Monday, March 26, 2007

The Harlot is coming!

I'm so excited to see the Yarn Harlot again and I want to better prepared to meet all of my blogsisters that I've exchanged comments or e-mails with. But the question that plagued me last year was "How do we let people know who we are?" Name tags, tote bags with our blog on it, permanent marker on the forehead? (I'm voting no on the last one, so don't go busting out your Sharpies just yet)

Any ideas?

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Spinning!

Well, Ms. Ashley and I have been pretty busy the last few weeks. I purchased some angora/merino from the Mt. Bruce Station fiber festival last fall and it's taken me a while to actually spin thru all of it. I decided to leave it as a single but ply it with metallic thread to dress it up a bit. I don't know my overall yardage yet, as I still have a full bobbin to ply. Here is a small sampling of what I have finished. I believe it to be about 90 yards worth, and I knit a small swatch just to see how it looks. I still have to set the twist but I was too anxious for all of that last night.

We went from this:

To this:

And finally ended up with this:
The color is the truest in the last photo since I took advantage of the sun and posed Ms. Glitter outside and used a real camera instead of my phone. Whadddya think?

It's measuring out to 18 wpi's and 12 stitches equals 1 3/4" on size 3's. That's laceweight, near as I can tell, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I can't wait to finish up the rest of it and pick my project based on yardage.

Enjoy the sunshine, it probably won't last long!!

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Touch me follow-up

A while back I made a pair of Touch Me gloves as part of the Knitting Olympics. For those of you that may be interested in making some, but have hesitated due to their hefty price tag, I thought I would direct this to you. I have been wearing these gloves practically non-stop since completion. They fulfill two main requirements, they are Purple, and they're equally warm and soft. I washed them twice during the Finishing process and was totally scared both times. I have been wanting to wash them again, since they have seen lots of different surfaces (read germs) and then more recently because I felt the need to dump a cup of hot chocolate on them (stupid stupid). I wanted to wash them inside out because the only real complaint I have about the Touch Me is that it's been pretty fuzzy on the inside. Get-caught-in-your-nails fuzzy and pull-out-big-globs-of-fuzz-every-time-you-remove-them fuzzy. So, I flipped them inside out and threw them in a lingerie bag and in the washer. My old fears returned after their initial run thru the dryer. They were somewhat damp when I pulled them out and since I was getting ready to leave the house I felt compelled to leave them on top of the dryer inside out, shrivelled up and rather hard looking/feeling. I had that same sinking feeling in my stomach that I had gotten the first 2 times I washed these gloves, sure that I had ruined them, and holy crap what a pricey mistake. When I returned home again, I sucked it up, shoved them right side out (still kinda stiff at this point) put them BACK in the lingerie bag and stuck them back in the dryer. There is something magical that happens in the last 10 minutes or so of drying these Touch Me gloves. When I pulled them back out, they were dry, the right size, and luxuriously soft. And CLEAN!! I still love my gloves, I hope to be a little brave-r the next time they need washing and if not, I hope I remember to read back thru this post to see that I survived it before, so I'll survive it again.

Here's the proof: That was then
And this is now:
IMO they look as good today as they did when I finished them last year. Whoo hoo!!

In other news, Ms. Ashley and I spent quite a bit of time together yesterday and I have almost finished spinning my angora/merino roving. I picked up some metallic thread from Joann and as soon as the single is finished I will attempt to ply it with the metallic thread. I have no idea what the finished yardage will be since I'm still so new to this whole thing, but I'm hoping it will be enough for a shawl of some sort. Wish me luck!

Happy Monday if you're into that sort of thing, and all I can say is my ladies are doomed since I'm NOT and I AM teaching a class tonight. Rest up, that's all I can say!!

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