Sunday, September 27, 2009

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things...

Oooh....bad blogger! It's been too long since I've posted and I'm not going to try and come up with the 20 million reasons that I haven't, but I do have one really good one.

Introducing (only 2 1/2 months after coming home)....Sir Chappy Chomperton, Gentle Dog of Crime.
He's now 17 1/2 weeks old, so a little over 4 months, and already weighs a whopping 31 pounds. He's growing at an alarming rate, but is turning into an utter sweetie. So who am I to complain.

I've also been doing a lot of spinning and knitting when I have time. I've been spinning up some singles for a laceweight yarn from AllSpunUp's August/September Spin Along. The fiber is merino/bamboo/silk and is a dream to spin. I'm hoping that I get some decent yardage out of it.
The spindle is a .5 ounce Bosworth Featherweight Spindle in Red Cedar. Bosworth spindles are amazing, spin like a dream, and the woods they have available are just wonderful.

Not sure what I'll knit from this, will just have to wait and see what the final yardage is after washing. Now, I will be cheating and plying this on my Kromski Sonata. For some reason, whenever I try plying with a spindle, well, lets just say we don't get along. Maybe I'll have to try it again, but I want to make sure that with this fiber, I get a nice even plying job.

As a reference back to the last AllSpunUp spin along fiber that I was in the process of knitting up, I did finally get it done, but alas I have no photos of the finished, blocked shawl yet.

I have though done some test knitting and test knitting of handdyed sock yarn. One of the test knits was for Anne Hanson of Knitspot and her Hillflowers pattern. You can see the post with the stole version I knit up here. I also test knit some new sock yarn for PoppyFlowerFibers on Etsy. It a lovely superwash merino...oh so very soft. You can see pictures here. Lisa's done a wonderful job of dying so that there is no pooling of colors. Yum!

My birthday was recent and thanks to a wonderful mom who sent me some birthday money, I splurged on some yummy fiber from ButterflyGirlDesigns and EnchantedKnoll on etsy and some laceweight and fingering weight from KnitPicks.


The bottom batt is Glacier Lake from Butterfly Girl. The 2 green batts are the superwash merino Fern batts from Enchanted Knoll. The purple yarn at the top left is Gloss Lace, the next three are shadow lace from Knit Picks (the blue and red are the kettle dyed line of shadow) and the purple balls of yarn is Palette in Clematis Heather. The Palette is going to be used for a very large shawl...thinking Maplewing by Anne Hanson. The pattern is for laceweight yarn, but I'm wanting to have a large warm shawl for the cooler upcoming weather, and I think that this might fit the bill.

I have some spinning calling my name....