What I've Been Up To

I'm still spinning, and here finally are pics. of my NEW WHEEL! This is the kit wheel from Louet - spins great. But what I'm really excited about is the beautiful handpainting by Gini. I love, love, love it!!! I know that my wheel and I will create beautiful yarn together. How could we not?

When I'm not working, or spinning, I have been creating some new jewelry. .

Here are some pics. of some of the more unusual stuff I've been working on (still works in progress). Other jewelry has been created for classes - it can be seen on the Anna Banana website

A yarnie reward

As a reward to myself for having spent the better part of 2 days on chores and paperwork, I spent a couple of hours spinning today. The idea is to carry some of my own homespun yarn in the shop. Problem is by the end of the long process, I have become attached to the yarn just spun and want to keep it all for myself.

Each new yarn has it's own personality and idiosyncrasies, depending on the fiber, the color, and even my mood at the time. I love spinning a multi-colored roving and just letting it do it's own thing. Sometimes I ply, sometimes I don't. It's a very organic process. At the end, I soak it in some Eucalan, and have a fresh, clean newborn yarn that still smells faintly of the sheep that once wore it. Lovely stuff.

I will just have to make sure that it goes to a good home where it will be appreciated for itself with all of it's joys and faults.

What I'm Loving Right Now

Lace. Soft knit or crocheted lace, or metal filigree lace. Cobweb light shawls or chunky filigree metal rings topped with old watch parts a la Steampunk (more about that in a minute).

Bamboo, cotton or linen yarns. Bamboo is so soft, cool and drapey, cotton so smooth and classic, linen so crisp and fresh.

Mixed metals. Silver, gold, copper, brass. Shiny or antiqued. Mix up several in one jewelry piece.

Vintage Cabochons and Cameos. Cabochons (flat-backed gems or stones) in glass or lucite, with fancy settings.

Anthing Floral. Especially flower-shaped beads and anything earth-inspired like butterflies, and leaves - even fish.

Brass. In particular raw, or oxidized brass.

Colors: coral pink/orange. periwinkle blue and robin's egg blue. seafoam green. sunshine yellow. lipstick red. classic black and white.

Stempunk inspired jewelry: Fantasy machinery in the steam era. Modern with an old touch. Think Jules Verne.

I've spent the afternoon shopping for lots of vintage jewelry supplies, and brass. They should be trickling into the shop little by little in the near future. I can't wait for the boxes to start arriving!

Spring!

I just love this weather! Not too hot, nice breeze; all around lovely. I also love to hang out the laundry. I used to hear a lot of 'why bother, just use the dryer', but now I'm politically correct. I truly believe that hanging out the laundry is good for the soul.

In my hurry-up life, it's a chance to be outside, just being in the moment, nothing to think about but smooth, pin, next... It is good to do something so simple and basic every once in a while. And the reward is wonderful - fresh-air dried laundry - you can't get that from the dryer!

Plus, this time of the year the sweet smell of lilacs drifts by every so often. Lilacs have the best perfume! I am a creative person, but I am defeated by flower arranging. But lilac-time inspires me to put fresh flowers on the table. Not a great job, but the flowers themselves are gorgeous, and the scent in the house is heavenly!

My middle-aged cat Frankie seems to think she is a kitten again; don't let this lovely pose fool you - she spent the morning

rolling around in the lawn - check out the grass on her!

A Quiet Day

Hubby was home for Easter! 4 whole days, actually. Three of the kids were here for dinner. It is sure nice to have kids old enough to cook when you're a bit under the weather. They cleaned up too! I haven't finished Tim's socks, yet, so I'll have to mail them since he has gone back to IL today. They are made from this lovely stuff (Poems sock yarn) in shades of gray. I finally found a yarn that pleases us both. He can have his conservative color, but I can use a yarn that does fun patterns. I left the half-knit sock at the shop over the weekend, but I expect I can have it done before wool sock weather is back. I wear mine all year long, but he doesn't!

Spin, span, spun

I have had the spinning fever lately. I have the urge to spin every fiber I can get my hands on. I love the handpaints; I have been spinning more singles lately. I like the fact that the colors are separate, and knitting with it just has a handspun 'look'. Plus, you can spin up enough yarn for a big project fast. I am hoping that it will go further as well, because I have a pound of a great color that I would like to get a sweater out of.

The weather has been so cold this week, that I decided to go through my boxes of UFOs to see if I had a sweater that was nearly done to work on. I came across one of my first spinning attempts.

It is a spindle-spun sweater in reds. I didn't even know how to ply at the time, and so did everything with singles. I did a lot of things 'wrong' in this project. The fiber wasn't an easy one to spin which is part to blame for the somewhat thick/thin look. I was so excited to knit this sweater that I worked on it piecemeal - knitting up a spindleful, then knitting it, etc... which I did know was not the 'right' way to do it. I knew you were supposed to spin up all of your fiber first, but I'm not sorry - this was a fun way to work, and the yarn is pretty consistent. I realized that there would not be enough fiber, and purchased some in a coordiating color to do part of the sweater. Also because it was made on a spindle, there are of necessity quite a few ends, but that really doesn't bother me.

All of this being said, the sweater looks surprisingly wearable. I was making it from the top down and had the yoke and both sleeves done. I spun up some yarn yesterday evening, and knit it up, and some more today. It looks pretty OK! I am going to try to finish it up this week, to try to get some wear out of it while Spring is still making up its mind whether to stay. It's too late to take decent pics. tonight, so I will get some done tomorrow. Fun!

Here it is - it actually looks better in person.

Laid Low by the Flu

Oh, the Flu. You can run, but you can't hide. The flu is insidious. It sneaks up from behind, smacks you on the head, and you go down like a ton of bricks.

No use claiming how tough you are, that you can handle anything; the flu knows better. It may be small, but it will beat you. The Flu doesn't care that you have obligations, schedules, appointments. The Flu doesn't care who you are or what you need to do. Finally, raise the white flag, "I surrender".

Four days in bed with Flu's heavy boot on your back, your nose full of cotton, throat full of sand and an anvil on your head. Days and nights all the same as you alternate between half-wakeful rousings to blow your nose and feverish dreams of untwisting the same darn puzzle over and over and over. Stumble downstairs once in a while to sit upright in a chair for an hour in front of the TV trying to feel half-human again, only to stagger back upstairs to drop back into bed wracked with coughing.

2 gallons of orange juice, 2 boxes of tissues later. Finally the flu begins to relent, slowwlly to release it's hold, leaving you feeling like you have been run over by a truck, but at least feeling like you might someday be able to function like yourself again.

Yep, the flu stinks. I'm going back to bed.

Long time, no post

Yep, I'm still here. Hubby is visiting from Chicago all week; yes, he really does exist. So with that and the shop open longer hours, I've got plenty to do. Keeps me out of mischief. I keep getting in new yarns, and of course new yarn = new project, so by now I figure I have to live to be 623 years old in order to finish everything up ( assuming I don't start anything new - sure ) I need to start taking better care of myself I guess. Hopefully somebody will discover that knitting prolongs your life and prevents disease.

Thank goodness for friends. I don't think I would be able to do all that I do without all of the support (physical and emotional ) from all of my wonderful shop friends. Any of you who happen to read this - you know who you are - THANK YOU!!

I hoped to figure out how to post pictures from the shop computer, instead of my laptop, but the battery on the camera is too low (boo!) I will try again after I power it up. Back to work!

Day off

The socks are coming along slowly, but surely. In the meantime, I have been getting classes organized, and new shipments priced and out. Class samples have been worked on, and I got distracted by the lovely new 'Poems' sock yarn, which I had to sample. Just so folks won't think that I live at the shop, I had a great visit with the grandkids on Monday. They are (of course) the most beautiful and clever little girls that ever were. Evie, not Anna (banana) seems to love bananas these days, as evidenced by the sticky fingerprints on the TV screen. Back to the shop tomorrow!

Socks on the Spindle

Because 100+ UFOs is not enough (HA!) I decided to try a project with overspun singles spun on a drop spindle. Inspiration comes from several sources: Spin-off magazine's current article on Kathryn Alexander, Twisted Sisters sock book, Nancy Bush's wonderful books, and more.

First, the fiber. I have some lovely Superwash merino/ alpaca blend from Dyepots in the color 'warm gray' on the shelf at the shop. Shades of plum, blue, gray, and more. 4 oz. should do it.

I will be spinning only what I can knit up in 24 hours, so that the singles will remain energized, and slant to the right. Spit-splice (hate that term!) joins, since there will be lots of them, and I want them as invisible as possible.

Begun a couple of days ago. Here is my recipe, designed as I go:
Singles spun approx. fingering weight.
I cast on 56 stitches on size 2 dpns.
Knit for about 1/2" and decided it looks too big? Start over? Nah. Decreased 4 sts., down to 52. MUST remember to do this on the other sock!

I am not ribbing this sock, because I don't like to work ribbing, and Lisa says she just starts in with stockinette, and her socks stay up just fine. The top is curling a bit, I'm not really concerned. Over the past few days, I have worked the cuff to about 7" ( or whatever the length of my double points are, which I am using to measure with ).

I plan to work 3 rows of seed stitch, then the heel flap in seed stitch, so that it will not twist. Probably another 3 rows of seed stitch after the heel, too.