On Mondays I sit down and figure out what I’d like to (or need to) work on in the coming week. I thought it’d be neat to take a photo of the plan, which is also a record of where each project is at.
Continue readingMy week, in a nutshell
spinning
It’s never just a straight line
Handspun inspiration
The next round of samples is almost done, and I’m ready for a break. Between indie releases and commissions, I’ve been going pretty much non-stop since July, so I’ve promised myself at least two weeks away from sample knitting when these are out the door.
Once these are off, I’ll need to spend a day or so digging the apartment out from under the mess that accumulates during a big work bender. After that, though, ohhhhh, yes. I’ve got more plans than could reasonably be accomplished: set up my workspace, finally; finish himself’s sweater, which has been a sleeve and a button band/collar away from done since April; get started on at least one of the sweaters I’ve been sketching and swatching for myself; finish my Circular Reasoning cowl before another winter’s come and gone; play Fallout 4 until my eyes bleed…it’s a very long list, and I won’t get to all of it, and I’m okay with that. The thing I’m most looking forward to, though (apart from exploring the post-nuclear wasteland), is getting re-acquainted with my spinning wheel. Continue reading
Crivens! Some actual spinning!
I’ve been sick as a pike, dearies, with a lovely head cold/flu thing that left me very tired and cranky, with the distinct impression that gnomes had come in the night and replaced my brain with soggy cotton batting. Too stupid to work, even on simple things, unless I wanted to go back and check every single detail later to make sure I hadn’t decided that 2+2=146 or done eleventy hours of knitting on needles that were .5mm too large. One thing I could do, though, was spin. I’d been working on the same spin since May 2015: ~330g of Southern Cross Fibre 60/40 Bond/silk in Vetinari, from last year’s Discworld MegaSAL. Continue reading
Fibre in the mountains
Well, SAFF was wonderful. Of course. I only tasted a bit of it, because I didn’t get it together to book classes and my non-fibre-obsessed friend had taken the weekend off for my visit, so I mostly wandered around on Friday and took everything in and got a feel for the thing. The thing, let me tell you, can be pretty overwhelming. A lot of the classes looked amazing, though: the schedule’s gone from the site now, but I remember seeing spinning instructors like Abby Franquemont and Judith MacKenzie, and a colour theory class with Franklin Habit, so that should give you some idea of the lineup. Fortunately, the fleece judging was open to all attendees, so I spent a very happy hour watching Judith MacKenzie walk us through many, many primitive breed fleeces.
Hybrid Vigour: Continuing Adventures in Socks
Some of you may remember the Great Handspun Sock Blowout of this past winter, in which my two pairs of handspun socks developed a cascade of failure points, resisting all attempts to save them from an untimely demise. At the time, I decided to rethink how I was spinning sock yarn, and relegated the yarn already spun to other projects. The one exception — a cabled Romney yarn — repaid my trust by becoming a sturdy (if somewhat fuzzy) pair of warm, comfortable, and durable socks. (So far. Knock on wood. With fingers crossed.)
(If you’re interested, the pattern is Kalajoki by Tiina Seppälä. It’s top-down, which I don’t normally do, but I fell in love with the waves down the leg and the rather ingenious anatomical toe.) Continue reading
Finished Object Friday
Just a quick Friday post heading into the long weekend, because a couple of things are done, and I’m like a kid with a new drawing wanting to show everyone.
First, the final spinning tally for this year’s Tour de Fleece.
The lazy Tour
The Tour de Fleece* has come around again, and I’m sort of participating, in a half-assed kind of way. There’s a lot going on Chez Cusser, including eleventy dozen shelves to finish and put up, a pile of designs to get out for the fall/winter season, and an ongoing search for ways to use the ridiculous amounts of fruit & veg I keep bringing home from the farmers market. (It’s as though I forget there are only two of us, and himself is not a huge consumer of produce. No matter how good and healthy it is, I cannot eat every fruit and vegetable produced within a 50 mile radius of this city, and I should probably stop trying.)
Given the general crush of things that need doing, and the fact that I’ve had enough stress in the last year without adding to it voluntarily, thank you, I’ve decided that this year will be the Tour de Slack. My sort-of-goal is to spin this Shetland top for a blanket.
Knit first, ask questions later…
…is the approach I went with for the next Christmas project, which is why there are two hats in this post. Always ask the parents, people. It’ll save you grief in the end.
A while back, a dear friend sent me some merino sliver, all the way from New Zealand, which spun up into a pretty, soft, red and pink yarn:
Now, I may not be a big fan of pink, but The Ever-Growing Niece loves it. Loooooooves it. Pink, pink, pink, the brighter the better. I knew who this yarn was going to. Continue reading
E. Elliott Knits 