Of knitting and knitted things

This is a little late in coming, but I had a birthday in August and got this:

Somehow I had to fit it into my stash spot, which also houses the Wii equipment, and which was sorely coming close to running out of space:

So I did this and added labels to keep myself sane, and so far it's working really well. It has also freed up space in the Wii equipment box for other things, and forces me to exercise every time I want to look at my yarn and fleece because it's upstairs now:

Did you see that rainbowy one in the birthday photo? That's Knitpicks Chroma in the worsted weight and it's a single ply, very soft and kind of fun to work with. A little bit Malabrigo-ish, but not quite as divine. I made these armwarmers for my kid and they're fuzzing a little bit, so I'm glad I didn't commit to a whole sweater with it, but for more gently-worn items, it'll be a great yarn to go back to, provided you don't care about consistency between garments or within a garment (there's no rhyme or reason to the striping):

Aside from my travel project, I have nothing on the needles now, which means I can get back to spinning for a bit. It's BFL/silk and it's lovely. I did my sampling and now I need to spin all the singles so I can get on with it. Or maybe not all of them, but a good enough chunk that I can make something fun. I'm thinking a Haruni. It's written for a fingering weight of 14 wraps per inch, so hopefully my singles are close and I can make a lovely natural oatmeal-grayish Haruni. I haven't measured my first single because it's not off the bobbin yet, but if it's not fingering weight, it's pretty darn close.

Sweater fun and other random things

Most important first - - the February Lady Sweater is finished!

I used Cascade 220 in the worsted weight, and I loved the gray, but there were only 4 balls when I saw it on sale in Oregon. I knew it wanted to be a sweater, so I picked up 2 of the purple as well, and devised this striping pattern to make the most of what I had, and to make it a little more fun for the young person it was going to be given to.

Nanna stepped up and posted the buttons, which are too bling-y for an adult (most adults, anyway), but perfect for a 'tween. She loves 'em!

It was a little worrisome to think that I had done 20 repeats of the lace pattern and that it might wind up being a cropped sweater ... but the beauty of lace is how it grows when you block it! I couldn't believe how perfectly-sized it came out in the end. Just wide enough and just long enough. Now if only she would stop growing....

This is my dog:

See the ridge on his back? He's a ridgeback. Rhodesian Ridgeback. The hair grows backwards there. It's pretty cool. He's a hundred twenty pounds of child-nipping awesome. It's not awesome that he nips children, but he is awesome. My English friend would be cross that I said that. I mean my dog is brilliant. Now that doesn't sound right, does it? He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, after all. He can't catch food thrown directly at his face for the life of him ... he lets it hit him in the face and then he races around trying to find it. You'd think he had no nose or eyes. Anyway, that was random.

This is the September 2011 Whipsaw four-wheeling trip, and the market bag being knit on the trip. It's not much of a bag at this point, but it will be soon!

There was no snow at Whipsaw this time. Over 30 degrees during the day and about 10 (probably) at night. It was warmer (again) at night than Manning Park, which was negative a hundred at night. I swear.

I'm going to go spin something.

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!