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.

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... :)

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.

Cooties!!

Gotta love Garden Slugs, and their crazy googley eyes :)

The kids requested these in specific colors, so I did a little bit of dyeing first. They are fun to make, and the kids have been playing with them ever since. All three of them have been "sleeping" in rolled-down socks :)

Stained glass socks

It's 4am. And in about 3 hours the kids will start to wake up, and it's not my turn to sleep in.

Night shift. It's messing with me again...

Promise, I'll go to bed right after this ;)

Only bought this because I love the BFL/mohair mix for socks. Not a color I would have chosen, if I had more choices.

But I liked the yarn it turned into.

 I didn't think there was enough to make a pair of socks for my big feet, so I striped it with some Sportmate. The squares on the toe end... they are there because I always wear out my socks under the ball of my foot first, and colorwork means double-thickness. There's always a strand of "the other color" at the back.

These went into the Harry Potter game on Ravelry as a 'project inspired by a potions jar' (thus the little jars in the photo). All the colors completely distracted me from my NEWT for a while. But I'm back on track knitting my Stilwell jumper, now, and spinning some interesting yarn for Quidditch.

Ravenclaw came second in the House Cup last term, by the way... forgot to say. Hufflepuff won it for the first time ever (it was the 15th term, I believe), but the margin between first and third (Slytherin) was only 5 points more than the number of points I earned, so it was close!

Slytherin is due for a win again. It's a house tradition to win every second term, I believe; forget sharing :)

And now, to bed...

Lately

In the last week or two I have been dyeing

and spinning

and knitting

It's all working in around work, and I'm throwing in this quick blog around cooking tea. :)

Shiny new

I was very good with my tax return money this year. Most of it went into savings, and of the bit we had to spend each, most of mine went onto a bike. The kids have all gotten little bikes this year, and Byron and Jasmine are spinning around the driveway happily, but they like us to take them to more exotic places ;)

Today we rode the 6km around Victoria Park. They all did well, especially little Zac with his training wheels.

Byron probably would have done it in a third of the time without the other two kids, but it was more fun as a family thing :)

Anyway, now I can feel free to spend the remains on yarn! I got a collection of Madelinetosh Vintage, which is one of my favorites.

Duchess (very dark purple)

Mourning Dove (just in case my other skein ran out while knitting Alchemist... ended up using about 30g of it)

Steamer Trunk (in case I need more before I'm finished Stilwell)

Firewood (really love this color)

Terra (love this mixed with Firewood)

Then I got some fibre from Shadawyn, a fellow player in the HP game (whose birthday is today, August 31). The fibre club one is "Severus Snape" (she does a different Order of the Phoenix member each month), and it was my reward ;) for finishing my Potions OWL on time. Seemed appropriate.

Severus Snape

And since I was paying postage, anyway...

Hebridean Black

And then I apparently rebelled against the greyness of the NEWT and ordered some color from Kathy's Fibres.

Jewel

Dazzle (Jasmine chose this one for a hat)

Opal

And some BFL/silk. I do still love grey after all.