What's that thing with the string and the sticks called again?

Oh, yeah. Knitting.
I'm still plugging away at the Drops sweater, knit with my handspun Cotswold. It's not going quickly, but it's going.
The sleeves are done:You can see the tie about midway up where I connected them in order to knit them at the same time.

And I've started the back:



The little pink scraps of yarn at the sides are marking my last decrease row, so I have an accurate point to measure from. ("Dec 1 st each side every 1 1/8 inches.") (Or every 3cm, but my metric ruler has gone missing, so inches it is.) (It's just as well, since I can only think in inches anyway...)

And speaking of all things wooly, here's some fuzzlump pictures I took the other day. (On one of those rare days when it wasn't raining...)



This last one is a self-kinnear:

With deep regret, ribbit...

I'm going to be traveling in a few weeks (It will be warm! There will be sunshine!) so I'm trying to plan some traveling knitting. My current project, the Great and Powerful Niebling, is much too complicated for airport/airplane knitting, let alone visiting-beloved-family knitting, so I've been trying to come up with an alternative.
Of course, the urge to cast on something new is a powerful force to contend with. My queue runneth over (both on Rav and off) and I have yarn in the stash that is practically shouting at me.
But.
There are stacks of bags in my craft room, full of UFOs, that are also shouting at me. Guilt is also a powerful force to contend with. Projects that were once best beloved, now unloved, smothered in plastic bags.
I need to finish something.
Or, at least, continue something.
The one that pulls me hardest is the sweater I started with my handspun Cotswold.
The reason it ended up abandoned in a plastic bag is that my gauge swatch lied. That, and an overwhelming load of sentiment.
I cast on the sleeves just before I flew to KC in 2009 to say goodbye to my mother. I knit while I sat at her bedside, keeping vigil through the days and nights. Even when I realized that the gauge was off, that it was going to be way too large, I knit on, keeping my hands and mind busy with the soothing routine of stitch by stitch, row by row.
When I got home, I couldn't continue with it. I knew it had to be frogged, but by that time it was all tied up with the loss of my mother. There was no point in knitting on, but I couldn't face ripping it out, letting it go.
I folded the knitting gently into a plastic bag, and set it aside.

I'm ready now.

This

turned into this


turned into this


and into the water it went.

It's time. I will begin again.
Though the original stitches are gone, the yarn and the sweater will always be connected to my mother. It will be a hug from her that I can always hold in my heart.

Still no chart. Though I now have some interesting lumps on my head...

I've gotta take a break from this charting madness. I could just do this so easily with a sheet of graph paper and a felt-tip marker... Why, oh, why isn't it just as simple to do it in a post-able format?
I knew I wasn't going to like the 21st century.

In the meantime, I've been looking at pretty pictures here. Love Drops Designs (Garnstudio) - more fabulous patterns than you can shake a circular at! I started out looking for a pattern for a vest; I've got some lovely yarn that was Christmassed at me and a vest seemed like a good plan.
Then, of course, I got distracted. I found this slipper pattern - and I am seriously in love! I don't actually need another pair of slippers, but I won't let that stop me from making another pair of slippers. It's all about the process, after all.
And while I was peeking around, I found what might be the perfect pattern for my handspun Cotswold.
Cardigan? Check. Simple lines? Check. Classic style? Check. Gauge matches my swatch? Check. Go check it out! (Is it okay to post their photo here? I don't know the rules...)

Catching up (again...)

Saturday was a gorgeous day, and since I was afraid that it might be The Very Last One, I got my butt in gear and washed up the brown alpaca yarn, and the last batch of the Cotswold, then hung them out on the deck to dry.

My spinning isn't great, but damned if it isn't well-balanced!

(And that's not blue sky you see there - that's a blue tarp that we've put up until we can get a proper roof put on... Our 5-year plan has unraveled into a 10-year plan, which is coasting toward a 15-year plan. Damn that Real Life stuff, anyhow...)

There was just enough of a breeze to dry the yarn nicely without blowing it out into the driveway. And luckily, I remembered it was out there late that night and brought it in - we had rain in the wee hours, and I would have been back to square one...

The other big project Saturday was getting new plastic on the hoophouse. Winter had left it looking like this:

We had untwisted as much of the framework as we could last spring, and re-built a much smaller version, but hadn't covered it. Now, with Jack Frost breathing down our necks, we had to get some protection up for our tomatoes and peppers.
Mission accomplished:
We're looking at killer frosts this week, so we'll be holding our breath. The garden has been running so late with all the rain and overcast skies that we haven't been able to harvest enough yet. I'd have my fingers crossed, but that makes it SO hard to type...

And just because I haven't put up a picture of the "little ones" in a while:
There's no way to get all 24 in one picture. If I stood back far enough to frame them all in, they'd be out the coop door and halfway to Canada before I could drop the camera...
And here's a closeup. The fellow in the foreground is a fellow - the comb gives him away. Just behind him and to the left is a hen.
Hard to believe that's this is what they looked like only a couple of months ago...

Peep, peep.

Gone to the dogs..... er, chickens...

My youngest daughter is infinitely amused that my "knitting blog" has more chicken content than knitting content.
More pics of our Rhode Island Reds - they're about 2 months old now.
When I opened the coop door, they all mobbed me. For such dumb creatures, they're extremely curious...

Notice the differences in their combs - we'll be able to tell the boys from the girls soon.

They're still trying to decide if the camera is something to eat, or if it's a chicken-eating monster...


I washed one more double-handful of the Cotswold fleece - then I'm going to call it close enough. I went back and counted all the yards of yarn I had and discovered that, instead of the 900+ yards that I thought I had, there were actually a little over 1400 yards. Woohoo! Apparently I forgot to add a few skeins to the list as I was going along. (If I'm going to screw up, better it's that way than writing down the same skeins twice...)
So, here's the last batch of Cotswold (for now. I've still got about half a fleece in my sewing room) drying out on the deck. I've sandwiched it between a couple of baker's cooling racks to keep the wind from snatching it away.



And a little closer view:
Those little ringlets are really cute in the fleece, but a real bear to card out. I've been using the hand-cards, since I still can't find anything reliable to use as a drive belt on the drum carder. I've had some success with large rubber-bands, but they wear out fast.

And, since I've been such a very good girl, and the last batch of Cotswald is drying... I got to do this:

Alpaca at last!! It's currently soaking, and I'm off now to rinse.
Woohoo!!

And, last but not least, I bought myself Selbuvotter for my birthday! It's the first pattern book I've ever seen where I want to knit ALL the patterns... Bless Knit Picks and their book sale!
I've already cast something on...

Everyone's getting mittens and gloves for Christmas this year, I'll tell ya! And possibly made of alpaca, if I can get off my butt and start with the spinning.

Still and forever spinning Cotswold

Up to 940 yards. Will it never end?
I plan to dye the yarn before I knit it, and I'm scared to death that I'll run out of yarn before I finish the sweater. So that means I should err on the side of Way Too Much, rather than Almost Enough. Now if I can only determine where that line is. In order to figure my necessary yardage, I could try knitting a gauge swatch from the undyed wool, but the dying process could change the gauge. Sort of a Catch 22 - can't figure the gauge till I dye, but can't dye until I have enough, and can't figure how much is enough without a gauge swatch.
Just shoot me now.

Still spinning Cotswold

I'm being very very strong. Very. The alpaca fleece is still sitting in bags. I'm not washing it, because that would tempt me to card it. And all that lovely carded alpaca would tempt me to spin it. And then I wouldn't be finishing the Cotswold. Argh.
Must be strong.
Deep breath.
*sigh*
600 yards of 3-ply Cotswold and counting....

I used to be good at math....

When my father gave me his old spinning wheel, he included the lazy kate and 3 bobbins. This worked great as long as I was spinning 2-ply yarns, but left me unable to spin 3-ply - I needed at least one more bobbin. At the last Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival, I picked up two more bobbins and happily spun my first 3-ply yarn - some alpaca that I spun and hand dyed in shades of blue as a Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. (It turned out beautifully, but I didn't think to get a picture. Argh!)
I don't know about other spinners, but I've never had my bobbins of singles come out even when I'm plying. In the case of the alpaca, I had singles left on two bobbins at the end of the project. (What with the pressure of Christmas fast-approaching, I skeined what I had, dyed it, and called it good. About 250 yards, as I recall.)
As I mentioned in a previous post, I washed a good-sized handful of cotswold fleece, carded it, and started spinning singles. I was trying to get something a little thicker than sock yarn for a change, so I worked hard at making my singles thicker, and planned a nice fat 3-ply yarn. I filled one bobbin, then another, then started the third, all the time eyeing the 2 bobbins of alpaca singles and thinking "Oh, no problem. When the time comes, I'll just ply those off real quick, and be ready to make my 3-ply cotswold. Good thing I bought those extra bobbins!"
So, there I was, 3 bobbins full of cotswold, 2 bobbins each 1/4 to 1/3 full of alpaca. I sat myself down at my wheel, ready to roll.
Anyone spotted the problem yet?
I own 5 bobbins. I have 5 bobbins loaded with singles.
What on earth did I think I was going to ply those singles onto?
Doh!
After I finished pounding my head on the wall, I realized there was nothing for it but to ply the alpaca off onto a handspindle. After a brief search (anything less than 3 hours is a brief search, in my book...) I finally located one of my spindles. (For the record, it was in a plastic bag, tucked inside another plastic bag full of handspun laceweight being knit into a shawl, tucked inside another plastic bag full of alpaca roving, tucked into a box full of UFOs, under a box of odd balls of worsted weight yarn. Easy peasy. Once I eliminated the other 42 bags and boxes, of course.)

There, dammit! Plied at last!
(Note: this is one of my homemade spindles - I used a little wooden wheelie-dealie from Michael's, an old paintbrush handle with the business end pried off, and a miniature cuphook. I figured there was no sense investing a fortune in spindles until I decided whether or not I even liked spinning. And then, of course, I was used to spinning with my homemade gizmos, so there was no sense in buying anything fancier. I prefer to think of myself as frugal, though I have heard people mumbling "cheap" when they thought I wasn't listening...)

And now, I can get on with the cotswold!