The Garden!

Is just about ready for planting.

And lo, there was much rejoicing and singing of songs.

May 2012 Lost & Found

This is a recurring theme…here’s what it’s all about…

Back in December I casually mentioned that I had found my motivation again. This means I’ve been (mostly) eating a lot healthier (yay!) and actually trying to get more movement into my days (another yay!). I have a goal, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. Because I’ve found that when I talk “out loud” about my goals, I start ignoring them. But I do have a goal, and since I have a goal of losing some extra squishy-ness, both in terms of pounds on my body and miles of yarn/pounds of fiber, it seemed like a monthly check-in might be in order.

Bonus! Just to keep it from being dull dull dull, and also in the interest of full disclosure, I’m also going to tell you what I gained, particularly in terms of yarn and fiber. But that’s going to go back an extra month, because I don’t want to spoil anyone’s surprises in the various clubs that I belong to.

Weight Lost/Found

Okay folks, it’s time to get serious again. And I’m having a hard time with the getting serious. Because my back is still messed up, and that messing everything up.

Good news is, I went to the doctor. To find out why it’s still messed up. I had an exciting MRI adventure, during which I frightened the technician by telling her that the MRI sounded like music to me.

And the results are in! Drum roll please?

No no no…not like that. Give me a slightly limping, slightly macabre drum bit.

Yeah, like that.

I have a herniated disc. Between my last lumbar vertebrae and my sacrum. This is a common thing. But usually, after one or two months, with pretty much no invasive treatment at all, they go back to normal. Mine didn’t. It went bad in February, stayed very very bad that entire month, landed me in the ER crying my brains out (and I endured 14 hours of labor with no painkillers, so don’t tell me I’m a wuss), and I’ve been super religious about stretching and resting and taking the joint-magic formula and…

It’s still all squished.

So. Fine. This explains why I no longer have a reflex in my Achilles tendon. This explains why my heel is numb and why I feel sometimes like there are rocks in my shoe (there aren’t). My sciatic nerve is still getting put upon, and it’s making up all kinds of stories. One of those stories is “I can’t go.” Seriously. I’ll try to pick up the pace crossing the street or whatever, and my right leg stays put, my toes looking up at me like, “What, you want us to come too?”

Anyway. This is all a very long-winded way of explaining that a person who used to run 5 miles for a short run is now walking a mile, then resting. Walking a mile, then resting. Walking a mile, then resting.

Unfortunately, my appetite got back to normal. So yeah. Unbalanced. Again.

But I’m working on it. I’ve got a plan. I like plans! And this one is beautiful for its simplicity.

I’ll tell you about it once I see if it starts working.

It’s nothing serious. Just some mental tricks I’m playing on myself.

And anyway…all this chatter is probably just to avoid facing up to the dire dire facts of the stash gains this month. But I can’t avoid that forever. So here we go.

Fiber Lost/Found

Erm…before I tell you how much fiber landed in the stash, despite all my spinning, this month, first let me say that I thought it was worse. Much worse. But then I re-calculated and realized I had screwed up somewhere. But still…

I added 42.9 ounces of fiber to my stash in May. That’s after all the spinning. And there was a lot of spinning. Just not enough to keep up with my grabby grabby hands.

Yarn Lost/Found

Oh dear. Yes, there was so much falling down in May. Really, a lot.

I added 2,125 yards of commercial yarn to the stash. How can that be? I don’t honestly even know. Let me look again.

Oh, now I see. Well, okay then. A good portion of it was for that Rustic Silk scarf I’m making right now. And the other bit is in preparation for July, when I’ll be naming the breed for the Woolalong over in the Knitter’s Book of Wool group on Ravelry. No, I’m not telling you what it is. You’ll get to find out when everyone else does, on July 1.

But it is really really cool.

There’s also another 1,846 yards of handspun in the stash now. Wow, I spin a lot, don’t I?

Yarn & Fiber Pr0n!

Now for the fun. Let’s go back to April (to avoid being all spoilery). Here’s what came to live with me that month! Starting, as usualy, with the yarny bits.

First up is Spunky Weaving Club for April. This is going to become a scarf. I think it’ll be the next project on the loom, so I might even be getting started this weekend!

And here is the Plucky Classics shipment for April. The color is called Starlings, and it’s lovely and neutral and did I say lovely? I keep thinking about canceling my Classics subscription, but I just love the colors SO much.

This was my last shipment for the Indigodragonfly Club, which was all accessory patterns with yarn to go. The pattern for this is a teddybear-voodoo doll. The colorway…wait, swallow your drinks…is Ruxpinosferatu. Hahahaha.

And finally, yes, more Plucky yarn. I just happened to be online for an update, and snagged a skein of the Hippie Chick club. The color is Paisley and it’s BRIGHT!!!!! Seriously bright. And since I don’t always do bright, this makes me very happy indeed.

Now for the fiber, yes? How about Club first?

This is SCF Batt Club for April. It’s 70-30 Merino-baby camel, and I’ve just finished it up, so you’ll get to see it again real soon.

And this one you just saw. SCF Fibre Club for April. Superwash Cheviot in Shipwreck.

Here’s April Spunky Club. 8 ounces of Gotland in Robin Redbreast. Also just finished up.

Did I mention that I keep falling for the Spunky Eclectic Colorway of the Month? I did it again in April. This is 8 ounces of BFL-Silk in the color More Coffee. It is destined to be spun light light light for a shawl.

I can’t ever escape with just one. This is 2 ounces of Cashmere-Silk in the color Lobster, also from Spunky E.

At some point I also snagged this 8 ounces of BFL in Warm by the Fire. A very pretty progression dye.

In March, this was the SCF Fibre Club colorway that I didn’t get. Only…I really really liked it. So when extras became available, I snagged it. It’s 8 ounces of Bond in Delicate. Mmmm. At the same time, I also grabbed one extra dose of that month’s Batt Club, because I have a plan! (And I like plans…)

Finally, there was the Romney Fleece:

Which we’ll get to soon, I promise.

Well, there you have it. Another hefty dose of stash, and more fun and games to be had with fiber and yarn!

Happy Fiber-Fondling, People!

Tags: Baby Camel

Spun and Shipwrecked

Once again proving that Southern Cross Fibre wools are absolutely irresistible…I bring you…

Shipwreck on Superwash Cheviot!

It began as the April 2012 SCF Fibre Club shipment…8 ounces’ worth of lovely lovely fibery goodness. (Oh look! My shoe! How did I not notice that before?)

Being on this sock jag, I decided to spin mine as a fractal 3-ply (although seeing the most recently posted finished skein kind of makes me wish I had n-plied…but there you go…we have to live with our decisions…)

Spin…spin…spin…

Ply…ply…ply…

I ended up with a little less yardage than I expected at about 530, but it’s still looking like a sportweight, so A-OK for socks.

Wonderful, wonderful spin. So much pleasure to be found in the colors and the fiber. Loved every second of it.

And I’ve moved on. And on again.

This fiber:

Has already been spun up and is just waiting for me to wind it up into skeins and finish.

And this fiber:

Is one bobbin down (of two, plus plying). It’s amazing amazing amazing, but I’ll tell you more about it later. All I’ll say now is that I’ve got a constant battle going on between that half of me that says “Spin now! Spin now!” and the half of me that says, ”Slow down and savor it, you lunatic!” 

Happy Spinning, Friends!

Bright Stripe Scarf

This was not the most exciting project in the world, but as it turns out, it…er…turned out quite nicely.

For my warp, I used some KnitPicks Palette in Asphalt Heather that was hanging around making trouble in the stash. I randomly added a few threads of the leftover merlot color from my February Spunky Weaving Kit. And at the end, I made a bright stripe of leftovers from my Darjeeling socks. (That would be Alchemy Juniper in Inferno.)

I’m not sure what made me throw the bright stripe in there, and I can tell you that I worried about it the whole time I was weaving this. Was it too bright? Was this yarn too different from the others in the warp? Would it make the whole thing look…just…wrong?

My weft yarn here was some handspun Cormo-Alpaca-Silk in a sort of mottled fuschia. Despite the fact that it’s Cormo…and alpaca…and silk…it’s not terribly soft or comfortable yarn. In fact, it’s downright itchy. And if you know me, you know that I can endure a lot of itch in my woollens. This one pushes the limits for me. My best guess is that there were a lot of guard hairs from the alpaca in the mix.

In the end, once it was finished and had its spa and steam treatment, it softened up a bit. But not so much that I’d want it against my bare neck.

But I do love the way that stripe works out when it’s all wrapped up around me. And I love the tweediness of that handspun. Maybe it’s meant for the depths of winter when you need an extra wrap around the outside of your clothes. Because between the wool, the silk and the alpaca, it’s got to be warm.

Not that I even want to think the word “warm” here right now. On Saturday, we hit 97 degrees, which has got to be some kind of record. And today, we’re actually under a “Fire Weather Warning”…which I’ve never even heard of before. I would assume it’s a more common thing in the Southwest or in California, but it bodes ill for the Midwest that it’s already this dry at the end of May…

I don’t even want to think about July and August right now.

So maybe I’ll think of January, after all, and how nice it will feel to be cold enough to want to wrap myself in wool, silk and alpaca.

Happy Weaving, Friends!

Red Mandy Is a Fudge-Eating Gold-Digger

Ha Ha.

Made you look.

This is now a thing that is happening here.

Warp is Spunky Eclectic Rustic Silk in Fudge, Gold Digger and Red Mandy. Weft is all (at this point) Red Mandy.

This one pleases me. It pleases me very much.

Discoveries…

A bit of a randomness post, as I took the pictures of All The Things, but promptly forgot to load any of them onto the computer. (This will make for a very impressive next week, I am sure…)

1. Needles

While I prefer wooden needles for almost everything, I am finally beginning to realize that due to the rather tight gauge at which I knit socks, wooden needles really aren’t the thing. For socks, at any rate.

Why? I break them. On one sock alone (and you know how many socks there are right now), I have broken two wooden needles in the past week.

Therefore, all the socks are now on metal needles. I prefer the softness and warmth of wood. I like the flexibility wooden needles have vs. the rigidity of metal. And who knows? There may be an ideal needle material that falls somewhere in the middle. That is both non-breakable and bendy-warm-softish. But until I discover that miraculous needle material that can do no wrong, socks go on metal needles.

2. Ginormous Project of Gigantitude

It’s done. Or, well, it’s almost done. All I have left for this giant project for work is my editor’s letter, and let’s face it–at this point I should be able to crank out 500 words in my sleep. And I might have to. Because my waking brain is completely rebelling against any more work-related writing at the moment.

But the discoveries element of the Ginormous Project of Gigantitude is this: Every year I have this project. This 50-plus question survey and all the responses (from 2,000+ people) to analyze amd then collect into a 50,000-some-word magazine. This is my sixth year putting the thing together. So you’d think I’d have learned by now.

But I never learn.

By the end of the day yesterday, as I put the finishing touches on the last section of the report, simultaneously swearing at my laptop keyboard’s sudden decision that capital T’s are not necessary (do you know how many sentences start with the word “The” or “This”?), I was a blithering idiot. At some point on Tuesday, I gave up on trying to subsist like a normal person and instead started eating only popcorn and chocolate, with occasional quick, unidentifiable-in-the-aftermath meals thrown in. Also coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

And all of that, combined with all of the incessant typing, and the endless staring at the screen, using of the calculator and sitting in the chair…well, it has me feeling like I’ve got ants in my pants who are coated in honey and thus cannot move at all but just sit there in my pants wishing that they could move because they’re ants and ants do things but these ants have been eating crappy food and can only sit around feeling sticky and bloated and…

You get the picture.

I have not learned. But I am aware of my not-learning. And awareness is the beginning of the slow scrape back to normalcy.

3. The Whole Handspun vs. Commercial Thing

Darn it all. I always thought that I was a freak of nature, because almost everyone I know who takes up spinning suddenly reaches a point where they see the light and decide that handspun is the only way to go. They then develop (I assume) the ability to resist beautiful commercial yarns.

I’ve never seen that light. Hence, my equally ridiculous yarn and fiber stashes.

But I can kind of see that maybe I’m standing sort of at the edge of the light, because let me tell you…what was it? Two weeks ago that I cast on the two handspun socks?

(Remember?)

Well, both of these are already at the heel turn. In fact, the top one is past the heel turn and I’ve almost finished the gusset already. And it’s not even due to yarn thickness. I mean, they are a bit thicker than a commercial fingering weight, but I’m knitting on the same size needles I’d use for commercial, and I also made the legs 2 inches longer than I usually would, so that’s no explanation.

The only explanation is that I too am completely enamored when I knit with handspun.

Now if only that feeling would coalesce into an ability to resist commercial yarns, we’d be all set. Or, well, sort of set, as I don’t see myself learning to resist wool for spinning at any point in the near future.

4. Supah-Fine

Some people can spin very fine indeed. Do you know what that is?

Do you?!

It’s 2,800 yards of 4-ply light fingering weight.

Holy carp! The lady can spin some fine fine supah-fine yarn.

5. I Am Such a Nerd

Because this is really, really quite funny to me.

Next week I promise I’ll have more to show! I hope you have a fun-filled holiday weekend, my fiber-loving friends!

Standby…

There has been much knitting. Much. Knitting!

However, I’ve been head down with work this week.

As it turns out, when I’m already struggling to write 50,000 words on a topic, I don’t have a lot of juice left over for blogging.

But I promise, there is excitement to come.

There is a sleeve!

There are two socks at the heel turn!

There are sexeh sexeh bobbinses!

Standby…