*knitknit*
spinning
Secret scarves and Frankenyarn
Aug 22nd
So I just finished my secret socks and started on the secret scarf only to find out I wasn’t too happy with the pattern. First of all it took me three or four times to get the amount of stitches right for the cast-on… I continued and pretended that this was not one hell of a bad omen. So I had a knitpro cable through the cast on instead of a piece of waste yarn because I thought it’d be ‘smart’.. so I end up with a nasty pain in my wrists because of the stiffness of the cable… the slipped stitches, the nasty cast on (please note if you want to start Henry: it’s probably just me but the pattern is a bit annoying to ‘just knit while doing other stuff’…) the rather tedious pattern, the fact that the pattern would look really ‘not handknit but storebought’ and on top of that a stupid mistake on my part is what did henry in… There was no more hope because in a rather frustrated fit of rage I frogged the whole thing to shreds to protect myself from wanting to start over again once I was sober again…
I was right tho.. the next morning I felt a tinge of regret but that was just about the fact that I had spent so much time on redoing it.. this pattern is clearly not for me. I still think it looks great but it’s just not for me…
I thought about it some more and realized I don’t want anything that looks like it’s storebought. Even tho it’s handknit.. why would I want to make something that looks like I just bought it? Especially since I spent so much time looking for a spectacular sock like the Sheherezade slippers?
So I went looking on rav until I found something I really liked. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Glenn’s scarf. The instant I laid eyes on this project I fell in love with it. This was exactly what I was looking for 
It’s manly and sophisticated, but also interesting to knit and to look at. There’s texture but also style. I love the textured squares and the lines ahhh So I’m knitting this up with a doubled drops alpaca yarn. I have 4 skeins but I might have to buy some more, I’m not sure yet
Again, evening pictures make the color look a bit weird, but it’s the same navy blue as the other pix.
In the meantime there’s also been some experimenting with the new takhli spindle and cotton Did I mention I LOVE that thing? 
So I’m new to the whole cotton spinning and I’m not really sure what I can and can’t do with it. I got a whole lot of roving but I also got a lot of ‘raw’ cotton (is it fleece?). Fortunately I have handcards, unfortunately they’re not fine enough for cotton, but since I have no other option I just tried carding it with the ashford student handcards and it worked just fine! I was able to spin a bit quite neatly and I might even be able to make me some nice even punies to spin from
So while trying some things out I plied a bit with the BFL roving I had spun up and I got some really nice yarn The problem is I don’t knit if it’s smart or not? Is it? can anybody tell me what kind of monster I just created? 
lol
I understand if the tree of you reading this decide to ignore my calls
One thing lead to another and the cotton and wool created a swatch together… the colors reminded me of spring and autumn at the same time (wtf right ) so that might be what the leaf stands for, but I like how the cottom seems to tame the explosive colors a bit
For some weird reason I’ve become very organized in my knitting. I have an actual queue in my head of which project I will finish first. This one is for my aunt Shahin. She’s very nice and she’s the mom of my favorite cousin so I thought it’s time to knit her something pretty. I wanted to knit her socks but with size 41 I realized that this is really not going to happen So I decided on the Haruni with beads. I don’t have the beads yet because they’ll be placed on the last row of the leaf pattern but I’ll have to get them soon because the deadline is somewhere halfway september because it’s her birthday busy busy!
spinning cotton
Aug 18th
I got my Takhli spindle today! I’m so excited! I ordered one via the webshop of ‘De Spinners’ in Den Haag on friday and it came in today 
This is how it came in (yea there was a box and stuffing too but it didn’t turn out to be very photogenic), now that’s a lot of cotton
It’s a 150 grams, four different types of cotton roving (?) and cotton fluff and top. It’s so nice and soft I can’t believe it I wanted to buy a takhli spindle because I want to be able to spin my cat fur with it, but I had no idea that this cotton could be so soft. I thought it’d have the same texture as the stuff you can buy at the drugstore… it’s even shiny and it feels like it’ll come apart if you look at it the wrong way
The six types of cotton found in the box I love the soft roving things but I also love the rough, natural cotton
The spindle itself is also very awesome It smells like ‘new spindle’ but I love how fast it spins! Obviously I just had to try it at once and I’m very happy that I’m not a total noob anymore. Spinning on this spindle is actually very very easy. Maybe it’s because I’ve spun a fair bit on a spinning wheel and this is not as fast and scary but rather cute in comparison. But it might also just be easy
I made a little navajo-plied hank of the natural brown cotton and decided not to go further just yet I love how the miniature hank looks and feels Isn’t it cute? It’s my first cotton spinning
I decided to do some practicing with the spindle before I ruin the pretty cotton. I might actually be able to spin something very nice and it might be able to become something pretty I’m thinking two-ply lace? It’ll be my first anyway I might as well try
The picture above is the BFL Dandelion roving I dyed as a test subject for the spindle. I was curious to see if I could spin anything else on the little monster or not. The spinning was quite easy but it went much too fast… My arms aren’t that long and after a while you’ll end up overstretching
I’m hoping to have some pretty yarn to show you very soon, but I think there’ll be an FO post for socks first
swatching handspun :)
Aug 4th
Another day, another log. The last few days I’ve been occupied with combing and/ or picking open the washed locks of Wensleydale x Gotland fleece. It’s a very slow progress so far and I haven’t completely figured out the best way to do it. Also while picking the locks I figured I should think about the best way to spin the fleece before I’m done with all of it. So far I had three piles of sorted, combed fleece but I didn’t know which one would spin up best. So I decided just to spin some of the combed fleece up to see how it would look. Also I’m trying to get a DK weight yarn and it would be good to see how the prepped fleece would work out. I tried to make a roving by slowly pulling some of the fleece out and roll it up so I had a little ball.
I want the yarn to end up as a 3ply because of the sturdiness and the fact that I won’t have to be thinking about how to distribute the singles on different bobbins and end up with more or less on one..
I want to knit this drops design jacket.
I really love the pattern and how it looks, the only thing is that I need 600 grams of DK weight yarn and I need to get it as even as possible because I don’t want to have any ‘weak spots’ in the jacket that’s supposed to keep me warm :p
I tried to be prepared by making a roving so I wouldn’t have to try spinning the weight ‘on the fly’, but would be somewhat prepared. Tho apparently it didn’t really matter much because it’s still quite thin. It’s a small step towards success but there’s a lot of room left for practice. I’m really having a difficult time right now… See I thought I was doing good.. look at the singles.. aren’t they shiny? It’s such yummie yarn already I want to eat it *drool*
But once it’s plied it loses a lot of its shininess and turned out to be quite thin even tho I did my best to keep it thick..
So this is what it looks like all knitted up. I used most of the pee fleece because of its color.. quite strange tho that just a small part of it should be blond… I started knitting with 4.0mm needles and moved up to 5.0mm and 6.0mm pens.
I need to knit the jacket with 5.0mm because I want to keep my sanity and having a lot of holes in there (like the yellow part to the left) is definately NOT an option for the fall/ winter
I must say I believe it might take some time but I’ll get there with the DK weight. The 4.0mm fabric looks really nice and since the whole thing is mere stockinette stitch that was all I needed for this swatch (and a little ribbing). So far only the 4.0mm part looks really good. The 5 isn’t half that bad but the 6 really is more lace than stockinette… if I manage to make the yarn a bit thicker the 5 would look much more like actual fabric and would probably be much more windproof.
This is the 5.0/6.0 mm part. The ribbing looked really crappy imo and would probably look much better if the yarn would be thicker and would be knit with smaller needles. I think that if I don’t manage to spin thicker yarn I’ll just have to make a 4ply instead of a 3ply. I don’t know how much thicker that would be but it would probably be enough to fill out the 5.0mm fabric.
I’m not sure if I want to dye the yarn yet or not, I guess I’ll see once I’m done with all the yarn. I want to spin and ply all the needed yarn before starting on the project. Also from now on I want to use the Tailored Sweater Method for all sweatery things I knit.. seriously Tuulia is a genious
no guts no glory…
Aug 3rd
story of my life.. when I start something I jump in headfirst.. Sometimes it’s bad but usually it’s really cool. I’m not the careful type and so far I’ve not fallen flat on my face yet so I guess I’m doing something right.. wel.. it’s either that or I’m extremely lucky and I’m pushing my luck ’til a point where I DO land on my face.. But we’ll worry abou that once we get there
This is washed (and dried) Wensleydale x Gotland cross fleece but unfortunately my scale only goes up to 500grams (I know I really need a new one but this one works so meh) so I don’t really know how much it is. I would estimate a 2-3 kilo’s but I’m not sure…
So before I started washing fleece I tried to find information on the web and found some good sources and good videos on youtube that were very informative. However there’s one thing about all of them I don’t really understand. Some of them wash fleeces by hand and others put them in a top-loader washing machine, but they all stress that you should NOT agitate the fleece while it’s in the water.
I have a front loader washing machine so I’m not even going to try it (hehe oops I did.. I’ll explain) but I find it hard to understand. When I look at this Wensleydale x Gotland fleece I see a snowy white fleece at the butt end and a tangled, messy, dirty, greasy, GROSS fleece at the tips.. the whole thing looks so gross I nearly lost hope for it to ever wash out.. (but some of it actually did).
I was freaking out about the whole thing because it’s suck a lovely fleece and its a birthday present so I really really can’t mess this up because I’d feel terrible because of my BF.. seriously if I buy something and I kill it for the sake of knowledge and experience I won’t be sad, because I’ll be taking something from it, but since this was a present I felt the need to do this right so I might get more presents like these so I won’t hurt my BF’s feelings.
So I’m freaking out because I hear Gotland felts like crazy, but on the other hand the fleece is so damned dirty I don’t know what to do with it, so I decided to give it a good long soak. I soaked the whole thing for 3 whole days… I filed a tub with lukewarm water and a little soap and let it stay overnight, the next morning I gave it a careful rinse and repeated the process 2 or 3 more times. Then I tried some warmer water and moved up to progressively warmer water until the whole thing was soaking in hot water with a little bit of soap.
The whole time I barely touched the fleece because I was afraid it would felt, and all the time it wouldn’t really get clean.. yes there was some serious mudd coming off the fleece but the nasty parts were still nasty and the color was still nothing close to clean white.
So in the end, after 3 days, I decided to just go for it.. I was thinking about the people who put their fleeces in a toploader washing machine and thought… well those things don’t just let the fleece sit there.. it moves around right? so what’s with the whole ‘don’t agitate’, ‘just push it down and leave it’ ?? I guess I misunderstood?
After these thoughts I went in and gave the fleece a good washing in nice hot wate with a whole lot of soap (I mean really washing.. squeazing moving, stretching.. ) et voila! It was getting clean :O and there was no felting.. (I was carefull )
The now dried up (after a centrifuge trip in the frontloader machine) fleece is sitting here.. taunting me… knowing I have no time to play right now…. but tho I’m happy with the cleaning this time.. the thing is STILL dirty… I was combing through the locks yesterday and there was still dirt in between them…. am I supposed to was the combed locks again? or should this come out with spinning or washing after it’s spun? aahhh I’m losing my mind people.. a little help
Here’s what the fleece looks like. It’s mostly locks that are connected via the shearing end so you can pull them off, and when you do that it becomes really fluffy and nice, but the tips still have a darker color, but when you comb it you see it’s because of the dirt 
After pulling the locks apart it looks like this. It’s really soft and shiny
The combed locks look like this, the staple length is between 20-25cm and I’m hoping to have a lot of these to make a nice roving. I’m going for a good fiber prep so I can have some even dk weight spinning this time This picture really shows how the tips are still dirty. Should I wash them here? or will it come out after spinning? questions.. questions…
The locks that are shorter or arent as pretty and even are sorted on a different pile, these can be made into rovings but need some more care.
The third pile is all the fleece that doesn’t look like a lock anymore. This is the pile that will be saved up and in the end will either be carded and spun or will be spun longdraw style I’m using every little bit of this fleece if I can help it
This little bugger is a bit weird… all the other locks are whiteish but this one is yellow… please please please tell me this lock is not saturated with sheep PEE please tell me there’s blond sheep out there or that there’s people who dye their sheepwool???
Handspun #4 Creamy alpaca
Aug 2nd
I suck at creating names, so for now this one is called handspun #4 Creamy Alpaca. Oh dear it looks messy but I’m so happy with it I don’t care
stats:
total weight: 200 grams
meterage : 340 meters
yarn weight: 20 WPI, n-ply
So as you might already know this is the first yarn I spun starting out with raw dirty fleece and I was very much overwhelmed. I couldn’t get it clean, then I couldn’t get all the VM off and then I couldn’t get it carded nicely. As a result every time I spent some time behind the spinning wheel I left a huge pile of debris around which was not all that great.
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What I learned about the whole process was very valuable tho and I’ve started to show more respect for the raw material. This simpel act has brought up some questions about how we live and how we see our surroundings as people. It also made me wonder about how underappreciated a lot of processes are. I know for an urban kid I’ve always been a bit weird but this was suprising for myself as well. Thinking of the difference between raw fleece and clean cut rovings it made me wonder what other things are processed like this, and how I felt about it. I started thinking more about the animals that these things come from and decided that I want to buy more ‘biologisch’ from now on and less of the processed foods. I’m not going veggie because I love all foods and I think we humans are supposed to eat meat as well but not as much as we are eating right now….
This little ‘rustic’ yarn has given me the feeling of going back to our roots as human beings and trying to be more in sync with nature and everything around us. It’s amazing how we can step into a store and buy (sometimes heavily overpriced..) products and produce and think nothing of it. It amazes me that there’s children out there that don’t know where eggs come from, or don’t know that meat actually comes from an animal. Anyway, this concludes my rant for more blogrelated info schroll down, thank you
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I spun this for Tour de Fleece but was unfortunately not able to finish it in time due to a wrist injury.. I’m a new spinner and because my work at uni also requires a lot of hand and wrist movement I’m quite scared to injure my moneymakers. So the moment it started hurting I stopped and dropped everything for at least a week. Thankfully everything was ok and there’s no more pain
I’m really pleased with the way it turned out because, tho it’s much less regular than the other two yarns I made, it’s the one I’m proud of the most. I like how it feels unpolished like some oil painting and I can’t wait to see how it knits up.
Alpaca yarn is totally yummie and I love the soft halo. I also can’t believe how much dirt came off after the plying so I have to pay more attention to washing fleeces before spinning.
While experimenting with new bobbins I tried out some of the dark brown wensleydale my boyfriend gave me last month and this is how it turned out.
I think I need to wash it some more because the yarn still feels greasy and a bit rough to the touch. Also when handcarding it looked like there was some coagulated fat on the fleece (YUCK). I spun some and n-plied it and then (before washing) knit up a bit of a sample. I was too curious sorry.
I started out in stockinette stitch with a 3.0mm needle, then moved up to garter rib and then 2×2 rib. It looked very dense at this point and tho I like the texture I didn’t like the feel.
then I moved to a row of yo and k2togs, but it doesn’t really show on this pic, and continued with a 1×1 rib. The thing is that the whole texture is missing because of the fuzziness of the yarn. Besides that the 3.0mm seemed to small for this yarn.
Moving on to a bigger (6.0mm) size I realized this was exactly what it needed. I think this yarn wants space to move around and I really like how it turned out. The whole thing seems to be slanting to the left and I think that’s because of the yarn not being washed yet and the twist not set.
Before spinning this up I think I want to finish the brown alpaca first so I can combine those two into a project (tho I’m not sure yet). 340 meters is nice but it won’t make me a sweater
some time off..
Jul 31st
I’m finding it difficult to keep blogging in the summer.. the heat.. the stickiness and the stress for my (hopefully) last semester as a student are interfering with my knitting/ spinning time. I do realize that that’s just the way it is and uni goes first and I just have to suck it up, but it doesn’t mean I like it :p.
It’s a bit frustrating but I’ve noticed that I’m completely useless when it gets hot out and I seriously can’t seem to get any work done, whether it’s homework or housework I’m not able to get any of it done when its hotter than 25 C outside.. So today, on a cloudy, rainy saturday my head got clear enough for me to start doing some serious blogging.
You might remember this little post where I show off my birthday present (a whole lot of fleece). Well I finished the first bag of 200 grams of creamy alpaca and I’m so thrilled!
Here’s some spinning in progress pictures. I’m still not that great in spinning but I noticed there’s a huge difference between spinning raw fleece and spinning roving… I like spinning with the long-draw method as I just love how the fibre just does the work and I only need to stretch it out at times or not do anything, and this is much easier with raw fleece than with roving.
This little project was my tour de fleece project and tho unfortunately I was unable to finish it before the 25th I’m very excited about the amount of time I spent on this little project.
This is only my 4th spinning ever so I’m not too worried about the whole thing being very even, I started out with carding and started spinning with my handcarded batts, but after a while I just started spinning the locks. I noticed something weird during this process, the carded alpaca was much dirtier than the locks. This was so weird it was almost as if the carded ones were much dirtier.
I truely enjoyed the whole process and I can’t even begin to explain how proud I am of this little yarn I humbly produced, even tho it’s really not that great compared to so many other spinners (who really blow me away).
The 200 grams of alpaca has become 340 meters of fingering weight navajo plied yarn. I washed it but its still a bit dirty.. I’m not sure how to get it superclean yet but when I do I’ll get on it. I’m also not sure if its actually white or creamy, so I’ll have to find out tomorrow morning
It looks a bit weird right now, but that’s also because of the lighting
Besides a lot of spinning there’s been a lot of washing fleece.. Most of the fleeces have been washed by now but the huge sack of cross wensleydale and gotland was still lying around.. so it was about time for a good washing.
I thought my cats liked alpaca but now I know for sure they LOVE sheep. This is me removing vegetable matter from the fleece while my kitties were rolling around in the fleece…
And I mean really rolling around… this fleece was seriously dir-ty. I actually already washed it 3 times but it’s not getting much cleaner.. it’s been lying around in water for a while to allow it to soak.. Tomorrow I’m washing the hell out of it but today I’ll show you the pictures of the unwashed fleece
the ‘backside’ looks nice no?
The problem with this fleece is I can’t seem to get the tips as clean as the butt end.. this lock has spent a good while in hot soapy waters and has been ‘massaged’ very carefully, but it just won’t budge.. I totally suck at washing fleece… I hope it comes with experience
I really love this fleece I’m so happy there’s a lot of it
Tho it was a bit dirty, the fleece was easy to comb through and looks nice
This is the progress on the creature comforts cardi I really like the cable pattern on the backside, especially with the wibra yarn
last but not least the socks I’ve been working on
I’ve been working on the Sheherezade slippers with malabrigo sockyarn but the gauge didn’t match at all so the sock ended up being much too small, so in order to understand the pattern and hopefully to be able to tweak it so that I can knit it with malabrigo sockyarn anyway I started a testsock knit in a heavier acrylics yarn.
There’s a huge difference between the malabrigo one and the acrylics one but at least I won’t mind a f*ck up with acrylics yarn
Last but not least, tho it’s a few days old already, my stash of kitty hair
Day two
Jul 4th
I find it very difficult to sit at home and work with fleece and yarn on beautifull days like these. I also noticed I really missed drawing.. I don’t know why but somewhere at some point I decided to split the knitting blog from the artstuff blog and then it all went down the drain. Since then I have not drawn a thing… which is a bad thing since I’m still not done with my brothers airbrush thingy… So now I’m having second thoughts about the second blog but I still don’t think the two subjects should be mixed… The blog started out as a place to organize all of my hobbies, but somewhere along the line my drawing got shoved out of the way by the knitting/ sewing and now I feel like I’ve lost an old friend…
I’m not sure what I’ll do yet but I’m thinking of returning the drawing stuff to the main blog because it’s not working out right now…
Talking about things creative – I’ve been nagging about how slow my bobbins are and that I’m annoying the living daylight out of myself treadling so fast I can’t even hear the tv anymore, but now I’ve come up with a solution. It’s still an experimental sollution but if this works out I’ll take the whole thing to the next level.
I spent a whole day searching the internet for a bobbin that will work out for me, and then came to the conclusion that I’m not willing to spend so much money on something I can make myself (funny, that’s what I said when I started knitting/ sewing/ spinning), so I grabbed my jig saw and the sander, and then the gluegun and I was a happy little girl Obviously this is an experiment, but it’s already a huge success, so the next step is to get me some plywood and making some good calculations to get me a 1:10 ratio
This end was twice as big and completely useless, the bigger side (now) gave me a 1:5,5 ratio, the new part gives a 1:7 ratio. Not a huge improvement but I can definately feel (and hear) the difference!
I know how it really looks very crappy but it’s totally worth it! This little experiment will allow me to actually do something else while spinning, like watching tv or a movie without the need for heavy headphones A total success if you ask me. So for the next step I think I’ll create some custom bobbins with different sets of plywood (recreating the original side). I’ll keep you guys updated
I had mentioned spinning a little today, but I paused because of the greyish color. It’s the first time I ever washed and carded fleece so obviously there’s a million things I could’ve done wrong with this, but the most obvious thing is that it isn’t clean. The fleece is a white alpaca, and not grey… but the singles are very very grey… It feels rather dry and gross on my fingers after a while but that’s not the biggest of my problems, right now I’m wondering if the color will ever go back to ‘white’ after spinning and plying…..
Besides the new singles on the mutilated bobbin I spent some time trying to get the overtwisted Dandelion straight again… I was so afraid of undertwist I really really overtwisted the whole thing in the end. The beginning isn’t even that bad, but the last 50 meters are horrible… It’s 178 grams of a total of 300 grams and I’m really sure I can make something quite large with this…
I was going for malabrigo sock and tho it’s not 400 meters per 100g it’s close enough for a first attempt Here, have some pix
Tour de Fleece :)
Jul 3rd
I’ll be honest, I’m really not a fan of the Tour at all… I don’t like watching it and I really think its quite boring.. I do however respect the athletes and I think it’s an awesome achievement but still it’s just not for me.. however.. this does not mean I don’t like to use this as an excuse to spin The plan was that I’d be done with the washing and carding so I could start spinning immediately when the Tour started, but unfortunately, because of the extreme heat, I haven’t been able to finish. It was simply too hot to touch any fibre so I haven’t knit or spun at all for a while. This meant that I had to finish plying the BFL before I can do any other spinning, so that’s what I did.
I finished the plying and I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out. It’s become a bit thicker than I planned it, but on hindsight I’m very pleased with that fact. It’s rather difficult to only knit very thin materials, sometimes it’s pleasant to have some heavier yarns to play with
This is what it looks like right now, it’s about the same size as malabrigo sock yarn (sometimes thicker sometimes thinner) and so far it measures 406 meters. At first it was a lot of fun to spin this but at the end it was a real pain. I will definately not start the other half before I have a faster bobbin because trying to spin light fingering 3-ply yarn with a 1:5,5 ratio really really sucks if you ask me…. Not only does my foot not like the fast treadling, but I’ve managed to unscrew the wheels main bolt….. I also noticed my hands start working faster and faster and my foot keeps the same pace so when at a certain point the singles break I can’t manage to continue because there’s not enough spin, causing the yarn to keep breaking and breaking every time I try to restart…. very very frustrating.
Another rather funny point is that it took a long time for me to spin the singles and then to ply them, so the end of the plying process was rather annoying because the singles were allmost ‘stuck’ to the bobbin. They were a bit curly and I had trouble getting them off in one piece. Also the plying went too slow because of my recent trauma concering underspun singles.. so while trying to correct this I overspun the yarn a bit causing this pretty mess. At the moment it’s hanging out to dry, hopefully tomorrow the curly mess will have subdued
Besides the Tour and the WC there’s been a birthday to celebrate My dad has become a year older and for us kids it’s the time to bake a cake. Why you ask? Well for as long as I can remember my birthdays have been marked by my dads ridiculously cool birthday cakes. My second birthday I had a barbie cake, with a real barbie doll on top wearing a pricess candy dress, for my third birthday it was a grass field with a house and 3 bear candles and the years after that I always had some fun cake. Later on my brother got the awesome cakes (kirby, mario..). So now (since last year) we bake him cakes and try to decorate them creatively. We just started out so we still suck but I think this one is another little success
My dads birthday was the same day we won with 2-1 from Brazil, and we didn’t want to show his age on the cake so we made the soccer field and the teams Like I said, we really suck (and Brazil didn’t play in yellow, and we didn’t have blue!), but I think my dad liked it anyway
Here’s my dad stabbing cake…:)
summer activities
Jun 27th
This is my third post this month.. what happened? I’m usually such an active blogger but I must say I’ve had to wait for this summer for a long time and I’m enjoying every bit of sun I can get. Thankfully someone sent a major heat-wave our way and our cold and windy little country has become a tropical paradise
But there’s more to tell than just how great the weather has been. There’s some major stuff going on First of all I’ve washed all my fleece and it’s dried and ready for some heavy carding action. Unfortunately as it’s still very hot I’m in no mood to start working on warm alpaca fleece right now, so the pretty clean fleeces are just going to have to wait.
The other thing on my mind right now, like most other people in the world, is the World Cup. I love soccer I was raised with a soccer fanatic father who used to play himself, so soccer was a big thing when I grew up. It still makes me happy to think that every four years the whole world is united for a few weeks because of their love for soccer (well… winning the world cup hehe).
Anyway, there’s not much time knitting while watching soccer, and no knitting means no blogging I’ve also already talked about my spinning wheel and my 5,5:1 ratio… this, unfortunately for me, means that I can’t spin while watching the game either.. so I just sit there and watch the game as my hands do nothing but relax (I do get the feeling my hands are enjoying the well-deserved rest too!).
Obviously it doesn’t mean I don’t knit anmymore at all! I’ve been working on some things, but the progress is very slow. Beside all of the above reasons for me not to knit there’s one other… I’ve already mentioned it here, but I guess I can say something more about it I just handled my first workshop and I’m really excited to do some more This blog is all about me stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to organize my life, and right now I’m doing exacty that.
On my internships I found out I value my personal time much more than I used to think I did. I thought I wouldn’t mind working full days, and I still don’t think I’d mind, but I will have to enjoy every moment of it. I don’t want to end up waking up feeling like working is a waste of my day, and starting to wish my days away so it can be weekend. I don’t want to waste my time and I don’t want to wish my life away like that. So now that I’m still a student and don’t have anything to lose this will be my first priority. I need to think about these things now before I end up being stuck in routine….
Sorry people the rant ends here…. From this point on it’s about showing you the progress of the past few weeks
Guess what.. I got a birthday present from my parents I noticed I tend not to knit in the summer (because it’s hot) and sewing skirts and dresses seems like the way to go. But tho I tried my best, the edgings never came out really professional.. and now I know why Lockmachines are the shit!
So obviously I bought the latest burda style and tried to make this pretty dress… So far it turned out to be a little more tricky than I anticipated, but I think I can handle it
Since I just got the machine and don’t fully understand it yet I tried it on some fabric I had lying around. My grandmother gave me this blue fabric with the large pink flowers on it. I really like it tho it’s a bit much
Before this ridiculous heat-wave it was rather rainy and cold, so I felt like knitting again.. unfortunately for me I did the cast-on a bit too tight so I need to restart this one, but I really like the pattern. It’s the lace capelet in malarbigo lace oceanos.
When I reached half of the 300 grams I got really bored and decided to n-ply the spun singles on the bobbin. So far I’m not even halfway I think but I’m happy with the way the colors are blending. I’m still not sure what it’ll become but I’m sure it’ll be fine
The singles weren’t all that even at some points but the plying evened it out so I’m pretty happy with the way this is working out. I must say that my ratio is really really annoying when it comes to plying. Spinning the singles is becoming a pain but the plying just downright sucks…. The end of the singles on the bobbin (where I started out plying) didn’t have enough twist at certain points because my hands would start to work faster than my feet.. even tho my feet were treadling pretty darn fast they still couldn’t keep it up. So I ended with a nice cramp in my foot and undertwisted singles……..
Tomorrow I’ll see if I can do something about it
updates…
Jun 15th
well.. you know how real life catches up with you and demands your attention by sitting on you with the weight of a fat sumo wrestler? I’ve spent some time working on schoolstuff and washing fleece besides hanging it out to dry in the sun.
It was my first time washing fleece and I must say I felt pretty overwhelmed by the smell… another thing that took me by surprise was the amount of washes and rinses needed to get the stink (and the goo) out.. I’ll have to re-wash the brown wensleydale but other than that it looks fine enough to me.
So today my cards came in the mail and I thought I’d give it a shot. The (HD; *drooooollll*) pics were made with my new phone (samsung wave; it’s totally awesome). Sorry for the short blog but there’s not much to show due to the slowness on my side.
no matter how much I spin it seems like I don’t get any farther
my cards ‘in action’, it’s not an action shot really I just wanted some fleece there
Two years ago I planted some strawberry plant seeds and they grew into a cute plant which gave strawberries, but before they turned a real reddish color the birds snatched them away (awww cuute… ). So the whole time the plant gave pretty fruits the birds were very happy (but we had no strawberries). It appears that now that we have cats the birds are scared to come close (they should… and I’ll show you why ) so we might taste some of these
See what happened? Our cats, like apparently many other cats, love to catch flies or.. well any living insect… one jump is all it took.. our poor pretty ikea lamp.. thank goodness they’re cheap
see the guilty face….. I KNOW it was you…. (I can’t prove it tho… I was just in time to see them both run… )
