Missing: Clapotis!

I hung my Clapotis on the clothes line yesterday afternoon after hand washing it. In the midst of an impromptu dinner party and celebration last night, I forgot to pull it down from the line. This morning when I walked outside with my cup of coffee, it was gone! I've been walking around the pasture and driving at 5 mph for three hours now. I'm really started to freak out!!!! I think the culprit is Luke the Hound... but will it be found? Will it be intact????

Vacation = knitting and spinning - Dawn

So I'm on vacation and have been spinning and knitting up a storm. Mostly spinning. Yesterday I went to my first Greater Los Angeles Spinners Guild meeting and yes there were many like minded obsessive people there. Yea! I also bought some Merino top and a package of Stone Soup - Brown batts that I started spinning up last night. I even had Jeff spinning.

I have finished spinning the Maine Woods. Hard to believe but I went through that 2lbs of fiber like nobodies business. I got 4, 300 yard skeins out of it and now can't decide what to do with it. Knitt it up, try to sell it and start my own yarn business, put it in the stash and decide later...its too difficult to decide. I did however break one of the skeins down into 3, 80 - 100 yard skeins and am planning on taking it to a local knitting store to try selling it. I have asked at two places and they asked me to come back after the holidays. I guess they are not wanting to gain any new inventory (hah? 3 skeins) before the end of the year. Well I'll be back and I'll try to recoupe the cost of buying the rovings and still have yarn left to make something for myself.

So we're getting ready to take off to Arkansas to visit Jeff's family. We hop a plane on Christmas Day so today we pack and as usual I try to get more yarn into my bag then is really necessary. A week in Arkansas means plenty of time to knit. So Iwill most definitely finish the Rogue (here's a progress photo) and start something else. I'm taking some of the yarn I got at Saff and some magazines for ideas.

Maine Woods Arrives and Rogue Started - Dawn

I have been a knitting and spinning queen. This past week my Rovings from Persimmon Tree Farm arrived. The Maine Woods colorway which I salavated over at SAFF is still as beautiful as I remember it and I'm now spinning it up and day dreaming about what I will make out of the 2lbs that a bought. Yes I bought 2lbs! Yikes! I'll probably get a sweater out of it and then some. As usual the picture doesn't do the color justice. It is a much darker and greener color than what it looks like here. Lindsey, how is your Permisson Tree Farm roving doing? I've already finished one hank, knitted up a sample and am combing through my pattern books for the perfect one. I'm spinning pretty thin now though I did have a bit of trouble when I started to ply. The strands were continually breaking and poor Bette was upset by my shouting and cursing. I finally got through the first hank. I think I know what I was doing wrong, but I will have to wait to find out when I ply the next one. Will there be more cursing or will it go smoothly?

The Maine Woods colorway screams Jeff and now is the time to finally knit him a sweater, out of handspun. What love! Picking the pattern will be a challenge. I've shown him several that I think look good and he says, "it's okay," which means 'I won't wear it.' I will not be deterred from my task. This is the Maine Wood Hank. The card has the date spun, colorway, fiber content and yardage on it. This picture is a little better with the color.

Other developments are that I finished the scarf for my dad. I put it in the mail right away and forgot to take a picture of it. As a result my mother has an assignment to get a picture of Dad wearing it. This way I'll know that he wore it at least once. A little background on the scarf. It is from Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan. The pattern is called Phyllotaxis Scarf and it is knitted in the round. My sister Dana and other mathematical/science type folks will like this bit about the scarf. "The double spirals of twisted stitches occur in two sequential numbers from the Fibonacci sequence as they would in nature: There are five spirals slanting to the right and eight spirals slanting to the left so the pair from the Fibonacci sequence is 5-8."

I've also finally started Rogue. I bought the yarn from Kpixie.com a long time ago and bought the pattern even longer ago and now I'm knitting it. It's great! I've read all these other blogs about what a pleasure it is to knit and finally listened to the Cast-on episode where Brenda Dayne goes on about Rogue and decided to start. They are right. It goes by so quickly. The cables are magical and... and... I'm at the separation of the front and back now. We'll see how the hood goes. Progress photo here. I'm a little further than this now . The color is called Willow. Jeff describes it as a wheat color. It is 100% wool 2-ply from Bartlett. The yarn is not as soft as I would have like, but the cables really pop with this yarn.

Thanks for Knitting and Gravy Shakes - Dawn

This thanksgiving was one of family, fun, food, and travel. Usually its just family, fun, and food and more food, though this year we hung out with my brother Dan, pigged out, laughed hysterically, and then got on a train headed for Flagstaff, AZ. I don't have photos of our trip yet but I'll post them soon. Our digital camera is, I think, about to die. So I apologize for the poor quality, but such is life.One of the things that my family loves doing is eating and we had plenty to eat and drink as it turns out. I even attempted to drink... the gravy. Doesn't it look like a milkshake?


















So no, I did not actually drink the gravy!

And I have mega projects in the works. The Brea Bag is knitted up and waiting to have a lining made. I'll need to go to the fabric store to find a matching lining. This is a dangerous prospect as I will probably find more projects to do and then I'll have to get my sewing machine out of its box and set up the kitchen table as a work space and then I'll truly be taking over the entire house with my projects. Poor Jeff. Little did he know what he would have to live with when he married me.

I also have done some spinning and we have our first "Knitting Things Done" product, which was promptly sent to Mary for her B-day. Mary, what do you think of your handspun? What will you make of it? I bought 1 lb of the rovings and was able to get 700 yards out of it. I think I'm getting better with this spinning thing. I used about 100 yards of this batch to make "Mortie" (see below)

I really procrastinated on starting this bunny, but once I got going...whoosh and he was done...AND he is so cute. Mortie was a family project. I spun the yarn and knitted the pieces and Jeff stuffed him and sewed him together. He is a gift for our niece, Helen Claire. I just know she'll love him. There was plenty of love knitted and sewn into him.

I don't know why I was procrasting so. I might even make another one. His body is made out of the Sandalwood Merino Handspun and his sweater is the Forest Colonial-Merino Handspun which was left over from my Clapotis. The picture doesn't do my Clapotis justice.