Knittinggarden

I've been working on spinning a braid of Juliespins Rambouillet for the last week or so and am really enjoying it.  In fact, I thought it was merino since it's so soft and lovely and drafts so beautifully.  I've never spun "Rambo" before but now will probably do so again.  The colorway is Stormy and the date on the tag is 6/09, so I've had it for awhile. As I was spinning along, I realized that all the projects I'm currently working on are being knit from my handspun.  I guess I've come a long way from a time when I decided I'd never be a spinner...how things change!  I thought it might be fun to document these three projects.  (Also, I'm still in the desert, where it's been about 114 degrees F the last couple of days, so I can't think of anything better to do than sit inside and knit, photograph knitting, and write about it.  When I do actually venture out to the pool and sit in the sun (or more likely, shade) I work on the s...

I am back in the desert, where it's unseasonably warm this year.  Last year I stayed home during May and it was cold and rainy in Seattle and very nice here.  So this year I decided to reverse that.  Of course it's sunny and lovely in Seattle and in the 100s here this time.  It's supposed to be down to 91 in a few days and I'm actually looking forward to that as a nice cool day! I arrived here on May 5th and got right back into my routine of going to the gym and sitting by the pool.  Yes, it's a tough life but someone's got to do it!  I finished my Professoressa Cardigan right before I came down and luckily didn't run out of yarn, so avoided cannibalizing my MIL's scarf that I retrieved from her just in case.  She was so nice about giving it back that I think I'll knit her a nice lacy scarf out of some Wollmeise as a reward.  I am happy with the way the sweater came out, but I won't be wearing it any time soon since it's fairly heavy even t...

Here we are, halfway through April and I've been neglecting my blog.  I got back to Seattle at the end of March and was busy with family for about a week.  The kids and DH came home for Passover and we had a lovely gathering.  Everyone left on Easter Sunday and it seems as if I've been trying to catch up ever since. On the crafting front, I spun a fun project on my new spinning wheel.  I guess I never reported on the Madrona Fiber Arts festival here, but I went to it in the middle of February and had a great time as usual.  I bought a little fiber and some yarn as a gift, but my big purchase was this:   I had been pretty sure that I wanted one of these little gems and when I went and saw them in person, I was sure.  It's a HansenCrafts miniSpinner and they're made right here in Washington.  I met Kevin Hansen, the developer and craftsman, and he told me just why I needed one of these babies.  I agreed with him and here we are.  ...

My March in the desert is going well; beautiful weather and lots of knitting time.  I still haven't gotten over the feeling that I have to be outside in the sunshine all the time.  Unlike at home in Seattle, there will probably be more sunshine tomorrow if I miss a bit of it today!  In fact, here my goal is to avoid exposing my pale skin to too much sun.  Sunscreen, sunscreen! My knitting is coming along nicely.  I finished the shawl that I wanted to wear to the wedding and it worked out very nicely.  It came out big but it wraps around nicely and it's very pretty.  The color is hard to capture (even though I took the photography class and learned a lot, one of the things I learned is that my camera won't do all the things that I might want it to. New camera?  Someday...)  Anyway, the deep purple of this shawl is gorgeous and I wish i could get a true representation of it. I also made another Herbivore shawl/scarf out of Handmaiden C...

I've been working on this blanket since the middle of September.  Now, that's not nearly as long as it took me to finish the Neverending Blanket , and at the end of that tale, I mentioned that I needed to learn to crochet.  I figured that crochet was supposed to be faster than knitting, so that was the way to go. afghans for Afghans  announced a new campaign and they needed wool clothing and blankets for children.  Aha, I thought!  I recently learned to crochet, I have bucketloads of worsted weight wool, and I'll make a blanket.  No, I'll make two! Needless to say, crochet (for me) was indeed faster, but not as much as I thought it would be.  I started a log cabin crocheted blanket at home and a striped single crochet blanket in the desert.  I learned that they required a lot more yarn than I was expecting and indeed took longer than I thought.  Maybe I'm just slow at crochet or maybe I was being unrealistic in my expectations (me?) ...

I was shown this disturbing video by my daughter.  It was sent to her by the (responsible) house and dog-sitter we had staying at our home during my absence.  I decided maybe I was paying her too much. Thank heavens Buddy was okay when I got home to check on him.  It was smart of him to duck and cover at the last minute, wasn't it? See?  He's fine! Disclaimer:  No animals were actually hurt during the filming of this video.

There's a group on Ravelry  called Sock Knitters Anonymous and they have challenges each month.  Every so often they have a mystery sock and I've knitted them several times.  You get one clue a week, usually three or four total, and at the end of the time, you have socks.  I like to knit the mystery socks two at a time so there's more chance they'll be finished. The ones for January were designed by Carrie Sullivan (irishgirlieknits) and had a flower pattern. The first clue was the cuff: The second clue was the leg: The third clue went over the heel and down the foot: The fourth clue finished them: This is the first time I've made socks that had a lace pattern down the heel flap, so it was interesting. I needed some semi-solid sock yarn, so I found a pretty ball in my stash  that was dyed and given to me a few years ago by my kind twin, Cathy.  Thanks again!  The yarn, which is Knitpicks Gloss, has a lot of subtle variat...

The Princess turns 21 today.  She lives in Vegas, so I'm sure it wasn't hard to find something to do to celebrate!  The first legal trip into the casino happened after midnight last night.   I must sound like a broken record, but I can't believe my baby is all grown up. I met this tiny girl with all the black hair on a Monday morning in late January, 1991.  She grew into a beautiful little lady with huge brown eyes and gorgeous dark curls.  She was bright, funny, and opinionated from day one.  Our Mother-Daughter trips mostly involved shopping, but here's an adventure that I'll always remember.  The coming year will bring college graduation and possibly marriage.  We look forward to welcoming Prince Charming into the family and seeing what the next chapter will bring. We wish you health, happiness, and love in the coming days, months, and years.  You are our Princess and we love you immensely. ...

It doesn't take much to impress me, but look at the size of the lemon I picked off one of the trees in our complex today.  It's as big as my hand! The lemons and grapefruits are ripe and delicious, but the oranges are still sour.  I have trouble getting a good orange here; either they're dried out from last year, or not ripe yet.  My quest for the perfect orange from a tree continues... In other news, I finished spinning a pretty skein of yarn.  I had a batt from Butterfly Girl Designs that was merino, bamboo, and firestar that had been languishing in my fiber stash for quite awhile.  I brought some of my stash and a spinning wheel down here to the desert (can't live in a place without a selection of yarn and fiber, ya know) and started spinning this pretty batt the last time I was here.  It was only 3.2 ounces, so I wasn't sure how much yardage I'd get.  I didn't split it before starting, so I decided to just spin the whole thing and see...

but I really wanted to be home in Seattle today to see this We don't get snow every year and if we do, it doesn't usually amount to much.  Without anywhere important to go, I love being warm and dry and looking out as our big fir trees are covered with white. On the other hand, it's not too bad where I am now. News!  I finished the first knitted object of 2012.  DH managed to wear holes through his favorite bed socks, so I searched the stash for some heavy yarn and started another pair.  I just make a standard top down sock with a short cuff.  I found two skeins of Mission Falls 1824 wool, which I think is discontinued.  Each skein is only 85 yards, so I wasn't sure if I'd have enough.  Sure enough, I ran out right where I needed to start the toe, so I found some leftover Wollmeise Twin in the colorway Zenzi.  I held it doubled and made bright toes. Even though there's no snow here, we can still pretend that it's winter.

The great thing about knitting is that you can put something away for a few  weeks years, get it out and finish it, and no one knows the history.  I guess if it was some trendy pattern or fad of the moment it would be different, but in this case it isn't. On January 1, 2008, I cast on a sweater as part of a Knitalong with my then (and now sadly closed) LYS, Village Yarn and Tea.  We ordered a bunch of Peace Fleece yarn into the shop, everyone chose colors, and we started the Everyday Cardigan . I didn't get very far on my sweater.  At that time I was having trouble with my purling.  It was too loose so the stockinette fabric didn't look smooth, it had obvious lines of looser knitting in it.  I ripped it out and tried again using some type of combination knitting, but it still looked funny.  So into the plastic bag went my red yarn and the first page of the pattern. Lately I've been obsessed with sweater knitting, so I determined to get that yarn...

Hannah has been posting galleries of her patterns lately and I noticed the one for the Rocky Coast Cardigan yesterday.  She takes the Ravelry photos of the completed patterns and puts them on her blog .  If you scroll down towards the bottom, there I am in my red sweater!  Kind of fun!

I've finished a few things, started a few things, and still have a few things underway.  Here's the knitting that I've finished since the last post.  Maybe I'll get organized and post the spinning that I've done tomorrow. I last reported on the hat and booties made for my banker friend's new baby.  They were finished in time to give to him when he was just a couple of weeks old and I was happy to receive a photo of the baby wearing his new hat.  As the youngest of four boys (!) I thought it would be nice if he had a couple of items made just for him. I made a quick hat for a neighbor in the desert who was going home to the wilds of northern Canada for Christmas.  He saw me knitting one day and asked if I was making him a hat, so I did.  Sorry for the fuzzy photo; it wasn't stored on this computer and it fuzzed up when I imported it from Flickr or Ravelry.  You get the idea. I made some socks for my sister out of Madelinetosh Sock in t...