I spin, I spun, I will spin

So, I did some spinning yesterday. I worked on the Rambouillet. One of the "things" about Rambouillet is that it has little balls of fiber in it. At least all the I have has been that way and a weaver/spinner/processor took one look at it and identified it because of them.

Anyway, it makes for a more rustic looking fiber (not that all my handspun doesn't look a bit rustic). I wasn't too sure I wanted to continue spinning out the full pound of it, so I quit a 56 gms, washed and blocked it. It really blocked out nicely, so I'm going to knit it up today (I so rarely knit up my own spun yarn...don't know why...) and see how it looks. I do like the look of not perfect yarn (not as drastic as thick and thin designer yarns) but the not so perfect handspun. Update tomorrow. Then I dug out some Mohair that I'd been gifted when my daughter bought a loom years ago. It was a private sale and this woman had more fiber than God. So this is 100% Angora goat of which the fiber is called mohair. (Angora fiber is from bunnies.) I dyed some of it with Kool Aid and Wiltons, so I'm doing a "self striping" thing. Several yards of a color that several more yards of white, then another color or two, then white.... You can see the halo on it already and it's not even washed yet. Have no clue what I'll do with this. I don't ply my yarn and spun singles are not really good for socks...just don't wear very well. But maybe for the leg of a house sock type thing.....
I worked on my F & F Comfort shawl last night while listening to my current upstairs audio book. Along with my upstairs knitting projects, I have my upstairs audio book. I re-listening to the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, Fiery Cross, and A Breath of Snow and Ashes. I'm almost done with Dragonfly in Amber. Now understand, I've read and listened to these books several times. I adore them. And I love the narrator for the unabridged audios-Davina Porter. She has such a wonderful voice. I often fall asleep listening to them.

And there is a promise of two more books. The next one, An Echo in the Bone is do out next year. I learned to knit, so I could knit socks because the male lead in the books, a big red heeded Scot, James Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser, better known as Jamie, knits his own socks as does every Scot, man, woman and child, during that time period--mid 1700s. If you're any kind of a historical romance, time travel, just good reading fun type of person, check out these books. You'll love 'em!

We cleaned up another several pounds of lemons in the back yard yesterday. They are all frost damaged and falling like snowflakes when the wind comes through. I really need to take F up on his offer of his juicer and start juicing and freezing. Picked a couple of really pretty grapefruit and am looking forward to one for breakfast.

Weather is still cold at night. It's 30 degrees outside now and is supposed to get up to the mid 60s I think. Seems like we're having a colder winter, but I've not backed that up with research. It's probably true, though as it counteracts out incredibly hot summers. F keeps promising me the weather is going to start shifting back to the more comfortable average 85-90 summers, but.... I sure haven't seen it since the mid 1980s.

Agenda for today is knitting up that swatch from the Rambouillet and working on the Waterhouse socks. I really need to get those done as far as I'm going to do. Almost done with the heel decreases. Maybe some more spinning....

January 27, 2007

Bunny, Row Marker and more

This is an angora rabbit. I snagged the pic from a post at KnittingHelp.com forum. I don't know where kblue snagged it from. As I said at the forum, one has to wonder what God/dess was thinking when that rabbit was created!

Here is the row counter I made yesterday with jump rings from the local bead store. It's an off-shoot of the idea here. The red one is the end of the count. In this one I have to decrease on the eighth round. So when I get to the red one, I know it's the decrease round. Then I start over with the other end. Each time I knit a round and go down one link on the chain. The numeric row counters that you turn or click after each row just never got turned or clicked. This one does get moved as I can't keep knitting unless I moved it!

My friend F, asked me list all the groups and forums I hang out at. So here it goes, in no particular order: Knitlist, Knitting Novices, Knittinghelp.com, Get Stitchy, Knitter's Review, and Knittyboard. I gain an enormous amount of information here...and although there is some repetition, like the infamous "Can I take my knitting needles on the airplane?" and "My stockinette scarf is curling, how do I fix it?" there is always some new good information to be gleaned!

My knee is worse again. The false improvement yesterday was just that it'd rested all night and felt better. But during the day, it takes a great effort to stand and get moving. After a minute or so, it's much, much better, but those intial half dozen steps....

Okay, just ran across this link at Knittyboard to a post at Knittymagazine... I haven't tried it yet, but...Let me know if you try it and how it works. I'll do the same.

"I did not think of this myself. It's in Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop (thanks to whoever pointed me at that book...). She says it's a traditional Japanese method.

This may seem hard to follow w/o pictures, but just try it, it's totally worth it.

1) Wind one end of the yarn around the tip of the middle finger of your left hand 3 or 4 times.

2) With palm of LH facing you, and yarn behind middle finger, take yarn around the base of the thumb (behind hand), across heel of hand (in front), and around back of hand, coming out at base of index finger.

3) Take yarn to back between index and middle fingers.

4) Cross back of hand, bring yarn to the front around heel of palm, cross the heel of the hand and go around the back of the thumb.

5) Bring yarn across palm, starting from the V between thumb & index finger, ending up at pinky-side heel of hand.

6) Cross the back of the hand, bringing yarn to base of index finger.

Repeat 3-6 until your skein is all wound onto your hand. Tuck away the end you've been working on. Slip your hand out. You are ready to work from the center with the end that was wrapped around your middle finger."