Tag Archives: hello yarn fiber club

black beans and sour fig.

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I got home from campus this evening and just could not find the energy to tackle anything in the work pile. So I started simmering some black beans in the crock pot and sat down at my wheel.

This is the second bobbin of Sour Fig, shetland from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club. I don’t know what I will make out of this yet, but it will be for me!

The beans weren’t tender yet, so I decided to start plying.

And when I filled my bobbin, I wound the yarn onto my niddy-noddy, counted up my yardage (201!), gave the loop of yarn a bath, and hung it to dry.

It is late. Like, way past my bedtime late. But I’m here, sipping a mug of tea, listening to Nanci Griffith (“I been sifting through the layers, dusty books, and faded papers…), and slowly planning the work I’ll do tomorrow.

I might even ply up the rest of this stuff tonight.

academic blocking.

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Today is the day: I’m wearing my GYC out the door, and I’m thrilled about it. Which got me to thinking: wouldn’t it be great if blocking worked for papers, and not just for sweaters? I’m giving a paper in a few weeks that just isn’t quite ready. In a lot of ways, I’m happy with it, but it still needs to be tugged and stretched. The stitch definition could be more even, the hem straighter, the lines cleaner. I’d really like to be able to dunk this particular project into a warm bath with some soak, and then reshape it on my kitchen table in order to get the results I want.

Alas, I’m stuck with revisions, more reading, talking to myself in the shower, and occasional full-on questioning of what it is that I am arguing. This is yet another area where I think knitting has the right idea: a lot can be solved with a warm bath.

spinning/silliness/sunday.

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The sun came out yesterday while I was spinning the first bobbin of my first (of two!) bump of Hello Yarn shetland in Sour Fig, from the Fiber Club. I had to stop and take a picture. Twenty minutes later, my bobbin looked completely different:

I’m super excited to see how this ends up. I’m aiming for a 2-ply dk weight, but this stuff wants to be spun fine, so we’ll see what happens.

And now, the silliness:

I am a lucky girl.

Yep, another picture of this sweater. The fit is a bit awkward, the armholes are huge, the seams are wonky, even the ends are poorly woven in. I love the big ribbed collar, but I think the reason I wear this sweater more than any of the others I’ve made is that it was my first, finished in February 2008.

I wear it to late night reading groups, to dinner at friends’ homes. I pull it on to take Boh outside in the morning, I curl up in it on the couch. I buy groceries and write papers in it. It fits over many layers, even other sweaters, which is often how I wear it. It warms me, in more than the obvious way. I’ve been reading/discussing Rushdie this week, and these rather silly ruminations on my green sweater make me think of something his narrator says in Midnight’s Children. “Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real” (230, in my 1991 Penguin edition, though this was first published in 1980).

Time to slip my arms into the green sweater and get back to work.

FO: winter storage.

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Boh really likes handspun. How about a few more?

You’re looking at what happens when a certain rooster decides to clear off ALL of her bobbins: lots of navajo ply practice wth leftovers of fibers past, and a squishy, 350 yard skein of mostly fingering weight 2-ply from some absolutely stunning Hello Yarn finn in the winter storage colorway.

This was my first adventure with the fast flyer for my Lendrum — first of many, I should say.

And this — this is how I can tell that he really is my dog. He just wants to sniff, paw at, and, let’s face it, roll in all of my yarn.

Happy Monday, folks!

pink/purple.

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I uploaded photos from my camera this morning and noticed a theme.

slaw tartare

safety pins

winter storage bob2

From the top: an impromptu lunch of slaw tartare with red cabbage from the farm, safety pins to keep my favorite jeans modest enough to wear out of the house, and the very pink beginnings of the second bobbin of the Winter Storage colorway I’m working on (my first project with my wheel’s fast flyer).

This rooster needs another cup of coffee!

 

yellow.

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It was a quiet Friday, spent trying to catch up with the week: lots of list-making and stock-taking, but also a longer walk to the reservoir with Boh to clear my head and stretch his (okay, our) legs.

yellow1 six mile creek

yellow2 six mile creek

It was a proper eve of Halloween — the sky was grey, the wind, howling, and the familiar scent of leaves settling and decomposing whirled about us. The seasons are starting to turn again, but there are some leaves, branches, whole trees, even, that seem to resist. These solitary bursts of yellow made me smile, and I found myself looking for pockets of color in the muted beauty of these woods.

leaves six mile creek

leaves2 six mile creek

wind in weeds six mile creek

late fall six mile creek

Everything always seems more manageable after a walk along this path.

ming muffins1

ming muffins 2

The oven helps, too. A friend of mine from college has this gorgeous cupcake website that you should all check out, and yesterday she posted a recipe for savory cheddar and scallion cupcakes. Moments after reading this, I was in the kitchen melting butter and measuring out flour. Yum.

winter storage first bobbin

I also finished the first bobbin of Winter Storage, and I’m hoping to start the next one this afternoon — but only if I can get some writing done today.

boh admiring himself

I’ll leave you with a bit of Boh humor. I caught Boh admiring himself in the mirror yesterday. He was so engrossed in his own reflection that I was able to snap a few pictures before he starting looking at me in the mirror. Silly, silly dog.

high.

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You know, like alpine.

alpinemacro1

alpinemacro2

alpinefo1

I absolutely love the way the browns and golds interact with the blues in this skein. So pretty.

alpinemacro3

alpinemacro4

alpinefullskein

203 yards of 2-ply romney, from Hello Yarn, in the Alpine colorway. Romney is not as soft as the other fibers I’ve been spinning lately, but oh, that sheen. I wonder if this should become something sturdy, like mittens.

quiche

Yesterday’s quiche, and legwarmers:

legwarmers

Believe it or not, it was chilly enough to warrant wearing these around the house as I made coffee and rolled out pie crust yesterday morning. People routinely find their way to my corner of the internet by googling “legwarmers” and related terms, so I figured I’d announce that, yes, the mornings are cool enough that legwarmer season is officially open, at least for around-the-house wearing.

More soon, as I desperately need to make more progress on the wedding shawl…

singles and shawl progress.

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alpinebob1

Bobbin 1 of the Hello Yarn romney in Alpine.

bob2alpineprog

alpinebob2

Bobbin 2, first in progress, because I thought I was going to stop, and then, in the second picture, finished. This stuff spins itself. I may cheat a little bit and ply later tonight instead of letting the singles rest a full day, We’ll see.

heathershawledge

The wedding is next Saturday, a week from today. I decided on two leaf pattern repeats (I think the last time I blogged about this, I was thinking about doing three), and this morning I began the edging. I’m 8 rows into 34, and I absolutely love how this is turning out. If I work steadily on this over the next few days,  I won’t have to stay up late and risk making stupid, bleary-eyed mistakes. My goal is to block this on Wednesday night, so that it has ample time to dry before I deliver it to the bride on Friday.

While I was working on the romney and the shawl, Boh was standing guard at the window:

longdogwindow

He really is a surprisingly long dog — I marvel at his length whenever I find him at the window like this, paws up on the radiator.

morepouting

Apparently surveying the backyard is pretty exhausting work. (There is loud snoring drifting towards my desk from the bedroom.) May your Saturday be as productive and restful as Boh’s!

why hello, skein.

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fpp1

fppmacro

fpp2

fpp3

LOVE.

238 yds. of squishy 2-ply worsted weight yarn, from 4 oz. of falklands wool in five plum pie from Hello Yarn.

fpp nply full

fpp nply

I navajo plyed what didn’t fit on the first bobbin — so here’s 28 more yards of practice yarn. This is still overplied, but I’m getting into a rhythm with this technique. It is really hard to slow down my feet!

zucchini pickles

Also, zucchini pickles! I made these on Thursday, but the recipe said they’d turn a lovely shade of chartreuse after a day in the fridge. I know the green of my kitchen is tough to beat, but the zucchini really is absorbing the color of the brine. I’m taking these to a backyard bbq later today!

five plum pie.

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First off, if you clicked through from Joy the Baker’s site because you, too, wondered if roosters wear shoes, welcome! I don’t have any pictures to prove it, but I did use my oven continuously yesterday (zucchini bread, granola, roasted potatoes). And I was barefoot.

(I won an awesome set of Baggu bags, and I can’t wait. In fact, I’ve been doing some serious winning lately, as I was the lucky commenter selected in Jodi’s blogiversary contest over at A Caffeinated Yarn. Yay!)

bob2plumpie

Amidst all the oven use yesterday, I did manage to get a lot of spinning done. I finished both bobbins of the Hello Yarn Fiber Club falklands wool in Five Plum Pie, and late last night, I decided to do a little bit of plying.

full bobbin

Which turned into A LOT of plying. That bobbin is so full that it no longer turns independently of the flyer. I’ll have more pictures of this 2-ply when it is done drying, but I’m really happy with how nicely the colors lined up. Instead of breaking the roving into 2 pieces, I stripped this in half lengthwise, and was carefully to spin them the same way to keep the color progression. In a lot of places, the colors match exactly, and the transitions between colors seem gentle and subtle. Also, not that it needs to be said, but this stuff was incredible to work with — smooth, even, and solid without being compressed. I fully understand the HY hype.

Public Service Announcement: Have you seen this navajo-plying video over at Spin-Off? I found this link through the Spunky Club on ravelry, and I feel moved to share. For folks new to navajo-plying, this video makes it really easy to see how it works and what it looks like. For old pros, the video demonstrates a particular way of holding the yarn and pulling out the loops that is easy on the shoulders and very rhythmic.

For those following my bat saga, Boh and I were winged-visitor-free last night. Here’s hoping it stays that way!