She just can’t sit still!

Back when my father-in-law had his lung cancer surgery, my mother-in-law saw me knitting the shawl from the prior post for my mom.  I was knitting pretty furiously to calm my nerves.  She gently reminded me that I had never made her a garment to wear and she’d love something.

I spent some time asking her exactly what she wanted and she described in detail a particular sweater; tunic, no cuffs, no high neck, no wool, and some lace.  I found a pattern that night and a nice cotton yarn from Elann.com.  When we went to see his dad a few days later I took the pattern and color chart and she picked out a really nice cranberry yarn.  This was a wonderful followup to the shawl since it was done with much larger needles, thicker yarn, and a pattern that didn’t drive me a little batty

I think this is one of the nicest sweaters I’ve made.  I’m very pleased with the results.

Mom Chaffins' Sweater

I finally finished my mother’s lace shawl.  The one I was trying to have finished for her birthday.  Back in March.

Southwest Shawl

If you click on the image, the elements that are working into the lace are pointed out in a larger image.

I enjoyed making this…but it was very fatiguing. I can’t wait to hear from her when she gets it to let me know what she thinks. I can’t remember ever knitting anything for her, so it was well past time.

I made it from a Peruvian Baby Lace Merino which is 50% alpaca, 50% fine merino wool. I did it with a finer fiber than called for since Mom lives in Tucson and something heavy would be limited. I thought she might like something to put over her shoulders in the evenings when she goes out.

If I ask nicely, perhaps she’ll get me a photo of her wearing it!

For my birthday, Brian took to what he dubbed “Fuzz Fest 2008.”  It was wonderful!  It was very difficult to limit my purchases to fit within my income.  There were SO many wonderful things, and I decided to only buy fibers that I can’t easily find.  It really is a wonderful event.  So many things to see and touch and pet and dream of owning!

I deliberately got some natural pale color fibers to spin and ply and then hand paint.   I want to do something with black, olive, and violet, and I already have about a pound of natural cream color Babydoll Southdown, so I’m hoping to do some really neat fiber blends to make it strong, pretty, and soft.

Here’s a breakdown of the haul:

From Mielke’s Fiber Arts:

On the left, 8 oz Tencel Top for $12.50  Tencel is a fiber produced from wood fiber (cellulous)  It’s very strong and silkier than silk (the biggest difference between this and silk is that this doesn’t stick to your fingers where they are a little rough)  On the right is 4.3 oz Bombyx Silk Brick for  $13.55

16 oz 70% Merino/30% Tussah Top in the Mckenzie colorway for $36.  I hope the photo shows the colors well.  It’s very silvery with color stripes of black, cyan, bright green, rose, and purple.  It’s super soft.

From Lissabeth Alpacas:

2 lbs 6.3 oz of black Alpaca with Brown tips from an Alpaca named Empire for $57.  This is earmarked to spin with the nearly 22 oz of heathered grey Jacob I got last year from the Mt. Bruce Show.  This will make for a very attractive spotted yarn that I am going to make a cardigan out of for Brian.  He’s never worn this style, but he likes it and I’m thrilled to make something he wants in colors he’s chosen.

12 oz  of creamy Alpaca from an Alpaca named Zen for $24.

From Wool and Water (a shop local to me in Royal Oak!!):

My favorite item from this trip was 2.5 oz of Tussah Silk Lap for $20 in the most exquisite jewel tones from Sapphire to Ruby.  I want to spin this and then ply it with some black alpaca.  Don’t know what I’ll make from it yet, I may just spin it and lay in it!  I really have no idea what the yardage will be, but I have to look to make something that will showcase this fiber.  Perhaps a shawl.  We’ll see.  This is both laps together.

This is the lap unrolled.

I just know that I can’t wait to start working on all of these!

-unfortunately-

I have major project I’ve been working on quite hard that needs to be spun first before I start on the new stuff.  Back in September I posted about some lovely grey angora.  I also had some recycled cotton denim.  When I got my drum carder for Christmas, I immediately set upon blending the angora, cotton, and a bit of sparkly fiber.

I’ve already spun up 6 spools, and the above batts are what I still have left to spin.  I suspect I’ll have 9 more spools from what’s there.

I’ll be making this a 3 ply yarn.  It is deliberately nubbly as I want to make a shaker sweater out of it to match one I have nearly worn out from over loving.

And on this very happy note, I think I’ll go spin!

This is the Color Blast fiber I carded made into skeins.  Can’t have a proper post without a picture!

Current Projects:

In January I started the Spirit of the Southwest shawl by Elann for my mom for her birthday at the end of March. It’s now mid may and I’m still working on it. The lace patterns are kicking my butt. It’s just slow going to make sure my tension is even and the patterns are correct. I’ve gotten good at frogging and picking up a lace pattern from mid go when I notice a mistake. The lace edging consists of 24 short rows knit 90° to the main shawl, picking up 12 stitches from the edge for each peak for a total of 35 peaks. I just hit the half way mark!!

When I realized that I wasn’t going to finish in time for her birthday (sorry, mom), I put it down for a while to give myself a rest. I picked up the color blast mohair/alpaca/wool blend I’ve spent so much time blending and spinning and started my next project. On MUCH larger needles. In about 2 weeks of sporadic work, the front and back were done (I’m using the long sleeve pattern of Stitch Diva’s Sahara) I put that down out of guilt and have committed to finishing the shawl before I do anything else. Hopefully, that will be soon.

I have an angora/cotton/tinsel blend currently on the spinning wheel and the drum carder. I carded about 1/2, then spun most of that, now I need to finish the carding. Still looking for a pattern once I have a count of the yardage.

I am playing with the idea of blending the remaining rovings I have all together in striped segments of alternating colors (pale grey heather, olive green, gloss black, and violet) and making it lace weight and doing a really long shawl for myself. The yellow one I made is nice, but I’d like something with a more complex pattern and styling like the Victorian Lace shawl I made for Heather.

I still have the off white wool to spin to play with for dying. I can do anything I want to with that.

My driving force at the moment is to get as much done as I can so that I can stock up on lovely stuff in August when Brian takes me to the Michigan Fiber Festival for my birthday.

And on that note, Happy Mother’s Day! I need to go knit!

I wanted to make something pretty for baby Ella who I get to see later this month. She’ll be about 6 months old, and when I saw this pattern, I was so thrilled because it can be worn from approximately 6 months to 4 years. The way it works is that it depends on which way you put it on. Infants wear the length as a hood. Toddlers wear the length down and the shorter edge as a shawl, as pictured here.

I knit this out of Peruvian wool that is unbelievably soft and yet will hold up to 4 years of wear without issue. I honestly can’t believe wool can be so soft and not itchy.

I started this over Thanksgiving weekend and another 2 evenings of making the sleeves. It was wonderfully fun to do. I can’t wait to put up pictures after Christmas of what it looks like on Ella herself!

I’m very pleased with the blend of colors. It seems a lot of folks make these types of things to use up leftover scraps of yarn. I wanted something that was more planned and the denim to plum to claret came out even prettier than I had hoped!

I love the edging. It’s done with an I-cord stitch, which is really a 4 stitch tube and the points where it meets and joins the body are actually knit together with the stitches of the coat, so these loops will hold up to curious infant fingers without coming loose.

The pattern and yarn are from Elann.com, which is fast becoming my favorite place to shop.

Oh!  And the bear?  My mom made me a pair of them about 20 years ago.  Yeah…hand made.  Ever wonder where I get this talent from?

7 evenings of knitting, one evening of finish work, and I knit myself a nifty sweater.

I didn’t keep track of how long it took to spin the roving for this sweater, so I’m firmly sticking with my One Week Sweater stance here.  In any case, I have new clothes!!

I really kind of hate bumping the handsome picture of my husband off with a new post!

Last Friday night I decided to knit a sweater. I had some yarn I had spun up a while ago that needed a project.

This was one of the first things I spun up and I got it because it felt soft and the color was so pretty, being made up from several dozen shades of blues, greens, and greys. The owner of the shop gave it to me at a great price because she didn’t know what it was (cotton and wool of some sort) and it had been there a while.

Well, I spent most of Friday trying to choose a pattern to try, but everything I liked needed more yardage than I had. I went to bed feeling rather frustrated. Brian insisted I just sleep on it. And sleep on it I did. I kept looking at this pattern from Knitty:

In the morning, I wound it up into balls and grabbed the extra I had from the sweater I just made for him. The guage was the same and I liked the way the two colors worked together. Then I sat (did I mention it was about 6 am on a Saturday? My head was preoccupied with health issues and I needed to stop thinking for a while) and photoshopped a little color into the patter to decide on some striping.

The concept came out a bit like this:

I liked it, so I grabbed my needles and threw myself into a project.

I just finished blocking all the pieces.

I have never finished a sweater this quickly. After it dries tonight, I’ll sew it together and create the simple neck edging. I’m really rather pleased with it at this stage.

If anyone who reads this journal is on Ravelry, I’m there as well as Jvar. Feel free to look me up there. I have additional notes on most of my recent projects there for anyone wanting more knitting detail.

[Place Holder for Finished Sweater - Check back soon]

I am pleased as can be to say I am 100% finished with Brian’s shaker sweater with the shawl collar. I’m ever more thrilled that he really likes it. He was amazed at how soft and warm it is. The Babydoll Southdown wool is super springy. It holds it’s shape and has an elastic nature to the yarn. Where cotton would stretch out of shape, this sweater will hold its shape really well. (click pic for larger detail)

This project took me a year to complete for a couple of reasons. The first was the dumbest mistake. I knit the second arm on the wrong size needles and had to frog it. Threw me off my game so I threw it to the side for months since the weather was turning to spring. Then I ran out of yarn and had to find the vendor who just -happened- to have more of the roving from the show where I got this batch, which is nothing short of a miracle. While it’s a natural color (not dyed) there was no guarantee that I could color match, but having some from the same show/same batch was exactly a perfect match! These are some thumbnails of the roving turning into the yarn I used taken from previous postings.

I have more of the babydoll southdown wool in white that I want to spin and then dye. I really like this wool a lot. It isn’t scratchy and the springy-ness of the fiber will help keep a garment’s shape like a pro!

Another project that I just finished for a sweet friend who is about to have a baby is a baby blanket that matches the gloves and scarf I made for her last year. I never took pictures of the scarf, but she really loved this silly muppet looking glove.

So, I used the same Lion’s Brand Fun Fur fringe on a blanket with an ultrasoft butter yellow boucle for the rest. I also need to have her get a picture of the cap I made for her baby from the same combination. I made the band from the boucle and the cap from the fun fur. She’s excited about matching when they go out now! (click pic for larger detail)

I have more spinning to do so that I can dive into some more knitting projects. I’m currently knitting up some holiday presents, so everything is in various states of completion.

Blanket adapted from this pattern.
Brian’s Sweater pattern available here.

I started this journal after returning from the Sheep & Wool Festival at Mt. Bruce Station in 2006. I returned for the fourth year in a row yesterday and left with 3.5 lbs of fiber and about $144 less in my bank account.

I imagine when I’m through, I’ll have been able to make 3 sweaters and some extra for striping in other projects.

On to this year’s stash:

Tops on my list was an Alpace 50%/Mohair 30%/Wool 20% with sparkly bits. This is soft and the colors are incredible. The best way to explain it is that it looks like flame. I got 16.3 oz for $46 I ended up spinning one bobbin of it last night and I’m planning on spending the better part of this afternoon with it. If you click this pick, you’ll get the original size so you can see the detail, it’s really gorgeous.

Wiley Woolies had their angora rabbits which I am always fond of wishing over. This year they had bags of batts for felting or spinning. I picked up 15 oz of a 50/50 angora/merino blend for $45. There are actually 2 batts, one pale grey, one charcoal grey. I seriously want to wrap my body with these batts, they are so soft!!

I fell in love with the rich olive color of this next roving. It’s not my favorite wool to blend, being 100% Border Leicester, but the color really got to me. I have a wonderful sweater I want to make in charcoal with scalloped stripes of this olive wool. I got 8 oz for $18

And my final score was 21.8 oz of a heathered grey Jacob that is about as fluffy as summer clouds for $39. I want to make a thick sweater out of this that either I or my husband can wear during the winter. I’m searching out just the right pattern. I have enough of this to do a triple ply if I want! These are the same local folks that provided me with the amazing babydoll southdown that I used to make Brian’s sweater.

The show wasn’t as big as years past, but it certainly provided me with some fiber that make me very happy. And speaking of which, my break is over (I also ran out to make a 3′ grapevine wreath with some wild vines Brian found while prepping wood for the winter’s heating), now it’s time to go back to spinning the pretty things I have!

What have I been doing instead of updating? Well, I’ve been putting together a lot of projects and prepping for winter projects. I am nearly done with Brian’s sweater from last year, after frogging an entire sleeve and putting it away in frustration. *note to self: Check second sleeve against first several times before finishing. I have about 40 rows left then the collar and finishing work. It’s looking good that he’ll have it in time for the weather to be appropriate for wearing it!

I got nearly all my roving stash from last year’s Fiber Festival spun. I have about 2 lbs of babydoll southdown left that I want to try my hand at dying, and about 1/2 lb of the alpaca/mohair blend left. Here’s what I have hanging ready to be made into skeins:

And, of course, some close ups:

Teal mystery roving.

Chocolate Babydoll Southdown: (This is the second batch after I spun 2 lbs for Brian’s sweater.  This is slated for a hat/scarf/gloves project.  I love this because it’s a natural chocolate brown!)

Leicester multi-hued yarn:

And here’some roving, rolags, and finished projects!

This is the Romney & Corriedale that I made the hat from.

The shawl was knit from a purchase of alpaca/wool yarn. The black and multi striped bag on the bottom was made from yarn left by Chris when he moved out and left it here too long. I made a hat out of it as well that he got and promptly gave to his wife. Never leave yarn here, folks. It gets made into things! Brian’s sweater parts are in the bottom bin along with some cotton roving.

Today I am making a huge vat of chicken stock so that I can freeze it and to also make a nice Chicken Potato Leek soup tonight for dinner. Tomorrow is the 17th Annual Mt. Bruce Sheep & Wool Festival and a stop at an orchard so that Sunday will be for making and devouring an apple pie and lots of spinning!!