Cardi, Carder, Combs and Clutter

I just looked back at the date of my last post. Almost a month has passed, and really, I'm almost ashamed I haven't gotten more accomplished in the past month. I has been busy, but there's been nothing "completed" to speak of. Just a whole lot of random "this and that", which I suppose pretty much sums up my existence.

I will start with the knitting, since that will be the easiest subject to cover. I have almost completed the first sleeve of the Bustaroony cardi. Now I started this project in early January. Shameful really. Even though I knew it would take me a long time to complete it, given it's a rather intricate and even a bit difficult pattern, I really didn't count on it taking this long. At times, it was the only project I was working on, and aside from a couple of times, I really haven't "put it aside" all that much (compared, of course, to how long I've put some aside). Add to that, I really really enjoy knitting on it. My only excuse is that I have been quite busy with "other things" besides knitting, and haven't had time off work, a vacation, or other really superb knitting conditions. Anyway, I really wanted to finish the sleeve before making this blog entry, but time is running out, so you will get it as it is right now. However, I only like about 10 decrease rows and about 4 rows of shaping finishing this sleeve. I plan on having that out of the way tonight, and sleeve number two on the needles before I go to work tonight. So here's the sleeve:



And the back and both front pieces lying in "position", to give some idea of the finished look of the cardi:




I mentioned in the last post I was trying to decide what socks to start. Well, I decided on "Betties Lace Stockings" from the Spring09 issue of Interweave knits. They are perfect for western action. I had some Patonyle already in my stash, 3 balls of black, 3 of white. Now from pervious experience, those of you who remember know how I detest knitting black socks. Still, black would be sexy, and match just about anything. But my spinning/knitting friend offered another suggestions. Just knit them in white and then soak them in tea to "dye" them to an "old paper" sort of tannish colour. I loved the idea, off I went knitting them up in white. I started them on March 24th, and even though I only am about halfway through one sock now, they are a quick knit. It's just that I've been working so hard on the cardi I've neglected them. But they have a deadline, and need to be done by the Winter roundup in mid-May, so sooner or later, I'm going to have to dedicate some quality time to them.



Now, to purchases this past month. I really haven't bought much in the fibre department, but I did get lucky and show up on Ravelry in Ixchelbunny's group right as she was doing an update! All her nicer stuff seems to sell out almost the moment it is posted on her blog, so I never seem to get her goods as I'm always a day late and I'm lucky to find anything left, much less something I like. This time was different though, and I'm now the proud owner of this lovely package of goodies. The black and white is the Jacob Humbug, and the green/gold medley is from her Masham sheep, and is called "Tawny Frogmouth". (Who can resist something called "tawny frogmouth"???)



If you've never checked out Ixchel's yarns and rovings, I would highly suggest visiting her blog regularly and buying a sample. If you don't see something you like there, or it's all sold out, email her and tell her what interests you. Not only is it beautiful, but her "bunny" fibre is so soft it will make you cry (for joy, of course). I first experienced her products in Bendigo at the Sheep and wool show last year, where I bought two skeins of cashmere/angora mix yarn that was so exquisite. It's still in my "most prized" stash, but one day I'll find a pattern (or a recipient) to do it justice. If I can bear to part with it that is.

The hugely major purchase this month was my brand new drum carder. Now, for those of you who spin and, more to the point, prepare fibre for spinning, well, you know about how much these things cost. They are by no means a small purchase, but I won't go into details of the price here for fear of shocking my mom, and making her adore my hubby more than she already does for "putting up with me". But, I swear the thing could pay for itself. I'm not saying it WILL pay for itself, because that would require me to quit buying other people's prepared fibre, and that's not something I'm prepared to do right now. I'm only saying that it COULD, if times got tough and I really really needed it to. Besides, anyone who shops on ebay for such things also knows that it's resell value is fantastic. So, I always figured if I don't like it, or don't use it enough, reselling it will be a breeze. So far though, no danger of that.

I bought an Inwood Smith drum carder from Bella's shop in Adelaide (The Walking Wheel Studios). She didn't have one in stock, so she had to order it, and it took some time to get there, but it finally arrived and I went to take possession of my new toy. Now, not having much experience with carders, I didn't really have a huge brand preference, so I decided to buy Australian, as the money is coming out of the economic stimulus check (once I get it, that is), so buying local seemed the patriotic thing to do. So I bought an Australian product from a South Australian shop.

Isn't she lovely:



I had to try it out right away, so I used some of the brown fleece that I've had for ages. It actually came in a basket with the spinning wheel when I bought it, and gave it a go. Here's a picture with the fibre on the drum:



And a picture of the fibre coming off the drum, all lined up and spinnable:



Now those photos shorten the process quite a bit. What you actually do is take your raw fleece, stick it in one end, turn the crank until it picks it up with the small drum and deposits it on the bigger drum. You add fleece, trying to space it more or less evenly around the drum, until the drum is full, then you pull it off. You come up with a pretty nice looking bit of carded fibre after the first run. You tear that into strips and feed it through again. Than, for good measure, it goes thru a third time. Generally three runs is enough, depending on the type of fleece and what you want. It's also fantastic for blending colours too, although I haven't quite got that far yet. But that's in the cards (pun intended) for the next week or so.

The thing about carders is they demand to be fed, so one must keep clean fleece on stock. I had a "nearly" clean Corridale fleece, which I had washed twice already but still needed an extra go as it was still pretty sticky with lanolin. So I washed it one more time, and it came out of this bath more or less perfect. (Although I did run us completely out of hot water and had to take a cold shower before work that night). It seems I've been washing fleece forever.

Recently, on a trip to the Salvo's here in town, I saw this neat sweater drying rack for 50 cents, so I picked it up on a whim. It has became very useful over the past couple of weeks for drying my fleece.



How handy is that?? Particularly with the cooler weather we've been having the past couple of weeks. Not exactly the greatest weather for drying fleece outside, although if it is nice enough, the little screen also fits just perfectly on the top of my clothes rack that I can take outside.

I also took some tips from Bella and others and made myself a homemade rack to wash and dry "locks" for combing. I bought some "Gutter guard" and some clips, and made this contraption, which fits into the bathtub and allows the locks to go through the whole process without getting them out of shape or messy.



I think, for next time though, I'm going to cut it down into small squares, so I can use the utility room sink, and also because the long contraption is a bit hard to handle.

That brings me to my combs. After washing my fleece using the "Gutter Guard", I then set about really giving combing a go. Combs are finicky instruments, and take a bit of practice, but I reckon I did okay for a beginner.

First I took my nice clean locks from the "gutter guard":



Then I loaded a comb:



Then I swiped gently at the bottom of the fibres with the other comb, transferring the fleece over:



(BTW...there's the clutter mentioned in the title)

This process loads the comb, giving it a nice beard:



After repeating this process a few times, switching the fleece back and forth on the combs a few times, you pull the fleece thru a "diz". (My diz is of the homemade persuasion):



And this is my finished roving:



You make the rovings into little "birdsnest" and your all ready to spin:



I have also managed to card up a bunch of this fleece, and have several batts now ready to be dyed. I'd like to make on "biggish" project out of these rovings, but I haven't decided what yet. I was thinking of a vest for Chris (who has been patient with me and my hobbies, after all), and I was hoping to get a good manly colour for him.

So I had to do a bit of test dyeing, using mostly just the basic colours and some 50/50 mixes of them. Since the wool is grey, the colours you get are interesting. They are more forceful than the pastels I tend to get on white roving, but because the grey does change the colour, I wasn't sure of what I would get. So, an experiment was necessary to give me some idea.

Here are my samples straight after dyeing:



And hanging to dry:



The finished products were interesting, and the colours certainly were brighter and less pastelly, but I'm not sure if any of them qualify as "manly".

The first batch is blue, blue/green in the middle, and green on the other side.



The second batch look better in person than in the picture, but still, the dye didn't seem to mix as well. One is orange/green, the other orange/blue (I was trying for a brownish):



The last set has red at the top, orange in the center, and orange/red at the bottom. I really like all of these:



Now all that's left is to make a decision, or do more experiments. Not sure which yet.

As some of you know, I've been losing quite a bit of weight lately. I don't mention it much here, as weight loss isn't really what this blog is about. But for those of you wondering (you know who you are), I will post some "before and after" photos when I get the cardigan done. I began making the Bustaroony cardigan as sort of an incentive. At the time I began it, it would have been about 4 sizes too small, but now, depending of course on the finished product, I should fit into it. When I get to that point, I will "unviel" the weightloss on the blog. But, I will say that I've cracked into the 60's this week, which was a big goal for me. Now onwards to the elusive 55K.

Well, that's enough for this post. Heaven knows, I do need to do entries more often, and save myself from these long long posts. Well, maybe next time. Or not :)

Accomplishments and Aquisitions

It's only been about a week since my last blog, but I'm thinking it might be helpful if I don't allow myself to get too far behind in the blogging department. When I do get behind, I start dreading having to do a post, as the whole effort just seems a bit too overwhelming. The posts will be shorter, of course, but at least they won't become a daunting task I put off for days or weeks.

This past week I've spent most of my crafty time working on the English Rose shawl, made with Kauni yarn using the "Northern Lights" pattern. I finally cast off on this project last night. I say "finally", but really, considering the size, it didn't take that long at all. There was a KAL going on on Rav that my friend D. was telling me about, so I joined up and had a go. The shades are more subtle than some of the Kauni colourways, but I'm happy with it.

Before blocking:


On the blocking board:


Even though I'm really trying to save up a bit for a new drum carder, I've spent a little bit over budget for this fortnight on fibre. Really, it's not entirely my fault. Moseley Park (aka Jane) updated the store, and I fell in love with the Mango Fluff, which with it's merino and optim and pretty pale colours was right up my ally, so i had to buy everything she had left, which amounted to six 35g batts.



Upclose, you can really see the gorgeous colours:



I can't wait to see how it spins up!

Then on Sunday, Chris was keen to go to the markets down at Port Adelaide. Well, he was really keen to GO anywhere, as that dear hubby of mine does like to go go go. So he drove me into work Saturday night, spent the night with his mom and dad and then picked me up the next morning for a day of shopping.

I'd as soon be home playing with my knitting and fibre pursuits as gallavanting about Adelaide after a hard night at work, but I was off Sunday night, and I had been wanting to go out to the markets. Stranded in Oz (aka Melissa Deutsch Scott) sets up there on Sunday, and I was looking forward to seeing more of her fibre art, yarns, spindles and rovings. I had seen her stuff in Bendigo at the sheep and wool show there last winter, and had bought a spindle and some funky fibre yarn from here then, so he didn't have to twist my arm too hard once I found out that was our destination.

Chris picked me up from worked, we stopped and had a coffee, and then made it to the markets a few minutes before they opened at 9AM. The Port River runs right there beside the market, and as we were waiting and standing looking at the river, we saw dolphins at play. There were lots of them in the river that day, and a particularly cute mother and her baby dolphin swimming near us. Too bad I'd forgotten my camera, as it would have made a great shot.

Anyway, I made it to Melissa's stand, and she had, as expected, many beautiful things. I wound up bringing home a bit of roving for a friend, but I won't elaborate on that or show a pic yet, as it's a bit of a surprise for when I meet with her next week. I also got about 250g of this lovely soft white merino roving. It feels more like cashmere than merino. I'm almost afraid to dye it. I wouldn't want to dull the softness.



I've gone way over my fibre budget for the fortnight, and must remember to be good next fortnight, or I will never be able to save up enough for my drum carder.

Today, I've been spinning some of my merino dyed to match the apple tree in bloom in the spring. I've almost filled the green bobbin full, and will then be moving on to the pink. I've been working on it in fits and starts, and making it quite thin (by my standards). Hopefully by the next post, I'll have an actual skein to show off.

I've also picked up the Croc socks, and feeling they were a bit tight, I transferred them from the 2.75mm needles they were on to a set of 3mm needles to make them a bit looser in the legs.

I have yet to pick back up the Bustaroony cardi, but hope to get to that tonight. I've made an error on the inside of the pocket, and while that might not bother me under normal circumstances, I really want this project to be perfect, as I'm thinking of entering it in the show, so I will need to tear the pocket back out and redo it to get it right. It would be nice to have that ready by the time I go back to work tonight, but it's late in the day, so there's no guarantees I will.

Till next time.

Once more, before I go...

Just a quick post before I go to catch up, before I get so far behind I forget half of what I've done.

First, the "Socks Ahoy" socks, made with the Widdershins pattern and the Koolaid dyed Patonyle are finished. I'm quite proud of them. They are, I admit, a bit loose (but truly, only a bit) around the toe and heel, and I will tighten that up on my next pair I reckon. Otherwise, I couldn't be happier, and the heel itself is still a marvelous creation as far as I'm concerned. Here they are on my very happy feet:



and a close-up of the heel:



So impressed was I, in fact, I have picked up my new Knit Picks wood needles (which I got to play with briefly while making the heel on my Socks Ahoy project), and have cast on to make Chris a pair of Widdershins, minus the cables.



When you take the cables out, what you have is a K2,P1 rib pattern. Pretty simple, but with that impressive heel! I'm using some Jigsaw sock yarn from Heirloom, in a flat grey color, and I'm making them one at a time, mainly so I can use the Knit Picks wood 80cm circular needle. It's too short to do two at a time, but I'm fixing that. Yesterday, I ordered 6 of them, sizes 2mm to 3.5mm in the 100cm length, perfect for two at a time socks. Since Knit Picks won't ship to Australia, I'm having them sent to mom, who has graciously consented to forward them along, hopefully with another batch of Koolaid.

Speaking of Koolaid, the Heirloom Easy care I dyed the other day turned out to look pretty good when it finally dryed. It has much more muted colors, which is certianly what I was looking for.



I wound it up into balls, and now I'm looking for a good 8 ply sock pattern, although that is proving a challenge, so I might just use a toe up sock "recipe" and design my own. 8 ply socks sound very attractive; thick, warm and quickly made, relative to fingering weight yarns that is.



On the spinning front, I just dived in and started spinning the silk, more or less. I did get advice from Jane, who sent me the silk in the first place, to keep my hands further apart when spinning. So that's what I did. I really didn't mind spinning silk. I have a tendency, apparently, to spin things rather thinly for a novice, but silk is very strong, and even a thin strand doesn't break easily, so I didn't have to "go fishing" for my yarn thru the orifice as many times as I do with wool. It's was rather slow going, because at places, even with my hands far apart, it was very hard to draft, and there were lots of stops and starts, but in the end, I was pleased.

Here is ALL of the pink:



Here is a strand of the pink next to a 10 cent peice:



And here is about 1/2 of the blue:



I'll have to wait until I get back to spin the rest of it.

Which brings me to the postie offerings this week. After my semi-success with the blue and grey wool that J.S. from work gave me, I got the itch to do more spinning. I had a few bits and peices around the house (including the silk), but never liking to get anywhere close to running out of...well...anything, I placed an order with Jane at her Moseley Park Shop.

I ordered some bare sock yarn to dye (fun fun!!):




And some white rovings to dye as well (MASSIVE fun):



I also ordered these black and white beauties:



Jane sent this beautiful English Leichester in varying shades of purple:



She also sent these babies:



I'm assured that it is entirely coincidental, but I can't help noticing how similar the colors of this last batch is to the colors of the silk! What dumb luck! (Or is it? hummm)

So now, plans are to finish the blue silk, spin up one color wool and then ply it with the matching color silk. I can't wait to get going on that.

Not this weekend. Shortly after finishing this post, I'm packing up and going away for the weekend to the state titles for Western Action Shooting. We're getting a cabin near the shooting range, which is a couple of hours from here. I'm taking the new sock I've started for Chris, plus my Peace in the Hood cardi, as these trips are always prime knitting time!

So I should have some progress to talk about when next I post. Till then.
















o

WIP's, Postie Offerings and Weekend Plans

I suppose this post is more of an update of the past week or so since my last entry. Chris is at work right now, but he is leaving from there and going out of town for the weekend, to the lovely seaside resort town of Wool Bay with a friend who has a cabin there, to do a bit of boating and fishing, so I have the whole weekend to myself, and my knitting, from this morning until Sunday evening. Whooo hoooo!

Of course, I still have to work, but just being able to have the time that I am at home free of distractions. It's also nice because alot of my time seems to be taken up in dragging out and repacking my projects, and sometimes I neglect doing things like spinning or dyeing simply because the whole process of arranging things is intimidating. It's so much easier if I can leave the wheel in front of the couch, or the dyed wool hanging on the shower head. So I expect to get a few things done while he's gone, and of course, I'll post about all that, hopefully, Tuesday or Wednesday when I have my "two whole days in a row" off work.

The postie has been very good to me this week. I ordered, and recieved, a new MP4 player off of ebay. It has a 4G capacity, will hold my audio books, has a screen for watching videos on, and also an e-book function, which lets me read txt format books on it. This part is promising, since I can copy the written (not graphs and such, but nothings perfect) part of patterns onto my Windows notebook, which is txt format, and then transfer those to the player. Which means I no longer need to take the big paper patterns of my projects around with me on short trips or to work. I can just put the info on the player, and then if I run into trouble, or get more finished than I anticipated, I have the written pattern right there in a much more compact way.



I've figured out everything but the video part so far. I know how to USE the video part, but can't figure out how to transfer videos on there (and all the different formats doesn't help either). I got an excellent deal on this thing, but it is a Chinese no name ripoff product, and the instructions are good mostly for humourous entertainment, but aren't much help in figuring out to work the thing.

But once I do get the trick, I hope that will be "knitting handy" too. I'll use an example, if I may. I'm knitting on a pair of socks, and reach the heel, but alas I'm away from home and computer (vacation, work, whereever). It's a short row heel, and I really wanted to use Cat Bordhi's method of picking up wraps that I saw on YouTube a couple of weeks before. But alas, even though I had practiced it at the time, I hadn't used the technique, but had planned on trying it on these socks. With this device, I could download that video ahead of time, and have it ready and waiting on my player when I reached that step in the WIP. That's my dream anyhow, now I just have to figure out how to execute it.

The player wasn't the only postie offering this week. I also recieved some lovely stitchmarkers from Binkaboo's Etsy shop. She had sent me some pretty blue stitch markers a few months ago as a RAOK, and I loved them so much. I'm sure it wasn't her intention when she sent the first ones, but she did get a good customer out of the deal, because I just love her work to peices. Not that the green/gold coloured ones aren't pretty, but just LOOK at those pink ones! In my book, those are pure ART.



Now for my WIPs. The "Socks Ahoy!" socks are going along very nicely. I started out with three balls of Koolaid dyed Patonyle to do them with. Since I'm doing two socks at once, a couple days ago I took the last ball and rewound it into two balls, and although I didn't get the balls exactly "half and half", I think it will work out fine, as from the looks of things I will only need 1/4 to 1/2 of each ball to finish the project anyway. Shortly after I pick them back up, the old balls will run out and I'll attach these two "mini" balls and I'll be in the final stretch.





Frankly, they are long enough now. As long as I generally make my socks, but I want to experiment with getting socks over my calves, so I'm going to knit away until I have "nearly knee" socks. At the moment, I'm doing a 1 stitch increase now at the end of each needle on each sock, every four rows (there's 8 rows in the pattern repeat) to make the leg wider as it goes up. I'm keeping to the K 2 P 1 Widdershins pattern, but don't have enough yet (and I'm not sure I will need enough) to make another repeat of the cable, but we will see. I'm trying it on every few rows to judge how much increasing I need to do (YAY for toe up socks!!!), but essentially the results are K2 P1 panels on each side of the sock.

The Peace in the Hood cardi (CPH pattern) hasn't seen as much work as the socks have, but I have gotten about 2/3rds of one sleeve done. I mostly knit on it when there is something on TV that demands I actually WATCH it, since the stitchs are bigger and don't demand as much concentration, or even me looking down overmuch. I'm in no hurry. I never really planned to have it done for this winter anyway, and it could easily go into hibernation as Christmas approaches if I get too overloaded with "gift knitting". But I do so LOVE knitting with the Peace Fleece every so often.



Well, that's about it. I'm off to the LYS and the grocery store soon. I don't precisely NEED yarn, but I do need to support them, and I've neglected them over the past couple of months what with the Bendigo trip and all. That's my excuse anyway.

Disaster theory

My darling husband teaches society and environment, and he tells me that everytime it comes time to teach a section on man made or natural disasters, one happens. For instance, he's teaching about earthquakes today, and last night there was one in Los Angeles. I think its a coincidence, but maybe not.

Sunday I had my own personal disaster, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Friday night before work, I decided to pull out the spinning wheel and give the new spinning book I bought in Bendigo a chance to teach me something. I had gotten a couple of rovings from a friend at work, and had spun up a bobbin full of the grey. I got out the other color, a sort of brownish orangy color, and spun it up as well. It went fairly well, and for awhile at least, I felt like the spinning wheel and I were working with one another, rather than working against one another as it's often felt in the past. I went to work and took up the spinning again when I got home Saturday morning. I finished an entire bobbin of the stuff, but the book says to let the bobbin "set" overnight to allow the yarn to relax before plying. So I did.

Sunday morning, feeling I needed to keep going while the "spinning mojo" was still with me, I began to ply. Chris had stayed up late to watch the Tour De France, so he was sleeping in and the house was nice and quiet. Plying did not go as well as spinning had done. I kept getting the threads tangled. Every time I needed to change the yarn to a different hook (which is often when plying), I had removed tension on the two singles and kinks and tangles ensued. A couple of times I forgot and let go of the twist all together, which of course meant it ran almost all the way up to the bobbin and 15 minutes of untangling was required.

Finally, after much trial and error, a bobbin full of plyed yarn resulted. And dammit, it looked pretty good.



I was immensely proud of myself, took pictures, and went to brag on Ravelry of my success. I also wanted to look and see if the yarn once again needed to "relax" or it I could skein it more or less immediately. Now that it looked like I was getting somewhere, I was anxious to have some finished product. I also had the idea that, lacking a Niddy Noddy, I could just skein the stuff on my skein winder.

The rest of the story I am now borrowing from a post I made the next day on Ravelry to some encouraging friends. It tells the story well enough, and given the sad nature of the affair, I don't want to retype the trajedy here:

I could find nothing saying I should wait before skeining my yarn, and I couldn’t figure out any reason why I couldn’t use my skein holder for this purpose, so I decided to jump right in with both feet. I brought my Lazy Kate into the study where the umbrella type skein holder is, postitioned them properly, and began winding the yarn on. I noticed right away there were a good many kinks in the yarn, so I held the yarn taught, as I had read somewhere that I should, pulling the kinks out, and kept winding. What I DIDNT notice was that my “umbrella” was closing ever so gradually…probably due to the tension I was putting on the yarn and the tension of the thousands of kinks trying to re-kink themselves…until of course, kinks started showing up in the first part that I had wound on. Of course, they had been wound on when the skein holder was fully open, but now at half mast, they didn’t have any tension on them anymore. I tried to push the umbrella back open, but of course the last few dozen rounds of yarn had been wound when it was smaller, so it wouldn’t go up. Ok, so I try and wind them back off, but then the kinks just started getting out of control, and suddenly everything was a tangled mess. After giving up, untangling and winding the rest at the smaller circumferance, I took my lopsided “skein” off, and all I can really say is that it bore a striking resembalance to a blue and brown unclipped poodle! I’m too embarrassed at the moment to include a picture, but I might start seeing more humour and less mortification in the business in the next few days and put one up on my blog.

I’m thinking I might need to patiently sit down and rewind it all on the bobbin, then reskein using my old arm…then do the wash thing and hang…oh I don’t know…my car maybe…on it to straighten the kinks out. Here’s hoping. As it is, it won’t even do as novelty yarn!

So that's the whole sordid story, and today, finally, I felt brave enough to take a picture of my "yarn poodle".



I had thought to sort and and wind it back on the bobbin today, but I had way more stuff to do, and not the heart to sit thru all those tangles. So, I suppose the poodle will have to "relax" and wait for another day when I feel more courageous.

On a more positive note, yesterday I finished those heel turns on the "Socks Ahoy" project. The Widdershins heels are a cross between the old fashioned heel flap and the short row heel. I searched thru Ravelry forums and found a post that directed me to this blog entry by K2Knits called Revisiting the Widdershins Heel. It literally saved my bacon. The pattern itself is only in one size, and unlike short row heels, there isn't just this easy "knit to the last wrap" thing going on that will adjust to any size. So for my fat feet, I needed adjustments, and the worksheet on her blog was indespensible, given my arithmatic retardation.

Even armed with the numbers, I still procrastinated about a week, rereading things in my spare time to try and get the idea of how it was done in my head. But yesterday, the first day of my two whole days in a row off, I was determined to get into it. The first one went slowly, both because I was being cautious and because I had two socks on the one needle, and I had trouble keeping the sock I wasn't working on out of my way.

So I knit the first sock off onto my new bamboo knit picks needles, and boy did they work a treat. I had never knit socks on bamboo before, and I know some don't like it, but I loved the way the bamboo held on to the slippery sock yarn. I could knit closer to the ends of my needles without worrying as much about dropping a stitch, and all it all it at least "seemed" faster. And the cords seem much more flexible than the Addi's. I'm going to order me some more, in a longer length. The ones I got in Bendigo are 80cm, which is big enough to magic loop a sock, but not two socks at once, which is how I'd much rather do the thing.

So the heel is done, on both socks. I finished them both yesterday, though I admit I didn't get much else done at all. But I'm very very happy with this heel, and I think I will use it again and again. No holes or gaps AT ALL. It's really a nice, clean, good looking heel, and not that hard once you have the tools to resize it and have knit it through to figure out how it works. In fact, I may never use another type of heel ever again! (Ok, I probably will...but it IS a nice heel).



Now, I'm ready to start working on the leg.



Meanwhile, I'm still knitting on the "Peace in the Hood" (CPH) hoodie, but I haven't gotten much done past the last post, so no picture is really necessary. I am working on that now, though, as I'm almost finished with the ribbing on the first sleeve, and would like to establish the pattern so it will be ready to "travel" when I'm back to work again.

Ok folks, that about catches things up. Off to knit now.

Down to the Wire

Well, the house is a shambles, but I think I'm as close as I'm going to get to being ready to go to the Bendigo Sheep and Wool show. The last minute things need shoved into bags tomorrow morning, and we plan to make as hasty an exit as possible, at 9AM tomorrow morning. But first, I must sleep a few hours (a very few, it appears), work 8 hours, drive home, shower, throw the straggling things in the bag, have a ciggy, and then off we go.

The trip, theoretically, is about 6 1/2 hours from here, maybe 7. For me, of course, it's longer. There's the stops so I can wee, and the stops so I can smoke, and the stops so Chris can eat sitting still. He refuses to eat while driving. Fair enough. For the most part, it's me that holds up our traveling progress. But, according to Chris, the world as we know it will cease to exist if we don't arrive at the caravan park before 8pm tomorrow. Yes, I did the math. That would mean we had 11 hours to get there, and even I shouldn't be able to delay things that much, so we should be fine. The worst part, of course, will be before we actually leave the house, watching Chris standing, tapping his foot and scowling while I smoke "One more" cigarette before we leave the house.

I did start the fingerless mittens yesterday, although I was trying to rush and kept flubbing up the cast on. I'm doing them two at once, using the Magic Loop, and casting on is always hard for me when doing two at a time. I don't know what I was doing. I think I started knitting back the way I had just came from or something. I'm not sure, but it was hideous. So I tore it all out and started over, I worked a couple of rows and then did a few more at work last night in my free time. I will work on them a bit more tonight at work, but for all intents and purposes, here they are before the trip:



Now all I have to do is have them finished by Saturday morning. It's certainly do-able, particularly on holiday.

Because I was getting the groundwork done on the smaller projects and doing all the preparations for the trip and such at home, I've only worked on the "Peace in the Hood" cardigan at work lately, and then, of course, not last night because I was working on the mitts. Even so, I'm making some progress. I'm about halfway thru the right front at this point.




The "Socks Ahoy are just about ready for me to start putting in the pattern. I've worked on the toe increases, done numerous calculations, and to the best of my knowledge, I like 4 rows before starting to knit in the "Widdershins" pattern. I like the way the colors are knitting up so far, but it will be interesting to see how they look in pattern.



So, with the exception of any progress I make on the mitts tonight at work, those are my WIP's that are going with me to Bendigo, and how they look when I leave. I wanted this as something of a yardstick with which to measure my progress on each project over the trip. Of course, I fully expect the mitts to be finished, but it will be interesting as a before and after shot of the other two projects.

Well, I'm wilting in my chair right now. My eyes are getting a bit furry, and I have a big day ahead. I should be returning Sunday night, and back online Monday. I will try my best to get a detailed and newsy post up Monday about the trip, along with lots of juicy pictures.

Until then...