wishing you and yours a day of happiness, family, friends, and if you’re lucky, a total lack of football.

And pie!

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here’s some stuff I’ve been spinning up lately - all three Navajo plied, to get it off the bobbins:

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The blue is Fleece Artist kid mohair - this stuff was a joy to spin, not felted at all and really lovely. The purple is mohair too, from Michigan Fiber Fest - this was a tad tougher, but a quick flick carding solved the problem. And the third is Fleece Artist Wensleydale - my spinning nemesis. For some reason I just can’t spin Wensleydale. It may be that every batch I’ve ever used has been felted, but I think this Fleece Artist stuff isn’t much felted. It’s not you, Wensleydale - it’s me.  We just weren’t meant for each other.
I’ve also spun up the first of the Southwestern wools from Sarah - this is California Red roving:

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It’s exceptionally springy and lofty, although the finished yarn is firmer than I would have expected. I’ll definitely be looking out for more of that in the future. I love the little dark hairs interspersed with the cream color.  This is medium-soft - something that would make a very nice sweater for wearing either next to the skin or layered.  I bet it’ll retain its nice springiness when knitted.

And today? Today is about one thing… PIE!    More from the kitchen, when the going gets good…

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and among those things for which I am truly grateful, I can count the friendship of some absolutely wonderful knitters. Kathy recently drew my name out of a hat for a blog contest and sent me this:

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That’s Indian fry bread mix, cookie mix, hot chocolate, and best of all, a mix CD (so how much does it date me that I wanted to just call that a “CD mix tape”?) Kathy is a princess among women - and those cookies were Yum. Thank you Kathy!

And Sarah, in trade for British wools, just sent me this tremendous box of Southwestern wool goodies:

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From the top, that’s raw Suri Alpaca, and Tunis, Romney, & Border Leicester Longwool roving; in the second row we have a Cheviot/California Red cross, natural black Churro roving, and California Red roving; and across the bottom we have some CVM fleece from a sheep named “Penelope”, Cheviot roving, a Suffolk-Churro cross, natural grey Churro roving, a fleece sample from a CVM/Corriedale cross lamb named Janet, and some Columbia top. What a fabulous package! I don’t know where to start in telling you about each one - rest assured that as I go through them in my ever-growing stash you’ll see them again here.

In knitting news… in addition to basking in the afterglow of actually finishing something for once (anybody who’s been reading a while knows that I’m even slower at knitting than I am at blogging), I’ve been chugging along on the hourglass sweater. I’ve decided to modify it a bit. I realized that the big bell cuff I was knitting would drive me crazy, so instead I’ll do close-fitting, tapered sleeves… conserving yarn as well. Because I think I’m really going to need to. I have pretty much both sleeves and the yoke to do out of four and a half 100 yard skeins and I think I’m not going to make it. I’m almost sure that I won’t be able to get much farther than a sleeve, maybe a sleeve and a half - in which case I will need a radically larger amount of yarn than the pattern calls for. I’m getting gauge, using the suggested yarn, everything. This pattern notoriously runs out of yarn by one or even two skeins according to the KAL… but this is crazy! I got two extra skeins to begin with, and I think I’m still going to have to order at least one or two more. It’s a total mystery to me.

I suddenly have the urge to knit a ton of Christmas presents. Which I swore this year I was not going to do. Somebody stop me.

…also known as the Pinup Queen sweater in Stitch n Bitch. I made (and botched) this sweater years ago as my very first sweater attempt, so I thought I would reprise that and see if I could knit up a sweater I’d actually enjoy.

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Pattern: Pinup Queen Sweater by Annie Modesitt
Source: Stitch n’ Bitch (edited by Debbie Stoller)
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Angora in 021 Turquoise
Needles: Sizes 5 and 6 (one down from suggested size)
Started: 6/19/06
Finished: 11/10/06
…
The final verdict? I like it. It’s extremely comfortable and extremely soft & warm - wonderful today on a day that’s got a high of 34 degrees -and for the most part the fit is flattering. My only complaint is that the sweater is a little more boobalicious than I expected it to be. I’m not sure I’ve got the cleavage to pull off this kind of sweater! I may crochet along the neckline to give it a little less oomph. Modesty aside, though, it’s wonderful.

In other knitting news, I’m trucking along on the Hourglass Sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts:

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This is the first substantial project I’ve done in a Noro yarn (this is Noro Cash Iroha) and for all the controversy surrounding this particular yarn and its alleged cashmere count, despite all the reasons Cash Iroha gives me to not love it, I have to admit that it’s really nice. I’m not head over heels in love with the color - it’s nice enough but doesn’t have the vibrancy I associate with Noro - and it is NOT a delight to deal with the two to three knots in every 91 yard skein. I’m surprised to find those sorts of shenanigans in such expensive yarn.  But all that said, it’s a delight to have in your hands, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to make a really nice sweater.   It came from a great swap with another really nice Knittyboarder - thanks Trill!
I’ll close with two pictures of yarns I’ve spun up from the British Wool Mania collection.  The brown is Manx Loaghtan, navajo plied.  I love the way the lighter tips give it a heathered, tweedy effect.  I can’t wait to try to card a colored fleece like this with nepps to make a really strong tweed.

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The grey is Gotland curls, in a very unruly and energized singles.  I had to work hard to get it to look this way - which is amusing because it looks like my very first attempts at yarn barf!  If I had it to do over again, I would likely comb it out completey instead of using the fluff and floof method.  But it was a fun experiment…
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I’m off to spin and knit some more - my goal is to finish the Hourglass sweater as quickly as possible, then hit the home stretch with the dreaded Argyle of Doom.  Wish me luck! And next time you hear from me, I’ll tell you about this:

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Sarah and I were talking today about posting videos of how we spin, so I whipped up this little video of me spinning long draw with the Romney/Suffolk/Corriedale fleece I bought at Michigan. Check it out - I think you can hear me swear when I accidentally let go at the end! My hope is that others will do the same and that we’ll be able to compare notes. Consider it a video-meme. If you do decide to take a pic of your spinning, please let me know in the comments! I’d love to take a gander.
As the video above attests, I do more than just collect fiber - I actually get around to spinning it sometimes. Here are a few of the spinning projects I’ve been working on:

This is a small sample of the Romney/Suffolk/Corriedale cross fleece, spun semi-woolen with a medium/long draw. It’s a two-ply heavy worsted weight - this was one of my first conscious attempts to spin thicker:
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The second skein is BlueFaced Leicester - only a small portion of the 400 yards I spun up for the Blanket of Procrastination.

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And here’s a representative skein of the purple silk/merino from my lovely Spinning SP Seiding, spun into a sport/DK weight two ply - I think this is destined to become a nice pair of gloves:

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In knitting news, I’m almost done with the BunnyLove sweater (Pinup Girl from Stitch N’ Bitch.) This was the first sweater I ever made (and botched) - I really wanted to give this a try know that I actually know what I’m doing, more or less. I need to figure out what the heck I did to the neckline and how to finish it.
But everything is on hold so that I can make the Hourglass Sweater. Knitting it is mindless, soul-soothing pleasure… endless rows of stockinette in soft single ply yarn does not get any simpler or more pleasant. That’s what I’m saying six inches into it, though - ask me again when I’m up to boob level on this thing.

I’ll spare you the details of my shocked happiness today… but Whee!  It’s fun to feel politically optimistic for the first time since 1992!