26 September 2010

Sadly, I don't have pictures of these, because the camera's out of batteries right now, but I got some fun fiber yesterday during Yarn Harvest.

My team (Team Grand Tour) made it to seven stores. My budget being limited, I was only able to purchase a few things. At Black Sheep I got some hemp yarn. I'm excited about this. I haven't knit with hemp in a while and I like its texture. It is cinnamon-coloured. Then, when we went to Sweet Georgia (it was like walking into a rainbow!), I got 50 grams of Wensleydale roving in blue and green. I had to have it as soon as I saw the word "Wensleydale" on the tag. It reminded me of Wallace and Gromit. And then, at our next-to-last stop, Knitopia, I picked up about 125 grams of BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester) roving in cherry red with hints of white and black.

And with that final purchase, that was my budget for the day. I didn't really want to spend a lot--I was more interested in seeing what the shops had, since I don't usually travel very far afield to buy fiber. I would have liked to buy something at Penelope Fiber, because she has a fantastic selection of roving, but that'll just have to wait for the next time I get out to White Rock. And last time I went to her shop, I bought some merino that I haven't finished pre-drafting yet (I'm turning into a pre-drafting maniac---it makes spinning a lot easier). Turns out a couple hundred grams is actually a pretty good-sized amount of wool.

So in the meantime, I've started the BFL roving on my spinning wheel, and the Wensleydale roving on my top-whorl spindle. The Wensleydale is, of course, a longwool and has a decent amount of crimp in it. It spins up very easily, and my goal for this is to ply it so it will self-stripe fairly well.

And with that, I'm off to bed. I'm tired.

06 September 2010

Today being Labor Day, I cleaned the stove-top. Haven't finished cleaning the rest of the kitchen yet, but I will.

My knitting projects are coming along. The pair of socks that's been on the needles for far too long is nearly finished, and I'm coming up to the waist ribbing on my cardigan. The lace doily is at the stage where I have over a hundred stitches in a single round, and 100+ stitches in laceweight on 2 mm needles takes time. I've already accidentally dropped a few stitches that then had to be rescued. But I am getting to the outer edges of the lace pattern (at this point it isn't difficult, just time-consuming).

This week I have to do some sewing, though, rather than a lot of knitting. This will probably have to wait until tomorrow, after my sister-in-law gets her stuff out of our spare room (she came down too early to be let into her dorm at school and has left some of her luggage with us for the time being). Her stuff is in front of the sewing machine right now and I don't feel like moving it since it'll be gone tomorrow anyway.

On Saturday, we were helping J.'s other sister and her husband pack up a truck of their stuff to put into storage before they headed back overseas again, and they asked me to hem up a dress that they'd brought for my sister-in-law's husband's mother, since it's too long. And then, as they were getting rid of a lot of stuff, my sister-in-law let me go through all the clothes she was getting rid of and take the ones I wanted home. I now have what amounts to a new wardrobe, mostly in shirts and jackets and sweaters. There's a pair of really nice dress pants that need to be re-hemmed (hence needing to use the sewing machine). Most of it is the sort of thing one would wear to an office, which is great for me. I've been slowly turning my wardrobe into one with things a grown-up would wear for an office sort of job. Although, since one of the hand-me-downs was a Homestar Runner hooded sweatshirt, my wardrobe isn't entirely grown-up yet (I couldn't pass that up, since I was a devoted watcher of Homestar Runner and Teen Girl Squad five or six years ago).

I've been wanting to get some of my quilting things back out and finish a quilt top that I haven't been working on for a while. I have 2 out of 8 rows finished right now, and a lot of pieces cut out to make into the third row. I like quilting, but I don't like the piecing part of it as much. I like the quilting part--the bit where you sew all the layers of the quilt together in pretty patterns. So I really should get to the point where I can do that.

As it is raining today, I definitely need to go for a walk, probably very soon. I love walking in the rain, even though then I usually get soaked and have to come home and take a hot shower and drink hot tea to warm myself back up.