This is my hand-dyed fiber, that I spun myself and on Thursday began to knit. It is intoxicating.

The initial plan, that I had in mind before I even bought the fiber, was to make a sweater like one I saw on Flickr many moons ago (on Flickr — on Ravelry). It wasn’t until I had skeined and washed the yarn that I realized how thin I had made the yarn. Whoopsie. I guess I’m still learning. The yarn screamed at me, “Make socks! Make socks!” So that’s what I’m doing.

Moonshine socks. I am calling my yarn Moonshine because, well, everyone around said I should call it Sea Glass. I agree that Sea Glass is a descriptive name for this yarn, but it is also too beachy and peachy and cutsie for me. Since I’m now dyeing my own fiber and will be giving it names I figure that the first batch should be representative of how I want to proceed. Moonshine is in honor of a friend, who wrote and recorded a song called Moonshine. A song I blast on the stereo whenever blasting music loudly is appropriate.

My singing-songwriting friend is Sarah LeMieux and she is just an all-around incredible woman. I wouldn’t plug just anybody, so if you’re so inclined you should check her out. Here is a video of a performance from the Women in Blues Festival in Wilmington, NC. If you watch it, you’ll hear Moonshine at the end of the clip. You can also hear the song (and others) on her MySpace page here (that link plays music). I do hope you enjoy!

Now I think I’ll go knit some more on that sock. Intoxicating and somewhat distracting — in a good way — and delicious. Oh, and I’ve dyed more fiber and it has no name yet. Non-peachy suggestions for names are welcome and encouraged.

With this new project I’m working on, I keep repeating it over and over in my head: manageable lengths of yarn, manageable lengths of yarn…

…manageable lengths of yarn. The idea is actually helping me and I would have thrown in the towel on this project from the start without the mantra playing continuously in my head. Despite the mess above, the yarn is not tangled, it is manageable, and I’m enjoying the challenge.

My Dad requested a hat that would look like the old Buffalo Bills helmets. I found this web page that has served as my guide. I’ve been thinking about it in my head for some time now, and with my Dad visiting I finally found the motivation to cast on. At the moment the whole thing looks like crap.

To distract you (and me!) from the mess above, I’ve decided to show you some mittens.

Pattern: Family Mittens by Lucy Rogers from Homespun Handknit (Ravelry project page*).
Yarn: My own handspun, from Ashland Bay merino top purchased at a local fiber festival in the Fall.
Start: Nov. 30, 2007.
Finish: Dec. 2, 2007.
For: Maggie.

These were the first mittens I ever made! I liked that the pattern had you use one strand of yarn for the ribbing then double yarn for the hand. Very warm mittens.

The next pair I made were given to Jerry for Christmas, and photographed at the park a few days later.

Pattern: Mittens for Children and Adults from Sandy’s Needle Nook (free online, Ravelry link).  I drew the skull chart myself.
Yarn: Cascade 220 in black and white, knit very tightly on size 3 needles.
Start: Dec. 19, 2007.
Finish: Dec. 23, 2007.

I love how these came out, and they fit Jerry perfectly.  There are long floats on the inside that he gets caught in when putting the mittens on, but it’s not a big deal.  The big deal is that we have no snow and it’s barely cold.  Mittens see little action around here.

But that’s not really the point.  The point is that I can knit nice things.  While I work on the Bills hat and it looks really, really bad, it’s okay to look back on little mittens to remind myself that I am a good knitter, remember to breath calmly, and repeat my mantra: manageable lengths of yarn…

*I’m going to link to Ravelry because I’m guessing most folks have an account now. If you don’t – Noreen! Mom! Anyone else living under a rock! – you should get on the waiting list. You won’t be disappointed.

And it became socks for Mag:

But there were issues with that batch of spinning. I won’t go into the details, and I did end up with a cutie pair of bitty socks, but we’ll just say there was a fight to the death with that first four ounces of fiber. I did not win.

That was a while ago (October?), and I still had another four ounces of fiber to play with. So on Saturday while the kids played outside with their father in some unseasonably warm weather, I got to it.

I guess I was going for worsted, but it came out rather bulky.  I still feel clueless about this whole spinning thing.  I enjoy doing it, I can make nice yarn, but I know there’s so much more to learn.  I’m just going to keep practicing and I think I’ll join the local spinning guild.

There is about 100 yards there and I love it unreasonably.  This morning it is finally dry, and it’s already on the pins.

Details: BFL Wool Top from Adrian at Hello Yarn, color ‘Scrappy’.

All I can think about is the rockin’ hat I’m going to make with this handspun, but I should be writing Christmas cards…baking the gingerbread…cleaning the house…you know how it is!  Off to knit!

Jerry’s Knight costume is half finished.

It still needs a belt and the boot things. The pattern is Simplicity 5520 and I love how it has turned out so far. Maggie’s Dragon costume is still brewing in my brain.

The Three Button Wrap for my mom is all the way finished.

Now you can clearly see why it’s called the Three Button Wrap. Those are 2.5″ buttons! I took just over 5 skeins of the Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande, color 69.

Also finished is the first pair of socks for the mother-in-law.

What would you call that heel? I call it a pigeon heel just for fun, but I think the proper term is ‘eye of partridge.’ Anyone?  I love how it looks with this yarn, and it knits up densely – as good a quality in a heel as you could ask for.

The yarn is Lorna’s Laces in Amish. I’ll tell you what, this was my first time working with Lorna’s and I’m sad that these squishy soft beauties are off the needles. They were a pleasure to knit.

The clothes I made for myself are all the way finished, too.

Sorry, no modeled shot just yet. I’ll have to bug Gerald to have another photo shoot. The jacket on the left is corduroy without the wale. The shirt in the middle is rayon (think thin and drapey and stretchy). The skirt on the right is a polyester herringbone. If JoAnn’s had more than one bolt of wool maybe I would have made a wool skirt, but the color on that one bolt was pretty horrible. So polyester it is, and actually it’s nice enough and is a great color and has good drape.

I’m going to make an October Sweater for Maggie.

Picot edges, cloverleaf eyelet, EPS design, good ol’ Cascade 220. I’m calling it the October Sweater because I liked the name of the June Sweater so much.

Just one more update for you: Spinning.

The spinning has mostly been on the back burner but I spun this 2.5 oz. of mohair/wool from Three Waters Farm and now I’m plying it.  I love the gorgeous golden green color of it.

Why, with all the progress on wips and various finished things, do I feel so bored with everything?  Do I dare say I’ve lost my knitting mojo?  I hate the word mojo, and there I just used it!  What’s the dilly-o?

This is the extent of knitting related accomplishments for the last week or so. None of the seventy-eleven pairs of socks I’ve started have comrades yet (or comraids, depending on who you ask). Nonetheless, I did start and finish a whole other pair of socks. Probably the best socks I ever knit.

From my own handspun yarn, for Mag to wear when we go for walks on chilly mornings. Actually, I walk and she rides in the buggy with pretzels. The yarn is made from Hello Yarn hand dyed wool top in the color ‘Scrappy’.

Despite the lack of knitting, I’ve been busy with other crafty pursuits. For some crazy reason I decided to make myself some clothes to wear to my cousin’s wedding at the end of the month. After I bought the fabric and patterns I remembered that I’m not a seamstress. That didn’t stop me from making a whole outfit and it turned out rather well, actually. I’m sort of inspired to sew a whole fall wardrobe and improve my crude sewing skills.

I made a wrap top with long sleeves, a skirt and a jacket (linked to pictures of the patterns in flickr). I’ll try and get some pictures of my outfit after I hem the jacket, but no promises there. The skirt and the jacket are unlined, which is fine but I’d really like to try to make some nicer, lined things. CUTE LINED JACKET ALERT.

There are also Halloween costumes in the works – Knight for Jerry, Dragon for Maggie. I’m trying to buy as little new stuff as possible to save money and because there’s just so much crap around my house, but the Knight might require some special supplies.

So yea, I’ve been sorta super busy with the sewing, but not so much with the knitting.

Step away from the alpaca, baby.

Hey, just one more thing. The ‘tape hand’ thing from the last entry was reference to the new show “Reaper” on The CW. It was a line from the series premiere, and Nova was the first in the comments to get it. Yeah for Nova! And yeah for anyone else who is watching this awesome new show.

(No, I haven’t decided what to do with the sister sweater. Don’t ask.)

Ganomy II

Pattern: Ganomy from Knitters Almanac by Elizabeth Zimmermann. If you don’t have any EZ books yet go buy one, any one, right away. You won’t be sorry and your Knitting Life will be forever changed.
Yarn: Handspun by me from corriedale wool top in ‘Trodden’ by Adrian at HelloYarn.
Needles: US 10.5. As with Maggie’s Ganomy, I really just knit this on the fly without taking notes. Add to that Maggie’s recent tendency to pull all the pages out of my knitting notebook, crumple them, and throw them in the garbage can. The result is that I can’t remember any of the details of this project. It looks silly when I wear it, but somedays I feel like wearing a silly hat. There you go.

Pirate Hat II

Pattern: We Call Them Pirates. Free online from Hello Yarn.
Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. 1 ball each in Pepper and Natural.
Needles: US 3 for hat, US 1 for lining.
The first time I made this, I used Encore sport weight. Why I didn’t use 100% wool for my first stranding project is a mystery to me. If I was trying to save a buck, that was ridiculous because the Nature Spun Sport is only $3.50 a ball. For the lining, I used some of my remnants of the Herbal yarn I had leftover from the socks that I finished but never told you about.

The hat is great, it fits me snugly and Jerry loosely, and looks identical to the first one.

Zeebee

Pattern: Zeebee from Schmeebot, free online.
Needles: US 4 for body of hat, US 3 for brim.
Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed. This was the very first time ever in my life that I ever ever knit with Rowan Yarn. It was great. The color is 145 – very manly, but it has a reddish tint when the sunlight hits it. I’m giving this to my very good friend, Pierluigi, who lives is LA and has very little need for a wool/alpaca hat. But because he loves me, I know he will love and appreciate this hat.

If you have seen this pattern before, you will notice that I added a garter stitch border to the brim. When I finished the body, I didn’t like how much it flared out. Maybe I knit it just a little too big. So I said, “Aw heck,” and tried a border. I picked up one stitch for each ridge and knit about 12 rows (back and forth), bound off using EZ’s sewn cast-off (see, you should really buy one of her books), and sewed up the seam.

It is so perfect now that I want to keep it. It even looks good on the Mag.

Bangs cut much?

Peace

Pattern:  Made up myself, starting with the Generic Norwegian Hat Chart (free from, you guessed it, Hello Yarn) and fudging around with it in Excel until it looked right.
Needles: US 4 for hat, US 3 for lining.
Yarn: Dale of Norway Heilo, 100% wool.
This is for my Dad, who has a hobby of collecting Volkswagens, fixin’ ‘em up, and then driving them all around and talking about them incessantly.  He currently has a little red Bug that looks much like the one I knit on the hat.  Smoke coming from the tailpipe and all.  My mom told me to put a peace sign on it, so I did.

Trouble is, my Dad wears his hats all funny like; just covering the top of his head and not his ears.  So while I love this hat, it might not be the one my Dad ends up getting.  I’m trying to figure out a pattern that will have a ribbed brim that he can fold up, and a VW logo on the top where the decreases are.  We’ll see.

Phew.  I feel such a relief that my camera is back.  I’ve got lots of socks on the pins now (weird for me) and two sweaters.  I’ll be reporting soon!

ps.  My Leaf Lace post was in Cara’s recent issue of Yarnival!

I spent the day packing. First, some light reading.

Then, some current projects.

Above, We Call Them Pirates, by Hello Yarn, free here. Below, a sock for Jerry waiting for it’s mate.

I’m also bringing my second handspun yarn to make a second Ganomy.

Actually, I knit most of the hat tonight at knitting group. Sadly, I have no updated photo yet. Perhaps I’ll finish it on the way, then I can make Gerald take a picture of me on the Mile High Swinging Bridge in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

For my just-in-case, you-never-know project, I’m bringing a ball of Cascade 220 for a Seaman’s Cap. There is no possible way I will run out of things to knit.

But if, perchance, I do run out of things to knit, I’ve already mapped all yarn stores within a 20 mile radius of the campground. I’ve called in advance to be sure of the hours of operation, and have the phone numbers handy if I get lost on the way.

Now maybe I should, like, pack the rest of the stuff we’ll need.