Sunday, September 28, 2008

Fiber progress

I've had a burst of knitting FO's in the past couple days. The main reason is that a yarn order I placed had some weird glitch by arriving in Greensboro when it was supposed to (some people track weather systems, I track packages) and then nothing was posted to the system for FOUR days. After the four days of tracking silence the package suddenly made an appearance in California! As a result, there has been no dyeing this weekend. I have been knitting, spinning, cleaning carpets, and trying to get caught up with the elusive laundry cycle.

The Family of Noro Hats is almost complete. Only the first is actually knitted with Noro yarn, all the rest are done in various shades of hand-dyed by me. Bowen's is done and I cannot seem to get an accurate shot of the colors. It's not this yellow at all.

bowen's noro

I'm hoping when he comes back to my house tomorrow we can get an outdoor shot that will do the colors justice. Morgan's is on the needles and moving along nicely.

The Mason-Dixon Knitters have a new book Knitting Outside the Lines and I've been making the quick knit, purposeful Monteagle Bag. It calls for Euroflax but since I don't have any of that lying around I used good ole Peaches 'n Creme.

monteagle bag

For the second bag I did a double-knit cast-on so I wouldn't have to seam the bottom and I used some of the left over Hempathy from the Hip in Hemp skirt. I think the bottom of the bag is the most beautiful part!

monteagle bag

monteagle

I used it today and it handled some beets and rustic bread very well.

One of my orders did arrive this week. After all the hullabaloo about Beaverslide Dry Goods from b r o o k l y n t w e e d I decided to give them a try. I opened the box and look at how beautiful my merino/kid mohair roving is:

beaverslide roving

A giant ball of fiber love! I ordered some yarn too, one fisherman's weight and the other two are worsted. Each yarn is a two ply.

beaverslide yarn

I see more hats in my near future!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Cozy yarn sale

This is belated, sorry about that, but Cozy's Annual Yarn Sale was a smashing success! I knew it would make all the difference if people could actually touch the yarn and see the colors up close. I dyed 32 skeins specifically for the sale and only came home with ten of those - not too shabby! Plus the knitter and Cozette love was well worth the effort.

One of the Cozettes, Lisa, has a blog and did a post with some pictures. The most amazing thing was the line of ten or twelve women waiting outside before the sale started. I was tucked back in the "personal care" section and a whoosh of women went to the back where the yarn is - a few with LISTS of what they wanted to grab. I met lots of great knitters, was totally impressed by the mellowness of the Cozettes in the midst of fiber lust-filled customers, and have found a few of them on Ravelry (I love that).

Yesterday I took a day trip, after two soccer games in the morning, to the Rising Meadow Farm's Sixth Annual Farm Fest. I got to chat with Mary Ann Pagano of Three Water's Farm. Mary Ann taught me to spin and I bought my first wheel from her. In addition to beautiful fibers in several forms, she also makes goat's milk soap -
I bought ten bars as handmade soap is a weakness of mine. I also stopped in at the booth by Gate City Yarns and bought a featherweight Bosworth spindle. Under the same tent I found Iseespots Farm and bought a nice nostepinne and a maxi Bosworth - I know, that was pretty indulgent!

new toys

I also bought four "truffles" of moorit roving from Rising Meadow Farm. There were six different colors and it was hard to choose only two. Each truffle is 2 oz a piece.

moorit truffles

The food was also good. There were lamb and grass-fed beef offerings, drinks to benefit the local Girl Scouts ( a glass of cider, lemonade, or bottled water at $1 each)! Given that drinks are usually the thing that kill me at events I was flabbergasted and went back for some muscadine cider!

The stove has been on almost all day and thanks to the breeze, many of the rovings (superwash merino) are almost dry. One of the local knitters happened to notice some of my roving that had been spun into a lovely single by Mama Blue. Heart was one of my favorite rovings. This is what it looked like before it was gorgeously spun:

heart

For some strange reason I was plagued by an inability to sleep well all week. I'm hoping cooler weather this week will help that situation.