The trials, tribulations and successes of my stitching related hobbies: knitting, cross-stitching, sewing and quilting. And you never know... I may decide to learn how to crochet some day!
Back in my "The old and the new" post from Jan 2008, I told you about some projects that I was working on - Wisteria socks for my mother, Heat Wave socks for my sister and Felted Bag KAL.
Well, the reason it has taken me this long to blog again about these projects is because they seem to have been reluctant to reach completion.
I continued working on the Burgundy Wisteria socks to discover in April 2008 that I did not have enough yarn to finish the toes on the second sock. This caused me to put these socks into hibernation until I could get up the courage to frog them back and make them one size smaller. In August 2008, I took them out of hibernation and finally finished them. Luckily, despite making them smaller, they still fit my mother.
Now, the Heat Wave socks for my sister are still not done. As mentioned in my "The old and the new" post, I had originally knit this yarn into Monkey socks. But after discovering that the socks would be too big and figuring out that the yarn did not really like the Monkey pattern, I frogged them back and started knitting the Heat Wave pattern. Well, back in April 2008, I ran out of yarn for these socks as well. However, I am short so much yarn (as can be seen in the picture below) that no frogging back will allow me to finish with this pattern. So, this got put into a long hibernation...
It has now finally come out of hibernation. A few weeks ago I frogged them back and casted on to reknit this yarn as toe up socks using a pattern from the New Pathways for Sock Knitters book by Cat Bordhi. I am knitting the Spiraling Coriolis sock pattern.
And as far as the Felted Bag KAL goes, once I felted the knitted project, it felted to much smaller than I was originally anticipating. So the bag that I had originally envisioned would no longer be possible. So, this got put into hibernation until I could think of another bag project. Finally, in September 2009, I took it out of hibernation. I decided to Needle Felt some Japanese symbols indicating "Life Energy" onto the bag, I purchased some leather handles, and finally put the bag together.
it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. - Miriam Beard
The reason I have not blogged over the last several months can best be explained by saying that I made Aeroplan Elite Status in the first two months of 2009 - Elite status requires 35000 miles of travel. Since the beginning of January, I have been to Las Vegas twice, to the Carribean (on a cruise), to Macau China, to Amsterdam The Netherlands, and I am currently in Sydney Australia. When I am home, I would rather spend the little bit of free time I have with my family or actually doing one of my hobbies - not blog about it.
I have started a few projects over the last two months. I have joined the London Wul February Lady's sweater KAL and am knitting this project using Alpaca. I don't have any pictures available since this project is at home and I am not.
I also decided I would learn how to do two socks at a time using the Magic Loop method, and while I was at it, decided learning how to do toe up would be cool too. I purchased some of Heidi's (from London Wul's) beautifully dyed sock yarn. The picture below shows how far along I am. I am currently working on the gusset decrease - the heel has already been turned. This project I brought along on my trip since it is quite compact to carry...
On my first day here in Sydney, Australia, I walked to a nearby knitting store and spoiled myself with several purchases. I seem to have had a consistent color scheme happening - but I'll let you judge for yourself...
This first skein of sock yarn comes from Chile and is hand dyed. It is 75% wool and 25% polyamide. It is from Araucania Yarns.
The following three skeins are designed by Jo Sharp an Australian yarn designer. It is 85% wool, 10% silk and 5%Cashmere. It is called Silkroad Aran Tweed and it the most amazing tweed yarn I have ever seen. They had it available in over 10 colors but the two you see below are the ones that really caught my eye.
And lastly I got some more Jo Sharp yarn. This one is called Rare Comfort Infusion Kid Mohair. It is basically 80% kid mohair, 5% wool and 15% Polyamide.
I also decided to buy some tapestry yarn since the I have been inspired by the guys attending the Sunday afternoon knitting group to use some of these in one of my future sock projects.
Now I need to figure out what projects I am going to make with these new purchases! On that thought I leave with a few pictures of beautiful Sydney Harbour.
I thought it was high time that I updated you all on what I have been doing with that spinning wheel I got back in late February / early March.
I have had some fun getting acquainted with my wheel. The first thing I spun was some beige colored fleece (not sure what it is) that I received with my wheel. I plied this as a two ply yarn.
I then decided to spin some Polwarth that I had won during the 7th Annual Maritime Spinner's Retreat. Since I loved the various colors in this and wanted the colors to stay together, I decided I would try my hand at navajo plying. Since I had never done this before, I decided to search on the internet for instructions on how to navajo ply. A YouTube video entitled "How to Navajo Ply - Demystified and Unraveled" taught me the basics, and away I went. You can see the results below:
I discovered that spinning finger roving is lots of fun. Especially when it is in my beloved fall colors. I had purchased this Fleece Artist Sea Wool finger roving from Gaspereau Valley Fibers during the 7th Annual Maritime Spinner's Retreat. And since my first attempt at Navajo plying had gone so well, I navajo plied this one as well.
I have not knit anything with any of these handspun skeins yet. I really will need to find some projects for these skeins. However, I have started spinning some very colorful wool/soy silk blend which is intended for a project. Once I have finished spinning all 6 of the 1/4 lb bags of fiber, it will be turned into mittens, a scarf and a hat for my daughter. I have just over half of this spun so far. I actually spun most of this while I was at the 8th Annual Maritime Spinner's Retreat a few weekends back.
During the retreat, I also started spinning some Polwarth that I had purchased at London Wul's a few weeks prior to the retreat. I really enjoy spinning Polwarth. I find it is very easy to draft and makes it easy for a new spinner to learn how to draft while spinning.
Spinning must make one dizzy and therefore unable to think clearly. As you can probably determine from all of the fleece I purchased during the 8th Annual Maritime Spinner's Retreat, I will not run out of stuff to spin anytime soon. However, what you don't know, is that about a month ago, I purchased approximately 5 lbs of Alpaca and 5 lbs of Llama - unwashed raw fleece from the beautiful animals you can see in the pictures below. Tanya also purchased some Llama and some Alpaca. We purchased these from a local hobby farm who was looking for a good home for the fleeces. We decided we would share each of our purchases so that we would end up with each 4 different colors of fleece as opposed to only two each. So I am going to be really busy getting this stuff cleaned and spun. I blame the dizziness for this out of control fleece purchasing!!!
In an attempt to get ahead on all of this raw fleece, I decided to wash the Romney/Lincoln that I purchased during the 8th Annual Maritime Spinner's retreat. I had to wash it 3 times, and rinse it as many times to get all of the oils out. You can see a picture of it drying below. I just love the colors and can't wait to start spinning it.
On the weekend of October 24th, 2008, Tanya, CJ and I headed to the Gaelic College in Cape Breton to attend the 8th Annual Maritime Spinner's Retreat.
Since we were meeting CJ in Truro, and we were a little early for our meeting time, Tanya and I decided to stop by the Masstown Market in Debert. If you have never been to this market, do yourself a favor and stop by. It has stuff for anyone and everyone. It has food, gifts, crafts, wine, baked goods, a garden center. I spent over $75 in Christmas presents that wasn't really even planned for.
After picking up CJ in Truro, we continued on towards Cape Breton. Immediately after crossing the Canso Causeway, we made our second luxury stop of the day. We stopped at the Candy Shop. The spending continued on at this location - including a "to die for" half-and-half hot chocolate coffee bought from the Chocolate Bar.
Our last stop before reaching destination was at a most wonderful yarn shop in Baddeck called Baadeck Yarns. This is where I made one of my most wonderful purchases of the whole weekend. A few years back, on a trip to Halifax, I had purchase the Queen of the Waves pattern by Ilga Leja from the Tangled Skein. At the time, I was planning on using the polwarth I had purchased from London Wul that Tanya had handspun for me. Alas, once it was spun, there was not enough to knit up this pattern. So the pattern went on a shelf waiting for the right yarn to come along. The right yarn spoke to me as soon as I entered Baadeck Yarns. The Yarn is Hand Maiden Casbah (80% Merino, 10% Cashmere, 10% Nylon) by Fleece Artist. The color is the most amazing - inspired by the color of the frozen Bras d'Or Lakes. The color is called First Flight and is to commemorate the 100 anniversary in 2009 of the Flight of the Silver Dart.
Our last stop of the day was our final destination - the Gaelic College. At registration, we were handed a bag (I love the bag itself) that contained all kinds of goodies including: a handmade orifice hook, handmade stitch markers, a Diz and some colorful Shetland/Romney. I learned on Saturday that a Diz is used for creating slivers from combed fleece.
We settled into our dorm style room, where we even created our little pantry/kitchen area:
The retreat had many workshops going on throughout the weekend. I attended some on using hand carders, creating novelty yarns and picking a fleece. Lots of time was also spent spinning in the Great Hall.
One of the highlights of Saturday was watching and listening to the Milling of the Retreat Blanket. The fleece was spun by the spinners New Brunswick Maritime Spinner's Retreat of two years ago. The cloth was woven by the spinner's from the PEI retreat of last year. And finally, the cloth was milled by the spinners of the Nova Scotia Cape Breton Spinner's Retreat
And a retreat would not be complete without the few forages to the Spinners Market where the vendors allow us to indulge our every whim. I continued on my spending spree and purchased:
some Shetland Fleece (in natural color so that I can attempt my hand at dyeing);
some unwashed raw Romney/Lincoln Fiber from Delia Burge of Cobweb Woolies;
and another find that made me jump for joy. Back on the trip to Halifax where I had purchased the Queen of the Waves pattern, I had fallen in love with the Blue Sky Alpaca Silk Shrug pattern. But when I calculated how much it would cost for the yarn to make this pattern, I left the pattern and yarn behind and determined that I would probably never make this pattern. Little did I know that I would find the exact yarn required for this pattern in one of my favorite colors at the retreat. So my last purchase is the following Blue Sky Alpaca/Silk blend. Sunrise Mercantile, from whom I purchased the yarn, did not have enough of the yarn available at the retreat. However, Suzy Belt of Sunrise Mercantile was kind enough to mail me the additional required skeins and the pattern. I received all of this late last week.
Well, this was yet another wonderful retreat. I am really looking forward to the one next year being held in the Fredericton, New Brunswick area.
It may seem as if I have been on hiatus because I received my spinning wheel and have not been able to stop spinning long enough to blog. However, that is not the case, after trying out my spinning wheel in March, I have not had time to touch it or blog since then. You may all be wondering what could keep me away from such wonderful pastimes.
The first thing that kept me away is the wonderful week in April that my husband and I spent in Cayo Coco, Cuba.
Then, I started a new job on the first of May. I am now working for GSA as an Educational Director. I am working from a home office, so I spent most of my spare time in April and May buying equipment and setting up a home office. My craft room has now become a home office/craft room. It is now a shared space.
I have also had to spend many evenings and weekends through June and July working in order to have course content ready in time to deliver to some clients who had requested training during these two months.
I did manage to have some down time during all of these months. But any free time I had was spent either enjoying my pool, camping in our new Coyote hybrid trailer or knitting. Blogging was very low on the priority list.
I have worked on a couple of knitting projects. However, the only project I have finished during this time is a lap blanket kit purchased from London-Wul. I started it in late June, and finished it in early August just in time to give to my Mom for her birthday.
In the next few weeks I will update you on my works in progress. And I will post pictures of the yarn I spun back in March. I still need to take pictures in order to post them ;-)
Back about a month ago, I ordered an Ashford Traditional refurbished spinning wheel on eBay. It was coming all the way from New Zealand, and I chose to take the least expensive shipping in order to save money. This is also the slowest shipping method.
I was hoping that the wheel would be in before Friday February 29th, since I had a vacation day scheduled for that day. So for the past two weeks, I have been stopping at the mailbox, hoping against hope that the post office would have left a little card in there for me telling me to go pick up my package at the nearest post office. I kept going every day and it was with great disappointment that on the evening of Thursday February 28th I stared at an empty mailbox.
I figured I would not let that ruin my vacation day. So, I sat and decided to cast off the felted bag I am currently working on. I will post about this further in a few days. As I was sitting there knitting, the doorbell rang. I am thinking, who in the world can be at the door when there usually isn't anybody home. I got up in a hurry and managed to tangle myself in my knitting. It took me a few minutes to untangle myself and finally get to the door. As I am climbing the stairs, I look out the window and see the Canada Post truck backing out of my driveway. Like a madwoman, I dash to the door and start waiving my arms frantically. Luckily, the postman noticed me. After all, how could he not notice a madwoman waiving her arms???
I was very excited to see that it was indeed my long awaited spinning wheel.
First my cat and I had a close look at the box to see what would be the best way of opening it.
Then once I got it open, I realized that I had some work ahead of me before I actually started spinning.
I took all of the pieces out of the box and laid them out.
After about an hour and a half, I was ready to spin.
Since Friday, I have spun up the beige roving I received with the spinning wheel and double plied it.
I have also spun some of Heidi's marvelous hand dyed polwarth. And I decided to be adventurous and taught myself to navajo ply it.
I purchased material to make curtains and a comforter for my bedroom approximately 4 years ago. My husband had pretty much given up hope that I would ever do anything with that material. But on the weekend of January 5th 2008, I hauled out the material, my sewing machine and serger and set to it.
I am happy to say that this past weekend I finished. I made a bedskirt (which can't be seen in the picture because it is a sleigh bed, you really only see it when the bed is not made), a comforter, pillow shams and curtains.
Now all I have left to do is get the following cross-stitch framed. I finished this cross-stitch about 3.5 years ago. It is meant to hang in my room since it matches the colors of my room.
This cross-stitch pattern is July's Amethyst Fairy (#59) by Mirabilia.
