Knit with a nice yarn....

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Pattern: Neck Warmer
Modifications: I lengthened the number of sts in the central area to make it into a shawlette
I'm using four different yarns, alternating on each point. Each one is a relatively quick knit, but how man of them I'm going to have to do.... Over twenty. It feels really nice to knit with mohair....I think I've found out the source of my winter of knitting discontent. I really want to knit things I want to knit and not things I'm "supposed" to knit for gifts. IOW, I haven't got Christmas Spirit. Which I generally have by now. Wonder if it's the 80-90 degree weather that's delaying my Ho Ho Ho spirit?
3rd Degree by James Patterson

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a good book. I'm glad that the last one was either a fluke of bad writing or the narrator just didn't know how to read.

Lindsey is on the trail of another killer....this one has been holding on to his anger for years and has decided that killing lots of people to get to his one victim is an okay thing. And then it gets really personal to Lindsey and the rest of the Women's Murder Club.

View all my reviews.


Some really cute animal pictures at Cuteoverload.com.

Mohair and MP3s

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Fiber work was a bit limited yesterday. I did some spinning in the morning...enough to wind off another skein of mohair. I now have a total of about 230 grams of it. And still quite a bit of it to spin. So, I might have enough for a shawl, depending on pattern and needle size.

After I dragged Youngest Son out of bed, we went looking again for finger puppets to make caps for my DPNS while they are in the midst of making a sock. Still no luck. But I did buy some Sculpey Eraser Clay. It's very similar to polymer clay like Sculpey or Fimo. But it's supposed to be good for erasers. I managed to create some passable tubes with a hole in the end for the elastic to fit into. Now I need to pick up the elastic for them. I'm thinking of getting the stretchy beading stuff.... Will let you know.

And I found these DP WIP tubes, which seem like a good idea, too, and are less expensive (cuz you get two sets for the price of one, and the telescope to fit the size of the needles) than the PVC pipe ones on etsy. So I was trying to think of a plastic tube that would be easier to cut than PVC pipe (which F says is a pain in the patoot to cut lengthwise) and remembered a hint from Heloise years ago to keep crochet hooks in the tubular toothbrush holders. So, I'm off to Target to find a toothbrush holder.

Speaking of Target, I took Youngest Son there so he could buy some Microsoft points to buy songs for Rock Band (video game) and decided to use my gift card to get a MP3 player that would be big enough to hold at least one whole book. I got one that will hold a couple books!

It is the Zen Stone Plus MP3 player. It's tiny, about 1.25 x 2 inches, 2 GB, and has a tiny display to see what track I'm on while listening. It's also an FM radio, has a stop watch, calender display, clock, apparently a microphone and will record. I haven't played with all the features yet. Youngest Son says that's better than the I-Pod shuffle which is $20 and 1GB bigger, but this one is adequate for my needs.

I'm thinking if I could attach the right jewelry findings, I could make this into a lapel pin to wear. I don't like things hanging on my neck (although this is pretty light so it might work that way, too).

Of course the ear buds were way too big, so I have to back and get some kind of earphone, smaller buds or something. All I have are the big nerdy earphones that are "so yesterday."

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Knit Picks watch out! Elann has just released their inexpensive sock yarn. $2.30 x 2 + $3 (s&h)=$7.60 for a pair of socks. Knit Picks is $2.99 x 2 + $2.99 (s&h) = $8.97 for a pair of socks. Yeah, it's not much of a savings, but savings is savings. (Heck, if you were to go to the store and could save $1.37 on a pair of socks, it would be a great savings!) If you're able to order $50 at a time from Knit Picks, shipping is free and that's a much better deal.

Scroll down and look at the cute flip flop stitch markers on Robyn's blog.

Masks and Chows

Eldest Granddaughter brought home her Friday folder of weekly accomplishments from school. They made masks for Mardi Gras this week. I'm really happy about how well she is adjusting to the new school and seems to feel good about it all, and the class feel good about her.

I got over six inches done on the scarf made from my dog's fluff. As I was working on it I kept wondering where the bits of color came from and then remembered I'd spun it with some wool I'd gotten in a swap. Hence the bits of orange and olive. I sure hope dog fluff blocks well, cuz this will have to be blocked. Had to use several pins to stretch it out enough to see the stitch pattern. Think the Rabbit Tracks can pass for Dog Tracks?


Hmmm I'm wondering about using something like glittergirl used in between stretches of Bunny Tracks on the scarf... What do you think?

I did a bit of spinning yesterday, giving myself a treat and working on more mohair. Knitting today has to be sock spiced up with scarf. Yet what I really want to do is sit down and read my Nora Roberts book, Seventh Son. She is a good story teller! I don't know if my book holder will hold a paperback well. Seems to me I remember it didn't work so well. It's too light weight to hold it's own with a strongly bound paperback.... And too wide to hold it. Hmmmmmm....

Necessity is the mother of invention:This is the little wire rack my printer sits on. The book fits nicely in the space and is At just the right distance for me to read while knitting. Turning pages will be a pain, but, hey....if everything was perfect what would have to bitch about???

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If you've not seen Dot's blog, check it out. She's a fabric artist and always has something inspiring to share. It is the home of the becoming very famous, Dotee Dolls.

Farm-Witch has some endearing photos of a just born lamb.

Berocco has a new-to-me sock called Comfort Sock. It's 50% nylon and 50% acrylic. Anyone have any idea why the nylon is there? Don't need it for strength and durability like it's needed for wool sock yarns.... For those that saw, "EEEwh, acrylic socks!!" I have been wearing the socks I made from LionBrand MicroSpun and enjoy them. With that said, I haven't worn them at all when my feet would get overly warm and perspire.

The yarn on the wheel goes round and round....

This is the mohair I've been spinning for the last couple of days. I decided to go ahead and wind it off, wash, and block yesterday. It's really pretty, has wonderful halo... It could make nice legs for socks...or a very pretty scarf. I need to finish spinning up the rest of it to see how much I have all together....

And I spun more of the Rambouillet. Probably half a bobbin. That was one ball of roving. I have five more balls to spin, so feasibly I could have these finished by this time next week, but.... I'm not going to set a deadline yet.

I had the whole evening to myself and decided I was going to finish the second Waterloose sock which was just at the end of the heel decreases. Well.... I did a stitch count and it was off by 8 sts. I thought I'd decreased too far. That wasn't it, I don't think. I am really not sure what it is, (except there is aYO at the end of the instep needle and I think...... ) but I ended up frogging it back to picking up the sts along the heel flap. OH well.... It's a good thing they only have to be to the finishing point next month before I go to TN.

So, I got about three rounds done on the heel decreases, but I'm back on track, the count is correct and it's much better I discovered it then instead of at the toe!

My youngest grand daughter really, really hates to wear clothes. She spends most of her days in just a diaper. It's still cold here, especially the floors and she's barefoot. The house temperature varies between 64 and 68 degrees. There is no insulation or draft protection around the windows in old houses out here in the desert. IOW, the heat comes out of the heater and goes out the cracks around the windows. So we can't afford to run the heater to contribute to global warming outside the house. :::sigh::: Now, if one wears a layer or two of clothing, wool socks, and nice fulled slippers, it's livable in the house.

Anyway, she hates to wear clothes. Sometimes, she'll wear knit jammies. So momma bought her a new pair yesterday. So far so good.

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....