March 22, 2007

Spinning....

F gave me an ounce of alpaca he'd bought on line from Common Threads. I decided to take a quick break from knitting (actually from housework) and spin it up.

It's a little hard to see the blue/brown combo of the roving in the yarn, but it's very pretty. Spun up like a dream! It's really inspired me to get the next step up from hand carding, The Minimalist Carder that F said he'd help me build in the works! It'll be much less expensive than sending it out and/or buying a nice drum carder. Hmmmm, rather than buying the carding cloth, I could take apart my hand carders and use the cloth from them..... Then I can get my alpaca carded and ready to spin!

I got some progress done on the sock...heel's all finished and I'm working on the foot. I'll tell you, hairy, angora type yarn is not fun to frog! Guess I'll just have to quit making mistakes!

We've had a cold spell come through. Lots of wind yesterday, some rain last night the hint of thunderstorms today through Saturday. It was up in the 80s and 90s last week and now down in the high 60s to mid 70s. Quite a bit of a drop! The weather really is "different" this year. Extremes of everything. We watched The Day After Tomorrow over the weekend and one just has to wonder.....

In answer to some of the questions in the comments section from yesterday's post: Trish: I'm not really using a pattern. My daughter likes the shortie socks with her work shoes, so I just checked out a couple patterns for the length of the leg and went on. Michelle: My grandson is 4, 5 in October. Thanks for all the comments on hiding stash from others in the family. Most of the people that answered my question on one of the knitting boards said the same thing. They would admit "sins of omission" but not direct out and out lying. I guess I just take things too literally!

And here's your dose of cute. This is her newest pose. She does the cross the arm thing all the time!

I've noticed there are generally only pics of my youngest grand daughter. The older one is in school or getting ready for school when I'm doing this, so no pics get taken. Maybe this summer it'll be different!

February 5, 2007

Dogs & Shawls

I have been noticing my dog is really shedding alot of her undercoat-which coincidentally is the part of a dog's fur one can spin!! So I grabbed my carders today and used them as doggie brushes. (Yes, I was careful!) She loved it! This is her nasty coat when we started Here's the actual "brushing" On the carders A pile of dog fluff And the happier, lighter, cooler doggie is in the pic at the top of the post. I got a grocery bag full of fluff that I'll hold on to and card with something else--probably wool--and spin eventually.

So, I decided I'd CO the Thinking Woman's Shawl to take with me if I have jury duty tomorrow. The pattern is very easy to memorize and I have some pretty purple wools to use. Edited: Jury duty postponed till the 13th.

I'm so late with my post today because we decided once we got the grand daughter off to school, we'd run down and visit the Gem and Mineral Show in town. My daughter is a beader as well as a knitter and crocheter. She needed some "parts" and I thought I'd pick up some rings for stitch markers. Not gonna make any fancy dangly things. Have some of those. They are nice, but often just get in the way of the knitting! So, I'll stick to just the plain silver rings.