Karma

About 3 years ago when my best friend found the light of her life I promised her a shawl to wear at her wedding. Knowing she is allergic to almost all animal fibers I immediately went searching for the perfect yarn. We discovered she could wear silk :) so off I went to ColourMart UK and I found this wonderful pale silver silk in a fine yarn that would be perfect for the elegant Shetland lace shawl I had in mind.

Life intervened, the silk got misplaced and when I went to order more it was a heavier yarn. One problem after another caused the lovely Unst Shawl to be sidelined and we used another pattern that she also loved. With the help of other friends this pattern was done and blocked in time for her to wear it at her wedding. :)

Fast forward to now. I find both skeins of the fine pale silver grey silk and discover a new friend loves this silk and its color. Then during a talk about trading her the silk she mentions she wants to learn to knit lace and make a shawl for her wedding from it. Smile you can guess what I said. YES! The fine pale silver is fulfilling it destiny of becoming a Shetland lace shawl. If all goes as planned Sami will walk down the aisle wearing a hand knit silk Sampler Stole designed by Hazel Carter and published in the book A Gathering of Lace. Smile this link leads to one that Eunny Jang knit and as you can see it is beautiful.

Mojo

Mojo
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

Mo recently gave us a real scare. He would yelp and start to turn to the right, was unresponsive to us until touched. At 13 years old we know that every day is now really borrowed time but the thought of losing him is still very hard to bear.

When my friend Margaret brought him to us as a present he would fit in my hands with his skin dripping through my fingers. I can still remember vividly how he look like a little puddle of shadow when he slept in a corner. He chose my husband as his person and no matter how bad he felt being with Toli was the thing that mattered most.

We have almost lost him before. When he swallowed a wasp and had an allergic reaction to at sting in his throat, when he wondered out a gate left carelessly open by a meter reader, and when he was first diagnosed with FSF, but those were nothing like our feelings this time. Probably because we are now acutely aware of how precious each day with him is.

Celebrations and Challenges

ready for the challange 2
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

Today is the hardest day for the Tour de France riders. They have two tall mountains to climb but it is also a sort of hump day that signals the end of the tour is nearing. After today there are only four more days of riding.

In the Tour de Fleece we are supposed to challenge our selves today. My increased effort will be attempting to spin cotton my my tahkli. I of course had to make it a real challenge by picking the shortest staple cotton in my stash. The fiber Peruvian colored cotton in the Mauve color.

Here in Cheyenne today is Cheyenne Day. The fun starts with the free pancake breakfast downtown. In the past he base has had an open house in many of its historic buildings, the Guard base will have an open house and a static display of all kinds of aircraft will be there for viewing. In the afternoon the Thunderbirds will put on an aerial show. And of course it all ends with a big concert and rodeo at Frontier Days. This year it will be Rodney Atkins performing. Yep this is a big annual event centered around the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo which is still going stronger then ever after more then 110 years. If you are into western this is the place to be the last full week of July. Grin I call it a Cowboy Carnival as for almost two full weeks everyone is a cowboy or cowgirl. ;-)

have you ever heard of a tahkli?

tahkli
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

It is a small fast supported spindle used to spin cotton and other short stapled fibers. I have a large one that I have never been able to make work right. Then I saw these coin tahkli on sale. The are made and sold by Spinnerdude on Etsy and figured I could afford another spindle I can't spin. Then I found the funds for his kit and figured what the heck lets make it 2 cheap spindles you can't spin, 4 oz camel down and a DVD that might help. (Yeah right dorothy who are you kidding you really just wanted the camel down ;-))
Grin surprise I can spin his little coin Tahkli and even bigger surprise I am having a blast with them. But man I did not realize how much 4 oz of camel down was! Oh that DVD it is not as bad as he makes it out to be and yes it did help.

Lace

falbala row 11
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

Ahhh Falbala how do I love thee. She is a crochet lace triangle shaped shawl. I am using Brown Sheep Wildfoote in Vanilla for her and she is beautiful.

CROCHET!

Man is my mind wondering a lot these days. Can I blame it on the cough? Which is still going strong on week 4 and we are no closer to knowing what the cause is then when I first went to see the doc.

I have all these fair projects carefully thought out. Remember the baby set etc...

So why did I let Jabberjaws AKA Jill talk me into not just a crochet project but an IRISH CROCHET project. I know it is crocheted with Bulky yarn or worsted held double but still Irish Crochet! And with charts! Surprising as sick as I have been feeling this has become my comfort project and the front is nearly done. I have had a couple of times when I got stumped by the chart for a bit when the written pattern didn't help much. But that join with a half double crochet (American terms) I would never have figured out with out the pattern or help. OH JILL where have you been?

I have not been totally neglecting my fair projects The baby hat is now 2/3s done sigh just have about another inch or so before binding off. Socks are still on hold from lack of desire and Nessie, well Nessie and I are not really on speaking terms. I think I need to wait until I can concentrate before I pick her up again. AFTER I tink back this last row.

Weaving: I really need to get these looms warped and start I have the most wonderful yarn for a scarf on my little Emilia and I really should get to work on it.

Spinning: Silk on my Lady Ann do I need to say more. Sigh except to say I really have a big learning curve ahead of me before I can make a decent thread let along a skein. Learning how to spin on center weighted spindles is a goal I have for this year.

DPNs socks and doilies

Now I know I have not used DPNs in awhile but this was ridiculous. I got my stitches cast on and couldn't remember how to join them in a circle on DPNs!? So off I had to go in search of a good tutorial with pictures to show me how to use DPNs. It was rather embarrassing to say the least when I had to ask my online friends for help. But I got past it and even finished a baby sock and cast on a second one. Knitting away on the second one my hands started to itch for cotton thread. I started to LUST for a doily pattern. It has been so long since I made one...

I admit I caved I gave in and went searching the Ravelry data base for a pattern. I even found one sigh a beautiful complicated looking small knitted doily. I found this (excuse me while I wipe the drool away) which is just what I wanted but then someone mentioned that baby set... whimper I want to knit a doily I don't want to knit a baby hat.

Back to Ravelry and yippie I found a solution :) I am knitting a baby hat with a doily start. Now comes the funny part. Remember for those socks I had to relearn how to knit on my DPNs? I looked at the pattern set out markers, needles etc and started knitting. Boom just like that those YO at the start of each needle were automatic just like it had not been years since I knit them. Sigh I am in heaven and the baby set is getting a lovely hat. Oh I almost forgot the hat pattern is Star of The Day hat which you can find here



Oh the shawl that is Gail just ignore her she is being very patient waiting for me to finish my fair knitting. Grin considering that she will be frogged and restarted when I am not on heavy cough meds and can gasp count... she is being a good girl.

Blame it on Gail

I mean seriously if it weren't for Gail I would not be in this mess. This is Gail. Well granted you do have to scroll down to see the photos and find the link for the pattern but well you can see what I am talking about. Gail is the object of Knit Along in one of my Ravelry groups and Gail is beautiful and I was going to use my Blue Jeans sock yarn for her. But Gail and Blues Jeans don't work well together. I mean as in it was a HORRID pairing. :*( So I frogged Gail.


And as I was sitting here listening to Forever in Blue Jeans and looking at Blue Jeans it hit me. Why not try Blue Jeans in the Wild West Lace Shawl I wanted to make for Fair. Mind you I already had this shawl started. In fact I had two starts of this shawl in the same yarn on different size needles, neither of which I was happy with. So Blue Jeans got tried in that pattern...


The blue merino/tencel on the left and Blue Jeans on the right. Ladies and Gentlemen I think we have a winner and it is Blue Jeans.

So now what do I use for Gail and even more importantly what do I make with all this blueberry yarn?

Zephyr scarf

When I first got the book Weaving Made Easy I fell in love with the "Tweedy Scarf" made from Jaggerspun Zephyr. I even scrapped up the funds to splurge and buy the yarns for it. Grin then I came to my senses and realized I was not ready to weave that scarf just yet. That yarn has languished for months as I worked on my skills so I could do it justice.

Today I got up the courage to start that lovely scarf. The project calls for 3 different colors to produce a tweedy effect. I wanted a softer more soothing effect so got three colors closer in color/value. I think the colors look good together and I think the warp using the 3 strands is very close to the effect I wanted. Lets hope its stays that soft ocean like color when woven.

Nice surprise

In fall of 2007 I started a FLAK which is a cabled sweater. You can read about my adventures with that sweater in the posts starting here. It was a really wonderful deep heathered brown and I adored it. My life being what is is somehow this sweater start got misplaced. Then I got some unwelcome guests in my life and since then I have been tossing bug eaten fiber, yarn and projects as I find them. I did find some of my brown yarn that had been ruined and tossed it. Found the cable/texture swatch and to be honest while I have not tossed it yet it is looking pretty ratty. I should toss it but just can't bring my self to do it. Until now :-) While emptying yet another box of JUNK that does not belong to me I found a small plastic bin that had been tossed into it. Always on the lookout for nice plastic bins I opened it and found WOW it had yarn in it hmm a rather odd mix of yarns too. 2 balls each of a green fingering weight, a blue worsted weight and a sage green bulky... Then I noticed the brown yarn. Whoo hooo I had found my "lost" sweater. Grin still nice and clean and with all the markers in place etc plus 2 full balls on my brown and a partial ball of the brown.

The knitted sweater part I found.


A nice surprise but still not my FLAK as 2 and maybe a half ball of yarn are not going to make nearly a whole sweater. But there is that lovely camel Galway I have 9 balls of and maybe they will play well together. Hmmm time for some swatches, it would be nice to at least know all that time spent swatching and editing was not totally wasted.

Spring is here

I know because I have seen Robins flying around and our daylilys are coming up. Sigh now to get up the desire to work in the garden before it needs to be planted out. Of course my little seedlings won't go out until the end of May but still.

My weaving is on hold for a bit as I KNIT some baby items and a stuffed animal for family and friends. I have started a darling top by Oat Couture called the Fisherman T-shirt. The yarn is from an Indie Dyer I found on eBay. Doesn't she make pretty sock yarn? YES I am making this baby top in fingering weight sock yarn and actually enjoying it. Grin hope that pleasure remains until I actually finish it.

Winter Remedy

Since our long and dreary winter still showed no sign of stopping I gave in to an impulse buy about a month ago. Completely impulsive and totally not the kind of flower I would normally go for even. I went to get groceries and the store had a huge display of orchids. Yeah pretty and expensive and so not me where are the daisies? Then I looked at the price! OH MY GOSH! They only wanted $10 for any of the orchids in the display. Hmmm let me look again... Long story short this beauty came home with me.

And here is is nearly May and it is snowing outside sigh. Sunday I went shopping, it was sleeting not snowing, and well I picked up two more orchids. These are smaller plants then my first one but I think are just beautiful. Grin I was actually only going to get one but I couldn't pick between these two so blush bought both.

Looms, Looms, and more looms

I feel like my house is being taken over by looms. I have been looking at all the loom types and the numbers here and WOW is all I can say.
I have two Mini Tablet looms. Think small inkle looms with out a heddle bar.
Then there are the 4 or 5 Mini Inkle looms I got from one maker that really don't work well for anything. The sheds on this particular makers looms is too narrow to make them easily useable. Those should go.
Then I have a nice med size Inkle that works well. This is another eBay buy and one I would repeat.
I also have a Tinkle or tiny inkle from Spanish Peacock that I like and of course the largest of my Inkle looms the Schacht. So for inkle/tablet weaving that gives me at least 9 looms which is a few too many.

Then I got into the Rigid Heddle looms. I have three of those, a 13" Glimarka Emilia, a 24" Ashford, and my pride and joy a 32" Beka RL. Those at least I have been reasonable about. Each loom fits a specific nook in my weaving.

We wanted to have a multiple shaft loom. So we got a 25" wide older 4 harness table loom
Then DH learned to weave on a floor loom. OOPS back to the market and we came up with a used Baby Wolf for him last May. Last month the Baby Wolf got joined by another floor loom that weaves a wider width. That is Mystery who turned out to be a Leclerc Artisat built in 1971!

Emilia

Boy am I excited! I got my Glimarka Emilia in the mail today. This is a very sturdy little rigid heddle loom for me to use at demos. The Emilia has a 13 inch weaving width and is designed and built with all the care and attention to detail that Glimarka puts into their larger looms. It did not take long at all to have the Emilia ready to warp and weave on BUT it is time for me to get some sleep so the warping and weaving will have to wait until tomorrow.

Summer and Winter

It is done finally! This is the last of the three scarves I was weaving with variegated yarn. This one has the same variegated yarn for both the warp and weft. I think the pattern it made is very interesting.


Now on to more intriguing things. Toli and I will be doing a Weave along/workshop on Summer and Winter weave. We found a really nice towel pattern that uses that weave structure in a "Best of Interweave".


We have our threads here for the towels and have been waiting for me to get the Beka empty so we could warp up both looms at the same time. We are in love with the colors the towels call for. If nothing else they should be pretty ;-)

This will be my first attempt with (gulp)double heddles. I will also need a pickup stick for this project. Toli with his four shaft Baby Wolf will only need to thread his loom right

Look at my loom bench :)

Scooted under the Beka RL
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

My wonderful DH made me a bench to sit on while weaving on my Beka RL. The Beka has a weaving width of 32 inches so stays on the stand permanently. Up until now that meant I had to haul a chair into my craft room to weave and haul it out when finished.

My bench is designed to scoot underneath the Beka when not in use. In the photo that is where it is but grin I have it turned around so you can see how pretty it is. The seat has a lip over the side of the bench and lifts for storage. The slanted end sections provide me a place to set my shuttles etc while working at the loom.

What makes my bench even more special is he used all salvaged wood in it so the bench looks old and used. :) He also put in cabinet hinges on the seat. They are hidden until you open the lid and will hold it up while I fetch things like shuttles or threading hooks that I need from inside.

Finished!

varigated wool scarves
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

Yep the variegated wool scarves are now finished. They got a bit more fulled then I had planned on but are still nice. Compare the finished scarves with the picture in the last post which is of them before fulling.

The variegated acrylic scarf is still on the Beka and I really need to get it off in a hurry. My yarns for the Summer and Winter weave along will be here next week...

Immersed in weaving

Grin I am still weaving to the exclusion of almost all my other crafts. I finished weaving one of my variegated scarves and am half way through the second scarf from the same variegated wool. These have been a lot of fun and are VERY different as you can see from the photo.

My next project is part of a weave along/workshop to learn a weaving style called Summer and Winter. More on that one later.