Catching up

Ok, there's a lot going on in my family and around my house...

I'm going to try and catch you all up in one post with lots of pictures.

Halloween - we had lots of kids this year - went thru 2 large bags of candy and had to shut our porch light out at 8 pm. Here's a cute pic of Summer and Zach - niece and nephew




I finished three shawls.
Another brown handspun Forest Canopy for my sister Juanita,


a commercial yarn Forest Canopy for Mom,


and my Kiri out of handspun exotics for me me me.







Here are some gratuitous cat pron... We have 4 cats - a 14 year old long haired calico - Cameo - my sweet old gal.


Two adults - Candy



and Stormy,




and a youngster - Baker Baker.



Here's a shot of them all on the bed at once - this rarely happens. Cameo is picky and doesn't like any of the others to come close to her.




Here's the reason we bought the new couch - Maegan and Sarah spend the night at our house almost every other weekend - this new couch gives them both room to sleep on it


The couch also got put to good use on Thanksgiving - the reclining feature was appreciated by all - my son and some of the girls


My mom and a couple of sisters



The kids had a good time at Thanksgiving - look at them playing fort under the table.



I have to finish the last minute details for my sons wedding this weekend. I'll probably have more updates soon.

Kiri finally done

No pictures yet, I just sewed in the ends last night.

At SOAR this year, I received a number of exotic fibers as samples from peace of yarn.

There was cashmere, cashmere/silk, ultra fine merino, angora, yak, camel down, etc...

About 1.5 ounces total for 10 different fibers - most of them white or off white.

When I got home, I scored an electric drum carder with a fine drum, so I carded all the white and off white exotic fibers together with some merino I already had. I added about 25% more in bleached tussah silk to get four ounces of yummy batts.

I spun it medium fine laceweight and the single came out slightly slubby in places, but pretty.

I already had 3/4 bobbin of very fine bleached tussah singles for a different project that I had stalled on - so I plyed those two together to get 1200 yards of a very pretty off white yarn - total weight a little less than 5 ounces.

I have knit the Forest Canopy Shawl 6 times so far and wanted to do a different one.I like my shawl knitting to be a memorizable pattern - written with a chart, but a small enough repeat to be able to knit without looking at the pattern every row every stitch. Kiri fit the bill perfectly.

So, in between the felted bags and the watch caps that I've made for holiday presents, I finally finished knitting the shawl. This was my take along knitting. Everyone at work has seen me knitting it and are waiting for me to wear it to work.

I have less than about 20 yards of the yarn left and did 20 repeats of the pattern rather than the 14 called for. I dressed it on to my 7 foot triangle loom to see if I was going to be able to block it on there like I've done all my other shawls and it fit, but a very soft block. Once I wet it down with a sprayer, the shawl sagged and I was afraid it was going to stretch all out of shape. As it is, it's very large on me and I love it.

I finished it last Friday and then sewed in the ends last night so that I could wear it to my guild meeting.

I'm hoping to get some pics of it soon

Another Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl

Here are some unblocked pics of the most recent incarnation of the Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl.





More later once it's blocked.

MS3 - half of clue one

I joined the Mystery Stole 3 KAL very late - yesterday in fact. I cast on last night hanging out at Tempe Yarn and Fiber and was able to get thru the first 50 rows of the first clue.



The second clue comes out today, so I am going to hustle up to see if I can get the other 50 rows of clue one out of the way this morning.

This is my very first KAL and I am hoping to have fun. This is already the most complicated lace I have every knit - everything else has been small pattern, easily memorized. Every row on this is different and there is no pattern repeat so far.

Lots to say - more later

I have a bunch of stuff to blog about - finished my sister's socks, knitted for the 4th at my favorite LYS, cast on the first clue for the MS3, and the most important thing of all - I got a call today saying that the waiting list for SOAR finally got to me!

Yippee! I am going to SOAR this year!.

I will try to take some pics tomorrow morning before work.

On Saturday, DeVia and I are off to Portland again. She will be at a conference, but I will be hanging out with the PDX bunch and trying to get a group together to go to Woodland woolworks on Monday or Tuesday.

green silk

Remember this silk on the bobbin? I originally intended to ply it with some gorgeous dyed merino roving. When I took the bobbins and the roving to Yarn Yankers last weekend - the harsh light of day revealed that the two do not go together at all.

So, I plyed the bobbins together and ended up with this 790 yards of 100% silk.

From Blog photos

The weight is about 4 ounces - so about 3500 ypp. I am looking at shawl patterns to see what will bring out the shine and color of this.

From Blog photos

I love the teal accents in the green.

The purple Shawl - before and after blocking

I love the way the brown and purple in this play across the whole shawl. Amazing what blocking will do for the lace.

From Blog photos

From Blog photos

From Blog photos

The brown blob blocking

I finished the Forest Canopy Shawl and it is a delight to knit. Very easy to memorize the pattern and the instructions are very clear. I did many more repeats than the pattern called for, as my yarn was finer and my gauge swatch was more stitches per inch. My first lace shawl.

I knit this out of a fingering or lighter hand spun yarn. The wool is chocolate Polwarth from Rovings.com and I blended it with some silk I bought at SOAR. The ball of yarn weighed 6.5 ounces and was 850 yards. I have very little left.

The colors of the silk are very hard to see but give the yarn quite a bit of tweediness in some places. I am not sure that I like it, but will wait to see what it looks like after blocking.

Blocking on the Tri loom, if I was going to do it over I would change how I put it on the loom. I did the top first and then tried to do the sides. I should have done it from the center out three ways.

More pictures when my camera starts working again. I think I need to replace the batteries in it.