Week 1 of the Tour is now over - here's what I did

I love doing the Tour de Fleece each year. I am so glad to see its getting bigger and bigger. It looks like its the thing to do for the summer. I know I have enjoyed my first week. I am half way through my goals. I have completed the yarn for my first sweater. For my first sweater I want to take an easy knitting project to SOAR. One that I don't really have to think about as I am working on it. So of course its going to be a Top Down from Knitting Pure and Simple. I'm not sure what pattern I am going to use but I know that I will need some where around 1000 yards of a worsted weight. So that was my goal. A few months back there was a Spin Off magazine that had the coolest yarn on the cover. It was a moorit brown that was over dyed with bright yellow. Instead of the end result being a yellow yarn it turns out to be a really cool green. So that's what I was shooting for. I found about 2 pounds of a Shetland in my stash and on the 4th I got busy.

I spun a bobbin full for the first 6 days. I then plied them together making a two ply.

Once all the plying was done I wanted to make sure I would have enough for a sweater so I ended up with 1100 yards. Into the dye pot it all went.

Dyeing brown yarn green using yellow dye takes a bit of faith. For one it shouldn't work. I'm yellow makes green. No way. So as its sits in the dye pot you have to let it be and do its thing. Once its done it still doesn't look green, not until its dry will you be happy with it. So for me it was really hard to let it alone and do its thing. I was like a cook watching a pot to boil. Then of course I thought I messed up all my hard work, but once it was drying I fell in love with the result.

Now the hard part. Letting it alone until October. I really want to get to knitting on it. The Sheltand was not processed all that well, there was a lot and I mean a lot of VM through out. So I was a bit surprised at how soft the yarn ended up. I'm thinking dyeing it helped burn up some of the VM.

Besides the sweater yarn I also worked on some silk on my newest Greensleeves spindle. I plan to make the Quaint head band that is on the cover of the current Spin Off for daughter number 3.

Lastly for this week, I spun up about 110 yards of Spinning Bunny's High Fiber Dessert club for the month of June. The Color way is Fudgy Chocolate Bundt Cake with Strawberries topped wit Sour Cream Chocolate sauce. The fiber is a Pixie Batt of baby alpaca,and merino. Now only was the recipe really good. I bit hit with the family and my knitting girls, but the fiber was a dream to spin. I am planning on knitting the button up neck warmer that is in the current Spin Off.

Tomorrow is a rest day for the Tour. So I plan to clean my wheel and change the drive band from Scotch tension to Double drive. I haven't decided which one I like better so that is part of what I want to do during the tour. My next big project is to spin some Cooridale that I bought for my birthday. I have been cleaning and carding what I hope is enough for an Einstein Coat. Its a wonderful shade of medium grey.

So stay tuned and see now only how I do on the Tour but if you haven' been watching the Tour de France its been fun to see Lance Armstrong back on the bike. I'm betting he just may be wearing more yellow before its all over. Right now he is in 3rd and looking really good. Yea for the old guys!

The Tour begins

Happy Independents Day to all Americans! Don't eat to much BBQ and stay cool. Enjoy the fireworks but please don't set your house or the one next to you on fire.

Today is also the start of the Tour de France which means the Tour de Fleece also began. I think I am off to a pretty good start. Some what like Lance Armstrong. I'm not the fastest, nor did I spin as much as some, but I'm also not in last place.

I started out the day spinning a batt that I came across last night while I was looking for some yarn in my stash. I have no idea where I got it from but I'm sure it was from an exchange. The batt is one of those kitchen sink ones. Everything but the kitchen sink is in it. I'm not a huge fan of these, because for me its really hard to let the bumpy bits stay in the yarn. But i am please with the out come of the two ply. I ended up with about 80 yards. I think I will make a very loose scarf with it. It kind of looks like a yellow jersey. If you look real close anyway.

After I finished the first skein. I took a bit of a break, as some friends stopped by on their way out of town. So after they left I got down to business. As you may recall one of my Tour goals is to spin for two sweaters. So I started with my moorit brown, which I believe is Shetland. I do plan to over dye the yarn once its all done. I spun about 4 ounce, enough to fill the first bobbin. I think its going to try out to be just what I wanted for my basic top down sweater.

So I figure I am off to a good start. The Tour de Farnce looks like it will also be a fun one to watch. I have no idea who will win in the end but I'm sure it will have all kinds of twists and turns before we are all through, kind of like our yarn.

For the love of it

As a knitter and spinner no matter how a project turns out, it was still fun to do. But lets face it there are some that end up better then others. Its all good but once in a while there is a WOW project. One that when you are all done you look at it and can't believe you were the one to make it. Well my new hat was just one of those projects.

I first bought the wool at Snake River Fiber Fair with the plan to make socks. Then the summer issue of Spin Off came out and I saw the CVM hat. I just fell in love with the pattern. So I divided up the 4 ounce into 1 ounce chunks. I left one the natural color and dyed the blue, gold and orange. I didn't have a wool that was the medium brown so I used some alpaca. The original pattern colors were blue, cream, yellow, red and medium brown. Because my daughter is attending Boise State this next year I want to make the red more of an orange instead of red. Now I really don't like the color orange so its more of a tomato red.

The pattern called for a bulky weight yarn and to use a size 5 needle. The total pattern called for 180 yards. So after I got all the spinning done each 1 ounce ball ended up with something like 36- 40 yards. Which I was hopeful would be enough. As it turned out it was. I did have about 4 yards of the cream left which is a bit close for me. The pattern called for tassels but I like braids better. The over all hat ended up maybe a bit on the smaller size but it does fit just perfectly so all is good. I can hardly wait to wear it this next fall and winter.

As I say I enjoy doing just about all the different projects that I work on but this one was such a total joy all the way from the first thought to the end.

Summertime fun?

I'm not sure if I have ever talked about my feelings when it comes to summer. I hate it! OK so I don't totally hate it there are a lot of fun things that go on during summer, but I really do hate the heat. So the month of July is usually never really fun for me. I don't mind when it gets in the 80's and even the lower 90's but I really hate it when it get 95 or higher. Which in Idaho it can be over 100 for a couple of weeks.

A couple of years ago I found something to help me get through the month. The Tour de Fleece. If you have not herd of the Tour de Fleece its, for me, a fun way to not think about how hot it really is. As you may know for most of the month of July the Tour de France is going. So the Tour de Fleece is where spinners ( not the cyclists) set some type of goal to work at during the Tour. A bonus for me is I love to watch cycling anyway. Each year I have tried something that I would normally not do in the 22 days of the race. This year my goals are to:

1. Spin for the Einstein coat ( a totally garder stitch coat that can be found in the The Knitting experience - the Knit stitch book by Sally Melville- about 1200 yards of a bulky weight

2. Spin for a top down sweater - about 1100 yards of a worsted weight yarn I also want to dye the yarn once its complete- (I will talk more about that later)

3. I want to spin and knit a scarf in one day.- my version of a sheep to shawl.

Now that is a lot of spinning so I have been in "training" I have been working on carding the wool for the Einstein coat.

This picture isn't all that great. The wool is really a darker grey.

For my top down sweater I will be using a moorit brown that I plan to dye bright yellow once I am done with the spinning. Now you may think I will end up with a weird yellow yarn but really it will end up a very cool green.

There is also a two fold plan for both of these projects. I want to wear the coat at the fashion show at SOAR later this year. I want to take the top down sweater to work on while I am at SOAR.

While I am doing all of this spinning I don't plan to neglect my knitting. July is usually sock month. I usually teach knitting socks and this year is no exception. I will be knit three pair this month. A plan vanilla pair which I use for beginner sock knitters. I also plan to knit a pair of sock from the new Knitty. The mermaid, which I have gotten started tonight which is my advanced sock knitter pattern. For my intermediate pair I will be knitting a cable sock. My plan is to have one of each of these done by the 11th so that I will have samples when class starts. That will give me three weeks so get all three second socks done, we will see if that happens.

In the mean time I am also knitting the fair isle hat that is in the current Spin Off. But its take a bit of time because the pattern calls for a size 5 needles and the yarn is bulky, so my hands are a bit soar knit it, but I do love the pattern. I did change one of the colors a bit. My oldest daughter will be attending BSU and I want to make the hat more to her school colors. So the red is now orange. Not the bright hunter orange that BSU is but its as orange as I can stand.

Finally I do need to share with you one more thing. When you join the Tour de Fleece you can join via a wild card group. I was in Team Moneky Fart last year so I decided to stay with it. Now I know you are asking where the heck did that name come from. As you all know I am a member of the Spunky Fiber club. Monkey farts is a colorway of Amy King. (yes Spunkeletic is the same Amy King of the new book Spin Control).
Now on Ravery we all have whats called a ravatar so there is mine for Team Monkey farts

Summer Time goals and plans

Well I have really wanted to keep up with the blog but it just seems like there is one thing after the other going on around here. Last week my oldest graduated from High School which means we have all kinds of family here. It was a great week and all was fun but I am glad to have everything all quiet again. Our middle daughter is starting summer school tomorrow so we will be busy with all of that for the next couple of months.
Knowing that I would be having a busy summer I decided a few weeks ago to get all UFO's completed. So that pretty much what I have been up to. I have to say its a great feeling to have everything done. I think for about 8 hours I had nothing on needles, wheel, or spindle. Then I did cast on for the Back home in Vermont sweater that can be found in the book, the Natural Knitter. I have also start to spin some lace weight yarn on my Matchless ST, I am using the High whorl. I have 6 ounces and I want to see how much I can get from it. Its a really nice superwash merino. At the same time I am working on getting some fleece carded for Tour de Fleece. I plan to spin again this year. I had so much fun last year that I think this will be a annual thing. This years goal is to spin for two sweaters. One is for a simple top down that I plan to knit while I am at SOAR this next fall. I want to take something that will be easy to knit as the drive to Bend takes about 6 hours and then I know there will be down time to knit. The other is from a fleece I bought for my birthday. My plan for that is to Knit it into an Einstein coat. I will be teaching a class on it in Sept. so I really need to get it all done before that. I will, I promise, pictures as soon as I get some batteries for my camera on all my progress.

Its been like forever!

It has been like forever sense I posted. What can I say I have been so busy with life I just haven't had the time, and when I did it seemed like one of the girls needed the computer for homework.
So what's been going on? You name it. I am still teaching knitting classes. I am taking time to spin just about every day. My oldest daughter is graduating next month. My other daughters are busy at school.
On a bad note We have a dear friend who has a brain tumor and is not expected to live much longer so we are spending as much time as we can with him. I plan to design a seaman's scarf in his honor, so be on the look out for that.
On a couple of good notes. My oldest daughter will be attending BSU ( Boise State University, yes the one that won the Fiesta Bowl a couple of years ago) She is also going to be in the marching band. She has earned enough grants and scholarships to just about pay for school.
For me I was awarded a scholarship to SOAR this next fall. I am so excited to go its not even funny. I am driving my family nuts with all the plans to be made, which classes to take, what projects I should work on, figuring out how I can save some money up to have at the market, etc. I am planning on doing some things for the fashion show and the gallery.
As far as summer goes we will once again be busy. My middle daughter will be taking summer school so I will have to drive her to have from school every day for the month's of June and July. So I won't be able to attend any fiber shows or retreats which is cool because I'm going to SOAR did I tell you how excited I am about that?
I am planning on attending Snake River Fiber Fair in May, but after that I will be saving all my pennies so that I can take as much as I can to SOAR.

On the knitting front I have been working on this and that. Same with spinning. But I have decided that I need to get myself more together about things. So my plan is to finish spinning up the yarn for a mock cable sweater I have been wanting to knit. For my birthday I ordered a fleece my plan for that is to spin and knit a coat. So look for more to come on that. I plan to spin this during the Tour de Fleece this year. I also have a cardigan that I plan to spin during the tour.
As I said before I will be designing a seaman's scarf to honor a friend of ours. I am also knitting up a scarf that I hope will be in Spin Off. If not its going to my mother for Mother's day. I also plan to knit some socks this summer I'm not sure which ones yet. I was given Cookie A.'s new book for my birthday so I may do one from there. Not sure.
Now that I am going to SOAR, did I tell you how excited I am to be going? I plan to knit, crochet , spin for our state fair. After winning the two big awards last year I wasn't planning on doing anything this year but I could use the prize monies for SOAR. I bet you thought I would tell you how excited I am to be going, well I wasn't I kind of thought it was to much.
So there in a nut shell is whats' been going on around here. I really do plan to try better at updating things. but who know, you will have to check back and see.

Its a regular Zoo around here

Its been a real zoo around here this past week. We adopted two pets. First Mazy a 5 month old Cocker Spaniel and Hoss the rabbit. Now we did have plans to adopt a dog but the rabbit was an add on. Our much loved dog Tiny died last spring and over the holidays it really came apparent that we needed a new dog. So for the past few weeks I have been visiting the local humane society looking for a new dog. We wanted a smaller sized one that was about a year old. When we saw Mazy we just fell in love.

While we were looking at her an older woman took her info card and was really looking over the information. My husband and I just stood there waiting for her to hang up the card so we could have her. The lady asked me were the age was listed. I showed her and she said she was looking for a dog closer to her age. Well the second she hung up the card we snatched it. By the time we were all done filling out the paper work there were a couple of other families looking at her too. We were told she was crate trained but they weren't sure about house broke. Well she isn't crate trained and she is getting the idea about going potty outside pretty well.

Now for Hoss. Over the Christmas break we baby sat a angora rabbit for a friend of mine. We had so much fun that we thought it might be something to think about for the near future. Well about a week ago a girl friend of mine herd about a breeder that was interested in selling one of her bunnies to a 4H family for a discount. We she called me and then I made the needed calls and we picked up Hoss on Friday.

His original name was Peter as in Peter cotton tale but I have to say he is one big bunny. So much so we are now calling him Hoss. He is 50% German and 50% Satin angora. He is not at full coat yet but I would bet I could get a pound of wool from him right now. Yes he is bigger then Mazy.

So as you can tell we are getting used to our new zoo. The great thing is both have great personalities and have so far fit nicely into our family