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To reinforce the idea that I am a complete and utter idiot, what do I do in the previous post? Yes, that's right. Make a stupid error. This time it's the fact that my cone is mahogany, not mulberry. Mulberry is what I'm working the shawl in. Duh.
To distract you from my idiocy, I'll dazzle you with a picture of my handspun.
Tah dah! Are you sufficiently dazzled yet? This (thank god) really does go from lace to cobweb weight as I had anticipated. It's about 250 metres of it too. *wipes brow* I took the neon orange and the bubblegum pink, both colours that I shudder to look at, and plied them together. The result is a mellower peachy orange colour.
And in an amazing feat of 'sometimes dumb animals do learn from their mistakes,' I took my singles and I plied them on my wheel. I remembered that plying a 129 metre skein on my spindle nearly killed me for the lack of mental stimulation last time. So I took my singles, looked at the spindle and thought, "No, Brittany. Remember what happened last time?" *taps noggin* See? Wising up.
How amazingly glad am I that it all worked out as I had hoped? It's enough to make the teetotaler that I am want a drink. Where is that bottle of sparkling apple juice?
In semi non-knitting related news, Sunday was the grandparents day. Both sets of grandparents are so funny. On my dad's side, my grandfather is obviously where daddy and I got our terrible sense of humour from. Unfortunately, I didn't get the social nature that he has from him. My grandmother spent most of her time telling him off. Ha! Sound familiar, Eric?
On my mother's side, my grandma is amusing too. I pulled out the camera phone to take pictures of the baby cousin and she starts ranting about camera phones and how the girl in the restaurant was etc. etc. etc. And I ask her how you make tea eggs. So what does she do? She whips out the carton of eggs and goes at it. Awww.And my grandpa. Oh my grandpa. I spent some of my time spinning while I was there. And I noticed him watching me and when I put down my spindle to try and pay attention to the cooking lesson, he picked it up and started going at it. So I showed him how to draft and such and I told him that if it wasn't twisted enough, it would fall apart. He gave it a shot and it dropped. Then he looks at me and laughs and says, "It's not easy, hey?" It's not that bad, grandpa.
I love Sarah. Sarah is the greatest purveyor of Jaggerspun Zephyr that ever existed. Visit her eBay store. Contact her. She'll hook you up good. Some while ago, I bought a gigantic cone of black off of her. Then the knittyboard buzz started. And I double-checked and yes, this was the same seller. I got in touch with her, mentioned my uncertainty about colours and she offered to send me snips. I was a dolt and gave her the wrong address and she sent them again without any question. I got the samples and finally placed an order. Friday evening I came home to the greatest package. Two cones of Zephyr in indigo and mulberry (the monster cone of black is what I got from her the first time).
I'm particularly floored by her service since a few days before I asked her about colours, I emailed The Woolery about shipping costs for a zephyr colour card. Three weeks later, yesterday or the day before (my memory is like a sieve) I get a reply. Saying that shipping to Canada for a colour card will be more than the cost of the colour card itself. I would have chalked that up to weird company policy rather than really bad service if it hadn't taken three weeks for them to get back to me. For an internet-based business? Really???
The black is what I'm working my Print o' the Wave Stole in. I'm planning on a shawl for mummy using the indigo, and I honestly don't know what I'm doing with the mulberry yet, other than fondling it.
I've made some progress with my knitting. The paisley lace shawl thing is growing. And because you really want to see a picture of unblocked lace... ;)
I'm also spinning with my new Ashford top whorl. I like the speed of the top whorl (all I had before were bottom whorl spindles) but I think I need something even lighter than the small Ashford top whorl. I'll update you if one comes in.
Yes, that orange is truly neon. It's some coopworth that I dyed with kool-aid. It was brighter than I expected, so I dyed up some pink and I think I'll ply them together. Hopefully this will result in a subtler heathered lace to cobweb weight.
I'm going to lunch with daddy's daddy and dinner with mummy's daddy today. Because daddy is miles away. Today is one of those days that I miss my mummy and daddy and the baby sis. My kiddo is coming soon though. July the 2nd. And she might be coming sans teeth. She's informed me that three of her teeth are wobbly. Her first loose teeth. How did she grow up so fast?
Don't say I didn't warn you! There is no knitting content here. If you expected to read about knitting, you will be disappointed. But there was the disclaimer up there! That isn't to say that there is no fibre content....
Buoyed by my success with koolaid dying the first time, the next day I decided I needed to dye some more. So I did. I dyed some orange/coral stuff thinking that it would ply well with the green/blue that I dyed before. So I dyed it and put it together in a braid.
Pretty, no? In order to keep myself from touching too hot roving, I did some more spinning and plying.
I plied up the corriedale from two posts back and spun up some sprinkle dyed sliver I bought from the LYS. I bought a couple of different colourways and plyed them together. I'm fairly happy with the result. The corriedale is on the left and the mystery wool is on the right.
Finally, I spun up my koolaid dyed perendale sliver. Spinning it up really muted it. And I now know that when Eric says, "Sure, it looks fine," that really means, "Okay, I'm going to humour you now..." Because as soon as he saw the green spun up, he commented, "Oh wow! That looks so much better!" Thanks hun...
I'm not going to ply them though. They both softened up so much in colour that I think the resulting yarn looks washed out. So a singles they will stay. Although I am a bit worried that the knitting will bias when I get to that. I over-twisted it a bit in anticipation of plying. We'll see...
For the first time! I dyed wool! Some natural coloured Perendale roving I had lying around? I dyed it! See?
It's dyed with Koolaid. Ice blue and lime something or other. The apartment smells like candy. I was so excited that when I went to work, I went to Safeway on my break. Luckily, they have Koolaid on sale right now. 5 packets for a dollar. I bought 15 packets. The cashier looked at them and asked me if they were any good. I told her that I didn't know but I wasn't planning on eating them. I was planning to dye wool with them. She gave me a look but was gracious and didn't ask. ;)
I placed an order for four more pounds of wool. I can't wait til it gets here!
Guess who finally sucked it up and did it? Yes, the Shapely Tank with the flippity flip has been frogged. The flippity flip was not nice. In fact it drove me mental. But now I have 7 intact balls of Filates Kim that I can knit with again and this yarn looks good. Man oh man does it hold up to frogging well.
(And guess who FINALLY figured out what the macro function on the camera is for? Oh shush. I can hear the chorus of duhhs from here.)
I spent the rest of my fiber-related day knitting a little more on the shawl and spinning. The shawl looks the same, maybe a little bigger.
This is the Corriedale top that I bought from Sun Bench Fibres. It's the red top by Ashland Bay Trading Co. And it is ridiculously easy to spin. Honestly, all I have to do is split it into strips, adjust the tension on the wheel to pull in a bit, and I just sit there and let the fibre go in. (Okay so I might have to do a little bit of fibre manipulation, but it really is ridiculously easy to spin.)
Yesterday evening we went out for a bit of a drive. We went to Westham Island in Ladner. We were right outside the doors to the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary but it was closed (and now that I look at the pictures, I really want to go back). So while the car nerds explored the island to take pictures, I knit a bit and I walked. I found some sheep [insert tacky joke about wool and homing instincts]. And the owners of the sheep had some honey for sale.
On the right is the alfalfa honey and on the left is the blueberry/raspberry. While the blueberry/raspberry sounded delish, I found that I preferred the alfalfa. There's something about it that's a little bit more rustic. The blueberry/raspberry does taste like it's perfect for tea though. Yum.
Speaking of which...
In order to get my mind off of that which needs to be frogged a.k.a. the Shapely Tank that likes to flippity flip flip (shown sitting looking innocently above, though undoubtedly plotting it's next rebellion), I've started something new.
It's the Paisley Lace Shawl from the Spring 2005 Interweave Knits. The circular beginning is looking like I fudged it and that's probably because I did. Eric will tell you that while I'm a Type A knitter, I am not necessarily a Type A overall. I couldn't find my crochet hooks so I did it with my knitting needles. Necessity is the mother of invention after all. I've already got the pattern repeat memorised so this is perfect bus knitting.
I must have eaten a million baby carrots this morning and I'm still hungry.
*goes off in search of food*
There are pictures of me... on the Internet... at a car event. There isn't even a picture of Eric at said car event. Who do you think dragged me there?
I'm knitting in the pictures though. I'm representing. Knitting while walking. Holla!
(Somethings obviously getting to me, what with the language I'm using. I have been knitting. And on the same stuff. The shawl looks the same but longer. So no piccies for you! Stefaneer, I think I might frog the tank, despite your advice. You're pretty anal too. Tell me you wouldn't. Especially knowing you'd get back 7 intact balls of the yarn you started with. Yep, not a single cut! ;) )
