Saturday spinning update: change the question

Posted on May 18, 2013 by natalie

I had a Calculus professor whose problem-solving method inspired my spinning this week. When something he was demonstrating on the board got a little out of hand, he’d change the question to make the answer simpler.

This week I spun a little bit more on the Jacob I had started, but then I decided to change things up. I wasn’t enjoying it enough. Instead I’ve converted this batt (from my friend Jennifer, who made it on her own drum carder with 3 different colours):

into these singles:

I’m planning to wind it up, then turn it into a two ply. I’m guessing it’s somewhere around 70 grams and I’ve got no idea on the yardage. It’s all a big surprise, but I’ve had fun with it.

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Reward for good behaviour

Posted on May 15, 2013 by natalie

Since things are moving along so well on my knitting items with deadlines, I started a little something else. This is the beginning of the left glove of Aino’s Gloves from Folk Knitting in Estonia by Nancy Bush.

It’s a challenging pattern, more than anything else for its gauge of 8.5 sts/inch. I think I’m getting about 8sts/inch, which will probably work for me with my rather large hands. I enjoyed the double stranded double start cast on. I struggled a little, but that cleared up once I found Miriam Felton’s excellent video. I was pretty close, but it’s so much easier for me to learn from a video than to try to decipher the written instructions with pictures.

The knitted-in embroidery technique is called roositud, and I’m knitting up this sample for a class I’ll be doing in November. It’s highly addictive!

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Saturday spinning update: I’ve got nothing

Posted on May 12, 2013 by natalie

I’ve been so preoccupied with knitting this week (see below) that I haven’t done any spinning at all.

Since I’ve hit my target for knitting, I can take a bit of a breather. I’m hoping for some serious spinning, but I know that I’ll have at least some spinning-related activities. I’m accompanying my son’s class on a visit to the Agricultural Museum for the sheep shearing festival. I may even bring along a spindle to join in the fun!

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Tour de France KAL preparation

Posted on May 10, 2013 by natalie

It might seem premature, but I’m gearing up for my fourth annual Tour de France Knit Along (KAL). Each year I come up with a shawl design that has some inspiration taken from France. I put up some lovely prizes (yarn, patterns, and perhaps more), and the KAL is run out of my Ravelry group.

This year’s inspiration came from my trip to Paris last year. We spent a few hours in the Père Lachaise cemetery and I took quite a few pictures of various gates. Here are the two gates I ended up drawing from for my pattern:

I went looking for yarn to match the gates and I found “Don’t Blink” from Indigodragonfly (3 skeins of Octobaa):

If you want to join in the KAL and use this colour too, you’ll need to act quickly and order the yarn soon. The Tour de France starts on June 29th and the yarn will need to be dyed up especially for you. So head on over and have a look at the Indigodragonfly order page. When you email in your order, do mention that it’s for my Tour de France KAL.

The pattern is a top down triangular shawl that can be knit in a variety of sizes by adjusting the repeats of one of the charts (0, 1, or 2 repeats for a small, medium, or large shawl).

To knit this shawl in the medium size, I recommend the following amounts of yarn:
Lace weight: 625 yds (so 1 skein of anything except the MCN Lace, because I want you to have enough yarn)
Fingering weight: 750 yds (so 2 skeins of any of the bases that strike your fancy)
DK/Sport weight: 800-850 yds (I *just* had enough with 3 skeins of Octobaa, which is 270 yds a skein)

If you’re not sure that “Don’t Blink” is the right colour for you, look at the special colourway to help with flood relief in Minden. And have a look at the other colours available. I’m knitting a lace version of this shawl with Merino Single Lace in “Tardis”, which is a gorgeous deep blue. I was also heavily tempted to buy “Unemployed in Greenland”, as it was also a close match for some of the gates. Well, that, plus I love The Princess Bride.

Look for more information on the KAL here in the next month or so. Hope to see you during the Tour!

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Quiet walks in the woods

Posted on May 8, 2013 by natalie

One of the things I’d been anticipating about spring was walking in my local woods. It’s too bad that spring took so long to get around to giving us nice weather this year! Last week I finally got out in the woods to look at what was growing. Things were just beginning. Here’s some Carolina Spring Beauty:

It was an almost rainy day, and little drops of rain were occasionally dropping onto last year’s leaves. I heard the squawk of a hawk circling overhead, a woodpecker at work, and the chickadees chattering to each other. The trout lilies were out in abundance:

There were little patches of bloodroot with the starry flowers all turned in the same direction:

My favourite part was spotting this little group of ferns-to-be in a temporary stream:

This week I can already see a lot of changes. The trout lilies are over. The bloodroot flowers are gone and the leaves are taking over:

There are violets:

And a few trilliums:

A lovely walk in the morning is a refreshing start to the day. I can feel my mind relaxing and I am more open to new ideas. What do you do to recharge?

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Finally about the Frolic

Posted on May 5, 2013 by natalie

I fully intended to write this post last week. I had the best of intentions. The week started with a 5 hour long meeting for Ron & I to choose everything for the new house. Once that was over I seem to have lost my way for the rest of the week. I know things happened and that I was busy, but I’m not sure what was accomplished.

Back at the end of April I went to Toronto with Debbie of Sheeps Ahoy to help her out in her booth at the Frolic.

This worked out fantastically, because I got to meet up with Sarah, who used to live in Ottawa and is greatly missed by our sit & knit group:

An even more rare meeting was seeing my friend Jennifer. We hadn’t met up since her wedding almost 10 years ago. Her sister’s wedding brought her back to Canada from Dubai. We’ve known each other since grade 7 & now we both knit & spin. Life is good!

The booth was busy & many folks were tempted by the kits that Debbie had made up for almost all of the patterns in Kate Davies’ book Colours of Shetland. I already have the book, of course, and I’m thinking that I might need the yarn to knit up the Scatness Tam (in my spare time).

What I did come home from the Frolic with was quite reasonable, in my opinion.

My haul: a one of a kind batt from my friend Jennifer, who has a drum carder, a lovely skein of Hedgehog Fibres yarn (found at Georgetown Yarn) and 3 skeins of Indigodragonfly Octobaa in Don’t Blink.

That should keep me busy for a little while.

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Saturday spinning update: Nate

Posted on May 4, 2013 by natalie

A message from a friend prompted me to go looking in my stash for bags from her very own sheep. I’ve got 3 different kinds, but I decided to start with wool from Nate, a Jacob sheep.

It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to spin this stuff. There is quite a lot of vegetable matter, so that dictated my decision. By spinning fairly skinny singles most of the unwanted stuff drops out without me picking it out, so faster production is winning.

I have no idea how the different colours from Nate will all work out in the end, but it’s fun to spin wool from a friend’s sheep. It was even better spinning it at another friend’s house outside on the deck. Here’s the pond before it’s all properly cleaned out and the less hardy plants put back in:

Can you see all those frogs? Some of them were talking to us a bit.

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Saturday spinning update: yarn!

Posted on April 27, 2013 by natalie

It took ages (almost a month) to spin this, but I finally have yarn! I have 2 skeins of Jewelled Seas, both of them 9-ply (chain plied & then chain plied again). The singles were rather skinny, because even though they yarn is 9-ply I have 180 yards in the first skein (110g) and 170 yards in the second skein (111g).

I’m thrilled with the yardage and I’m thinking that this might one day turn into mittens and a hat or cowl for me. I love the colours & with all that effort put into making the yarn, it’s got to stay with me!

My son & I visited the Agriculture Museum again last week. It’s a wonderful time of year to go with all the little babies being born. He noticed right away that some of the sheep were about to become moms, which I thought was pretty perceptive. At the end we saw some poor hugely-pregnant cows lying down with little calf-limbs poking out of them in ways that looked very uncomfortable. I didn’t take pictures of them. Instead, here’s the cutest little baby we saw. It’s an Angora Goat with tiny little horns:

And then we wandered around and amused ourselves.

“I’m on a pig!”

Wait, that doesn’t sound right. You can’t end like that. How about this?

“I’m on a horse!”

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Rippling River

Posted on April 25, 2013 by natalie

I’m thrilled to announce that Rippling River is now up and ready to go. Thank you all for your name suggestions. You helped me get one step closer to publishing.

The last step was getting some pictures. Once again Francine was my model. Despite the forecast of rain, we ventured out to Dick Bell Park yesterday and walked out to the lighthouse. The weather was relatively warm, but the wind was up.

It doesn’t quite look like spring, yet, but I love this shot with the Gatineau hills all blurry in the background.

Out at the lighthouse:

Francine removed her shoes to climb on some rocks for this. She’s dedicated!

Rippling River can be a warm scarf or a summer shawl. You can use 2, 3 or more colours. You can have no stripes, thin stripes, or thick stripes. The background would look also amazing in a yarn with long colour repeats.

You can pick this pattern up for $6 USD on Ravelry or Craftsy.

 

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A pattern in search of a name

Posted on April 22, 2013 by natalie

A while back I showed you that I was busy darning in some ends:

It all started because I had these lovely balls of Jamieson & Smith 2 ply lace weight yarn in natural colours from Sheeps Ahoy.

I sat on them for a few months waiting for inspiration. Early in March, I did this little sketch:

I knew what I wanted. I wasn’t finished with intarsia and I had this idea of doing a simple intarsia with stripes only one stitch wide through a lace pattern. After a little swatching, I grabbed the yarn and turned it into this:

1 skein each of White, Moorit & Black of Jamieson & Smith 2 ply lace yarn

It blocked out beautifully and even though there were a few (hundred) ends to darn in, I was thrilled. I also decided that I had to do a second stripeless version. I made a stole in Louet Euroflax Sport Weight in two colours:

Louet Euroflax Sport Weight: 2 skeins of French Blue, 1 skein of Champagne

I’m holding myself back from knitting yet another version, but I’d love to see this pattern done with a background yarn that has long colour repeats. That way you’d get all the glorious stripes without as much work!

I’m still searching for the right (and hopefully somewhat unique) name for this pattern. Please let me know what this pattern looks like to you! I’m intending to bring it to the Toronto Knitter’s Frolic this coming weekend (at the Sheeps Ahoy booth, of course).

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