One more hat completed as demoed by Tido unwillingly. Did the cable on a pair of socks first then I thought a cabled hat would be nice too.
I have not been blogging for a while. Interests took me back to spinning lately. I purchased a e-spinner from HansenCrafts. It took maybe 2 weeks to come but it arrived safely eventually. I have been using it to spin ever since. A bit everyday while I watch TV with Leo. I placed it on the arm of the couch between us and now I can sit with him in the evening to watch a movie together. It’s a welcome time for the both of us. Usually I sit in the bedroom watching my video or using the iPad while he sits in the living room watching his favorite TV shows. Now we can watch something together that we mutually like. Good thing.
I am almost done with the first 16oz ecru wool I got into lace weight. The WooLee winder flyer is a joy to have also. I don’t need to move the yarn across the flyer any more, it winds the yarn evenly onto the flyer automatically back and forth across the flyer. I ended up with a nicely wound flyer, no need to transfer it to other bobbins to produce even bobbins for plying. Can’t wait to ply the yarn with the spinner too. It is very easy and fast.
There are three 1 lb wool/cotten fleece waiting for me to get to them after this. I am really enjoying the spinning now. My back doesn’t hurt any more as I am sitting comfortably on the couch when I spin with my feet up. A drink at hand, the lake view on the left and TV ahead. Heaven!!
I also got a new skeiner by CrazyMonkey. It took almost a month to get here. I have already assembled it with Leo’s help. Have not used it yet. The lace yarn I’m spinning on the e-spinner would be the first candidate. It would be a lot easier and faster than using the Niddy Noddy. yea!!
Bought an Apple TV 2. Since I am subscribing to Lynda.com to learn adobe software, and watching the twit TV podcasts, using the iPad is sometimes annoying. It flips and flops and I have to leave it on one side and having the knitting instructions on the left. My neck was not happy about this arrangement. that’s when I remembered Apple TV’s air share. Now I can tranfer the video from the iPad to the Apple TV if I want to watching a training video or just use Apple TV’s podcast tool to view TWIT.
I am learning new patterns from the Gold DVD with Tim. I made each into a clip and copied them to the iPad. I can also use the Air Sharing on the Apple TV to review the patterns on TV. Yea!!
So I’m learning video editing with Premiere Pro using Lynda.com. The dancing video provides me a good project to learn it with. So very happy.
So with all these things going on in my life, I neglected blogging. That’s the story of my life though. I move from one interest to another. Over time, I do cycle back again and again and life is never boring.
I was in my usual hair saloon getting a hair cut and coloring a couple of days ago. I brought my WIP sock to knit while I sit and wait for the color to set. As I was happily knitting away thinking how smart I was to remember bringing my knitting to pass the boring time. My hairdresser came up and tried to be friendly and said, ” I think knitting is such a good activity for the old people.” That got my antenna up. She contineud, “You know, when you get old, your eye sight is going and your brain is going. Not to say that you are old, you know. But knitting can keep the brain engaged and keep your fingers moving and help your eyes, too” Well, ok, the helping the eyes part obviously doesn’t make sense. But hey, how dare of her to categorize knitting as an ‘old ladies’ activity!!! Not that I’m getting old (besides the point that I need coloring to cover my gray), ha, I like knitting because it fulfills my need to create and watch something useful or beautiful grow from nothing. Why should this be only for the old people. I know lots of young(er) people are doing it. My son’s girl friend in her 20s wants to learn how to knit.
So people, don’t call knitting an old lady’s activity to keep them from going senile, ok? !!
stepping down from the soap box….
I’ve picked up the Rona Shawl again lately. For a while it was not something that I enjoy knitting. The yarn I picked is too thin for the fingers to hold it comfortably. The pattern is complicated so you have to be on top of the pattern repeats for each row. And if I made a mistake, fixing lace is not my cup of tea. So that often gets frustrating. But in the past 20 rounds or so, I started to memorize the repeating pattern for each row and found that I actually could remember it and knitting became a bit easier. It has 153 rounds in total. So i’m getting close at round 124. Doesn’t seem that it is going to be a very big shawl but this is the first circular shawl I’ve ever made. So I have no idea how big it really will be.
Thinking about possible projects to bring for the trip. Although shawl is a good one to bring, I like to have one that doesn’t need much attention while I try to catch the next connecting flight and listening for the boarding announcement. I have a lot of my hand spun yarn in brown. Maybe I can find a pattern to take that with me for the trip. I don’t know if the Rona shawl will be finished or not by the time I leave for the tirp and whether that will be enough if I bring it to last the whole time.
And what do I load my iphone up with to listen to on the way? What presents to bring? Ahhhh, the dreaded trip….
Well, I had every intention to get out of the house today and do something or go somewhere by myself. Leo went to the garden to plant more vegetables and flowers. I took a shower and put on my jeans and was browsing the web when Leo walked in the door. Talked to Connie for a bit and just decided to go downstairs and work on the PC a bit. Oh yeah, and open the mail that has been accumulating for weeks. I hate mail. So I try to ignore them as long as I can before guilt gets the better of me and forces me to take care them. That’s what I did this afternoon and filed those that need to be filed. Did a big of organizing the office using the new plastic organizer we bought a few weeks ago.
Came up around 4pm and started back on the two socks on two circular needles. Man, I really don’t like this method. The hands feel so confined and restricted and the yarn is constantly twisting around each other. It doesn’t help that I am using the yarn from one ball, every row or two I have to untwist the yarn and find the right needle to use again. I only have 2 16″ and they are a bit too short for me to deal with the socks. Anyway, I have been struggling with this one and avoiding knitting it for a long time. One saving factor is the cuff down method. It’s only the second time I tried to knit socks from the cuffs down. So learning the method makes it interesting and I quite like the construction of the socks knitted this way. Especially the short rows done by K2tog or ssp instead of wrapping is more appealing to me. Picking up the stitches along the heel is also much smoother than the other way. I may start knitting socks cuffs down for a while but I’m going back to the dpns. I love knitting socks with dpns.
The skein I plied the other day and washed and dried did not have enough twist in the first half of the skein. So I ran it through the wheel again adding more twist to it. It took quite a while as the skein got tangled in the middle I had to wind it up from the other side and paying extra attention in untangling the darn thing. But eventually I conquered it and then I wound it to the swift and then to the ball winder. I got 400 yards for this skein. Hmm, what can I knit with it?
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| From Yarns |
The finaly product looks better but it is the first wheel spun yarn, there are lots of irragularities and vm and over spun or under spun spots. But it’s my first attempt so I will give myself some slack. Then I started on the new roving I got from the Great Lakes Fiber festival, it’s border leicester dark brown. More crimp than the coopworth I worked with a bit more difficult to spin for some reason. But I will stick with it and hopefully it will get easier with practice. The drafting is still not even.
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| From Yarns |
I have a spinning station setup behind the chairs facing the TV so I can watch some TV when I spin. Well, hoping to watch TV when I spin. The swift and the ball winder mounted on the portable coffee table next to me. I’m quite happy about the setup having all the tools I need at arms reach.
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| From Yarns |
I went back to sock knitting in order to watch the Cavs. It’s so close it kept me on the edge the whole time. Leo gave up to go to bed but can’t help coming back to watch the ending. We lost. But it was so close. These two teams are very equal in their game but Magic got lucky again. It’s such a disappointment to watch your team lose and you just can’t help really getting into it and feeling the stress and the anxiety as the seconds count down to zero. Now I’m tired and finally getting ready to go to bed.
So that’s the day. I am pretty productive all in all and yet I stayed home all day. Oh and the little geeselings have grown a lot since I last saw them. I took the second picture from inside the house so the color isn’t as vibrant. But you can kind of tell the little babies have grown up a lot.
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| From Condo |
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| From Condo |
Yeah!!!! I got a loaner wheel today at the Great Lakes Fiber Festival in Wayne County fairground. Tido here is checking it out too.
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| From Yarns |
And of course, I immediately sat down and started spinning. I was so wrapped in it, I think I spun for 5 hours straight. Only stopped briefly to put down some food that Leo heated up for me and went back to it again. The result is this:
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| From Yarns |
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| From Yarns |
I finally got the hang of it and started to spin the thin yarn I am aiming for. It’s not there yet to mke a lace yarn, but I’m pretty happy about it. Peggy from the yarn shop I took the spindle lesson from have this great program where you can rent to own a wheel. And She had this Louet S10 right there at the festival. And she gave me a 5% discount for it being gently used. 🙂 I was sold at the first sight. And I picked up 2 1/2 lb of Border Leicaster brwon roving also from her so I can spin it up and make a sweater for Leo.
My back is achy from sitting in the same position for hours but my spirit is still high and I can’t wait to spin two bobbins and ply it up to compare with my hand spun.
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| From Knitting |
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| From Knitting |
Yea!!! My first spindle spun two ply skein of yarn from Louet’s Coopworth light brown. It’s about 180 yard and I wasted a lot of fiber in the beginning learning how to spin. So out of 1/2 pound of roving I got 180 yard. But it looks pretty good for the first skein. I’m working on the second 1/2 pound now and we’ll see how much yarn I can make out of it now that I don’t waste as much.
I’m trying to achieve a lace weight yarn eventually but this one is more like a worsted weight even though I think I’ve spun as thin as I possibly can. Still, I know there are lots of room for improvement still. I’m watching wheel spinning videos on youtube trying to get as much understanding as I can right now so I can move up to a wheel some day. I’m pretty glad that I picked the right fiber and first spindle to learn the craft. And the lesson I had also helped tremendously. I learned that the singles look kinky and it’s not a failure. I got so frustrated the first few tries when I see only kinky yarn came out and I didn’t know how to control the amount of fiber going in either so it has lots of unspun fiber caught in the over-spun yarn. It was quite a sight. Not.
Now I can draft better and only let a small amount of fiber into the twist, I don’t waste as much. And I learned that playing from both ends of a ball makes it a lot easier than from two separate balls. I can check for balance for each spin and only wind on if the yarn is balanced. Don’t know how I can adjust on a wheel. But spinning with the Golding spindle is easier than the Greensleeves Bare Bone. It spins longer. The Bare Bone is still nice, it just doesn’t spin as long and stable.
And all this improvement happened within a week after the lesson. Before the lesson I tried on and off for a couple of weeks and finally set it down out of frustration thinking I’ll never be able to make yarn. The lesson didn’t really teach me much technically, but it did help me to understand the process better, especially drafting the roving more. I was slowly getting it on my own thinking I could split the roving but I didn’t do the pre-draft so the yarn was still very thick. After predrafting, the yarn is much thinner and consistent. Although I drop the spindle more often trying to spin as thin as I can, the yarn is much better looking. Can’t wait to try other kinds of fiber. This first one is supposed to be easy to spin for the beginners, but it’s not very soft. I like to spin some very soft lace yarn and sock yarn in the future.
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| From Knitting |
Yea!!! My Golding Aromatherapy Spindle arrived today. It came very quickly, I ordered on Monday and it arrived on Thursday. It came in a huge box with tons of peanuts surrounding it. I couldn’t wait and dropped everything and spun for a while. I love it! It does spin for a long time and I put a few drops of Bath and Body Works Vanilla and Jasmine oil on a cotton ball and stuffed it in the little cup. I was in heaven. I really, really love it.
Yesterday, I went to a local yarn shop and took a spinning wheel lesson. The instructor talked a lot about the whole process of spinning from fleece to roving before we actually started spinning. I didn’t do very well. With all my experience with spindle spinning, I could not keep the yarn going. The twist gets into the drafting zone over and over again and I just couldn’t get the hang of it. When I finally thought I was doing something, it was time to go. Darn. Anyway, we were spinning on the Louet’s S51. I am going to try some other wheels before I decide which one to get. I know I will eventually be spinning on the wheel to produce yarn in a timely fashion. But I won’t give up the spindle spinning either.
My spindle spinning is getting more and more consistent. It’s a zen like activity where you get into a zone and let the hands do the repetitive tasks and the mind wonders. Sometimes I listen to the Cast On podcast and enjoy the yarn talk and the music that Brenda Dayne put on her show. It almost makes me feel guilty to be doing exactly what I love to do. Strange how we view things. Lots of time we are brain washed by the teachings that we were rasied with. You have to be working or doing something you don’t particularly enjoy for money’s sake and everything else is sinful because you indulge yourslef in the things you like to do. Guilty or not, I do enjoy my life and should work on getting rid of the negative influences that do not help with your mental health anyway.
I did a bit of replanting today. The bamboo plant we got from the oriental store has not been looking very good after the cats got into it and nibbled off a lot of the leaves. So I took the scissors out and cut out all those bad leaves and shaped some others. Dumped the old water out and mixed a new batch of water with miracle grow. Hopefully, it will get some life back into the leaves. I also combined the two Christmas cactus that have outgrown their pots. And the poor Christmas pointsettia that have been losing leaves for a while, I repot it in a bigger pot with fresh soil. Hopefully it will come back to life too.
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| From Herbs | From Herbs |
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| From Herbs |
Oh there is the geese vs swans battle outside the window right now. A pair of geese with their little tiny babies are walking along the lake by our condo, two swans came swimming with the wings up trying to scare off the geese. The parents were protective of their babies and kept a watchful eye on the swans. Quite interesting to see. The neighbor also got her camera out and was taking pictures of the scene.
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| From Pets | From Pets |
We went to Herts in Akron and got some herb plants and seeds today. Leo planted some Saturday for me in a containter. Hopefully, we’ll have something to cook with in a few weeks. We also stopped by the community garden to check on the lot he signed up. They haven’t staked it out yet, we have to wait till Memorial day weekend. But he is going to grow some plants from seeds to get them ready by then. I’m looking forward to see his garden this year.
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| From Herbs |
I also ordered the Ashford Niddy Noddy the other day from Woolery. It came today.
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| From Knitting |
Now I’m ready to make skeins of yarn. One step further to the final product. Just can’t wait to knit something from my first attempt at spinning. Oh yeah, ordered the Aromatherapy Spindle from Golding yesterday. Really can’t wait to get that in my hands and see what the rave is about in the spinning community for them.
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| From Knitting |
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| From Knitting |
I finally finished the feather and fan throw that I planned for my suregery recovery. It’s a very soft and fuzzy yarn and makes a wonderful TV blanket or car blanket. I guess I can even put it on my shoulder if I want to take a quick trip outside to the mailbox. Very versatile. Thinking about making another one.