Finished stuff

The Order of the Phoenix mission (knit four socks, preferably single socks) is done.

I did Hedgerow socks for Gryffindor, in a BFL sock yarn called String Theory Bluestocking. The color was Firecracker, and I loved knitting with it. The pattern is basically columns of moss stitch.

The yellow ones (for Hufflepuff) are Embossed Leaves, and they'd be a great start to lace, I think, as it was pretty simple but looks good. The yarn is Wollmeise Twin in Olio Vergine.

The blue Ravenclaw socks are Tern, and I used Lorna's Laces Sportmate in Navy Pier. The color wasn't really dark enough, so I dyed it a bit bluer.

The Slytherin Green ones are the pattern Brave, which I got in the Tour de Sock last year. The yarn is Shire String (it's all speckley and I loved knitting with it) in the color Samwise, dyed by Pacasha from the House Cup game (see also blogs on the right). I think I started these first and finished them last!

This lot is my handspun Cormo from the Ton of Wool Project. I got 100g or so of it at Bendigo last year, and spun it into 325m of 3ply. It's 20 or so WPI...

I probably could have fit a few more strands into my inch marker there...

Mostly this month I've been getting the socks done and working on Byron's red jumper. It's getting there; should be finished in a few days :) The other thing I have been doing is walking around the lake, and it occurred to me that I could knit as I walked reasonably easily. So

Dyeing this month

Made the yarn for the Hat In Progress with dyece (food dye ice blocks in the steamer)

And dyed some sock yarn with Fair Trade Coffee, stuffed into the jar and left in the sun all day :)

This one is just a dip-dyed-in-a-pot  with green, teal, blue and purple. Should spin into a bit of a gradient; we'll see, I suppose.

And now, back to that silly dragon jumper! Sigh...

Little things

More dyeing :)

Someone in the Harry Potter game ran a little tutorial on dyeing self-striping yarn, and, even though I've done it before, it put me in the long-skein-crazy mood. So I dyed some BFL sock yarn into "house" colors (blue, green, red and yellow) to make stripey socks. It is fun, though the sheep and husband all seem to think me a a bit silly... I used a repeat or two to test it, making up some icord scarves for the mini models :)

Also dyed another self-striping one, but this little skein is small-hat-sized at the most ;)

I'm getting into NEWT part 4: Byron's dragon. The "egg" part is spinning 100g of cormo from the Ton of Wool Project (wherein Kylie Gusset got a bunch of Aussies together to finance her, and took charge of a thousand kilos or so of Tasmanian wool, and made sure it was processed 100% in Australia, and then divided it up amongst the backers) - I've never spun cormo before, and after all the long-fibred Romney, it feels a bit short, like merino, but I think I'm getting it thin enough. It sure is nice and soft!

The "dragon" part - Byron's top - is harder. I'm just not loving the red that he wanted... but I'm  persisting. I'm about down to the underarms, now. The socks are going sooooo slowly. I think I've done about an inch in a week! lol.

I may have gotten distracted knitting baby things

Well, I have 20 minutes to clean this place, and then half an hour to get dinner in, and then my hubby will be home. It's my night off, so I get to run around crazy for the evening sit in the air-conditioned  shopping centre eating chocolate healthy stuff and knitting socks.

NEWT progress

 For this month's NEWT work, I had to finish spinning some merino/BFL/sparkle fibre into 3-ply yarn of 16-20WPI...

145g. 394m.

 and knit Jasmine a top representing unicorns

Used 582m of Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 12ply, which she hand-dyed with my assistance. There's about 150g left, so enough for a hat, perhaps. It's got a picot hem with a 20-row facing (to cover the back of those unicorns) and the sleeves just have a  purl-row turn and 10-row facing. I'm liking facings at the moment; they're neat. The jumper was knit top down, but I left a little V at the top, and then did a little collar with an icord cast-off that extended down the V. It worked out ok, I think. It was all made up as I went, although I pinched the "horse" pattern from Hestapeysa :) She wanted to wear it all day, but gave it up when it got near to 30 degrees at 10am. hehehe.


My 113 in 2013 goal is up to 16 so far. I whipped up a little one of these

A Milo, size newborn, but with worsted weight. Aguas. Love that color of Malabrigo Rios.

It's going to the unborn baby of a friend of a friend. I'm also making that particular kid another thing or two...

I've been doing some dyeing, which is a relatively quick way to get Points in the HP game, but it's still addictive and fun. Both were for Quidditch, and are BFL fingering weight sock yarn.

Here's one color repeat, to show how it's self-striping.

And a chuck-in-a-pot easy one, too

And this little thing, which began as a "let's all weave cushions" weave-along in the Slytherins' weaving thread on Ravelry, and became a useful padded shield. hehe.

The fabric I made for it ended up being far too long and thin. So I made it into a rectangular cushion with a deep pocket. My sewing machine and I are not yet friends, so this was a frustrating little thing, but the kids have been having fun with it.

And now I'd better get off to bed. Somehow, 1am always manages to sneak up on me, and make me grumpy the next day! hehee  :)

I survived brain surgery ;)

Yep. And my sanity is still intact.

The brain hat is a simple idea, really. Knit a hat, then knit a heap of icord (I used 12m) and sew it on to look like a brain.

The hat took a day or so (I used worsted weight, though, not fingering) and the icord (once I got Jacki's mill cranked up, took a mere "several hours". (I bought an icord mill, and suggest that if you're thinking about it, get an Embellish Knit, not a Prym. Mine dropped stitches a lot, and was very, very frustrating.)

12 meters is longer than I thought. And pinning it all down in a manner that looks brainey, inch by inch, was time consuming. I made mirrored matching hemispheres, which supposedly looks more brainy, and sewed it down while it was stuffed onto a round cushion.

I back-stitched all the icord down. It wasn't exactly fun, but the inside is funny.

And that's 10 things out of 113 for the first month. Now to get onto some more socks...

Preparation

This little boy, who once sat under a coffee table reading Dr Seuss upside down...

...is heading off to school tomorrow. He can't wait! (Mainly he can't wait to run around madly with his best kinder friend, Aiden, again!) For now it is 4 days a week, missing Wednesdays, until the preps get a bit more used to things.

And this independent little girl

is finally headed off to kinder for 3 days a week. By herself. She thinks that going by herself is the best thing ever!

So Zac is going to spend a bit of time on his own this year. But since his birthday last week (where he got some toys that his older siblings will not leave alone!!!!!) I think he'll cope just fine. Hehe.

As for me, I'm going to get back into some exercise. I'm going to walk around the lake, sometimes with Zachary and sometimes without, while the older ones are away. The weather is so nice, perfect for outdoor exercise, and when it gets cold again, I'll be prepared.

My fingers will be warm. They're nice merino (String Theory DK in "Delft") and so comfortable. The pattern ("17th St" by MediaPeruana (Kristen) in the blog list on the right) is simple and stylish, which she is good at. I'll be able to sit in a coffee shop and knit as soon as I've finished my 6km walk, and I won't need a hot chocolate to warm my fingers on first. (Might need one for other reasons. hehehe)

And that's the only thing I've finished this week. I've been working on Jasmine's rainbow top, and stitching icord onto the Brain of Insanity... more on that if I survive.

Summer sweaters

Happy Birthday, Zachary! Can't believe you're already three. Also, can't believe it's only been three years. And sorry about the Summer birthday jumper, which you can't wear for ages...

Not for long, anyway :)

The warm weather hasn't stopped me knitting a pair of socks, either

I made these ones using hand-dyed sock yarn. (I have some more white sock yarn waiting for me at the post office, at the moment, so it's like my birthday, too!) The self-striping thing worked out well, although I had to knit a straight tube to keep the stripe thickness even, and then pick up stitches for a heel afterwards (and chop out the grey parts to keep the heels and cuffs all-green). The afterthought heel is almost exactly the same shape as a toe, but it fits great.

I also finished a wooly hat, which is a pattern made up as I went. I knit most of the body of it (from the top down) watching "Les Miserables" at the theatre (which I saw twice and may see again, I liked it so much) and the contrast bit I did at home. (Can only knit very simple stuff without watching my hands.)

The edge was curling up, so I picked up stitches on the inside and knit a 1x1 rib facing, so it's nice and thick, non-curly, and a little tighter. Which is good, because this hat is for a 13yo, and it's going to be very slouchy! :)

Mostly, I have been doing some spinning.

I finished my Romney/alpaca for my NEWT. This is 50% alpaca from a fleece that my brother and sister-in-law gave me. I offered a knitted thing, and Kylie requested socks. After research, I discovered that 100% alpaca is not ideal for socks, because when it's stretched it doesn't bounce back, but mixing it with 50% wool does the trick. So I mixed the brown alpaca with a variety of colors from last year's Romney fleece (red, orange, white and blue) on my carder, and spun it up so that it will stripe in a subtle and random way.

130g = 313m of 3ply yarn, 20 WPI thick (fingering weight)

It's fun with batts this month. The next experiment was a little spin mixing some Jacob wool with sparkley angelina. The original was "humbug" top, which (I think) means they take all the natural colors and layer them into fibre ready-to-spin.

But carding it mixes it, of course, so the variation was pretty subtle. The sparkley bits are hard to photograph, too

50g = 54m of 3-ply

Nice and thick, this one.


Then, after chatting with some "Slytherin" friends in our little spinning thread, I decided to try "spinning woolen"

Normally -- always -- I spin "worsted". That means I stretch out the fibres between my two hands, preventing the twist from getting into the fibre until I'm ready, and then sliding my fingers back to carefully let twist in. It makes for dense yarn with very little air trapped in the yarn.

Spinning woolen means that I let twist go right up to the fibre as I stretch it. It's hard to explain, but it sure goes against the grain letting twist go up like that... yet it works. If you let a little twist in to the fibre you're stretching, it goes straight to the thinnest parts (so they won't stretch more), leaving you free to keep stretching out the thicker parts. Anyway, my yarn did end up being thick-and-thin.

Also, to spin "woolen", you have to prepare your fibre into rolags. I'm used to spinning fibre that is already brushed so that all the fibres line up. With rolags, you roll up a flattened square, and then pull fibre from the end of the roll, so the yarn you make is basically a long, thin tangle of fibres. That's what makes it airy, light and soft.

Only did 30m of 3ply, it was 40g, so it's quite thick, but spinning thin woolen yarn will take a bit of practice. As it was, I broke my single about 5 times! Noob. :)

Well, I'm off to play trains with that 3-year-old! Toot!