you don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops.

Posted on February 10, 2009 by barefootrooster

Last night I heard Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller sing Tom Waits, Bessie Smith, Johnny and Jack, Judith Miller, some gospel music and a bunch of their own stuff. It felt like looking down on something special, to see these individually incredible songwriter-musicians make and enjoy their music together. Makes it sort of hard to return to regular life, so instead of jumping right into the reading I should’ve done last night, I’ll show you a little bit of spinning I did yesterday.

spunky-jan-fiber

This is my first batch of fiber from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club — 4 oz of organic merino in colorway Twilight.

boh-spindle

Boh’s not so good with the spindle. (Yet.)

spunky-progress

The blues and greens look particularly beautiful against the colors of one of the books I’m reading this week — prompted me to get out the camera this morning.

Time to have some more birthday cake for breakfast and get back to the pile of reading…

birthday weekend.

Posted on February 9, 2009 by barefootrooster

I have a whole slew of unrelated (or maybe loosely connected) photos: knits in action, kitchen adventures, knitting mistakes… Hmmm. I promise NOT to name this post something about the letter K.

Friday:

bolero-in-action1

Bolero Jacket in action. I feel like I read a lot from folks about how sometimes knitting is not super wearable, and my blog gets lots of visitors who are looking for advice on wearing things like legwarmers, so I’ve been a bit more mindful of snapping photos when I am actually wearing things I’ve made (not that I consider myself remotely fashionable). This sweater gets a lot of wear around the house, and steps into real life when the weather is variable enough to warrant a heavy sweater but not a winter coat — this works best for me with a big puffy vest. I wear this when I need to bring a bit of comfort with me — in this case, the discussion of a tough book.

fork-for-scale

Friday night, we made pizza and lemon tart (from deb at smitten kitchen, of course). No pictures of the pizza. Note the fork for scale in this picture. I also discovered some serious errors with my increasing on the BSJ I’ve been working on — I literally had 6 ridges left to knit when I realized that my increases (for the fronts of the sweater) were uneven. I don’t even have the heart to photograph the problem, nor could I stomach ripping back. I just put it aside, dug through the stash, and cast on for a baby version of the bolero jacket.

Saturday:

biscuits1

moroccan-stew

Moroccan Stew (from deb) and biscuits (a la Mark Bittman). Also, a new spindle arrived:

newspindle

I LOVE this spindle. I spun the sample fiber it came with immediately, and may need to dig through my fiber stash to start something new so that I can put it to work. The spindle is from Spinsanity, and it spins wonderfully. Hooray for birthday presents to myself.

Sunday (actually anniversary of my birth):

birthday-cake

Homemade birthday cake, not baked by me. Honey-Rosemary Cake with Lemon Frosting, from Apples for Jam. This is incredibly delicious, the kind of cake you can eat several pieces of during the day and not feel like you’re overdosing on sugar. I intend to have some for breakfast after I post this.

replacement-sweater

And since this purports to be a knitting blog, here’s the progress I’ve made on my replacement baby sweater. Just about halfway done already — what a difference worsted weight yarn makes. I’ve had enough distance from my BSJ to take a look, and I imagine I’ll rip back and keep going — it may go to this baby, or to the next. Lots of folks in my life are adding to their families this year!

Hope you all had lovely weekends. Sadly, you don’t get to stop reading when it is your birthday, but I did slow down a bit. Time to have some of that cake and prep for class!

pooch for scale.

Posted on February 5, 2009 by barefootrooster

pooch-for-scale

pooch-for-scale-2

Ta-da! My first plied yarn. By my calculations (which are often up for debate), this skein contains about 180 yards of squishy mostly worsted weight yarn, with some light worsted and light bulky here and there. I’m thinking that I *need* a new cowl, and once I finish this BSJ for the now overdue baby, maybe I will allow myself to cast on.

bsj-almost

I’m making progress, to be sure — cast off the 5 st on each side for the neckline yesterday, but there is much to do, leaving me with a dilemma: do I read for my independent study with my advisor tomorrow, or knit for him? I’ll likely do some of each, but what I cannot do — I repeat, CANNOT DO — is work on this:

fruitloops1

How did this happen? Spinning is a slippery slope, my friends. I got a new Butterfly Girl Designs spindle in the mail this month, but did not allow myself to test it out until AFTER I had finished spinning the Finn. So, while my plied skein was drying, I figured I had earned just a few minutes with this spindle and some more AVFKW fiber from the club. It seemed slightly unbalanced — likely due to how soft the gold hook is/perhaps some jostling during the shipping process, so I tried bending it slightly this way and that to make it just right — and suddenly, I had spun almost an ounce of this beautiful shetland in the Fruit Loops colorway. This is wayyy too much fun.

Alright — must stop blogging and get reading! or knitting!

plied.

Posted on February 4, 2009 by barefootrooster

full-spindle2

I filled this spindle — which split where the hook screws into the shaft just as I was finishing. (I think I’ll mostly be using this for plying, as I didn’t have much luck with it as a beginning spindle, and it seems fixable.) Plying took much longer than I expected — it takes time for an appropriate amount of twist to travel up the strands of yarn! Next I began wrapping the yarn around my arm to make a big loop — but there was too much yarn:

winding

So I started over, using a chair back, and found a reasonably priced niddy noddy online for next time. Here’s my yarn, pre-warm bath:

before-washing

I LOVE it. LOVE. After soaking in warm water/detergent, and then hot water/vinegar, and then warm water again (according to Maggie Casey’s instructions in Start Spinning), I hung it to dry on a hanger in the kitchen.

closeup-hanger

hanging

I woke up this morning to find my yarn almost dry. A few more hours, and I’ll be able to twist it into a skein (and take more pictures). I’ll also work on estimating wraps/inch and yards!

sleepingboh

Boh is pretty tired from all that plying, and I managed to pour my coffee grounds from the grinder into my glass of water instead of into my press. I might be a little tired from plying too! Today I must make progress on that baby sweater. No more spinning until it is done. (Hear that, self?)

plying!

Posted on February 3, 2009 by barefootrooster

singles-balls

I still haven’t finished my book for this afternoon’s class, but yesterday I made some serious progress on my first plyed yarn. First, I wound my singles into balls.

2-strand-ball

Then, I wound these balls into a single 2-strand ball.

plying

And now, I’m plying! I’m still working on understanding the differences between under-plying, over-plying and “just right”-plying, so my expectations for this particular skein are low…but even so, I love it! This looks to me like it ranges from light worsted to a thinner bulky weight yarn, and I can’t wait to turn it into something for me.

While winding my singles, I made a pot of rather unconventional kitchen sink chili — leftover pork from the dumplings, black beans and corn instead of kidney or pinto beans, etc. and a batch of cornbread. Both were soothing and warm — just what my sort-of scratchy throat was craving.

chili-and-cornbread