Handspun Friday - Quackenbush

When Quackenbush was colorway of the month at FatCatKnits, I bought 12oz of it. I wanted to do different plies, but use the yarn in one project. I decided a scarf it should be.

Here's the fiber: 12oz Polwarth - Quackenbush



regular chain plied:




3-ply:




hand carded chain plied:






2-ply:




Here they are all together:


Well, the resulting scarf was REALLY really long. 6 inches wide unstretched, and 130 inches long!
I used the Berlin scarf pattern by Purl Soho. It's just Brioche stitch, which is awesome!







Once again, a fun project.

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A Gnome and other stuff ...

Hmmm. I didn't mean to, but I ended up knitting a few Christmas gifts anyway. I'm still at it, so today, to distract you, I'll show you something else.

This morning we woke up to a little snow. It's not much, but we'll take anything we can get.



My birthday flowers this year, where two potted plants. Look at this wonderful Amaryllis! It had only buts when I got it, and right now, it has all FOUR blossoms all opened up. I took this picture earlier, because I was so amazed at how beautiful they are. The little white blossoms from the other one (which I don't know the name of) smell really strong.



My DD went to Vermont for a week and had fun felting this gnome with a friend while there. He's nameless, but so cute. I especially like the beard on it, but am still amazed that he was done just with fiber and a felting needle, not even wet felting!



And this is what awaits me every night, when I go to sleep. The three Musketeers waiting for their Good Night treat. This photo was taken a year ago, but it still looks the same every night.



Well, I better get back to work. See ya! ♥

Handspun Friday - Metro

The fiber is from Greenwood Fiberworks Fiber Club June 2012. It's 4oz Polwarth. I wish I had more of it, but oh well.

I wanted to use my hand carders, and decided to rip the braid into pieces, like this: the color runs were a little short.



Then I arranged the pieces into color groups, and hand carded them.









The resulting yarn, which I spun semi woolen, and chain plied, looked like this.






When Kelly asked me to test knit her new hat pattern - Stormont, I grabbed my Metro yarn and knit it right away:


What a lovely design! Unfortunately, it didn't use up all my yarn, and I wanted to use it all in one project, so I ripped it back to the prim, used that and just kept knitting, until almost all the yarn was gone.



And that's the story of "Metro".







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How something fun can go wrong quickly!

Happy is a dog who can entertain himself for quite some time. It's always fun to watch him. But this time, he scared the $#@&%# out of me. Thankfully, my son came to the rescue. You see, Happy got a twig logded in the back of his mouth, which stuck really tight between his back teeth. DS reached in and got it out, even though that meant getting his hand chewed up (no blood, just teeth impressions, but still very hurtful. I did that once with Biko, who had the same problem, and boy did that hurt!).

It's always something, isn't it?!!!

Before another day goes by without a new blog post, I thought it's time for a little puppy love again.
By the way, Thank You all again, or the lovely birthday wishes!

I'm so glad we have the basement for the dogs to play in, when it's nasty outside. As you can see, not everybody is up and running. Maggie rarely stands still, so she's another blur in the picture. Denny just managed to get the ball away from her.



He isn't at all cocky about it.





And then he was too lazy to get it, and just kept on snoozing.

Happy Birthday to me!

I wouldn't have mentioned it at all, but I just wanted to show you this lovely Happy Birthday cub cake music box.

(from Twisted Timber)

 

I'm off now, celebrating!

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Handspun Friday - Trickster

I'm trying to spin the monthly fiber from the clubs I'm in within reasonable time. So here is one of the two colorways of the Southern Cross Fiber Club of October. I was in the  mood for colorful, so it jumped right on my wheel as soon as it arrived.

Trickster: 2-ply, 199yds, Polwarth. It's enough for a hat at least.









Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

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Happy's Fall yard cleanup

He's just too goofy!

Paintbox socks!

It's time to wear socks again! I've pawed through my sock drawer, finding a few with holes in them (always at the bottom of the heel), and retired those, but they were replaced with new ones immediately. One can never have enough hand knit socks, I tell you!

I fell in love with this yarn, when the Ladies of Wandering Cat Yarns showed it off, and was lucky to get it as a gift!!! I had to cast on right away to see how they would knit up.



With yarn as colorful as this one, no elaborate stitch pattern was needed, but to stave off boredom, I added a little texture to the socks.



I really like how they turned out, and they wear very well. I've already washed them several times in the washing machine, and even put them in the dryer once, and they still fit wonderfully.



yarn: Wandering Cat Yarns-Transitions Alley Cat-Paint Box-Merino/Nylon-460yds-gift from Rhonda - 1 skein

pattern: my own

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Precious

Back in August my DD Hannah went to New York for a short trip, and brought me back a little souvenir.
I've been meaning to show you this precious little gift for a while now, but forgot until today.



She found this picture at a flea market, and snatched it up for me.
The wonderful thing is, this is an old calendar from 1937. There's a little ledge to pull out at the bottom of the picture.



There is still some paper left in it, on top is the month June. Isn't that cool? Gifts like that make me incredible happy!

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Handspun Friday - Candy Corn

Back in Spring 2010, I dyed some Norwegian fiber, in several colorways. This I called "Candy Corn".



I finally took it out to spin it, but it was a little squooshed together from being stuffed into a box with other fiber. It's also a bit on the prickly side, O.K. a lot. I might, maybe, stand it as socks on my feet, but definitely not near the skin anywhere else.

Anyway, as I already told you, I love wielding my hand carders. And I filled up a basket with my rolags. What fun that was!






While I wasn't crazy about the colorway, I really like how the finished yarn came out.







It's 4.4oz, 2-ply, 272yds.

No matter how long it takes, eventually I'm spinning up all my fiber. It was refreshing to spin something else, something more rustic than the usual fiber bases.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

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