From Spinning

1.5 oz finished weight, about 6 yards, unfortunately in 5 pieces. But still delicious!

From Spinning

I love the color progression, and the bulky curves… it does not love me however. Ply, slide, slide, slide, SNAP! Repeat x5. The poor #20 crochet cotton did not know what hit it. There’s a couple horrible spots in the last longest piece where the core got so roughed up that the coil would not push up and over it, so I just kinda plied up and down to cover the core and hoped for the best?

From Spinning

This section was rescued from a core-thread-break about 12 inches up the finished ply – it’s about perfect keychain length, if I find some nice autumny embellishments for the knotted end.

From Spinning

All of these are folded in half and “plyed” a la the Supercoil Colliers in Intertwined – it will only work if the coil is freshly spun, but it’s nice to have them stable and in useful format. And it disguises the painful parts quite well.

From Spinning

Tiny scarves? Really nice embellishment for a plain headband or coordinating scarf? I saved the other 2/3 of the braid for a standard two-ply to pair with it. A cowl with candy apple edges, a white middle and this couched over the white part would be pretty awesome.

From Stash

I really need to get off my butt and take pictures of my stash WITHOUT the obscuring plastic bags. This is Bee Mice Elf falkland in ‘Candy Apple’.

I have seen cocoons and haloes and twisters before when roaming through art yarn techniques books, but I had never really liked them – well, had never really thought of a reason to put them into a yarn except “just cause” and that rarely does it for me.

Then I watched the Sit-n-Spin dvd I got for my birthday. Her cocoons and haloes were a bright warm orange.  The back of my brain combined this with the Fiber Friday theme “Octopi” and suddenly I had a reason to try these techniques! Everything is better if it’s representational!

From Spinning

I set up a sample, first, to see if everything would look good together (and to practice the techniques!) The goal was to have some wholly visible octopi, some swimming away from you (so only tentacles visible), and some swimming towards you (heads visible.) This would allow for varying tentacle numbers as I practiced my joins. I think it would be awesome to have a hat or cowl full of 3-D octopi.

From Spinning

From Spinning

Yes, so definitely I need more practice, but overall I am quite pleased with the idea and will continue.  To fix for next time:

• more twist!
• thinner orange sections of more consistent thickness for the twisters
• more crisp and tight cocoons – I am amazed at how little fiber it takes to make a distinct bump. I never predraft anymore and here I am having to make strips of fiber that are barely visible.
• thicker aqua single with perhaps a thinner plying thread. This is #10 crochet cotton as the #20 tatting cotton was more expensive…

From Spinning

 The singles.

The ocean base yarn is Targhee top in ’Blue Raspberry’ from Hungry for Handspun. I had to try targhee because it was featured in a Connie Willis novel, but I love it – it’s substantial. It’s bouncy and squooshy but there’s something there, unlike say a superwash merino.  I think in the next attempt I’ll try to get the Targhee single thicker and the ply thread thinner so you can better appreciate the elasticity of the wool.

From Stash

The orange is a huge bag of Louet merino/silk in ‘Golden Hibiscus’, from my orange kick this spring. I am glad there is so much to practice with!

From Spinning

Om nom nom!

From Spinning

220 yds of a dk-to-sock weight 3-ply in 50/50 merino/soy by River’s Edge Weaving Studio. My mother-in-law bought this for me at the Shepherd’s Harvest fiber festival in Minnesota in May; the dyer’s website keeps threatening to open an online store sometime soon, which will be lovely as I don’t want to wait till May to restock.

From Stash

I tried very hard to put in lots of singles twist to compensate for the soy. This is my thinnest and longest skein ever.

From Spinning

So thin!

From Spinning

I am so pleased with the way the colors blended!

From Spinning

It says “socks”, though, and I don’t think 22o yds is enough for a pair. I like at least 7″ cuffs. Hrmph. Don’t taint my joy, expectations! A nice scarfy triangle so I can see the yarn when I look down would be just lovely!

I am not the only one in my house who appreciates the value of a well-filled fiber stash.

From Spinning

From Spinning

I call this Holy Alpaca because it’s the samples I got in the spinning class at Sacred Heart Monastery in Richardton, ND. They raise alpacas and have the fiber processed by a mill in South Dakota. I also call this Holy Alpaca because it’s a corespun boucle and it kinda looks like there’s holes in it, get it? (I am easily amused.)

It’s not quite done yet – there was an ounce of fawn as well that I haven’t got to. Each is one ounce and approx 75 yds. I love the way corespinning stretches small amounts of fiber.

The technique is one I learned in Watertown from Patsy Zawistowski’s “Five Quick Novelty Yarns” class. Basically you corespin onto sewing thread; you can bunch up the fiber as you spin for a thick boucle, or leave it as is for a wispier one (I left it as is.) Then you ply with sewing thread again. Quick and satisfying.

Here’s the second-to-last batch of completed yarn. It was really really hard to get a decent picture of this one, for some reason. It’s thick-and-thin and soft spun (with a silver-white rayon racing stripe!) so most of the pictures looked really uneven and fuzzy.

From Spinning

From Spinning

I got two skeins, about 120 yds each, from 4 oz of merino/bamboo/tussah batts. I don’t have a good before picture so I will refer you to the luscious original listing by Moonlightbaker.etsy.com. (I have a couple gorgeous braids of Rambouillet from her calling my name!)

I really appreciate when sellers do repeatable colorways! This was a lovely soft quick spin and it’s comforting to know I can get more batts if I need them.

Wow, these push polls are getting less subtle every day.

Today’s example:

“Your senator, Earl Pomeroy, did a bad thing. He voted for Pelosi’s health care bill. Would you like to chastise him?”

HE “DID A BAD THING”?

What, are we two-year-olds now?

I hate that I always think of good replies after they’ve hung up. “Who wrote that script? Is it the same for every state, or do they just think North Dakotans won’t understand words longer than one syllable?”

Or the classic, “Do you actually believe this or are you just being paid to say it?”

I don’t know which one would be less depressing.

Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment if political calls were only allowed to be made from inside the affected state, by people living in the affected state, who actually believed in the thing they were calling about?

I’m sure there would be lots of unintended consequences for my people too, people who believe that exchanging $1200 per month in health care premiums for a $300 increase in taxes would be a net savings… but I betcha the frequency of calls would decrease!

In an ongoing effort to achieve Pioneer Home Maker, I have (almost) completed a set of three Window Quilts for the north rooms.

I say Home Maker as the lowercase version of the noun has become so commonplace, people forget it takes a great deal of skill to optimize one’s living space without paying others to do it for you. It is a skill I aspire to but have not yet achieved. Total achievement in the insulation arena would involve quilted door hangings, draft dodgers (an amazing faire-goer in Ohio has shared detailed plans for these two, not yet implemented) and wall-to-wall tapestries. These last will probably not happen as I feel like I would have to weave them or something similarly absurd, and to cover that amount of square footage would take years; and unfortunately that look really only goes well with 100-year-old farmhouses or stone castles, and I have a tiny-ass 50’s suburban ranch house. I can just see the visual incongruity exploding visitors’ brains.

I say almost completed because the quilts are completed to the point of hanging on the windows, but I have not yet attached the velcro round the edges to properly seal them. They were hanging nice and flush, and I could tell the difference in heat retention the first day, but then the cats discovered they could climb them to the ceiling like jungle gyms and now the quilts need some additional help to lie flat.

From Crafts

I apologize for the horrible pictures but it’s rather hard to take pictures of curtains that show their actual colors. Sun glows through in the day; at night we have to live with ze flash.

I am proud that all of the fabric and backing for all three came from stash.  Although with the pair of blue sequined poinsettia velvet,  I have to say “what was I thinking when I bought that?” I am sure it was on deep sale and I vaguely remember liking the back side more than the front, to coordinate with some holiday sweater. It makes much better curtains than a skirt. It matches an existing blanket; and while the color does block a lot of light, that actually helps a great deal with my rotating night shifts.

From Crafts

This is my overstuffed office, including some stash overflow looking for a more permanent home. (I am happy to say that the bookshelf has since been cleaned out.) This quilting stuff is much harder than it looks at first glance - unfortunately this stash fabric was a knit, and the sheet of clear plastic I put inside to help block air movement stuck to itself like crazy as I was trying to turn it rightside out after sewing.  It’s light enough to let some light in, so I don’t feel like a total cave-d hermit at work.

I am looking forward to a bit of rearranging now that Ancient Male Family Dog of Incontinence has succumbed to congestive heart failure and been put to sleep – no more need to worry about good wooden furniture being warped by inappropriate moisture. I’d rather not have made that particular trade, but now that it’s done it was probably for the best.

Measuring 402 ends of 8/2 cotton on my shiny new warping board? 7 hours.

Sleying 402 ends of cotton through ~250 dents? 3 hours.

Threading 402 ends of cotton through 402 heddles? 5 hours.

The fact that I’m the type of person who can get excited about threading 402 ends of string through approximately 650 tiny holes? Makes me very happy.

Woo used 36″ 4-harness floor loom!

From Spinning

These are Lumpy Fingerless Mitts, knitted from two fraternal chunky bumpy thick-n-thin skeins spun from this:

From Stash

2 oz of chunky All Hallow’s Eve spin-along goodness, from Bohoknitterchic.

From Spinning

“Oh hello! No pictures for you!”

From Spinning

The green and orange, short color repeats:

From Spinning

Black and purple, with longer color repeats. Both are singles candy-striped with coordinating holographic thread.

The batts were full of coordinating-colored nepps, in hopes that some would stay in the finished yarn. Some did – but still, during the *thwack* period after the wash, there was a short multicolored rain.

This is actually the first of my handspun I’ve ever knit with – it’s always been more fun to go on and spin the next skein, than to pause and knit with the past one. Thank you for the motivation, O SAL Small Chance of Winning Prizes!