Hi There Hammy

Less than a week ago I went to Bonnieview with some folks to shear sheep. Since then I’ve been steadily working my way through two rather large garbage bags of wool. I have three kinds/colors of fleece: a dark, dark brown that spins up black as night, a marbled fleece which spins up either grey or with stripes of color (depending upon how you card it), and a very very white fleece. I’ve processed half of the deep, dark brown and most of the marbled fleece. Now I’m out of soap to wash it with so I thought I’d take a break from the sink and the spinning wheel to show you some pictures.

This is a picture of the same fleece in three different stages. On the left is the fleece as it is straight off of the sheep. It’s chunky, full of lanolin and has bits of hay and other less desirable things in it. In the middle is the same wool from that fleece after it has been washed, dried and carded. It’s much fluffier and almost free of debris. On the far right is wool from the same fleece that has been spun. I wanted a variety of colors to come through in the final yarn, so I purposely separated the various shades in the original fleece for the greatest contrast. This will be a single-ply yarn (which means that I won’t be twisting two pieces of yarn together to make a sturdier, thicker version) and I’m going to try to knit some socks out of it. Try is the operative word here.

Raw wool, straight from the sheep.

Washed and carded.

Spun!

I was skimming through my google reader when I notice this little tid bit:

My, that sounds like…. me! I clicked on it and found myself eye to eye with one of my Manimal tins! Thank you Mr. X Stitch for featuring the shop and blog today! I have a mutual love for all of the things on your site too.

I found an old ball of bulky yarn that I’d spun months ago when I got my first batch of wool from Bonnieview. I decided to try dying it with a packet each of the blue and purple kool-aid. Turns out that the purple overwhelmed the blue but the end result is a fairly nice light purple yarn with flecks of cyan here and there. I like it much better than the crazy “Caution Orange” I made a last week, to say the least.

I knit another pair of baby shoes using the Babystovler pattern from Handmade by Calista. The process of working my way through the leftover bits of yarn and through the yarn I don’t like is fairly addicting and baby things are small enough that I can bust through a walnut-sized ball of yarn and wind up with a pair of useful and sweet little shoes! That is my definition of satisfaction.

Joe and I slopped our way down to the farm to empty our compost bin and we stopped by to see the new piglets! The second pig just had her litter of piggies yesterday, and you can see the other sow in the background with her litter. In amongst the new piggies, there’s a wee black one with white socks on his feet. They are so tiny and wriggly that it was hard to get a good picture. The sow never pulled her head out of the hay burrow she had made, but her grunting got louder when she heard us come in. Oh mama-piggy, your babies are so tiny and sweet! Still, I know what they’ll look like in a couple of months: big piggies.

I read a tutorial on dying yarn with a crockpot and kool-aid and thought “Well, why not?” So I skipped down to the village store, bought a packet of each flavor and spun up two spindles worth of yarn. I soaked the yarn as soon as I was done spinning it and then followed the directions in the tutorial. About an hour later I had a ton of yarn pretty bright orange and salmon yarn that smelled like hot juice. I wanted to make a yarn that went from yellow, to orange, to red then to blue and back through the colors again. Turns out the kool-aid in the blue pouch is NOT blue. No, it’s also red. The same red as the stuff in the red pouch. SNAP. I was hoping to work some purples and greens in with that blue pouch and instead I have something crossed between sherbert and construction site.

But, now it’s been two days and I’m getting over the initial peevishness. The colors are starting to grow on me, to the point where I’m even starting to think of some projects I can work it in to. Next time, it’s blue all the way baby. If I can find a wrapper that doesn’t lie, lie, LIE.

Oh, and it was a great tutorial, so if you’re interested in spending the minimum amount of time and money dying something, this is definitely the way to go.

It’s been too sunny and warm the last couple of days to not take Linus out in the snow to play! He was out for a good long romp and now he’s busy drying off his incredibly muddy paws.

Meanwhile, happening elsewhere… I finished knitting a second New Aviatrix hat for Aunt Carol! I just popped it in the mail this afternoon.

On April 1st, I’m taking over for a woman in the Admission’s office when she goes on maternity leave and today I went to her baby shower in the library. It was fun, there was cake and someone actually wound up buying her one of my wooliemans that I have in Stardust bookstore down the street! (I’ll give you a hint… it’s the minty green one) It was a treat to see her pull it out of the bag and have that instant of “Wait a minute… that looks familiar… OH!” I whipped up a baby hat one night using the Aviatrix Hat pattern I found over on ravelry. I had a blast knitting it, and for all of you knitters who read this I would definitely recommend it. It’s made using short rows which is essentially how you knit the rounded heel of a sock. Very cool and very fast!

This is the hat I knit using a good portion of my left-over bits of yarn from other projects. I love when I can dip into that stash and get rid of some of those teeny tiny balls. And here are two lovely photos from Rogue Sheep on ravelry/flickr. I wish I had a baby I could plunk the hat on and confirm how cute I think it’ll be, but for now I’ll have to be content with Rogue Sheep’s sweet little pictures of her finished version!

Joe and I are trying to start a knitting/crafting group around these parts and now that Stardust bookstore/cafe is part of the school, it’ll be a mite bit easier to do it in a comfy place now! Here’s the poster that will (hopefully) stir up some interest. Woot! Let’s knit/crochet/spin/sew/embroider this weekend!

It’s been a little while since I posted anything that I’ve been working on. I’ve been knitting a sweater (the Featherweight Cardigan from Knitbot) as fast as my nimble little fingers can go, but it’s still taking a small eternity. I decided to take a little embroidery break last night and whipped up this little bunny…. The story is that long, long ago I found a story about a disabled bunny in a little chariot and it’s floated around in the back of my brain ever since. So I did a wee bit of researching and finally drew this little guy. However, I need your help! I want to embroidery something achingly clever below him (aka: Cruisin’… or Low Rider… or Hello Ladies). I haven’t come up with that perfect little somethin’ yet, so it will have to remain unfinished until ya’ll help me out!

And here is the foxy-man I posted a while ago, with his little chicklets… 

And here is the Hiker’s Waistcoat that I knit months ago, but never posted about. This is knit with wool that I hand-washed, spun and knit all by myself! It actually turned out pretty successfully considering that the yarn was a wee bit uneven and I had never made something all the way through like that! This is all wool from Bonnieview so it’s local to boot!

The newest and coolest Ziggy Fingerless knitting pattern is now hanging about in the etsy shop! Check it out…