space kitty knits

(among other things)

Do you know, gentle readers, what this is? This is my spinning wheel. This is my spinning wheel that I built. This is my spinning wheel that I built with my own hands. I MADE A WHEEL. Okay, okay, I had help, and I used power tools, but… it’s my baby! And it’s not from a kit! We didn’t have a kit, or plans, or anything. Just lumber and something to copy.

Man, it’s so beautiful. I think it needs a name. I think it’s a boy, and I think it needs a name. Help me out here. It also needs a single pilot hole drilled in one of the treadle supports because the leather strap (a.k.a. my dad’s old belt) needs to be connected and isn’t yet (and I don’t want to split the wood (again)).

I’ve spent months on this baby, and it’s so wonderful. It’s smooth and it’s pretty and it’s cherry and it’s mine. In every sense of the word. It’s a “copy” of an Ashford Traditional, but it’s my creation.

I’m showing it off at school tomorrow, and I’m excited to use it for the first time. I want to spin on it (but I can’t, see above not attached treadle).

Ooh, man. I love it.

My favorite part is the maidens that don’t match. On the right you can see the maiden I bought at Sheep and Wool. On the left is the maiden fashioned as a substitute until I get another one that matches the one on the right. I think it’s so funny that one is beautiful and round and turned and one is SQUARE. It rocks. The flyer and bobbin I did not build. I did build the mother-of-all and the base, though, so they match the cherry wood.

Squee!

In related news, I have swatched for the Project Sweater. I think the 7s gave me the nicest fabric, so I think I might just cast on the final stage tonight!!!!

The yarn I dyed is ready…

(mostly…)

And I can spin and dye more as I need it. Oh boy!

Also today, I pulled this little bastard…

off of the roof of our house. Picture me hanging out my sister’s bedroom window for half an hour trying to lasso a kitten out of the gutter with my sweatshirt and the handle of a bag. I have bruises all kinds of places. Freak. I love him. He’s fine, by the way.

Help me name my wheel!

I’m amused by myself and the references to Sheep and Wool being somewhat akin to lions eating an antelope. Maybe that was just me, but that’s a bit what it felt like, maybe. Really lovely, peaceful lions, eating a wonderfully sunny, breezy, fiber-filled and wholesome antelope.

Friday:

The stalls were half-up and empty of people, but they were beautiful. I spent the day with the Skein and Garment competition and learned more about yarn and spinning yarn than I literally thought there was to know. Insane. And amazing. I got some incredible critiques on my yarn and know what to do next time. My spinning has already improved.

Saturday:

I arrived…

… to a parking lot full already, and made a bee-line for The Fold’s booth, which was full of Socks that Rock, and also full of knitters. Being bound for a 9:00 start time selling t-shirts for the festival, I stood in line with my two happily acquired skeins until about 9:30. No guilt.

I visited my socks.

And bought some yarn.

At lunch I met up with Molly, and we watched the sheep dogs for a bit (but I had to go back and sell more shirts).

There were emus. And alpacas. And llamas.

I saw lots of people I knew, and took pictures of none of them. I saw Jessica, Erin and Michelle of The Sweet Sheep, and Coleen. I also saw my Spanish teacher and her daughter/my friend who is coming with me to Haverford. I saw Lolly at the Ravelry meet up, and I saw Jacey admiring her yarn at the skein and garment (she won first place for her hand spun yarn with eyeballs).

Did I mention I LOVE this festival?

After I got off selling shirts at 6, I went to (got lost en route to) the Ravelry party!

I met the lovely Jess and Casey, and coerced the adorable and fashionable Mary-Heather into a photograph:

(she’s way cuter than I am).

I met Pam (right) and Julsey,

and won some yarn in the raffle(!).

(thank you Webs/Ravelry!)

I didn’t expect to stay until 11PM, but I was having such a good time that I did. It was lovely. Everyone was so fun and interesting and wonderful. Then I went home and crashed.

In order to return on Sunday! I came back with my mom and sister on Sunday for the shopping. We saw a lot more of the barns than I’d seen the day(s) before, so that was good. Also we ate funnel cake. Then I picked up my items in the skein and garment competition, and we came home. I forgot to take pictures all day, but pictures of me shopping really aren’t interesting.

Pictures of what I shopped FOR, however, clearly are.

Five skeins of Brooks Farm Yarn Four Play (wool/silk) for a sweater (pattern as yet unchosen) for me.

Six skeins of O-Wool for the Elinor tunic from this summer’s IK.

Two skeins of Koigu for socks.

Two skeins of superwash merino laceweight from Tess Yarns for a shawl of some sort (I’m loving knitting lace).

Two skeins of Socks that Rock mediumweight in “Sapphire” and “Chapman Springs.”

And finally, parts for my Ashford knockoff spinning wheel.

Now I’m beat. I started a pair of socks with the STR Chapman Springs, but the yarn was too exciting for the pattern. I loved knitting with it, though. Yum.

There are, of course, lots more pictures in the Flickr set, so please click on through to see like 15 more pictures of those alpacas (among other things).

We’ll see about next year. S&W tends to fall right in the time of serious studying for finals in the college world, and I might not make it (sob!).

I loved it.

Oh, also I got a photo with Jess and Casey– my sister pushed me to ask because I was being shy. I’m glad she did!

Will you look at this please?

This is a booth FULL OF SOCKS THAT ROCK.

I will be here. I will finally get some. I will turn into a consumerist monster this weekend, and I just don’t care!

Also, I might be wearing my (new surprise) Haverford sweatshirt, and/or my green Sheep and Wool volunteer t-shirt. Come buy a t-shirt from me. I’ll find a name tag. And a Ravelry button!

Yaay~! Tomorrow I begin the descent into madness that is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I’m working at the Skein and Garment competition from 9 to 1 doing intake, I suppose, of entries, and I’m also entering a handful of stuff myself (omg!). I’m going to enter a skein of my undyed project wool (the second skein is washing, and is much, much prettier than the first), as well as a skein of blue merino I spun (extra points for a Maryland farm), my Diagonal Rib socks, and a new skein I’m spinning now (when I should be spinning for the project, yes).

I’m really excited.

Yesterday I tried to go through my Ravelry queue and pick out things I wanted to buy yarn for. The “final” list looks like this:

Sheep & Wool
-STR
-Smooshy
-Claudia Handpainted
-Koigu
-Louet Gems?
-laceweight, 2-3 shawls?
-600-700 yrds DK/sport (ballet cami)
-1300 yrds worsted (tubey)
-1000 yrds worsted (snow white/wicked)
-1400 yrds worsted (SKB)

I might end up dropping a couple hundred dollars on yarn. Ouch. But you know what? I’m excited. I want yarn for sweaters and socks and shawls and everything. I also want some fiber to spin (yes, okay, I have some of that too).

On Saturday, I’m going to be helping sell t-shirts from 9 to 11, and then from 11 to 1 I’ll be strolling the Skein/Garment competition to see that nothing walks off, and from 3 to 6 again I’ll be t-shirt selling. So from 1 to 3, I’ll have some time to look around and probably buy things. Then I’m headed to the Ravelry party at the Sheraton in Columbia. Sweet!

SUNDAY I’m coming again with my mum. To buy things. And look at animals. Oh boy oh boy.

I think I’ll wear Rogue, and please do come say hello if you’re there and spot me. I’m not terribly famous, I know (ha!), but I’d love to be approached.

(in case you’d forgotten)

There will most definitely be a yarn p0rn post. Mmmmm. Yarn.

I ought to be giving you a more complete run-down of what my project actually entails (and why I get to be at home for the next five weeks), but since it’s raining now and I kept forgetting last week to take pictures of the drum carder, I’ll do a bit of a slipshod job now and a more complete one later.

So what do I think I’m doing, not going to school? I’m working on my Senior Project, that’s what! At the end of Senior year, our school hands us seniors six weeks and says “Get out and do something useful.” Some kids go work in offices, with the mayor, or in a lab doing research, or with an animal hospital, or something. There are lots of things we’re doing this year. Me, I’m turning a sheep fleece into a sweater, all by hand.

In February, I got a fleece. I started washing it in my washing machine in early March. I took the fleece out to the back porch and picked all the crap and grass and stuff out of it (mostly).

I separated it into sections and dumped it in the washing machine, which was full of hot water. I let it sit for half an hour or so, and came back and spun the water out. Then I refilled the machine tub and did it again. I washed each section about three times, some more, and then let it dry.

Then I put all the washed fleece into a large tub and left it on my porch for a while.

Later, I started carding. I borrowed two sets of hand cards (and a spinning wheel) from a friend’s mother. I started to card my fleece by hand, which takes a long time. I had a few blocks off school, so I stayed home some mornings to card and watch my kitties run around in the back yard.

Then I borrowed a drum carder! I was going to get a drum carder from the Weaver’s Guild of Greater Baltimore, but they were taking so freaking long to get that worked out that I went ahead and found someone else who had one. It needed a little bit of repair (primarily the drive band thing), but I fixed it and started carding as soon as I had all day to work.

So that brings me to last week. Last Tuesday I started to card on the drum carder. I spent the days carding from about 9 to around 11:30 when I’d get bored. Then I’d have lunch, and check my email, and then go for a walk (keeping me a little bit mobile in my highly sedentary project). Then I’d come home and spin for a couple of hours and watch a movie (or a couple of episodes of 21 Jump Street).

It’s working out really well. This week will involve more spinning than carding (because I’m almost finished carding and I have a pile of fiber to spin. Both of the bags in the picture below are full, and there’s even a pile of fiber on top of the blue one. Gah.

Plus, wonder of wonders, I only have one bobbin. If anyone has or knows where I could get some Louet bobbins, that’d be awesome, because I’m going to have to skein up every bobbin-full if I expect to ply any of it. Rawr. I just navajo plied this first bobbin, and it’s soaking in a tupperware in my bathtub now (water leak protection).

On Friday, I played with dyes some and tried to dye a gradient.

It didn’t totally work, but I think the inner yarn there is lighter than the outer. It’s not what I was hoping for, but it was lots of fun to play, and I’m pleased with the yarn anyway.

I’ve also been working on some knitting projects too (although how soon I will be sick of knitting is not assured). I started a pair of plain stockinette socks to keep me busy. The Drunken Bees I like a lot, but I need to carry the chart around, and I’m not interested in heavy chart knitting right now. So I’m knitting these toe-up socks on size 1s out of Scout’s Socktoberfest colorway in the merino sock. It’s knitting up nicely, and fairly fast.

The other thing that’s seen the most action is Icarus:

It’s getting bigger: stretched now it reaches the length of my arm (center top to where the needle is). I’m going to finish the first section and then see if I want to add some more repeats of the branches, or start on the feathers (section one ends in the middle of the chart, so if I want I can just knit the rest of the chart and begin again). I love the color changes.

Well, it’s not hat weather, but it is Caribbean weather.

Today I had my last day at school, sort of. Yesterday was the “real” last day– today we showed up at 7:30 am and had a big crazy senior party. Our theme was “jail break,” and it was a bit silly, but it was fun. Last night, for part of our senior prank, I bought $25 worth of balloons and filled the (upper school) principal’s office with them. He’s one of my friends’s dad, so it was all good. I started blowing them up and people just kept coming to join me. I’ve wanted to do that all year.

(our last day, yesterday)

In the morning he said it was the most fun he’d had in a while, popping all those balloons (~400) to get into the office. My hand still smell like latex from picking up scraps afterwards. Hilarity.

We had a fancy brunch and everyone but me apparently got some kind of female memo that said “wear your prettiest sundress,” so I ended up in torn jeans and this t-shirt I bummed from Leah once I realized that a black polo shirt was not going to appropriate (or any fun at all).

After brunch, which was lovely, I went back to school and waited for my sister, and finished this hat while I listened to Sense and Sensibility.

Start: March 25, 2008

Finish: April 18, 2008

Yarn: “Caribbean Blue” handspun (mine, squee!); 2-ply (superwash merino plied with BFL); original colorway was “Blue Pacific” by Lisa Souza, bought at 2007 Stitches East.

Needles: US 10, bamboo circulars

Pattern: None at all. I started at the top with 6 stitches and increased 6 times around every other row until I had 84 stitches, I think. I knit for a few inches until the hat fit over the tops of my ears, and then added 10 or so rows of ribbing. The gauge was such that a couple of rows went a long way, and it’s a very cute hat. I like it a lot.

I’ll wear it when it gets cold again!

So I knit a wee tiny sock,

and sent it to Mrs. B of Knitters Uncensored. She posted about them here on her blog, and it is such a silly cute sock.

I knit it for the Wee Tiny Sock Swap, which was literally a swap over the weekend. On Friday we got our partners, and on Monday we mailed our socks.

My socks came from Ireland, from Fiadhnat, and they were so adorable!

The green one is my “Haverford Luck” sock. One side has a little purled H, and the other has a little purled four-leaf clover. I’m trying to keep them away from the kitties, but they do love their tiny socks to play with.

So there.

I’ve got a couple of other things going on, also.

I crunched the numbers for my sock yarn blanket and came up with a bit of insanity. I want it big enough to cover a double bed (my bed), so it has to be 12 squares wide and 15 squares long. This comes out to a total of 165 squares, and every five squares I knit is another 3% of the blanket finished. I’ve knit 15 squares, so I’ve knit 9% of the blanket so far. Yikes. Some of the squares are smaller, so actually I’ve knit more than 15 squares, but it’s about 9%.

Speaking of sock yarn, I’ve knit 19 pairs of socks.

That means my Drunken Bees socks are pair 20.

That means I’ll be having some kind of elaborate contest soon.

Stay tuned!

I know, sheer insanity.

Start: March 31, 2008
Finish: April 7, 2008
Yarn: Merino… dyed by me! I’ve been calling the colorway “Firebrand,” which I think is appropriate.
Needles: US 2s, knit on 2 circs. I was going to knit them at the same time, but I started the first sock on DPNs and didn’t feel like knitting the other one up to match. This came back to haunt me a little bit later.

I went to see the Yarn Harlot in Annapolis last night. It was so fun! I convinced my mom to go with me, along with Erin and Terry, and we went and sat and had a lovely time.

We sat and chatted with all sorts of people we didn’t know, and it was really delightful. Knitters are like that. Terry has pictures on her camera of us there, and me with Stephanie, and it was lots of fun.

I realized I could finish these socks as she talked, and measured the second one against the first one. “Only 8 more rows!” I said, a bit foolishly, and continued to knit. I measured again and decided it was time to knit the toe. So away I went! I got so far as to graft the toe as Stephanie finished speaking, and put both socks on.

Only to discover that second sock was 1/2 inch shorter than first sock. About four rows. Which I had not knit. Damn.

So after I got my books signed and had dinner and drove home, I ripped out the toe and tried to reknit it before I went to sleep (while simultaneously reading the new book I had just purchased and had signed). It didn’t really work, so technically I finished the socks today, but I’d like to continue thinking that I finished them yesterday as the very rockstar-famous Yarn Harlot spoke.

P.S. Cloverhill’s going to be at Sheep and Wool again this year, and they’ve got a Countdown Blog full of news and cool stuff. Click over and see what they’re up to!

Look familiar?

Start: August ?, 2007
Finish: March 31, 2008
Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A.
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in “Deep Seaflower”
Needles: US #2 dpns

These are pictures of my own feet, but I decided to give these to Molly for her 18th birthday (which was on Saturday).

She loves them, and I am quite happy. She’s wearing them today, and it’s nice to have someone outside my family (and ex-family-in-love) wearing my socks. They are beautiful socks, but I think I needed to let them go after they had taken me so long to knit them. Some day, I will have my own pair of Monkey socks, but for now I’m happy.

Now I can move on!

hahahaha. I just realized that today is the VERY LAST day of Project Spectrum’s “fire” theme, and I have cast on Ann Budd’s Diagonal Rib Socks in my handdyed colorway… Firebrand.

Red/orange/yellow is a color theme I almost NEVER knit. But I’m knitting it now, at the end of the PS time. I suck.

These are actually for the Ravelry March Sockdown knitalong, which I wasn’t planning on being part of this month, but I finally found an Ann Budd pattern I liked. The other ones weren’t speaking to me, but this one should be simple enough to be a quick knit.

Because I need more things on the needles right now.

Current Queue:
Icarus (graduation)
Diagonal Rib Socks
Caribbean Blue Hat (with my handspun)
Drunken Bees socks
Clapotis
Endpaper Mitts

I’m a knitting fiend!

Also I finally finished my Seaflower Monkeys. But they need their own post, I think.