handed in 75%, which was half of the Astrid. I’m loving the grey-shaded fabric, and the double-sided edge cable. But there are a LOT of stitches to knit!

Zachary has been asking for these for a while. I bought yarn from a destash especially to get the right colors in a sport weight, and they were time-consuming to knit. But he adored them!

Note the past tense, there. He adored them for about 2 days, and then he lost one. It still hasn’t turned up. Sigh... I have enough yarn to make another one, but have not yet summoned the will power!

Crank socks! Managed to get two shortish pairs from one skein of Hedgehog (“Goblin”), using a bit of other sock yarn for the heels/toes/cuffs.

I tried a quick and easy project, which was to crank a skein of handspun laceweight through my CSM. This was a 200g 2ply mix of “Time” and “Space”. I loosened the gauge, and had to block it by stuffing it (it was longer and thinner at first) but it turned out pretty nice! It’s certainly soft!

I did manage to spin and knit Jasmine’s new snake for her (though I pretended I hadn’t started it for a while... hehehe). It turned out a bit chunkier than the other green one, but she likes her.

She’s longer than the original snake, and does look more poisonous, I have to say! :)

Next post will be all spinning, as the Tour de Fleece has taken over July!

June

More spinning (we're in training for Tour de Fleece next month - hehe)

Jasmine's been pestering me to do more spinning that's for her, but I haven't started that yet. That's next. She wants a "handspun blue snake" for her birthday. :)


It was Byron's birthday last month, though, and he wanted a soft strap cover for his sax strap. I made him some red socks, too, with little black music notes on them.

11 years old. Crazy!








Here's what I sent my sister for her birthday. Sparkly rainbow stuff. Hehe. If she thinks the socks are embarrassing, she can hide 'em in her boots :)

Coming along are my Mission in Pink, and my NEWT in grey. Long, long, long rows of stocking stitch. Good for watching old episodes of Star Trek. :)

April

I said that April was going to be a boring month, and this is what I spent the most time on.

2148 yards of handspun 3ply yarn. It’s about a fingering weight thickness (some thinner, some thicker!) and I’m using it to make the second half of my NEWT, which is basically a poncho pattern named “Astrid”.

I couldn’t wait until June 1, so I could cast on something that was Not Grey :) Oddly enough, I ended up with all this green and grey mix. (Spelsau, and some grey 70/30 BFL/Silk)

I did spin up a bit more color, though.

Might be one of my favorites so far this year. Not sure what to make with it, of course. It’ll just get added to the stash, as usual!

Null Hypothesis

Finished, somehow, my double-knit scarf for Ancient Runes. Definitely could have used another month for this, because I had to spend 1-2 hours every day on it. But it's pretty cool... double-sided, goes with anything, a bit steam-punk, warm, soft and 2.5m long.

Here's Zac trying to show both sides for me

And one that shows the middle section (the pipes) a bit better. Man, it's hard to take a squarish picture of both sides of a long scarf!

In keeping with the grey theme, I also knit up some little fingerless gloves. The pattern is called "Something Wicked" and fit in nicely with the poem I'm learning this month, which is (a bit of) the witches' song from MacBeth. I thought it would be fun to mutter "...eye of newt and toe of frog..." while I was cooking, or crushing patients' meds with a mortar and pestle. Hehe.

New pattern, too, by Kristin Lehrer, whose podcast I've been listening to.

And then there were socks... I'm working on my 4th pair for the month, but these orange ones are my favorites so far. Other two are warm but ugly :)

The crazy colored yarn (aptly called Kandinsky )

The current spinning is very blue and calm. And the next NEWT, she is ready to start on April  1. It's going to be a dull and boring month next month!

Amazing Greys

This year, my one and only New Year’s Resolution is to knit more grey stuff. I find, with my typical short attention span, that I make a whole pile of uncoordinated bits and pieces in a wide variety of colors, and nothing looks good together. Not only am I going to whittle down my clothes to more basic stuff (a 5year goal) but I’m going to coordinate my knitting better. 

So this year, grey. Which is probably why I’m currently spinning this: 

Hehe. I finished some light grey spinning, and now I have 4. One to go. We also got these two distractions. The ginger one is called Mars, and the grey one (grey!) is Cloud. 

A bit of color is sneaking in around the edges. Some of my fibre stash is colorful ;) and socks... well, they don’t really count because they hide inside your shoes, right? 

This hat is the start of a set. There’s a bit of green in it (Slytherin!) but who cares. I like the folded hem and the green edge, and that Ivy is one of Malabrigo’s nicest greens yet. It was the one and only project I finished for “The Ravellenics” (knitting Winter Olympics, except we’re not allowed to use the O word, apparently.)

Null Hypothesis made it to the 50% deadline, which is finishing chart 4 (of 7). This is well over 300 rows, and I’m still averaging 4-5 rows an hour, so it’s a bit of a daily chore! I’m keeping up, though, and currently working on chart 6. This is the white side after chart 4. 

And one thick and quick grey/white combo, made on my Addi King Express with Bendigo Woollen Mills High Country. It goes through my machine very nicely.

Next term, I’m thinking of a NEWT that begins by spinning 500g of grey. I’m going to be as coordinated as anything! :)

Too easy, too hard.

Look at this for a silly project. Bendigo Woollen Mills fingering weight cotton goes great through my CSM, as it happens; I had to use it for something, so I made up three long seatbelt covers. Hehe.

The only spinning I’ve done so far is this, the third skein of  “White Pepper”. I love it, but I didn’t love finding broken bits in the second skein when I picked it up... I’ve got some of those moths, I think, that nibble holes in wool! (I’ll get them!)

Thought I’d use up some handspun and make a quick scarf. For some reason, the warp used a lot more yarn than the weft, and I had lots left over (which is annoying) and the warp colors are really dominant (which is also annoying). Live and learn.

I was happy, though, because as soon as Zac saw it, he tried to convince me that he’d “forgotten” that he’d meant to ask me for a purple scarf for his birthday... LOL

Made Nathan some birthday socks again. Because they’re ribbed and knit with two strands of sock yarn held together (for toughness and good fit) I have to do them by hand (unlike Zac’s). This time he got blue, so he has green, blue and brown socks. They take ages to knit; next time, remind me to make them in November, so he gets them on time!

Zac got blue socks, too. His request was “blue socks with no heels”, so I dyed up some blue variegated yarn. Then I decided to dye some grey, too, and make him two pairs, one blue with grey toes/cuffs and one grey with blue toes/cuffs.

He loves them. Knitworthy kid, this one.

For my OWL, I’ve been learning Double-knitting. It’s very, very slow. Basically, it’s two sided knitting, doing both sides at once. Every stitch on the chart is actually a pair; the first is knit as written, and the second is purled with the other strand of wool (ie, knitting on the other side with the opposite color). This is the grey side of chart two, and the white side of chart one. So far so good, except that it’s So Slooooooow. Takes me an hour to do 5 rows, when I’m concentrating and they’re easy rows. Hehe.

And now, for some more of that double-knitting...