Stashing

The mailbox was productive yesterday.



This is 4.1 oz of hand-dyed superwash merino roving that I bought last week from copperpot's store on Etsy. I'm hoping I can squeeze out enough yarn for two socks (??) before the cow-cat tries to eat it.

Knitting knitting knitting

The (knitting part of the) Mystery Stole is done! Now I need to find a blocking surface.

Hey, who stole my rows?

About an hour ago, I counted the number of Clue 4 stitches remaining to be picked up on my Mystery Stole and realized that I had reached (technically) row 159 of the wing. I was shocked; until that moment, I had THOUGHT I was on row 149.

It's not an egregious error, but I'll have to fudge the rest of the rows so that the feathers lengthen gradually instead of looking long-long-stubby. On the bright side, I'm 10 rows closer to being done! Semi-huzzah!

Mmm colours

We picked up some cheap pine chairs from Ikea a few weeks ago and tried hide this fact by staining them to match our dining table. The main factor working in our favour was that there was a store nearby full of staining gurus who could custom-match the colours. The really enormous factor working against us was that the chairs were made from (presumably) cheap pine and the table most certainly wasn't.

Despite this, the gurus managed to find a colour combination that turned a patch of the chair into a colour nearly identical to that of the table. Once we got all of the materials home, I lugged everything onto the balcony and started to apply liberal amounts of stain to seats and backs and sides and undersides and even to bits that would never, ever see the light of the day once they were incorporated into an actual chair. Visions of elegant matching furniture and throngs of admiring DIY-ers danced in my head...well...once or twice.

It didn't turn out that way, of course. Despite being practically marinated in stain, the chairs are still several shades lighter than the table and still look like they came from Ikea. Fortunately the differences aren't as obvious indoors.


I'm sure my technique was flawed, but the wood should share the blame; after all, a niddy-noddy to which I applied some leftover stain turned out fabulously.

Chair and niddy-noddy pieces.


World o' knitting/spinning

I saw the Yarn Harlot at Third Place Books last Friday! She spoke for over an hour and answered a couple of questions, but then we had to surrender the area to another Friday group. I already had a signed copy of her latest book, thanks to Rachel, so I left right after the talk.

I churned out the gusset part of Monkey sock #2 during the talk and finished the rest of it today. Hooray for Monkeys and Trekking yarn! The pattern was easy as anything and the colours looked so cool in the sock that I NEARLY gave into the temptation to make the socks in my foot size instead of that of the intended recipient.

MMMMonkeys!!!!

There's an enormous amount of yarn left over, but I'm not sure if there is enough for more socks...maybe I'll try making mittens or doing colourwork or something.

Leftover Trekking yarn with average thirsty adult male cat for scale.

I also finished spinning and plying some pinkish roving that I picked up last year. It's 2-ply, about sportweight, but I don't know the length.

Pinkish 2-ply yarn on fabulously stain-absorbing niddy-noddy, with CatRuler(TM) for scale.

Rainy morning

Happy September! Instead of starting Christmas ornaments as I did last year, I spent the weekend beating the crap out of yarn.

That doesn't sound very nice, does it? Let me backtrack.

I popped into Weaving Works about a week ago and picked up some merino roving in the colourway Denim. It's really pretty stuff! It reminds me of a gas giant when it's all balled up like this.



And as you can see, I spun some of it too. I wasn't sure if I should go for 2-ply or 3-ply so I tried a bit of both. It really kinked up the first time I plied it so I went back and untwisted it a bit. Here it is in its kinked form. I forgot to take photos of it afterwards.



The thing I'm not sure about though is whether the yarn is supposed to kink up like that before one sets the twist.

Anyway, I followed the directions in Shannon Okey's book Spin to Knit to set the twist, hence the yarn-beating. The yarn is still drying in the bathroom with some buddies (in the photo it's second from the right).



Here's a close-up.


The drop spindle is still seeing action. I tried switching to a top-whorl for a while but still find the bottom-whorl much easier to use and less wobbly. Here are some singles; I kind of cheated and spun the spindle on a table so I could keep the singles thin.


World o' knitting
I'm on Clue 5 of the Mystery Stole! Hah! Take that, Clue 4!




And I passed the heel on the first Monkey sock.