Wit Sharpening Potion

And so my holiday up in Ravenclaw has ended, with me finishing my Potions OWL about an hour before the deadline! I decided that while I was in Ravenclaw, who are the geeks in HP, I would be one. I knit the pattern "Tortoise and Hare Sweater" by Kate Davies, but added some Nerd.

Picture by Jasmine :)

The runes around the top say "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good". Then some music, and then a chart I called "waves and particles" (just to make is sound nerdy). The question marks are a nod to one badly dressed Dr Who, and the Sine waves were really just a rest from trying to decide what to do next and how to fit it in :D

Above the 6 inches of 1x1 rib I did 3 vikkel braids (which are fiddley and time-consuming!) and then wrote out Pi to 35 or so decimals. And look! More sine waves...

The colored stripes were a nice rest from Fair Isle, but officially they're Fibonacci Numbers. On the "8" strip I wrote out my Rav name (Alrischa) in binary. Binary is Not Shorthand!

Daleks! Cute little exterminators. Also some DNA, which was a fiddley chart.

It sure did test my wits. Look... steeks!

A weirdly shaped thing (so as to go around and around, which is far easier for Fair Isle) with no armholes or neck hole, though the stitches for the back of the neck are held on a string.

Where you plan to cut, you do 5 extra stitches, and then you sew a crochet reinforcement (holding each side of the center stitch to the next stitch) and cut down the center of the center stitch.

 It works beautifully, in theory. The crochet took me a long time (because I hardly even know how to hold the yarn for that) but it held the stiches nicely. Then I picked up stitches all around, folding back the cut edges, and knit the arms and neck.

Half-way through the first sleeve, however, the yarn remembered that it is Superwash, and so not as willing to stick to itself. The crochet edge started drifting off... and then the stitches. I had to do a quick and ugly re-reinforcement that I hope does the trick. Silly thing. It was a good experiment, but I won't use superwash next time!

And now I'm back in Slytherin (hopefully) and working on my grey NEWT. 

Check out the difference between my raw fleece, and my washed and carded fleece. This will end up as leggings, a woven skirt and the Sitka Spruce hat.

Made a start on the merino/suri/silk that will be Phi

A bit of Stilwell, with stripes :)

The Tour de Fleece

This year I played the Tour de Fleece game on Ravelry, where we spin our wheels (as do the riders in the Tour de France) each day that they do. There are no rules, really; it's just an excuse to "get together" for a spin :)

So here's the yarn I spun during this tour, all 3653m of singles

You've seen this one. Kathy's Fibres merino in "Summer Fruit". About 220m of 2ply.

A skein of the Idlewood Mashup. Kathy's Fibres merino in "Timber" and oatmeal BFL/silk/angelina batt mixed up by me. About 65m of 6ply

This mashup skein is KF merino in "Timber" and "Strelitzia". 70m of 6ply.

"Strelitzia" and "Currawong". Almost 90m of 6ply.

Kathy's Fibres merino in "Red flowering gum" and Ixchel's angora/merino/tencel in "Autumn". 75m of 6ply.

SO nice to spin something other than 6ply! This is the Autumn Fibre club from Kathy, in the colorway "Autumn at the Oakbank Races". 200m of 3ply. Merino and tencel.

I realized at the start of the TdF that I could sit on the couch if I put my Jenny on the knitting box. It occurred to me this day that I could put my feet up, if I was careful. Nathan thought it was funny, and put this on Facebook. :) Lazy, eh?

And this is what I was spinning, which is Kathy's Fibres BFL/mohair, 278m of 3ply. This will be socks one day!

New stash!

But first, the finished Idlewood, where I took 1200g of fibre

and spun it into 1165m (1275y) of 6ply yarn, and then knit it into this heavy, warm top.

which I've worn a lot since!

 Also used the scraps (a few yards I kept from each of the skeins) to make some gloves

in time to wear to the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo.

Yay!

And now, on to Bendi stash...

My goal this year was to get some different yarns to spin, including a fleece. And so, I got some

Texel

Wensleydale

Blue Faced Leicester/ silk 50/50

Llama and silk

Merino/Suri alpaca/ silk

This experimental attitude goes along well with the latest surprise fibre (AKA fibre club) from Kathy's Fibres, which was

merino/camel

but I didn't get that one at Bendi. I also picked up a jumper's worth of lovely Madelinetosh Vintage at the Zigo Zago stall, which I put straight into my "stash to save if there's a fire" box.

Steamer Trunk, Silver fox, Winter Wheat

And these sock yarn skeins just jumped into my bag, I don't know how :)

Stranded in Oz "Goddess of the Field", but it makes me think of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers".

Stranded in Oz "Friar Tuck Green". Sparkly.

Moseley Park, "Dion", also very sparkly. hehe.

I also got  a nice fleece from Moseley Park. I couldn't decide what kind of fleece to get, and was tossing up between Finn, Corriedale and English Leicester. Then I found this one

The woman at the MP stall said "Jack" has a grandparent of each breed, so it's a English Leicester, BFL, Corriedale and Finn mix up. And quite a grey/natural color, which I was also looking for.

Now I have a new plan for a NEWT next month (not that I'm even close to finishing my Potions OWL with only one week to go, but nevermind that) where I knit lots of grey. The current dream is
* Make a jumper, perhaps Stilwell but with stripes out of the Vintage
* Spin and knit the merino/suri/silk into a shawl, perhaps Shaelyn or Zenaura...
* Transfigure this fleece into knitted leggings and a hat and a woven skirt

That's not too much for 4 months, right?

hehe.

Bendigo 2013

Let's have a rest from 6ply, shall we? lol...

Yesterday, I got up early (well, I tried to) and picked up Kelly on the way to the Australian Sheep and Wool Show for 2013! It wasn't quite as sunny as other years have been, but the Show was just as good, and there was no lack of color, for such a grey day.

We made it just in time to see the Fashion Show, though we had to stand in the breezy door behind the speaker because the place was quite full!

I wore my completed Idlewood, and my fingerless mitts made to 'match' the Idlewood, and was warm. Warmer than those girls, I'm sure!

We explored the place and spent as much money as we could :) We got nacho baked potatoes (there's a good mix!) and looked around the competition shed.

Weaving

Felting

Blankets

Drunk bees

Crazy stuff

Lace

More lace

Lots and lots of handspun; this was my favorite

When the showgrounds were about to shut, we tripped off down to the Nanny and Ewe thing at a bowling club down the road. There wasn't much there, frankly. I wanted to get a new stash of Chiao Goo needles, but they didn't have any short straight circulars. There was free coffee, anyway, and then we headed off back to Ballarat with LOOT.

Might talk about my loot next time. And that 6ply top that's finally done.

Purple!

I started the Tour de Fleece with something different, thank goodness, and was so pleased to be spinning a different color that I finished this one on Day 1. My goal for this TdF is to spin 3403+m of singles while the bike riders do 3403km. I'm ahead so far :)

Alas, next time I post there should be 5 new six-plies. I've already knit up most of them; in fact, I have 40g to go of the Bravo I  spun ages ago, in May, I think, and then I only need to spin and knit India, and my handspun Idlewood is done. It weighs a bit over a kilo, which is heavy for what is basically a sleeveless top. It will be perfect for a cold Winter's day of fibre-shopping at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Festival in a few weeks.

So this skein is 100g of Kathy's Fibres merino in the color "Summer Fruit". It's a fractal plied 2ply, and I'm surprisingly happy with it; I don't usually like how my 2plies come out. But this one is tightly twisted and balanced :)

Fractal spinning, if you're wondering, is where you take a single with long color changes, and a single with short color changes and ply them together. With this one, I spun half the fibre as it was (making long color changes) and I split the other half into eight, so that the thinner pieces would change color quickly. I like the effect.

Jasmine, who turned five today, tells me that I can make myself a hat with it, if I have enough left over after making hers. hehe. I bought her Alana Dakos' book, which is very cute, and as soon as she finished it she wanted to learn to knit.

 I dug around and found some of my Nana's old straight needles, and she had a go for ten minutes. (Casting on was fun, knitting was hard). Later, her little brother broke one needle into four bits, so I'm going to buy her some later. She might be too young yet, though.