Call Me Kate the Great

With mom away I get to run the house. This morning by 10AM, I had planned the menu for the week, sorted all the laundry, tidied up the freezer, and was at the grocery store (note to self - it opens at 8AM could have saved time if I’d known that).

By 1ish… I had:
*done the grocery shopping (and put it all away)
*marinated the chicken for later in the week
*made chili for today
*made and frozen lasagna for later in the week
*made and frozen ham and scalloped potatoes for later in the week

Then I cleaned the kitchen (yech), did more laundry, and ate my own lunch.

This after noon saw me attempt to use the pattern from L. to make the 1812 dress I need for the next couple of weekends. No such luck, I believe she credits me with being thinner than I am. My narrow back (thanks to having no shoulders), means that the back pieces aren’t too bad, but the arm-holes are too small and it might as well not even have a front for all the coverage it gives. *sigh* Tonight I’m going to try making the body about 2cm longer (to open up the arm holes and make sure the waist sits at my waist and not across my chest) and extend the front so that it looks like a dress bodice. I’m going to need to make a run out to try to find: ballet flats in an appropriate colour, white stockings, and white/nude slip shorts. Apparently at least some of my clothes from last time will work (score) and since there is a sailing component I might get to run around dressed like a ‘boy’ (hahaha see note about chest fit problem, not likely to pass for a boy in this lifetime) and learn the rudiments of sailing!!

This afternoon I got in some more spinning, the white bamboo continues to be… the same.

And, last but not least: I got my first Loop order in the mail!!! *insert happy dance* I got 1oz of ice-sparkle glitz; 3oz of Platinum Print 100% bamboo batt; and 3oz of Mint Chocolate Chip 100% bamboo batt. It also came with a wee satchel of lovely smelling stuff (don’t ask me what - little seedy things…). The bamboo is so incredibly soft. I can’t wait to spin it up. I’m not sure how I want to do it, in terms of the colours. But I do want to make it laceweight, possibly I’ll do a swirly single…

Platinum Print

Mint Chocolate Chip

There is too much, let me sum up

1. Spent last week (last Saturday to today) at a cottage up in the Muskokas.  The cottage was lovely, the lake was lovely, but I am so incredibly not a lake person.  Give me a swimming pool (heated) (not to mention my internet address- I will never catch up) and keep the bugs.  I did, however, get a lot of work done on my MDAN shawl.  I’m now less than 30 rows from the beginning of the centre panel.

See how much longer than last time?

This is the long -20 repeat long- mid section.

2. I finished the first Austermann Spring sock and am part way down the leg of the second.
Yarn: Austermann Step
Colour Way: Brombeer
Pattern: Spring Forward

3. There was major a S(tash) E(nhancing) eX(perience) waiting for me.

3a. My drive bands (both hemp and stretchy) and 2 additional bobbins from Gemini Fibers.

I got the walnut, with the quieter plastic centres.

3b. Two rovings from C.J. Kopek. They are Cowgirl Chic and Cottage Rose. Both are warmer than I expected (what looked to me like greys and blues are in fact browns), but they are stunning anyway! And sooo soft. The Cowgirl Chic is 100% merino, and the Cottage Rose is merino, bfl, and silk. The two colour ways look really good together and I’m now wondering if I mightn’t be able to use them together, though I’ll probably spin them up separately.

Cottage Rose

Cowgirl Chic

3c. My Loopy Ewe order!! First off, ten million thanks to Stephanie - I won her blog prize, a Loopy Ewe gift certificate, and if not for that I probably wouldn’t have placed this order. It consisted of Green Tea handsoap (smells wonderful and feels great), the Icarus Shawl pattern, and 10oz of combed fiber… Lorna’s Laces… in Black Purl! I wanted Black Purl yarn, but somehow managed to miss out on it, so this is extra squeeful for me. I’m planning on spinning it as one single and then navajo plying it, but we’ll see once I sit down to it.

The package was sealed, so I didn’t open it… sorry about the glare

3d. The new Knit Picks catalogue, which has books for sale in it… *step away from the website and no one gets hurt*

4. Tour de Fleece has started, I did get some done on the first day of the tour (before we left for the cottage). Today some more. I’m using the bamboo I ordered in the spring. The jury is out on how I feel about bamboo - it is a bit crunchy like the ingeo, but it is much better than the ingeo. I am getting a fine thread, but …. it feels a bit weird… Anyway, I am going to stick with it and we’ll see where it goes.

5. My grandfather, mom’s dad, has been in the hospital - apparently he had several small strokes, physically he appears fine, but he’s been really out of it mentally. He has improved, but is still in hospital and we’ll be going to see him tomorrow. At this point there doesn’t seem to be any danger, at least anymore, but mom is going to stay with grandma for part of this week - which means… I probably won’t be getting any work done this week either *sigh*

6. My sister is finished the second language portion of her summer training and is now into the office training component. She met my best friend’s husband’s best friend… (he was the best man in their wedding last summer, when I was the maid of honour) this week, apparently they are both watching for fires…

Happy 4th of July

To friends and readers from down south, Happy Independence Day.

Cupcakes, Patriots, and Bruises

It is now July 3rd and the Canada Parties are over.

On the 30th we hosted a semi-formal one here, which was a great success. The bar and the ‘dance floor’ (aka. that space in the basement in front of the tv) had a great work out, the patio was enjoyed, and my cupcake Canada flag cake (with sparklers) was a huge hit. 

This is the cupcake cake from the previous post.

On Canada Day we went to an annual party at a friend’s family farm. Where there was music, bbq, and lots of old friends and acquantances to reconnect with. Including one who brought a bow and target and started to teach me to shoot (NTS- need longer arm guard).

This led to…

this.

Yesterday was spent watching the homestead, as mom and dad were off with grandma and grandpa (mom’s parents) as late on Tuesday grandpa was taken to hospital (he’s recovering, from what the doctors don’t seem to know - the whole thing has sounded a little too much like an episode of House to be real… and it’s not lupus.)

I’ve got the first 8 or 9 inches of dad’s Patriot’s sweater done and the colours are working out nicely (I even lucked into a set up that makes the patterns (ribbing and chevrons) match up!

Today, I’m baking a cake for tomorrow (when we are having a small Declaration of Independece party for a friend who will soon be leaving Canada where he’s been studying and working for the last several years to study abroad) - I’m going to use the ribbon pan (which I mentioned a few months ago) and ice it all fancy like.

Saturday, we leave for our family vacation- a week at a cottage. It will be nice to get away, though I’ll have my laptop with me and hope to do some writing. I will be without internet access (no ravelry, no blogs, no plurk!!!)

Hencircle Project #1

The first assignment for the new Plurkette Hencircle is to introduce yourself… sure give me a hard one!

I’m 26, chronically single, a PhD candidate specializing in north germanic medieval vernacular literature dissertating on images of woman within said literature, the oldest of 7 kids, homeschool graduate, knitter, spinner, dvd collector. I have been known to play around with dyes and leather and have a few impressive cakes in my portfolio. I’m a suburbanite from the greater Toronto area. My farm experiece is through my mother’s family for the most part, where there are a substantial number of dairy farmers. I’ve sewn for years, though less since I got into knitting in a serious way about 5 years ago. I recently bought a spinning wheel and it competes with knitting for my time and affection.

My list of things I’d like to try are: keeping a plant that doesn’t die or turn red (long story involving the aloe vera plant I kept during my undergrad); making soap; and I have wild ideas of planting some flax and spinning linen from it.

I’ve been going through everyone else’s introductions and keep finding other things I’d love try (what an amazing group of creative women!) I find my creative outlets grounding as a grad student, no one ever asks ‘what are you going to do with that’ when you show them a cheesecake, sock, or sweater.

No one is confused with what to do with these…

Sox and Pats

I have finished another pair of socks!  My Noro Kueryon Sock RPMs came off the needles today (yeah!), it is however, far to warm to put them on my feet - but they look great on the sock blockers.  I still have between 1/4 and 1/3 of the ball left.  Overall I was really pleased with both the pattern and the yarn.  The yarn is Noro, which means it is thick and thin, very ’sheepy,’ and prone to knots (though, thankfully, I didn’t have a problem with any in what I used for my socks), but the colours are great and it is an nice little sock yarn.  I probably won’t make it my go to sock yarn, but I won’t rule out using it again.

And they even match!  I am so proud! *sniff*

This morning there were errands being run downtown, so I made my way out the the Purple Purl to pick up yarn for Dad’s Patriots sweater (which doesn’t count for anything since he is paying for it!) I now have 16 balls of Galway (2 white, 4 red, 5 blue, 5 grey) which (PLEASE God) should be enough. Tonight I’ll start swatching (I need to do some mathy type stuff to figure out where my colours are going to go) and I should be able to start knitting it soon (I would decide to do a man’s sweater in 100% wool in July…), which will be a good thing, since he wants to have it to wear during the football season.

While I was there I sat and ate a smore square (yummmmmmm), knit and chatted for awhile, and worked on my sock. (Oh, I also scored another of their fantastic purple reusable shopping bags!) Have I mentioned the PP rocks? (Oh, and I paid hommage to Glenna’s Glowing, which was keeping one of the chairs warm).

This week has seen decent progress on the MDAN shawl (I’m now at row 70 of 200 of chart F). I also cast on a pair of Spring Forward using some of the Austermann Step from the stash. And I started to Plurk… do you plurk?

Just Keep Spinning

My week is almost over, and I’m actually a bit disappointed.  I rather liked having cooking, cleaning, and laundry as my serious objectives (I’m dreading having to go back to my thesis…)

On the fiber front, this week was really quite productive. I finished all of the Barber Pole Blues, and the Purple Haze, I have prepped all of my bamboo for the Tour de Fleece, started spinning the green merino, and I finished chart A of the MDAN shawl and am now making decent progress on the next section (NTS- purl rows are really really good). Not to mention I’ve learned to spin laceweight!!!

Friday… or was it Saturday… I slipped while browsing etsy and bought Mint Chocolate Chip, Platinum Print, and some Ice Sparkle glitz from loop. I foresee some bamboo laceweight with a bit of sparkle…

Like I mentioned above. MDAN is progressing, thanks to a trip to Blockbuster (more on that below). I finished chart A and the first two of 20 repeats of chart F. The bulk of this now has almost purely purl reverse side which is making for a much faster knit.

See my lovely life-lines… I can-it seems-be taught

I also started spinning up the green merino I got earlier in the week, this is turning out a lovely thin single, with the aim of becoming a lovely lace weight two ply (obsessed me…!!? never!)

Blockbuster meant movies, which I normally don’t go too much into here, but… Black Sheep. What knitter/spinner isn’t going to insist on seeing a movie whose tagline is: “There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand… And they’re pissed off!” It is hilarious, the best zombie/zombie spoof since Shaun of the Dead. The effects (gore and prosthetics) were by WETA so those are top notch. Not scary* at all, how can a weresheep be scary?! Very well done all around and really really funny - if you liked Shaun of the Dead, or Dead and Breakfast (or anything else in that vein) you’ll probably enjoy Black Sheep too.

*Disclaimer: I didn’t think Psycho (which I also watched this week), the Ring, or the Exorcist were scary either, so maybe I’m not the best judge… 

In other news - I have officially completed the requirements of the Province of Ontario’s graduated licensing system and now have my full G class license.

300 yards

I’ve finished spinning and plying the purple! 

Specs:
2ply
laceweigh-c.30 wpi
approx. 300yds (yeah, figured out how to work the niddy noddy)
merino

I bet the zoom in really close feature is turned off… I’ll have to check that next time…

I’m now trying to figure out if I can get a shawl out of this, or if I need to find out if there is another one (or two) at the Purl.

I think my training run was a sucess and that I should be able to manage lace-weight for the Tour.

Oh. My. Gosh. SQUEE!!

Look! Look! Look! Look!

It’s so fine, the camera won’t focus!!

I made lace - not like before where my singles were lace (like this):

Lovely, but infuriatingly fingering weight when plied.

But really real lace, lace where when I ply it it will absolutely be lace, not light fingering, but lace lace!! YEAH!!!!

I bought 50g of custom blended merino from the http://thepurplepurl.com/, it was a pretty purple (which is soo much prettier when opened up). As training for the Tour de Fleece, I started spinning it last night with the smaller whorl (up to this point I’ve been only using my largest one) and Holy Cow what a difference. This stuff is crazy thin - my brother was sitting across the room and couldn’t see it while I was spinning.

I started off spinning from the fold, but this stuff drafts so easily that it is in fact easier just to spin from the roving. I split it in half by weight, and will spin it up and then make a 2 ply lace yarn. I am so inordinately excited.

Oh and more pictures of the blue stuff…

  

Approximately

I can proudly report that: most of the laundry is done (I’m down to the last duvet and whatever has accumulated in the last day and a half).

The pie met with mixed reviews, A. for whom it was gluten free really liked it, Dad also claimed to like it, and the rest of us ate it, but wouldn’t have rated it the best we’d tasted. That would be a combination of the gluten free part and my having to fudge the topping (though, the crust really was the problem).

I finished plying the tussah silk/merino-silk.
Specs
Colourway: Barber Pole Blues
Skeins: 2
Ply: 2 ply (1 ply is pure tussah silk, handdyed most by me but some by … somone else, I don’t know who as I bought and it wasn’t labled by artist… the other ply is an undyed 50/50 merino/silk blend)
Singles: spun right (laceweight), combination of pre-drafted worsted, and over the fold
Ply: spun left, I think my original measure of c. 17 wpi probably holds for the whole thing
Weight: skein 1 - 90g, skein 2 - 67g
Yardage: skein 1 - approx 356 yds, skein 2 - approx 194 yds [Note: I think I probably have a total yardage more like 600yds, see what I did was take out my swift set it up and use a scrap piece of yarn to wrap around it, measure that (56inches) and then skein the yarn from the bobbin, count the number of wraps in the skein, multiply by 56, divide by 12, divide by 3 and volia. However, that assumes all the yarn is wraped fairly tight around the centre -smallest part- of the swift, which of course is not the case. So I guesstimated the yards per gram based upon the larger skein (4) and multiplied that by the number of grams (157), which gives 628 yds, and then I rounded down to 600yds just because that seemd like as sound a method as anything else I've done...]

The colours aren’t the greatest… but then our kitchen at midnight in a lighting storm doesn’t have the best lighting…

So, I think I’ve ended up with between 500 and 600yds of light fingering to lace weight. I really like the idea of doing a triangle of Frost and Flowers, but I’m a little concerned about the effect the barber pole will have on the over all appearence. The shawl is almost universally knit in a solid or semi-solid. (Have I mentioned I’m not a swatch person… as I suppose a swatch would help).

I also finished spinning the rest of the merino-silk. I don’t know how much I have, only that it is a tightly spun laceweight single.

I made some progress on the MDAN shawl, I’m now almost through chart A, just another 9 rows. I really need to get moving on that one. Note to Self: lace with purl rows is a good thing. I think I’m going to make this be my only holiday project, I’ll take any socks I haven’t finished (rpm that means you if you are still not done) or a ball of Austermann Step and start a pair of plain socks for knitting when charts are just not an options. I’ll have some spinning with me, as holidays are during Tour de Fleece (but it will have to be spindle as I won’t have room to pack my wheel), but mostly I think I’ll be knitting on the shawl, as I’d like to make a serious dent in it.