Working with lace

I finally made the plunge and decide to try out some lace weight yarn. And I have to say, while the process of knitting an complete FO with such thin yarn is very time consuming, I love the end results

Earlier this summer, I worked on the fountain pen shawl by Susan Lawrence. This shawl is going to be a gift for my mom, who has a milestone birthday coming up in September. I used Tess' laceweight superwash merino. The pattern was fun, but the rows got really long toward the end. I only managed to complete 10 of the 11 suggested repeats before calling it quits and jumping into the edging chart. And the edging chart was so fun! I think it was my favorite part to knit and is my favorite part to look at. As for the yarn, it was okay. I'm a little disappointed that it didn't really soften up after washing. Also, my left finger was constantly black from the dye bleeding while I knit. That was a big deal, just a little annoying.

Next up was the whiper cardigan by Hannah Fettig. I was dubious to knit this cardi because I couldn't quite wrap my head around the construction and if I could make it fit me. I would not be pleased to frog and re-knit a laceweight sweater! But after 3 people I know made whisper, I decided to give it go, taking into account the lessons they learned from knitting it. I made somewhere between a M/L size. That is, I cast on the right number of stitches for an M and knit the appropriate number of inches for an L. This made it a little tricky to decide how many stitches to pick up for the collar. Nothing that I little counting and a calculator couldn't solve, though! I also made one mod to the lower back: increases every 4th row rather than every other row.

Oh and the yarn! I absolutely love this yarn! I bought this skein of Malabrigo merinocash in the "smoke" color way during my trip to San Francisco in May. ImagiKnit was (is?) carrying merinocash as a test product. It is so soft to knit with and the color is fantastic. Hopefully it will be more readily available in the future!

CSA August 8, 2009

My CSA partner said I could have ALL of the CSA veggies this week, since I'll be away for the next 2 pick ups. Hmmmmm, that's a lot of tomatoes for a gal with a husband who doesn't eat tomatoes. Actually, that's just a lot of vegetables to eat in 5 days!



As usual, I was drwan to the beautiful flowers in the pick your own garden. This week, I went with a purple and pink theme.

I attacked the veggies with great vigor! I am detemined not to let anything go to waste:

1. Shredding/freezing squash for future sweet bread or muffins.

2. Blanching/peeling/freezing tomatos for a winter sauce.

3. Pesto... this jar might last until next summer!

Rule of Thumb

Who knew? I certainly thought that the rule of thumb had to do with wife beating. The actual explanation is a bit of a snoozer.

Alpacas!!

In addition all the fun puppy play in Garrett County, our friends treated us with a trip to BlueBell Farm Alpacas.

Our first stop on the farm was to visit the female alpacas. Here are some pictures from the ladies' side of the farm.

One-week old baby.

Sun bathing!

Curious creatures!

Here is the latest addition to the farm: a brand new baby alpaca. Only three-days old! Alpaca babies are called crias. Jo, who owns and runs the farm, picked up baby so we could take a closer look.

I got to hold the baby. She was too adorable and soft to describe.

My visit with baby was short lived though. Mama was nervously pacing and humming at me as I held her little one. After a few minutes of holding baby, I put her down and she and mom ran off to the corner to nurse.



The next stop was the farm shop. I was, of course, in fiber heaven! Even though I was overwhelmed in trying to select my fiber souvenir, I still managed to goof for a few minutes too.



Spinning wheel in the shop. I forgot to ask what kind this is.

Reason 4,387 I love my husband. He spent a couple hours watching me play with the alpacas and then still has a good sense of humor about being dressed up in silly alpaca hats.

I finally decide to purchase some roving from "Smokey" and some yarn from "Cappuccino." Yup, that's right, most of the fiber in the store tells you exactly which animal it came from!

The last stop on our trip was to visit the male alpacas. I took picture (not great ones, since we were in a barn) of the two boys whose fiber I purchased.

Smokey

Cappuccino

Weekend at the lake

This weekend, the mister and I headed up to Deep Creek Lake to visit with some friends and to take a sorely needed mini-break. Our friend Mercedes is the director of HART for Animals. She and her husband are constantly raising money to find good homes for homeless animals. They are hoping to raise enough money to open a no kill shelter in Garrett County.

Needless to say, they have a few rescues of their own.

This is John Kerry, named for being found on the side of the road on election night 2004.

This is Chance. What a perfect rescue name! He's a greyhound/shepherd mix. A 90 pound cuddle bug!



And finally, Nikki. She's a Malamute/border collie mix puppy. She's always in motion and constantly herding the others in her pack.



With all the animal love, we couldn't leave our little buddy behind. Rocky had a fun afternoon of swimming (actually, more like wading waist deep in water and drinking it), stalking spiders, and hypnotizing ducks from the dock.

We took a break from pup play to visit the Penn Alps artisan village. What a charming place! We visited several of the craftspeople, including the soapmaker. I spent some time outside the soapmaker's shop admiring the beautiful flowers before I bought two shampoo/body bars (English Garden and Lavender). Yum!

We had a great time visiting our friends... and we also got to go somewhere for a real treat. Wait until to see my next post!

My first real yarn!

Well, well. After my last post I "just" had to ply something together to share my first real skein of handspun with you. Ha! Little did I know that plying would take me a good 4-5 hours of time! Anyway, I recently shared some work in progress pictures of this hand spun project and now I have the FO for you.

I can't wait to cast on and actually knit with this yarn, but for now I just carry the skein with me everywhere I go... yes, it's in my purse... because I just love admiring the pretty colors! When I finally do cast on, I think I'll make a shawl with the yarn... perhaps the textured shawl.

I was impressed with my ability spin thin yarn. The 4 ounces of fiber yielded 480 yards of 2 ply fingering-weight yarn.

I also have another spinning project in progress. I have one pound of BFL that I am spinning up for a sweater. So far I have 2 skeins. One skein is a dk weight and the other is a fingering weight. These two skeins used to be one skein, but I spilt it into two when I realized that I started spinning thicker yarn and got thinner as I progressed. Beginners error! I'm hoping the rest can be spun up at the fingering weight.

CSA catch up!

I've missed blogging about CSA treats for 2 weeks. This weekend, I'll play catch up!



July 4...











July 11...






July 18... first pepper and tomato!









Lots of spinning to share... but first I have to ply something together! ;)

Feeling blue and brown

Two of the projects I am working on right now are in the blue and brown color family.

First up, a quick knit from leftover sock yarn from my Spirit Trail Fiberworks Charade socks. This is the tiny shoe pattern by Ysolda Teague. As with most of her designs, this one is very clever, with minimal seaming/finishing involved.







I'm also getting in my spinning practice. A friend bought me a surprise gift of Sheep Shop Yarn Company merino roving in "Royalty." So far, I've spun up 1 of the four ounces. I am still a pretty slow spinner, but my product is getting more consistent as I go. Here's a picture of the roving, pre-drafted roving, and spun single ply. I have no clue how this is going to knit up. I'm thinking this will make a lovely winter shawl or scarf.

Cocoa Cup and Enablers Meet-Up

I finished my cocoa cup! This is a pattern by Heidi Kirrmaier called Buttercup. I made the small, but probably should have gone with the extra-small because of the plunging neckline. In fact, the only mods I made were on the neckline. The neckline was way too low for me so I ended up redoing it 3 times until I found a relatively comfortable fit without scrunching the top too much. Instead of picking up the neckline per the instructions, I picked up every other stitch along the neck, every stitch along the sleeve, and 3 of every 4 stitches across the back.

The tee took me 5.5 skeins (841.5 yards) of Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy. It's interesting knitting this yarn up at 22 stitches per 4 inches instead of 24 stitches per 4 inches (as in the Arbor I made last year). The fabric has a lot of drape!

Here's me with a couple of my fellow "enablers," all in our buttercups...

But even better than 3 buttercups are 12 enablers! Check out the picture from our Enablers Anonymous Meet-Up! Our host Kate made some delicious treats for brunch. We managed to take a break from some serious knitting, chatting, and eating to take this picture outside. Even though it was in the 80s, we were adorned with FOs -- lots of shawls and summer tops!