August randomness

It's been a busy month so far, and I have hardly had time to get pictures off my camera! Here's some random summer fun, including some super-fun knitting. Skaha Lake:

Similkameen River:

February Lady Sweater:

Birthday croc socks:

Butterfly poop:

Next up, yarn organization ... before and after!

Ain't we havin' spun fun now?

This post's title comes courtesy of a word change in a snappy little ditty from The Little Shop of Horrors. I highly recommend it. A campy musical starring Rick Moranis. Also appearing are Steve Martin, Jim Belushi, Christopher Guest, the woman who played Martin's wife on the TV show Martin and a few other familiar faces.

Good news - I have one sleeve on the baby sweater and sleeve #2 is likely to be finished today. They're just wee - I have no excuse for the length of time it is taking me. I should be able to snap my fingers and have a baby sweater appear ... but no such luck.

I have also taken all sorts of photos and lined them up below to tell the story of the singles, plies and knits experiment. If you're on dial-up, you won't like this post. But really, what are you doing on dial-up??

The singles: teal, white, red and blue, hand-dyed (except for the white one - the sheep took care of that).

The teal plied and knit on its own:

The teal plied with some loosely spun white and knit into something just this side of vomit:

The red plied and knit on its own:

The red plied and knit with white:

The red plied and knit with blue:

The red plied and knit with white and blue:

The blue all on its own:

And the blue with white:

That was great fun! I have a pile of knit samples now, some favourites and some REALLY not favourites, but it was interesting to see how everything came out ... and I'm likely to take such a step the next time I dye multiple colours. It showed me that I don't like most of them when there are two or three colours plied together. They spin up looking nice, but they knit up to doo-doo. I do like the way some of the colours go together, though, and will adventure into some self-striping sock yarn of unknown weight.  That could be cool.

Here are my sweet singles one more time, only because I like this shot:

Divergence

What a quick about-face! I didn't knit a single stitch on the baby sweater nor the February Lady Sweater last night. Instead, I spun up some sample singles and played with plying, and then knit up tiny swatches to see what each blend yielded. Then I drowned the tiny swatches and laid them out to lightly block into a somewhat normal shape. I'll have a photo collage to present sometime this weekend.

This sampling was my best idea EVER!

Summer lovin'

Not much is new here. The only bit I've spun so far, from all that I dyed, is the bit of batt that the girl in red painted. I spun an extremely fine single and kept the colours separate as much as I could. Then I navajo plied it to keep the colours together and wound up with all of 70 yards. I turned it into a little headkerchief with an i-cord edging and it's too small for a human, but may work for a doll. It's something to remember the day by, anyway.

I'm madly knitting up a baby sweater, and it's a good thing the kid isn't born yet, because it gives me more time. I think I should have it done this weekend, actually. I hope so, anyway.

Then it'll be back to the February Lady Sweater, which is also coming along nicely. And perhaps some spinning here and there to break things up a bit. I'm reeeeeeally tempted to do a worsted single, but I don't know if that'll work out with fleece that doesn't felt. I'm also reeeeeeeally tempted to ply together the red and blue and see if it works out as dreamily as I think it will. Maybe I could throw in an undyed single as well. So many options!

Until there's more news, that's all the news.