Pretty pretty yarn

I can't remember if I mentioned it in one of my previous posts, but I finally finished spinning the fiber that I bought from Dicentra Designs (http://home.earthlink.net/~dicentra/) at OFFF http://www.flockandfiberfestival.com. It was in a gorgeous dark sapphire blue, turquoise, dark emerald green, olive, dark amethyst, and lighter amethyst colorway. I can't remember what it was called, maybe Eowyn? The fiber is a Merino/mohair blend. I split the roving lengthwise about 8 times, spun it thin, on the fastest ratio on the Fricke (I think it's a 19:1 ratio), then Navajo plied it. It turned out just BEAUTIFUL. Maybe a little under-twisted at the joins (if someone knows how to fix this, please let me know), but otherwise just totally gorgeous. I ended up with about 300 yards (it was around 4 oz of fiber). I washed it, hung it to dry with 2 lbs of weight on it, wound it into a center-pull ball, and now I'm making socks with it. They are gorgeous, so far, if I do say so myself. The yarn has a very short striping thing going on. I THINK the stripes might get longer as I get into the ball, since I think I used a really thin strip of roving on the last bit of spinning, but we'll see. I decided upon the Winter Lace Socks from Wild Geese Fibres (http://wildgeesefibres.com/?page_id=67). Here's a couple of pictures of what I have so far.

I really like the texture of the yarn. It is very smooth, with kind of a crisp and silky feeling. Not very soft, so my 9 yo dd said, but soft wasn't what I was going for. I'm looking for high twist, sturdy yarn, because I don't want the socks to wear out very fast. As long as it take ME to knit them, they need to last a while. I'm wondering, since it has mohair in the fiber blend, if the yarn will halo. Hmmm. The lace pattern isn't very obvious in the pictures, but visible in person, and looks very nice. Best yet, it's simple. It's gotta be simple for me to do it! I ended up knitting the socks on US1 Crystal Palace DPNs.

Speaking of Crystal Palace DPNs, I have another project using them. This one on size US0. Which is painful to think about, but not quite as painful to knit. I'm still working on the Fiber Fish Mittens. I finished the mitered square cuff and the ribbing, added on the base triangles for the entrelac, did the first entrelac square, then had an extra stitch left over at the top of the previous triangle. I need to go back and look at what I did and compare to the pattern, and see if I messed up, or if the pattern is written wrong. Since this is the first time I'm trying the whole entrelac thing, I'm just not sure. But, tomorrow is the BS (short for Book Store, but I like the other implication) Knitting group, so I will take it with me and see if anyone can give me some tips. Here's a picture of what I have so far:

On the spinning wheel front, I have sold my Peacock Tui. I shipped it off yesterday. It was very emotional. My husband caught me crying over it, so he took a pattern from it and promised to make me one just like it, in whatever wood I wanted. He's such a sweetie, sometimes. Now to hold him to his promise, muahahaha. So, I took the proceeds from that sale to Woodland Woolworks and paid for the Fricke that I've been renting. The cool thing is, when you buy a new wheel from Woodland Woolworks, you get STUFF. I opted for a $40 gift certificate. Yesterday, I went there and spent it. I got another pair of Crystal Palace DPNs (you can never have too many dpns, can you?), the book Knitted Babes http://www.knittedbabes.com/ from Interweave Press, and some solid colored wool fingering weight yarn to knit the aforementioned "Babes" with. I'm hoping that I can just knit the babes, and my girls will make the clothes for them, themselves. They are simple enough to make, and it should be fun.

Oh, and the BIRTHDAY MONTH has begun. In February, we have my birthday on the 19th (I'll be 34, who knew I would ever get this old?!), Keegan's on the 22nd (He'll be 13) and Brhianna's on the 27th (she'll be 10). I guess I better get to knitting something for them for their birthday...it's only right. Maybe I'll whip them up some socks on my CSM. I haven't used it since right after the holidays, and it's probably feeling neglected!

Emotional attachment to equipment

Well, I decided that I have to buy the Fricke that I've been renting. I LOVE it. Except for the odd sound it's making now, but I'm assuming that I will be able to figure that out and stop it. Anyway, to pay for it, I've decided to sell my Peacock Tui. And as soon as I decided that, I started feeling...sad? Lost? Anyway, I DON'T want to sell it. But, if I have the Fricke, I don't need it. But I LIKE it...make that LOVE it. It's like an old friend...or a relative. It's the first wheel that I really connected with, and totally understood. I have two people interested in buying her, and I can't count the number of times I almost changed my mind today. I hope someone comes through with the money soon, so that I CAN'T change my mind.

Anyway, I've been a bad blogger. Uhoh. There's really no excuse, though I have been really busy. This past Saturday I went to the NWRSA Newport Spin In. I love going to that. A lot of people from my guild go, and a lot of people that I know in passing from far away travel to go. This year, I rode over with a lovely woman from my guild, Kathy. She also happens to be our newsletter editor, and she does such a great job. This was the first year that I went without my husband, and could therefore spend the whole day there. I took the Fricke. Oddly enough, I had lots of questions about it. Not very many people knew what it was, or had spun on it. It was nice to be able to say such nice things about it. I also sat amongst a group of women whom I didn't know. That was kind of scary and fun at the same time. I always have the best time looking at everyone's wheels, and seeing what everyone is spinning and HOW they are spinning it. I was BAD and spent about $60 while I was there. I got 4 oz of alpaca/soysilk blend from a guild sister, and I'm hoping to spin it fairly thin to make a shawl. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to work out a trade with someone so that I don't have to KNIT it, and it might actually get done sometime this century. I also bought 1 lb of deep red wool roving and 1 lb of golden yellow roving. And another knitting machine. HAHA, one of the older ladies that was sitting near me said that she keeps on buying fiber because she's hoping "they" won't let her die until she spins it all, lol.

Spinning Wheels

So, I thought that today I would talk about my spinning wheels. Which, I've unfortunately come to realize are like that potato chip that you can't have just one of. Currently, I own a Journey Wheel from http://www.journeywheel.com/. I have the single treadle version with the Scotch tension. I love it. It is truly a work of art. The wood is to die for, and that means a lot to me since I'm a huge wood person. Unfortunately, I'm finding that I really don't use it that much, since even though it only takes a few minutes to set it up, I'm basically a lazy person, and I still have to set it up, lol. Also, it doesn't have a Woolie Winder available. http://www.thewooleewinder.com/ Which sucks. The other wheel that I own is a Peacock Tui. These are no longer made. I love this wheel, also. It's got really slow ratios and huge bobbins, so this is my bulky yarn spinner.

Now, the reason I decided to post this is subject is because I am buying a new spinning wheel. One that I'm currently renting from Woodland Woolworks. It's a Fricke Double Treadle with the Woolee Winder option. This wheel is THE BOMB. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I highly recommend this wheel to anyone who wants a great multi-functional wheel. It has nice slow ratios, it has nice high ratios. It's lightweight, easy to adjust, sturdy, inexpensive. It's not all that pretty, but I'm fairly artistic and I'm going to do some decorating to bring it up to snuff in the looks department. :-) Also, I've found the added benefit that the Woolee Winder for this wheel also happens to fit on my Peacock wheel! Woohoo!!!

Continuing...

So, I still haven't quite figured out how to do the whole picture thing. I mean, obviously I learned how to add pictures, but I'd like to be able to figure out how to put them where I WANT them to be. If anyone can help me there, that would be GREAT.



So, in continuing the fiber saga. Thursday evening was the Aurora Colony Handspinner's Guild monthly meeting. It was one of the first meetings that I presided over as President. I just want to go on the record saying that I'm not comfortable leading meetings. I HATE that it's my job to interrupt people and tell them that their time is up, it feels RUDE. And unless I'm really pissed off, I don't do rude well. But, I guess this is what happens when no one else will volunteer to do things.

Our program this Thursday was basically everyone talking about the "White after Labor Day" projects. The White After Labor Day challenge was something that Dianne McKinnon, Jean, Wanda & I came up with. We wanted to DO something with the guild. So, we arranged for the guild to buy 2 oz of plain white roving for everyone. We passed out the roving at the September meeting. The goal was that people would make something (anything) out of that 2 oz and bring it back to the Holiday Party for everyone to see. I think it was fairly successful. And definitely a learning experience.

One of our guild members used the fiber and did a story board. In the story, the fiber was from the Abominable Snowman (Yeti), and it is shown spun and knitted/crocheted on weaving pirls. It was VERY cute and inventive. Other members dyed and spun and knitted or crocheted. There were some very impressive projects brought in. Unfortunately, my memory is so bad that I don't want to talk about them, because I can't remember who did what. In particular, I remember that Diane dyed her roving before spinning, laid the three primary colors out and let them bleed together. There was a lot of white left in the roving, and it looked very colorful. It was neat to see that after it was spun and plied, the colors appeared more dark, somewhat somber. Very, very pretty and unexpected. She knitted her 2 oz into a small lacy shawl. Another new member who is just learning how to spin decided to use her 2 oz of white and crochet the unspun roving. She made the cutest snow-woman!

My own personal project was a cell phone cozy that I made up using Weavette squares. It was definitely a learning experience for me. I learned that you should ALWAYS wash your individual pieces BEFORE assembling them, and definitely wash them before you apply any decorative items. See the pictures. It looks fine, but the buttons on the flap were originally sewn on with space between them, yet when it was washed, it shrunk up enough that the buttons now overlap. Not enough to make it a bad thing, but enough to bother ME. See the pictures below.

Tomorrow my fiber-ish enterprise will be going to the local Stitch-N-Bitch. OK, I don't know if they officially call it that, but it's a knitting group held at the local book store. It's the first time I've went in over a year because I just haven't been comfy there in the past. We'll see how I like it now. My friend, Wanda, and I have been considering making our own Stitch-N-Bitch, but there's no reason to do so if we like this group now.

Oh, I don't have pictures, yet, but I've started on the Fiber Fish Mittens seen here http://issueswithknitting.blogspot.com/2006/08/fresh-fiber-fish-fer-sale.html that I bought the pattern for last week. I'm using some old Trekking that I had, then I had to go out and buy MORE Trekking, so I guess eventually I'll have more than one pair. They are just SO cute I couldn't resist them! Hopefully I get them done in time for next year, haha!

The not-so-famous first post...

Let's just start off by saying that in the past I've been a VERY bad blogger. I've had several blogs, and they just don't seem to "stick". For whatever reason. Probably because I lose interest. Anyway, I'm hoping that by using this blog I will be inspired by and help to inspire other people via fiber arts. First we'll start off with a little about me.

My name is Marcy. I am 33 (34 in Feb) years old. I live in the gorgeous green state of Oregon, in a very small town not too far away from Portland and Salem. My town still has that "small town" feel. I am a stay-at-home mom. I guess I live the "typical" life, I stay at home, my husband, Jason, works to earn enough money for me to be able to do so, and I am SO thankful for that, because I am NOT cut out for a 9-5 job. We have four children. Keegan (m, 12), Brhianna (f, 9), Jennah (f, 8), and Garrick (m, 6). All of our children are homeschooled, which most of us love most of the time. My children are wonderful, exceptional children. I am forever hopeful that they will grow up to be productive individuals. We have two dogs, small Chihuahua mixes, whom I have a love/hate relationship with. Their names are Aura and Terra. We also have two cats. The first one is Noir, a long-haired black/white who is 6 years old. The second is Daniel Tiger Shes-probably-gonna-die-soon Sharkbait Bell, who is about 6 months old. Yes, there IS a story behind the name. She's my lovie, even when she makes me crazy. Oh, and there are also two rats, two Bearded Dragons, and one Ball Python living here.

I tend to be somewhat "alternative" in my thinking. Generally very liberal, and often described as a hippie, though I was born long after the hippie movement. I make a habit of going to the http://www.oregoncountryfair.org/ every year. This past August I fulfilled a lifelong dream and bought an old VW Bus. It is a work-in-progress, but I'm hoping to have it running well enough that I can drive it to the Country Fair this year, and sleep in it. Hope is eternal, haha. I am an eclectic Pagan, with Wiccan tendencies. I don't like bureaucracy and government officials interfering in how I run my life. I want to live in the country, with no-one around for miles, and LIVE OFF THE LAND. My way. I want to be able to build a house and NOT have to pay a ton of money for permits, and be able to build it the way I WANT to build it...not how the government says it should be built. I would kind of like to live in a commune...is there anyone around who even knows what that is anymore? Anyway, on to the fiber content.

I have been a crocheter forever. I learned how to finger-crochet when I was probably 5 or so, and have kept on playing with yarn since then. I started spinning 3 years ago at http://www.flockandfiberfestival.com/. I bought a beginning drop spindle kit from a vendor (I sure wish I could remember who it was). It came with about 4 oz of fiber and a simple heavy toy wheel spindle. She gave me a 5 minute spinning lesson. Looking back, I can ALMOST remember what sanity felt (haha, I said FELT) like, before the fiber took over. I remember sitting on a bench at that festival, and one of my friends asked if I wanted to go to a certain booth (It was Robin & Russ Handweavers...how I MISS them!) to look at their back issues of Spin Off. I was all "What is that?" and she said it was a spinning magazine. My reply echoes eerily down the corridors of my memory..."A spinning magazine? How can there be so many articles about spinning that they need to publish a quarterly magazine about it?!" The shame. Now I WISH that they were published every month. So began the insanity.

When I returned home with my drop spindle kit, I sat on my couch, amid the confusion caused by 4 active children, and spun. For hours. I spun up about half of the fiber. I wanted to spin until I was sure that the next time I picked up the spindle, I would remember how to do it. When I woke up the next morning, my arm was sore from holding it in the air (while standing on the couch), and when I went into the living room, my dog (I only had one, then, and she was a "teenager" in dog years) had chewed up all the wool. Oh, the woe. Then I found out that Woodland Woolworks is only 7 miles away from me. I hightailed over there and bought more wool.

The next week (or maybe the one after that), I went to my first spinning meeting, the Mac Spinners, which was held at Robin & Russ. I sat there amongst these wonderful, friendly spinners, all who were happily treadling away on their gorgeous wheels, and I spun and spun on my little drop spindle. After a while, Carol says something along the lines of "this girl really wants to spin, lets get a wheel over here, so she can spin" and they brought over this Schacht wheel, a double treadle, and taught me how to spin on a wheel. The next day, I got a call from Carol, who said that someone had brought a used Ashford Traditional into R&R, and did I want it. Did I ever!!! R&R was nice enough to let me make payments on that wheel, and by the end of October, I owned my own spinning wheel.

Well, it wasn't too long after that when I decided that I needed to learn how to knit. I knew how to crochet, and I had played with needle felting, but I needed to knit. So, my son, Keegan, who was probably 10 at the time, taught me how to knit. It took me a while, but now I LOVE to knit. I'm still not a very great knitter. I can do all kinds of basic things. I can work in Fair Isle, intarsia, simple lace, cables and etc. But I don't do large projects, and extensive lace scares me. I do sock out the wazoo, though. I love socks enough, and I'm a slow enough knitter, that I had to buy an antique sock knitting machine, commonly referred to a CSM (circular sock machine). It's also a love/hate relationship. It's kind of mechanical and fiddly, but I crank out tons of socks on it.

Well, there's my short (yet, oddly long!) history of fiber. I'm sure I'll add to it more as time goes by. Somehow, I need to figure out how I went from beginning spinner to President of the Aurora Colony Handspinner's Guild. Ugh! I hope lots of people read my blog and give me tips on how to make my blog better, and how to improve my fiber-ing.

Oh, and this cute sock is part of a mini sock blocker keychain that is available at http://store.carlsonwoollies.com/kesobl.html. It came with fiber that I spun up on my Moosie spindle, then 2 plied and knitted on size 1 needles. The fiber was a Crosspatch Creations colorway called Gwen and her Daughters. I thought it turned out very nice, though this particular section of yarn doesn't show any of the pretty green that is in that colorway. I highly recommend buying from The Bellwether, as I have only had good experiences with Amelia.