It was so beautiful in Rhinebeck this year, contrary to all the dire weather predictions. Both of us were not feeling 100% so the warmth and sunshine really felt like a gift!

Our crew expanded this year! Kierstin, Tracy and Jeremie joined us and we weathered the cold and played with the sheepies together. Super fun!

Anyway, it was another good year for spinning as I said earlier, and I am delighted to have won a blue ribbon for the best Leicester Longwool skein. I was highly surprised, grateful, and amused (!) when I received this in the mail just a week or so later…

I love the blank letterhead… though thank goodness they included it because otherwise I never would have known why I was getting $50 in the mail. I like to tell myself that it paid for most of my favorite toy from Rhinebeck this year… an aromatherapy RingSpindle!

I love it! Not only does it sport a cauldron on the top but the delicious aromatherapy diffusion really works! I definitely commend this craft tool to everyone. There was of course much more delightfulness to experience, taste, and see! More on that soon….

This is such a fabulous pattern! After Kierstin made me one like a total love, I realized how perfect this winter gear solution was for locs. Problem… I have a bright red coat which I cannot wear with her delightful mauve calorimetry. I wear that one with my other coat. So what is a knitter to do the night before leaving for Montreal in November with said red coat? Knit of course! This is in Manos del Uruguay Wool Classica with a happy pewter spinning wheel button.

Too satisfying.

Just a brief check in from the New York State Sheep and Wool festival, where we had an unexpected gloriously rain and snow free day yesterday. What a gift! I was delighted to walk up to the blue ribbon wall for spinning and find my handspun among these lovely submissions. My work is all the way on the right. I won a blue ribbon for spinning this year’s featured breed, Leicester Longwool. Hooray!

We are going back today even though the day promises to be wet! More soon….

Sometimes the very best thing to do is take on something small and savor it.

During my last visit to The Fold, Toni introduced me to something wonderful! A new dyer (to me anyway) by the name of Kimber Baldwin, the creative force behind Fiber Optics. Her shop is worth a visit and I can tell you that her eye for color is spectacular. In my hand (above) I am holding a tiny sample of her pencil roving (Foot Notes, 80% superwash merino wool and 20% nylon) in the black coffee colorway.

This sat on my desk for just a couple of days, spun on my ringspindle in spare moments stolen from other tasks. So delightful. Simple, satisfying drafting, gorgeous colors, and a perfectly matched set of double pencil rovings that I split to create two singles.

Yes those singles were stored on bamboo skewers… inexpensive and long enough to fit into my industrious kate reasonably well. This was a very tiny amount of roving, and I wanted to use the same spindle for both plies. On that note I would like to sing the praises of the recent addition of Seth Golding’s work to the ringspindles collection.  This one is an ebony ringspindle, 0.8 oz.

The result was 25 yards of laceweight in lovely colors.

The colors are easier to see here.

Simple. Satisfying. Utterly worthwhile.

I have been pretty bad about updating the blog with recently spun yarns, but that does not mean that I have been ignoring the wheels completely! Here is a taste of what has been drafted between my hands of late…

This Leicester Longwool is lambswool actually, my first spun single! I was playing with this in preparation for Rhinebeck, where the annual New York State Sheep and Wool festival is held. Leicester Longwool is the featured breed for 2009. This is about 250 yards, spun at a low ratio (7:1) and unbelievably soft. I am working on a companion skein for some colorwork from the Leicester Longwool I dyed with pokeberries.

The roving that became this two-ply Romney came from a store near Edmonds, WA. The wool was from a local sheep named Chris and purchased mainly because I loved the colorway. This was also spun at a low ratio, and the resulting yarn is softer than I would normally expect Romney wool to be. That is not to say that it is super soft by any means, but it is sweet.

And finally some color graded Polwarth. This roving and I have had a rough time of it. There was a lot of felting and tons of little neps and pills. Highly irritating. I had been holding on to it because it seemed so terrible to waste wool as soft as Polwarth and then I finally had to stop myself. I got rid of all the terribly felted bits and and spun a heavier yarn (this is a heavy worsted) while simply allowing the neps to spin right in. At this weight they just became incorporated and we got along much better. This 200 yard skein will likely become a hat at some point in the near(ish?) future.

I have always been enamored of milkweed fluff. It floats beautifully, shimmers in the sun, it’s soft and light and magical. As a child I even decided to love monarch butterflies because they loved milkweed. Then one day someone told me that it can be spun. Into yarn. Really.

I started by carding those cotswald curls that you see at the top, opening the locks before adding the shimmering milkweed into the mix. I read that you can only use up to 70% milkweed in a fiber blend before the resulting yarn becomes too brittle to spin. It is best blended with wool. This blend was only about 5% milkweed, because it was just an experiment.

The drum carder took up the milkweed well, once in was sandwiched between two layers of wool. I removed all the seeds of course, but wish I had separated the fibers from their connection point before carding. The might have all floated away of course, but I think the blending would have gone better. It is amazingly hard to keep your milkweed from blowing away. There was much holding of breath in this endeavor.

Here is Devorah kindly modeling the fluffiness of the final batt.

This was spun up long draw again. Another 50 yards or so like the green curls. Shiny!

Jaywalkers are of course a much beloved pattern and have nothing to do with the shame described in this post. I am celebrating the end of three… years… of second sock syndrome. Hence the shame.

It all began when I started toe up jaywalkers in Scout’s Socktoberfest colorway. Yes, nigh on three years ago. There is nothing quite like telling people to stay tuned on October 13, 2006 and just posting an FO today. Terrible. In my defense the dreaded second sock syndrome was compounded by the halloween theme of my socks. Pretty much if the second sock wasn’t started by the end of October it was set in the WIP pile for another year.

Several people who have seen my finished witchy socks have (rightly) argued that they can be worn at any time, not just at halloween. Though there is something about that orange-purple-black combo that does cry out for our unique American observance of this time of year. Is anyone else already looking forward to small children in adorable costumes? I definitely am. It is worth handing out chocolate to see such cuteness.

Regardless of your halloween practices, I for one am delighted to have these finished. And yes, even though these were started three years ago… the purple trend continues. While rumors may be circulating that I also just purchased a pound of dark plum merino top from The Fold, you can’t prove it and anyway it wasn’t my fault.

Just a brief update to share that I have completed another Noro striped scarf (ubiquitous, yes) and this time I actually like the colors. Good thing since this scarf is for me. The colors are actually much brighter than in this picture, with some of those yellows being more on the green end of things. But most importantly, I am very pleased.

It is huge! Almost 100 inches in length and with much nicer drape than the last one because I used Noro Silk Garden Light this time. I highly recommend it.

The Felted Clogs pattern by Bev Galeskas has been utilized by thousands of knitters to create deliciously squishy slippers. Mine went on something of a journey…

Once upon a time there was an eBay posting for a colorway of Manos del Uruguay yarn that I had never seen before. Neptune! The green and purple combo always appeals to my inner witchiness so there was no resisting. But then the yarn arrived. The green was lighter than anticipated. I had no idea what on earth to do with it. After a period of stash ripening, I began to imagine clogs. Warm, squishy clogs. This was when I was living in Illinois. In winter. Gak. So I made one. Yes, insert dreaded drumroll here. Just one. And then procrastinated waited.

Moving to Florida was, of course, wonderful inspiration to get that second clog done. Not so much. More stash ripening. Then finally came my recent move to New Haven, CT. Moving here from Orlando, FL was a bit of a shock. I was freezing cold in my house. In June. Uh oh. My two “wasted” years of knitting nothing warm, of obsessing over lace and socks, came back to haunt me. Cold in June. No one selling slippers. What to do? Enter the stash!

But of course, there was a problem. My original first clog had been cuffed in a solid purple yarn. Which I promptly lost. So I was out the other color and couldn’t find the remnant of that first skein of yarn either. And what had I done with two of the three remaining skeins? Gifted them to a friend of course. Genius. But she liked the colors, so how not? So there I was. Two cuffs and a full clog to do with one remaining skein of yarn. Would I make it?

See that dangling piece of yarn there? Yep. That is how much remained when I finished the outer sole (last section of knitting) on my second clog. These barely made it! I had to seam in another color of Manos. Anyway, the prayers worked and I just made it in the end.

One warning: I followed the felting instructions and felted for 10 minutes at first. That was the exact right amount of time. They were completely finished. Finished enough that I was worried I had overfelted. Which would have been a poor ending to our story. So please, if you make these clogs, start with less than 10 minutes of felting.

They fit! Thank goodness!

The end.

My fabulous cousin reminded me (mid-move, sorry that it has been so long between posts) that I have never knitted her anything. A horrendous oversight! After all, knitters are always looking for people to unload bless with yarny goodness. Think summer and one too many zucchini plants in the garden.

Now that I have moved away from Orlando and put many miles between us once again, it is good to know that she has something with her that I made with my own hands… an object that is literally stitched together with love. Of course, I still owe her a scarf. I am not a miracle worker. I got about halfway through the scarf which, considering all the moving madness, I’d say is a win. I loathe moving! The organizing, the purging, the boxes… the humbling love of your housemate who graciously models your knitted hat once again even though you have been cranky all day!

Devorah is full of grace. Those who know her know that well. Look at that photo, she is even smiling while wearing a hat made for someone with a bigger head. Patience, she has it. Koolhaas, this lovely dome of buttery soft cables, was designed by Jared Flood. Ravel it here. The yarn is 100% baby alpaca (Miski, by Mirasol) and therefore the cables do not pop as much as some other koolhaas’ I have seen. But the color was perfect (she asked for blue or purple) and the softness is not to be believed.

This was a lovely pattern. A bit hard on the fingers (what with the all over cabling), but if you are looking for the perfect reason to learn cabling without a needle, this one is more than worth it.