Friday, October 20, 2006

Weaving, like I needed more things to do.

I have been so busy over the past 5 weeks. I took my very first weaving class, it ended this tuesday, having woven 4 placemats you would think I would have pretty much had my fill of weaving for a while, that is if you know me, that I really didn't have much interest in weaving going into this, it was supposed to just leapfrog me into being able to hold my own at an upcoming linen weaving class at Burr house, date yet to be set.
Well, that plan of not weaving much more completely went to pot, I wove a small stole for Katherine, and have enough warp left to do one for Elizabeth. I am currently warping my loom for some stripe work, I only have a table loom, so can't fit a full size tea towel on it, I figured at 2/3rd size I was also pushing it, so plopped onto the idea of doing little towels for the kitchen, the girls are always driving me crazy looking for towels in the kitchen, so thought 6 little things would be nice, my towel draw is full to bursting, but all it takes is one time for Katherine to get her paws on the drawer to empty it completely. Too many towels is never enough.

This is the stole on the loom.
















This is the placemats.















Since I last posted, I have passed along the baby blanket to the lady that ordered it, she was very pleased with the blanket, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.















In future when I am blocking I shall take a picture, and I shall look at picture to see if the thing looks remotely like the shape it is supposed to be.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

A visit, an FO and a pain.

Wannietta came to our spinners guild last week. I t was so great to finally meet her. She is as bubbly as she appears on her blog, she is as into knitting as you would expect, she is also a very nice person, and can knit like a devil........

I felt insanely slow knitting next to her, I can't imagine how one could get any faster than that.

Her talk about the speed competition was great, I would like to go to the Creative Festival now this year just to see the speed knitting.
I may well have to teach a bit of spinning to Wannietta too, this is cool, I love to share spinning with people, while I am no expert (nowhere close) just a spin to knit kinda person actually, I really enjoy the feeling of creating my own yarn. It gives me an opportunity to meet Wannietta again too, which I suspect could be a lot more fun than the meeting at the guild where we didn't get much opportunity to talk.

I did see a bit of a secret project, and what I saw I liked, but it wasn't enough to give away anything, so I too have to wait!


I finally finished my Fair isle cardi, it dressed out nicely, but needs a bit of a firmer dressing in the sleeves, which I suspect I may have to alter before I am totally happy.














I wound some balls of the cobweb silk I have ready to knit the wedding ring shawl from Heirloom knitting, it took almost 45 minutes to wind these two little balls, thats a lot of yarn in those two little bundles. I am busting a gut to start the shawl but desperately want to finish the Princess before I start another huge project, so Princess has been dragged out, kicking and screaming, to the top of the lace basket, which is currently quite full.
I just couldn't let go of wanting to start a new lace project, so I started another simply stunning project, the Jade shawl in yellow, it is looking good so far, so this is project three on the needles of Heirloom knittings. Yet I still kept going back to the wedding ring shawl, wanting to start, I got as far as checking needle sizes, I found my 2.25 mm needles after a bit of hunting, they are in my Unst stole! That's project 4 of HK's designs..... I should finish at least one before I put the big project onto the needles, it will be hard. I have a birthday coming up, and was sure I was going to order the Cora shawl kit as a pressie to myself, but here's the bitch, it's another HK design, and while I obviously adore her designs, I also just as obviously have issues with finishing them. While I have finished lots of them having 4 on the needle right now isn't sitting too well with me.


Here is some Princess progress, and a kind of marker for me to see how much I do in months to come.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Another busy week.

Two weeks ago I got a call asking if I had any baby blankets I could sell, I didn't so so the next question was if I would make one. After heitating for a while I agreed to it.
I couldn't pick a pattern, so decided to make one from my own rather busy little mind.

I finished last night.

I have to block it as it is to go to it's new home tomorrow I hope.














In the time I made the blanket, I also made a number of mindless pieces, scarfs and dishcloths really, I have been eyeing this sari silk stuff for a while and finally caved and bought a skein. I wasn't impressed..... Tree trunk needles equal burning hands for me, as it turns out most things on the needles for me right now are on big needles. Not fun. I need some tiny lace to correct my poor fingies.












I will be starting back on the indigo top this week, also my fairisle cardi that is languishing again. Two or three other lace projects fill in the gaps, and scarfs are the sealers.















Last week Babydoll had a birthday. She was 4! Big girl now, she can beat me on the gamecube, draw really cool pictures, dry dishes, help to cook dinner, she is growing in leaps and bounds.















This week is proving to be busy too. I have weaving again today, lesson 3/5. The weaving bit! Wahooooo.

Tomorrow is guild meeting night, Wannietta is coming to visit with us and talk about her knitting title. This is turning out to be good timing, I had forgotten that the Needlework festival is later this month, this is where Wannietta got her title at.

I hope the title stays just where it is.

I was supposed to go to a yarn sale on saturday, but just couldn't make it, considering the stash busting I am supposed to be doing, it's probably a good thing.

I am back to not having anything on the box to watch, I have a few dvd's I never have watched, Elizabeth, Katherine, and their aunt and Uncle watched one of them on Saturday, they enjoyed it, so I guess I should now too. It was the new Pink Panther movie with Steve Martin. I have held back on watching this as I really love the old movies of the Pink Panther, and nobody but Sellers in my mind could be the Pink Panther. We shall see....
I keep seeing Pink Panther DVD's everywhere, I may well cave and get the box set!


Anyway, back to fibre things, I may well remember to take my camera with me to the lesson today, so will post back with news on how it went tomorrow. Hopefully I remember to take a picture of the baby blanket after blocking.