Do I have any idea how lucky I am?

Hell yea! I got a package today from Sarah! It included French lavender soap, the beautiful Mountainscape in superwash corriedale



Cheerful Ember, also in superwash corriedale,



and a sample of Squoosh in superwash merino



I haven't been knitting so much, and now I doubt I will for another few days! Here is the lovely, cabled Broken Yolks. It came out to 195 yards (would have been 390 as a two-ply), 14 WPI. I love it!



And up close.



Betcha' can't guess what I'm doin' tonight!

seed III

seed III
Originally uploaded by theytoldmesew

Sarah's picture of my roving that she has spun into this gorgeous skein!

Fiber update

Just posted a whole slew of roving to Etsy yesterday. The warm weather on Friday and Saturday was most inspiring! I did a few kettle rovings. A couple are merino/tencel and all the others are superwash BFL. I'm calling this one Morgan's Favorites for his love of all things orange.



And Gothic Grapes



Chicky's Sunrise (merino/tencel)



Bowen's Blues (merino/tencel)



And Mixed Fruit



And below, we have from left to right: succotash, it's not easy, tadpole, spring chicken, bouquet, poolside pop, and subdued.


Dyeing was fun, but my other fun is coming along nicely. Broken Yolks is over half-way spun! It is so shiny, smooth, and lovely. I hope to finish it up today!



More spinning coming soon!

Weekend fun, fiber swap, and spinning

It's been quite a week. It started off at the beach (Wrightsville) with a little walking around and photography in Wilmington. There are old steamboat style houses, along with all manner of Victorian, and just some grand old houses. Almost every house down town has a plaque on the side declaring the year, style, and which person of importance formerly inhabited it. This tree is grafted and has two different flowers on it, I have no idea what they are, but they're lovely. (You can click on it to make it bigger.)



This house was for sale so there was some window peeping. Glancing up, here is some gorgeous design.



That gives way to some amazing cast iron around the porch itself.



Right next door is a Bed and Breakfast with garden. I can only imagine how enjoyable it will be when it's actually blooming.



Back here on the home front, Morgan's hand seems to be healing nicely. He has his check up tomorrow and another two weeks in the splint.



And some happiness in the fibery world, Sarah, and I are swappin' some fiber! My package arrived today:



The roving is superwash merino called Broken Yolks (LOVE IT!) and the yarn is her scrumptious handspun, Secret Garden. Plus, some Hershey Kisses and Peeps! The kids had no idea candy and fiber even existed in the same universe. They said that Sarah can come and stay at our house anytime.

Gratuitous Fiber shots ahead, avert the eyes of the young:



Broken Yolks up close and personal.



And Secret Garden. I'm giving some serious thought to what this should be knit into. The blues and purples are fabulous together. Can't wait!

In order to spin Broken Yolks, I have to ply some more random spun yarn. I've got one skein soaking and the other is on the wheel. Can I just tell you how much I love my tensioned Lazy Kate? Makes the whole thing so much easier, I can't believe I waited so long to buy it. I tried doing it myself on my old Kate and it didn't work out so well. Those Ashford people know what they're doing!

Dyeing, knitting, and spinning

I've got four more dry rovings - yea! More super soft, superwash corriedale! OK, so some of the colors I'm not so taken with, they look different wet and dry, so sometimes I'm not exactly sure how they'll turn out. "Flashback" I find the boldest. I still think the colors would be fabulous spun - not too overpowering, and great combos plied.



This is "Ruby" and is by far the most conservative color scheme I've ever done!



Mr Mustard. The yellow is actually more mustardy than pictured (that color is giving me fits trying to get it accurately).



Last is"Pam" - my favorite. If no one on Etsy wants it, I'll spin it up into something lovely for me!



I'm double knitting up some samples of the yarn I've been dyeing, so people can have an idea what the pattern will look like. That's the kind of thing I like to know when I'm looking at hand-painted yarns. Double knitting will imitate knitting in the round (I've only cast on 40 sts instead of the 58-62 I usually do for socks). It should give a nice idea of what will happen with color in the round.

There's more random spinning on the Ashford, but I'm contemplating cutting out one of the rovings. I hate "wasting" roving, but this one (I bought it) is pretty compacted and frustrating. I'm thinking of saving it for Chicky to spin, she tends to spin thicker and it won't bother her in the least, and she'll love the colors!

Morgan's finger is healing well. It looks a nasty shade of gray and we're de-funking it daily, but whooee! Stench! I'm glad we can take the splint off and clean it, or I think I would faint from the fumes by the time it had to come off. He's being very good natured about the whole thing. He thought it was cool until Day 2 and then he figured out he'd need to do some adjusting to basic daily tasks for a while. I tried to remind him that this was one of those times his stubborn nature should be helpful.

Still here...

There has been a giant pause in blog land over here. I've been doing quite a bit of dyeing, some knitting, and today it's been spinning. I've also been playing with the new camera. I was playing with the macro lens the other night and got this picture.



Then, this morning I found the rovings I dyed on Friday afternoon were dry. So, they've been finger crocheted for display purposes. There's one I'm calling Rosemary.



Sage.



Zinnea.



And Hyacinth.



I'm still working on random spinning and have almost a full bobbin. I'm pondering spinning another bobbin of one roving the whole way through and plying it with the random one, or doing another bobbin of random and seeing where the chips fall. No clue yet.

In family news Morgan broke his left pinky on the playground this week. He was playing tag and his finger got wrapped in another kid's shirt. The kid turned quickly and smacked his arm away while it was still wrapped in the shirt. The pinky has a transverse fracture and I am happy to report no special surgery requiring a pin was needed (this was the worst case scenario we were presented with). Morgan took a copy of his x-ray to school and got a cool fancy, custom made splint (gotta love the orthopedist - never go to the ER for broken bones if you have an orthopedist near by - quicker service, more qualified help, and they are nice to you). Bowen broke his arm a couple of years ago, so the boys were comparing stories at the dinner table. Bowen said, "Erin, all you have to do is break something and we'll ALL have had broken bones." She looked at me and said, "Mom's never broken anything, right?" I said, "Nope." She said, "I don't want to break anything either."