What do you think of the shawl?

I ripped her out and washed and dried the yarn, so I could start over. There was a problem, several rows back, no life line and not enough shawl in existence to really warrant a tedious fix, so I ripped her. The deadline is so far off, that I'm not terribly bothered by that.

But it hasn't all been the foul smell of failure. The Dragon Hoodie is progressing beautifully.

I'm working on the hood right now and will begin all the little dragony details after that.

In spinning news, my parents sent me roving for Christmas. What? Christmas is a week away? Are you saying that when I get a package at my door, a couple weeks before Christmas, with my parent's return address, I should know not to open it? Insanity!

And look at what was inside! Each bag is half a pound of gorgeous roving. The left two bags are a rich olive green Corriedale roving. It appears that MJ has almost identical roving, herself. I met her in person for the first time this weekend, at a knitting get together. It's a little eerie that we both have matching Kundert spindles and green roving, if we hadn't been seen in the same location at the same time, someone could have assumed we were the same person.

I managed to snap a pic of the Corriedale, on the spindle this weekend. She has her own ray of sunshine here. That means this is the only picture with enough lighting to be any good.

It sort of makes the rest of the pictures look even worse. I began spinning this on the Kundert, and it spins well, but I really found myself feeling like I had to spin pretty thick singles on it, so I switched to the Golding. I may have to invest in a few more Goldings just so I can spin more than one roving at a time. This 0.9 oz has been perfect for just about everything. I love it.

This is how it looks plied. The color is really a true olive green, despite the variety of shades you see here. When I was spinning it near daylight, I saw undertones of yellow shine through, it's actually quite lovely.

The other roving in the bags is a Merino/silk blend. It spins up into more of a sage green shade because the white of the silk soften the colors.

You know, though, there's a pretty good chance that I'm not going to be able to spin all that roving by hand. I mean, I'm a relatively quick spinner (spindler? spinster?) but a pound of sock weight yarn is a lot of yarn to spin. So Julia and I are talking about renting a wheel. I'm a little scared to go down that road, but I think it's time. Look for news of that next year.

Posted by Marnie at 04:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Under Category: Gray Merino/Silk , Under Category: Green Corriedale , Under Category: Green Merino/Silk , Under Category: dragon hoodie , Under Category: knitting , Under Category: spinning

The Dragon Hoodie is moving right along. I love knitting baby stuff. I feel like such a prolific knitter.

The body is done and a sleeve begun. The sleeves are going slowly because this yarn is hard to knit on plastic needles. Metal is definitely the best choice but since I'm saving my pennies for Christmas presents, I'll get by.

I've also been working on my shawl a bit. You can use the squares on my ironing board for scale, if you like. The top pieces hoodie is about 11-12" wide (it's not blocked so I'm estimating a bit)

Posted by Marnie at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Under Category: Gray Merino/Silk , Under Category: dragon hoodie , Under Category: knitting , Under Category: spinning

Between pity parties about our gas and working, I have managed to get in some knitting. On the bus I knit that Dragon Hoodie and at night, I've been working on the pattern for my shawl with my own roving.

Confession time, I have made designing a shawl far more complicated than it really is, until I had the "AHA!" moment and I realized how flippin' easy it really is. I should really clarify that sentiment. There are some amazingly beautiful and complex shawls out there, but the essential premise of increasing at the center and edge and gradually incorporating more and more repeats of a single motif, is very easy. This is what happens when you try to design something you've never knit before. I'm sure if I had knit even a single triangular shawl, that concept would be rather straight forward.

Nonetheless, three days of toiling have brought me here:

Not so exciting, but I think the effect will be nice once I've worked a few more inches.

The Hoodie is much further with far less toil

I'm hoping this will be a good size for the baby. My gauge is slightly tighter because of the difference in fiber, but she is very young and I'm knitting the largest size. Worst case scenario, if it's too small, I have a friend who is due in a few months, I can give her this and make a new one for Matt's friend.

I still have several more posts I'd like to get up this week, including one about a cowl that won't do what it's told and some amazing Christmas presents from my family.

Posted by Marnie at 05:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Under Category: Gray Merino/Silk , Under Category: dragon hoodie , Under Category: knitting

On the spinning front, I've been making as big a dent in this as I can.

That's my merino silk blend roving, which I've been spinning for a while now. I went back and forth, trying to decide what I'd knit with it, but I've decided to use it for this. Right now, I'm attempting to design my own shawl. I should note that I've never designed a shawl before, but hey, the worst that can happen is I make a less than stellar, piece. Who hasn't done that before?

Here is everything I've spun to date. I would say these photos are fairly accurate in showing the texture and color. I'm rather surprised at how much I've spun without getting bored. That braid at the top is about 5.8 ounces and the stuff on the bottom represents about 1.5 ounces. There has probably been another half an ounce of various problems, frustrations, knit swatches that wouldn't come undone and the like. We will speak no further of those.

So far, my experience with spinning this fiber has been good. There are occasional slubs of the merino content. Sometimes they are easy to pick out and sometimes they become "features" of the yarn. Otherwise, the spinning is fairly easy if rather imperfect. The silk content makes drafting smooth and delightful but not very even and it occasionally gets away from me. Since I haven't actually started the piece, I simply spin when the mood hits me. I may be more flustered if knitting is held up by spinning. We shall see.

Either way, it has to take a back seat as it is "that time of year" (which should be said in a most ominous tone) so there are other projects that take priority.

By the way, I'm so happy that a bunch of you left a comment to assure me that you still manage to make it to my site. My bloglines account hasn't shown a single new post for me since I switched to MT, but if at least a few of you are still stopping by then I'll keep posting away. I have fodder for several more posts, already.

Posted by Marnie at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Under Category: Gray Merino/Silk , Under Category: spinning