Thursday mishmash

It's grey and "cold" and I'm up to my ears in secret knitting projects, so I don't have much of interest to show you. I am in love with this pattern and am considering making them for every single person I know. I have finished the sock in my last post, and am hoping that I can cast on for the second one on the bus tonight without screwing up too badly. I am two bobbins (of three) in to the November Fiber Club offering (picture here) which is lovely, but which I seem to be chronically underspinning - I think I may have to graduate to the fast flyer for "everyday" spinning (yikes!). I have two presents left on The List 2008, plus finishing off Boo's Tomten, which still has only half an arm (and no hood). One of the last two presents has been chosen (Rav link here) and I think the other will be a bias knit Eye of Partridge stitch scarf with garter edging that I've had percolating in my brain for a while now, using the yarn I spun at Yarn School. Assuming I have enough of it that is...methinks I might have to add some plying twist to that second skein.

What else is going on...Devil is still not convinced about the necessity for clothes in December. To be fair, she wears clothes, it's coats and pants that she's not so excited about. Occasionally I can convince her that the dress-over-pants look is a good one, and hopefully on those days, her classmates' parents don't wonder about my parenting skills (Why is that girl never dressed appropriately?). Boo has embraced the joys of verbal communication: (in the car on the way to daycare) "Mama. Mama! MAMA!!!!!" "What is it Boo?" (A beatific look through the roof of the car) "Eh-plane!" She has also finally stopped using "Daddy" to refer both to Ironman and her sister. However, she only occasionally makes any really distinction between "No" and "Nyah" (which means affirmative). Grandparents, consider yourselves warned.

Thankfully, tonight is Knit Night, so tomorrow I should have something reasonable and/or entertaining to discuss. Like Tartanic. Failing that, if I get my act in gear, I have a candidate for Fiber Friday that I really should blog about. It's been spun for a month now!

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Ah! I almost forgot. Progress for November:

Knitting:
Devil's Tomten
Christmas Present #5

Other:
Dyeing 2 lbs of wool for a coat for me. With the girls. Fun times. And a purple driveway.

Dyeing with Devil and Boo

I've been doing some dyeing with the girls recently. The first attempt, with Devil, resulted in some lovely brightly colored Romney locks, which I got as a gift with my hand carders.

Violet, Scarlet, Turquoise and Sun Yellow - colors picked by Devil and dyed with no standards whatsoever (i.e. Devil dumped in a bunch of 1% stock into a jar until she liked the color and we put some locks in). These were microwaved for about 6 minutes each I believe. We rinsed them out in the big dye box, spun out the excess water in the washing machine, and hung them out to dry.

Now the question is what to do with them. They'll be good practice for the hand cards, but what sort of gawdawful yarn will these colors make? Yikes!

Our next project involved the turkey roaster. I had a little problem the last time I ordered dyes - somehow I found myself on the roving page at Dharma Trading Company, and ended up with a box containing 2 oz of dye and 2 lbs of wool. Hunh. So I'm looking at this massive pile of wool and wondering what the heck I'm going to do with it. And sitting next to the pile was the Fall issue of Interweave Knit, which contains the pattern for the Peacoat of Gloriousness (Rav link) that I am completely in love with. Not that I need a wool peacoat in Houston, but heck, next fall I will definitely want one. So my new spinning goal is to spin up enough yarn to make it.

The first yarn (worsted weight) is going to be from this wool, dyed purple. I think the variegation in the fiber will work well as yarn, but I'll probably have to sample* a bit before I commit to spinning up the whole mess. The second yarn (the pattern calls for two different yarns held doubled) I think is going to be merino/tencel, dyed violet, spun DK weight. At least that is the plan. Who knows what it will actually become.

This attempt was somewhat less successful in that there is now a large purple splotch on my driveway (thanks Boo!). We did these in the roaster and I ended up dyeing with twice as much dye as yarn (by weight). I had to add a bit more water to keep things from drying out too much. 3 hours at ~175 degrees and then left it to cool overnight.

This is a lot of purple fiber, people. I've got two balls of this stuff now, and they are approximately the size of 40 lb pumpkins. Much, much larger then my head. Maybe Devil and Boo's heads stuck together. In any event, I'm either going to need a ball winder or many more bobbins to spin all this stuff up. Anyone want to take bets on wether or not I can get it done by next summer so I can knit the damn coat before it gets cold?

* Oh no, a second dreaded "S" word!

Halloween

I know Halloween was over two weeks ago but it takes me a while to get to these things sometimes. About two months ago, Devil suddenly and inexplicably became obsessed with all things Princess. Princess shoes, Princess videos, ballerinas, the color pink...I'm not sure exactly where this came from, but I've decided that I will blame daycare.

She came with me to the fabric store to pick out just the right color pink, and we came away with the most gawdawful shade of fluorescent neon pink I've seen in a long time. In tulle. After making this costume I have sworn to never sew with tulle again, although Ironman rightly pointed out that I can't really seriously make that statement until both of my children are married. Harumph.

Anyway, we went trick-or-treating with a Beeyootiful Bright Pink Princess Ballerina TM and a lion. Who refused to wear her hat, to which I spent many an hour hot gluing small loops of ribbon to make a mane. Thank goodness Ironman was there to take up the slack.

Go, go, go, go!

Two extremes

So the last time we saw this project, I was bemoaning my lack of competitiveness in the Ravelympics and making myself blind with black beads and fingering weight alpaca.

I'm still making myself blind, but the shawl has grown considerably, and I am now only 50-something rows away from being done. Hooray! Granted, I'm doing one less repeat then is called for, but from my extremely scientific calculations* this thing is going to be at least 40+ inches across. Plenty big enough. The only issue is that the rows are approximately 550 stitches each (and only going to get bigger), so I get maybe four rows done per day commuting to and from work. Which means 5 more weeks of knitting. And Christmas is only 6 weeks away right? So...hmmm...we'll see.

To combat the wear and tear on my noggin from Ms. Isis up there, I cast on a few days ago for something nice and simple - garter stitch.

Devil has decided that she needs a "coat", and due to our impending relocation across the pond, I've decided that I need to do some serious stashbusting, and fast. Enter some stashed Lamb's Pride Bulky (in a barely acceptable purple color, since there was no pink to be had), and a couple of evenings with EZ's The Knitting Workshop and Alias, Season 1 DVDs, and I've gotten almost to the armpits of my first ever Tomten (Rav link).

Look at the squishy garter stitch! Absolutely the perfect brainless evening knitting.

So Isis for the bus commute, and Tomten for after the kids go to bed. Or for Knit Night, since I brought Isis last week but was extremely uncommunicative (which totally negates the entire point of going to Knit Night**, right ladies?).

* I pulled on the center to stretch it out, put it next to a piece of paper for comparison and said "That looks like about 16 inches, and with 50 more rows, I'm sure I can get 4 more!" You know, Scientific and shit...
** Which is, of course, to talk very loudly, share completely inappropriate and embarrassing stories about our children/spouses/pets, and scare the folks who go to Whole Foods to, you know, buy food or something!

Learning from my past mistakes

Please note

This is not happening again.