Tag Archives: AVFKW

skeined.

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myrtleskein

Spunky Club Dark BFL in colorway myrtle, 4 oz.

183 yards of 3-ply, dk to light worsted (says my eye).

wpi: soon.

I caved and acquired a tool to measure this on etsy. I hope it will be here when I return from my parents’ house on Wednesday.

darkbflmyrtleFOcloseup

Yay! I’m thrilled with this. Now, what to do with it?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

targheeinprog

I couldn’t help but put something on my empty, forlorn-looking wheel. This is targhee from the Woolly Wonders Fiber Club at AVFKW. It is so smooth and shiney that even now, this photo is distracting me from my attempts at description. This is 3 oz of deep melon-y beauitfulness in the It’s a lovely day colorway. Although the Lendrum does fold and travel, I’m going to leave it here to await my return, mostly because I might ignore my family in order to keep spinning, and that would be poor form.

One more WIP today:

thujaturnedheel2

I turned the heel of the second thuja sock for my uncle last night, and am planning to work on it a bit more before Boh and I hop into the car. I will get these done in time to deliver them, I will get these done in time to deliver them, I will get these done in time to deliver them…

2-ply and pie.

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bohpliedcandle

Yay! My first wheel-plied yarn! Some ravelry forum advice confirmed my decisions to turn this into a 2-ply. My singles are a bit underspun to remain singles, so I’ll try again with something else. I am thrilled with how this looks all plied up — the wheel makes a huge difference with respect to evenness of the twist and the amount of time it takes to ply. This practically flew through my hands on Friday night. Here’s a close up:

plied candle

I’m still working on consistency, but for the most part, this looks to me to be worsted-weight yarn, with some thinner and thicker bits adding a touch of character. My math tells me that this is about 120 yds of subtly shaded goodness. What shall I make?

I believe I promised you pie: peach-strawberry-rhubarb, to be exact.

pie

M and I made a big batch o’ crust and then this delicious pie. Oh, and a big, green salad filled with radishes and beets from the farmers’ market to go with it. (I failed to photograph the salad.)

We had a lovely visit — so nice to have a dear friend here to walk, talk and bake with. Boh loved that she was here too.

Mostly unrelated, but I wanted to be sure to post this so that you know that I occasionally ruin things in the kitchen. Boh was the only witness this time.

beautiful beans

Aren’t these green beans lovely? (More green in my kitchen?!) On Friday I was planning to fix a late meal to tide me over until M’s bus got in around 11:30 pm. I rummaged through the cookbooks, and found a lovely green bean recipe in Supernatural Cooking, by Heidi of 101 cookbooks. The beans are tossed with lemon and lime zest and some fresh chives, all of which I had. I oohed and aaaahed over these as I mixed the beans with the other ingredients, sat down to take a bite, and promptly spat out a mouthful of very pretty beans. I’m pretty sure I grabbed a lime that had turned to the dark (rotten) side, as my beans did not taste citrus-y — just plain bad! I am looking forward to making this again with a lime that is NOT ready for the compost, as it sounds absolutely delicious and perfect for summer. I was so disappointed, but the beans were so pretty that I thought I’d snap a picture for you anyway.

Hope you’re enjoying the weekend. I can’t believe June is tomorrow. Crazy.

the candle’s nimble flame.

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verbfibernest

The title of this blog post is the name of this colorway of corriedale from A Verb For Keeping Warm’s Woolly Wonders fiber club.

But I should back up: Thank you. Your kind words  and, perhaps, the catharsis of blogging about my hurting, helped me to sit down at my wheel late last night and early this morning.

Thank you.

Now, would you like to see what I spun? I thought so.

verbcorriecandle

verbcorriefullbob

One more, involving me playing with the macro button:

verbfulbobmacro

This is a bit thick and thin, and to my eye, mostly light worsted. I initially thought I would try for singles, but now I’m thinking I should ply this (I filled two bobbins of 2 oz. each) to even out the thickness and to make a sturdier yarn. I’m beginning to understand that singles require more spin to make them sturdy, and I am still learning to balance the pull of the bobbin with the treadling of the wheel (and thus, twisting of the yarn). These colors are hard to photograph, but absolutely lovely in real life. I am being good and letting the singles rest, but I’m hoping to ply this yarn soon…

katie

A morning surpise: a facebook wall scribble told me to take a look on my porch — friends headed west (for good) left a love note and this lovely plant on my stoop long after I was asleep last night. I found her a nice spot in one of my bedroom windows, and gave her a good drink. Here’s a close-up:

katiemacro

And I had to grab a handful of these mums at my favorite farm stand today:

mums

Boh and I went for a great run today, and I may or may not have cleaned out the bottom half of the refrigerator. Keeping busy indeed.

Things to look forward to: my best friend M (who offered to be on a bus moments after I called last week) will be here for the weekend. My farm share starts Tuesday. Inching forward…

sleeves and shetland.

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First of all, THANK YOU for all of your kind comments re: the stress of the end of the semester and my very exciting should-be-here-on-Tuesday purchase. Yay!

I turned in paper #1 on Saturday, and paper #2 Wednesday at noon. Yesterday I spent the afternoon cleaning: kitchen, trash, 4 loads of laundry, vacuuming, etc. and even made a trip to a great farmstand to replenish my dwindling supply of fruits of vegetables. I actually enjoy a lot of the parts of keeping house, but these tasks are extra-enjoyable when you’ve had to neglect balance in favor of meeting a deadline or two. One more project, due at the end of the month, and it will be summer, which to me, means the chance to read more slowly, keep getting to know New Home, and enjoy the company of the dog (and my spinning wheel)!

Enough daydreaming, it will be here soon enough! Last night I finished up the sleeves of my whisper cardigan – time to pick up a zillion stitches! Must fortify myself with coffee first.

whispersleeves1

whispersleeves2

I’m pretty bleary-eyed in these pictures, but you can see how the cardigan fits across the shoulders. Here’s one more:

whsiper sleeves3

I lengthened the sleeves — they are about 9 inches long — a half inch of 1×1 rib at the elbow, and then 8.5 inches of stockinette. I decided to make the 22 inch size across the back, and I’m happy with that choice. I’m still on my first skein of shadow, which is hard to believe. While knitting with laceweight on 7s is still slower than knitting worsted, it isn’t as slow as I thought it would be. I’m hoping to keep making steady progress on this sweater, as it seems like the perfect amount of warmth to keep tucked in a bag for when the sun sets!

Also, in anticipation of my Lendrum, this week I returned to some shetland I had started, but with an actual plan: to try to keep the colors separate and spin fatter singles. While I might not have been able to detect the differences in spinning one wool vs. another a few months ago, I am really understanding what differences in staple length and stickiness mean for spinning. I’m really happy with this so far:

shetland singles fruitloops

The fiber is shetland from the AVFKW fiber club. The colors are so rich — and coming off on my hands a bit, but I don’t mind.

Alright! Boh and I have plans to spend some serious time at the d-o-g-p-a-r-k today. He was very patient during all of the paper-writing, and has earned a lot of playtime. Happy Thursday!

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?)

turn a spindle, turn a square

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vinn-pink

And here’s what I was working on while skein number 1 was hanging to dry. This is the first half of 4 oz of Finn in colorway Equilibrium, the November installment of the AVFKW Woolly Wonders Fiber Club. Here’s the beginning of the second half:

brown-vinn

This is more of a complex chestnut brown than it looks. Silly me for photographing it on a brown chair. I clearly took this picture before my morning coffee. I’m planning to attempt plying on my spindle when I finish spinning this up. I think these colors look lovely together, and “Equilibrium” suits them perfectly.

I’ve also been working on turning another square:

square-in-progress

blurry-square

I had to have one for myself — I’m hoping that the decrease seams will become more slouchy with a good blocking. (Apologies for the blurriness on this shot — all I can say is that my arm is a bit tired from all of the spindling!) Details: Grey Cascade 220 and Araucania Nature Wool Chunky leftovers, size 6 and 7 needles, as directed. Also, even though I’m using the notes to get the stripes to line up, it doesn’t look quite right. I ran the tails of both colors up the seam to fill in a few gaps that formed during color switches. Maybe I need to pull the yarn tighter as I’m carrying the strands along inside.

Totally unrelated, but I found myself wearing my malabrigo cowl on my head. And I like it.

cowl-on-head

Still thinking about my knitting plans for 2009…

yarrrrn.

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spindles

Those of you who’ve been reading for awhile know that I’ve begun practicing with a drop spindle. I posted some practice “yarn” this spring, but honestly, I was having a hard time with drafting and getting an even, longer-than-a-millisecond spin with my spindle. Enter Mel of Pipe Dreams and Purling Plans. In September, Mel held a contest in conjunction with fundraising for the Breast Cancer 3Day Walk in DC, and I won the beautiful spindle in the foreground above. This spindle has made all the difference. It spins forever, which has given me the practice I need to figure out how to draft and spin more consistently. I’m considering this my very first yarn — spun from 2 oz of BFL in colorway Sadia from A Verb For Keeping Warm. It is a beautiful, complex gray. Here’s what it looked like when I took it off the spindles:

prewash

I then soaked it in a warm water bath, and weighted it as it hung to dry to straighten it out.  I waited all day yesterday for it to dry, and last night I wound it into a skein:

tada

And here’s the skein with a dime for scale:

tada-dime

This looks pretty thick-thin, but much of that has to do with switching spindles and making it over the drafting hurdle part of the way through this projct. I’d say most of the yarn is solidly dk weight, and none of it is thicker than a heavy worsted. I’ve begun a new spinning project already, and I can already see my own progress. This is seriously addicting.

Happy New Year! I’ll be back soon with (perhaps) a quick review of my knitting year, and some resolutions for 2009.