about 5 bank accounts, 3 oz and 2 vehicles*

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twilight-2oz

This is more like 2 oz.

Of fiber from the January Spunky Club.

Not anything illicit. I’m just saying.

I’m realizing that 2 oz is about all I can fit on the spindle at one time. Despite what this picture seems to reveal, I’m really happy with the evenness of this yarn. the last 10 yards or so are more irregular (and what you can see here) and I think it has to do with how heavy the spindle gets. When it is approaching full, my technique seems to emphasis the “drop” in drop spindle!

*This is Dr. Dre’s answer to the previous line, and the name of the song: “What’s the difference between me and you?” Given that the song lyrics and music references I normally post situate me solidly in the land of americana/folk/alt country, I’ll provide a little more context. This album was popular during my freshman year of college, and somehow it became clear that a friend and I knew all the words. (While this isn’t my favorite song, I have a serious memory for useless information like song lyrics.) He is getting married next year, and there have been jokes about demonstrating this particular skill at the wedding. If you know the song, you probably realize that it is pretty intense/violent and, shall we say, representative of the genre. Despite all of this, it makes me think of said friend whenever it comes up on itunes, and I smile. Music is good for that.

Plus, now that I operate in ounces — of a very different kind than Dr. Dre —  it is allowing me to creatively(?) post on my spinning progress this week…

first handspun FO.

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handspuncowl1

handspuncowl2

I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out, as my first plied handspun is definitely a thick-thin yarn. After perusing a bunch of cowl patterns on Ravelry, I settled on something similar to the malabrigo cowl I made a few months ago. I was aiming for a drapey fabric, and figured I’d knit til I ran out of yarn.

I cast on 75 stitches, worked a purl row at some point to counter the roll over, and then knit, knit, knit while catching up with a friend on the other side of the world, listening to This American Life, and even last week’s CraftLit episode. I increased by 9 stitches at a few different points in the middle, worked a decrease row (also 9 st) somewhere, another purl bump row, an increase row, and then at about 14 inches, a purl row close to the bind off. I was worried about getting it over my head, initially, but those fears were totally unfounded. I LOVE this cowl — and not just because it represents my first foray into the spinning side of things. I stayed up an extra hour last night in order to finish this — here’s the token “hold the camera up to the mirror” picture marking my victory:

handspuncowl3

It’s a good thing you can’t actually see how bleary-eyed I was at this moment — but we all know how certain projects induce a kind of “must…finish…” zombie-like state.

In conclusion: hooray for handspun! (And I will finish that baby sweater by Friday. Really.)

fad classic in action.

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fadclassic

This morning, in need of a little more warmth, I dug deep into one of the drawers under my bed and retrieved my Fad Classic. It seemed like just the thing, and the slight variegation and bumpy, round stitch pattern made me smile. I slipped it on under my cozy navy blue cardigan and looked in the mirror. And I LIKED it. See, I neglected to post FO pictures of this particular project because while I liked it in theory, I really didn’t like the way it fit — seemed not long enough, the neckline didn’t seem all that flattering on my shape, blah blah blah. But today, as a layering item, I’m thrilled, and in honor of Vestuary, I wore my Fad Classic out into the world for the first time. And I’ll be doing it again.

fadclassic21

Also, this weekend I wound up my handspun:

my-yarn

I’m really excited to see what it will look like all knit up. Still working on the baby sweater, which needs another inch or so of ribbing and then it will be time for seaming — I will have it done by Friday. I will have it done by Friday. I will have it done by Friday…

lobsters.

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It all started innocently. A dear friend came over to bake and decompress. She is far more talented in the land of dough, so she did the honors:

kate-hands-hearts

hearts

In my desperate search for a heart cookie cutter, I came across a few other shapes that I simply could not bear to abandon mere days before the retail holiday of affection.

lovelobster

Thus, love lobsters. (These cookies are also courtesy of Deb at Smitten Kitchen — the coconut shortbread cookies posted recently.)

My valentine and I (and Boh) managed an afternoon walk to celebrate. The ground was frozen, but the sun was shining.

monkeyrun

monkeyrun2

For dinner, I turned to Deb again — this stuffed cabbage recipe had caught my eye. There are lots of leftovers, and all parties are excited about that. My only hot tip? Next time, I’m going to use cooked rice, as the half cup mixed into the filling seemed to take forever to cook. (As in, many jokes were cracked about our romantic three course meal — the first two courses being delicious rolls of cabbage and filling, with slightly underdone rice.)

cabbage-drying

stuffed-cabbage

I rarely remember to take pictures before we eat — while I was packaging leftovers, I realized I wanted to document this meal, so I dumped the container back into the pot…splitting open a few of the rolls. Trust me when I say this can/did look prettier, and that it was delicious, homey and hearty.

Time to get some work done on this Sunday afternoon — hoping to have some knitting to share very soon…

sweater on dog.

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sweaterondog1

sweaterondog2

I realize that the title of this post may inadvertently direct those looking for actual pictures of sweaters on dogs to my blog, and for that, I apologize. As you can see from Boh’s reaction, this is as close as we’re ever going to get to “sweater on dog”. I would, actually, consider knitting him something if (a) he seemed cold and (b) he didn’t LOVE destruction of knitted things. Surprisingly, he seems to understand the difference between WIP and FO. I can leave this on the couch for hours:

sweateralmost-done

And he will sleep next to it. But if it were finished, and somewhere even the least bit accessible, it might become Boh’s next victim. (Psst. See how close to done I am with this ribbed baby jacket? I really like how it is turning out. My wrist has been a little sore from all of the work I’ve been doing on it, so I think I need to take another week to knit the rest of the ribbing and sew up the side seams — oh, and decide on a closure. What do you think? Button? No button? Snap?)

More classic Boh:

sillydog-couch

Boh laid like this for hours yesterday. Thinking hard? Needs a lot of blood flow to the brain?

bohreading

And this. Such a tease. He didn’t actually read any of that book.

Coffee’s ready! Happy Thursday, all.

you don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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

Also, this is what greeted me when I got out of the shower this morning:

pouting-boh

I imagine I look sort of like this before I’ve had my first cup of coffee…