CT Sheep & Wool 2010!

Today was an absolutely perfect for the Sheep and Wool Festival.   It was sunny and warm, but not too hot.  The Tolland Agricultural Center was full of vendors, people, and of course sheep!

This year I went with my mom and we had a lovely time wondering around looking at all the booths.  Of course we indulged in a little yarn and fiber goodness.  Since a wheel is not in my immediate future, my mom was nice enough to treat me to a pretty new spindle.  I picked out a Kundert spindle with a walnut whorl from The Wheel Thing's booth:

It's very pretty and I can't wait to spin with it so its good that I also got some lovely fiber.  On top some fawn colored Coopworth from Purple Fleece, and below is  some pretty merino that came from some place that I sadly can't remember the name of.

And of course I could not be around yarn and fiber all day without picking up some sock yarn.  I choose Panda Sox from Dye Dreams in their Seaside colorway, which is a little shiny and generally beautiful.  I'm imagining this becoming a lovely pair of socks with cables or lace.

Robert got out of going this year because he has papers to write, but he has been subjected to me showing off my pretty new wooly things so he didn't get to escape completely! 

Crisis Averted

I'm sure everyone was really worried when I recently wrote that I was almost out of sock yarn.  I know I was.  But then something happened.  I was about to pull out the yarn to make a cute little cotton cardigan and underneath was my leftover blue Dream in Color Smooshy.  I stared at it for moment, and thought, "That ball is so full you can hardly tell I already made a pair of socks from it, there has to be someway for me to get another pair of socks out of that."  Then I remembered my leftover pink Piece of Vermont yarn, had a sudden uncontrollable need for pink and blue stripe socks, and cast on.

Rather than do jogs and all that stuff, I looked up Grumperina's posts about doing helical stripe socks.  This method of stripes of fantastic.  Super easy and look how pretty even the inside is:

I have been loving the stripes and all that, but I did hit a bit of a wall.  I decided to try out a short row heel, and I'm just not really feeling it.  Short row heels look nice but I'm so familiar with flap heels that this way feels finicky and complicated.  I plan to solider on with it, but I need to find a little bit of time where I can just sit down and focus on figuring how this works.  Sadly, such time is in short supply and my poor little socks have received little attention the past few days.  But at least I have socks on the needles again, still have my one skein in reserve, and the CT sheep and wool festival and my birthday are both approaching so hopefully my sock yarn stash will be revived.  Everything is good, well, except for fast approaching finals that could be better.

Seven!

At last, there it is.  A full week's worth of hand knit socks to keep my feet cozy and comfy.  This long awaited moment arrives thanks to the completion of these lovelies:

Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A
Yarn: Three Irish Girls Adorn Sock in Carrick
Mods: Did a slip stitch heel rather than plain stockinette, Added a repeat of lace to the cuff

This was my first time knitting a Cookie A pattern, and I can see why this pattern at least is so popular.  The lace pattern was simple and addictive, and the directions were clear and easy. I had the lace memorized after the first repeat, and throughly enjoyed knitting it.  I also liked working with the Adorn sock yarn.  It wasn't splitty, didn't bleed, and was nice and soft, overall a very nice yarn.   The other nice thing about this sock is that it fills a gap in my sock wardrobe.  I didn't have any lacey spring/summer socks but now that I have these I'm sure they'll be getting lots of wear.  Plus they match my favorite blue shoes :)

PS- it is really hard to take a decent picture of your own feet while standing up.

The New Twist Collective is Up!

I'm sure by now everyone has seen the new spring/summer Twist Collective, but I just took a few minutes to look through.  It is lovely as always.  I have to confess I've never actually made anything or bought a Twist pattern, I just love to look at them.  Twist Collective always seems to bring together such a great collection of designers for each issue, each issue I am sorely tempted to cast on one of the beautiful designs.

I am especially enarmored with Azami and Cecchetti in this issue.

I know summer is approaching and these are both long sleeved so they are not particularly practical but I'm having a really hard time not going to Webs and buying a bunch of their bright pink Southwick to cast on for my own Azami just like the one pictured ASAP.

Oh and let's not forget the socks.  I have a serious sock addiction and it pleased me to no end to see they had a whole section devoted to socks.  My favorite is Sweetgrass.

This sock could very well be in my future except that I'm almost out of sock yarn.  I only have one skein left and I had a different pattern in mind for it.  I may have to end yarn moratorium soon as not having any sock yarn is a serious problem that can not be allowed.

My first handspun!

I made yarn!  I finished spinning my 4 oz of shetland wool last weekend.  At first I wasn't going to ply it and then went back on forth on whether to ply or not.  After a few days of contemplation I decided to ply since the thickness of my singles varied so much and I hoped that plying would help even it out a bit.  I  think it worked overall, a few spots came out very thick, but mostly the finished yarn ranges from a worsted to bulky weight.  Also plying was much easier than spinning.  I was able to do all the plying in a single evening. I am immensely proud of my yarn and can't wait to get my hands on some more wool to spin, but first I need to continue working on this project (also I'm trying to be patient and wait for the CT sheep and wool festival at the end of the month).  The next step is to knit this up into a hat.

Energy Project Progress

The spinning continues, and its going even better today than yesterday.  I spent part of this morning perusing the Beginning Spinning Group on Ravelry, and learned quite a bit.  Using my new found knowledge I split my huge ball of roving into two smaller ones and this has made spinning it quite a bit easier.  I'm also getting somewhat more consistent results, though the thickness still varies quite a bit.  But I think the project is going very well, and as an added bonus, spinning doesn't seem to bother my wrist.  I've spent a couple hours this afternoon spinning with no pain at all, where as spending this much time knitting, crocheting, or typing on a computer without a break frequently causes pain in my right wrist or hand.  Overall, I am really enjoying spinning and feel immensely proud of my little bit of yarn, as I'm sure Robert could tell you since I keep showing it off to him.

Spinning Ambition

My energy law professors is rather eccentric.  He doesn't like people to take notes during class and the final is whatever you want it to be.  Seriously, whatever you want it to be from writing a paper to drawing a comic book.  He gives no guidance but encourages students to incorporate something that they're interested in or good at.  Well clearly for me that means there has to be knitting involved!

I've been rather intrigued by our discussions that involve how much oil goes into making something.  For example, it takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of corn based ethanol.  With all my knitting and sewing I've been thinking how much oil goes into making the clothes we wear?  Is making your own clothes an alternative that would use less energy?

As a little experiment I've decided to make an item that uses as little energy as possible to make.  I'm doing this mostly by cutting out all the middle men and trans ocean journeys usually involved.  I bought some wool roving from Contented Butterfly Farm in Vermont on etsy that's from a sheep names Sage.  I plan to spin it, knit it, and do some math to see how much energy I used in this process compared to an item of conventional clothing.  Of course this requires me to spin, something I'm not really experienced in.  However, after a half hour of spinning this morning, I took the picture above and I think its going quite well.  It's at least not as thick and rope like as my first attempt at spinning.

Also, for an idea of what goes into an item of conventional clothing check out Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles.  It tracks the average journey of some of the items they make.  I find it fascinating, this is a company that actually makes an effort to be environmentally responsible but a huge amount of resources still goes into every item of new clothing they make.