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Last week when I saw that Crown Mountain Farms Superwash Merino was on sale I couldn’t resist. AND I had $50 I received as a birthday gift from DH’s parents. Here are the 3 colorways I chose with a photo of the top and bottom of each.

This is Layla:

This is We are the Champions:

And this is Sultans of Swing:

Ever since I heard about and saw photos of Crown Mountains hand spun Sock Hop yarn I’ve loved their colorways. This superwash merino is the same as what the Sock Hop is spun from.

I don’t know yet how I’ll attempt to spin up my fiber. I’m not really at a point yet where I’m good at shooting for a certain weight before I start, but if you are curious about how Teyani spins up Sock Hop she wrote a post about it on her blog, The Intrepid Fiber Wizard.

Though I’m tempted to start one of these right away, I think I’ll work through more of my cupcakes for practice first.

Did you all notice how I skipped right over Work in Progress Wednesday last week? I feel like I’m not getting hardly any knitting or spinning done these days. It’s quite frustrating to me. I’m trying to adjust to this new schedule and routine, but I’m just not there yet. And then I go back and look at my WIP post from 2 weeks ago and realize I sound like a broken record.

1. Tryst Vest - umm….maybe next week? (copied from 2 weeks ago)

2. Imitation Ab Fab - Knitting DONE. Weaving in ends underway.

3. SIL: A Midsummer Night’s Dream - failed in my goal to get it officially cast on. I *really* want to get it going this week. (copied from 2 weeks ago)

4. Evergreen Superwash - all spun up as singles. I also spun up a bit of the multicolor superwash too. I plan to 2-ply the solid evergreen with the multicolor, but when I started to ply the other day I couldn’t get a balanced yarn. I may try again tonight.

5. Cutest Baby Hat - Done, but did I get pictures? Nope.

6. Kaaren’s Socks - I’ve had the yarn picked out for weeks now. Finally I cast on and (as usual) once I’m cast on things move right along. Somehow I went a couple of months with no socks on the needles - I’m glad to have them back.

Goal between now and next week: get my WIP list back down to a normal size!

Look what I got on Friday! They are my birthday present that I picked out for myself. DH asked if I wanted a spinning wheel, I said no, but I’d like a couple more spindles.

These are both Bosworth Spindles, fondly referred to as Bossies by their fans. On the left in both of the above photos is a Canarywood Midi that weighs 24 grams (.84 ounces). On the right is a Bubinga Mini that weighs 20 grams (.7 ounces). Both have the standard Birch shaft.

For scale, here are all three of my spindles. The largest is my Schacht Hi-Lo that weighs in at 1.1 ounces. The fiber that’s on my new Bossies is what Sheila used to test spin and what a great idea is this - I just love that upon opening the package I could immediately give them a spin.

Miss Blondie has settled in very nicely at L&R. This was my goal by having her return to a familiar facility. When we moved to Montana it took her about 3 months to even begin settling; she had wide eyes and lots of nervous energy. On top of being familiar, her best buddy JJ moved to L&R while we were in Montana.

Here we are standing around at the tie rails while I check her feet and brush her.

This is her best buddy JJ. All the other horses like JJ, but he prefers blondes. And seriously, you haven’t seen two happier horses than JJ and Blondie in a pasture together.

Showing off her new trim. We have a new farrier and things are changing a fair amount from the way she was trimmed in Montana.

Hanging out in the pasture.

The End (at least until next week when we try out the fit on some new hoof boots).

But I wasn’t the one who spun it. This is a hank of alpaca/blue faced leicester that was spun by Sheepshape Spinning. It is really lovely - I’ve tried to capture it’s true colors in the photo - sky blue with pale green and lavender.

Go have a look at Sheepshape’s other handspun yarns. They demonstrate exactly why I got so interested in spinning in the first place, there is just something about a handspun 2-ply from the changing colors to the slight changes in thickness that I love.

I won the yarn in a contest that Phat Fiber had back on April 29th. Due to an email snafu I just got the yarn Saturday.

I feel like I haven’t been getting much knitting done. Some of my time last week was spent organizing my craft room. It’s looking pretty good now.

I did go to a World Wide Knitting in Public event on Saturday, but I forgot to take the camera. Turnout seemed good to me - knitters filled the parking lots.

1. Tryst Vest - umm….maybe next week?

2. Imitation Ab Fab - probably halfway complete. At this point I just want to get it done.

3. SIL: A Midsummer Night’s Dream - failed in my goal to get it officially cast on. I *really* want to get it going this week.

4. Evergreen Superwash - this is a bit of fiber from the Wooly Cupcakes I bought from The Wool Peddler. I haven’t yet decided whether I will finish just the green or whether I will mix some of the other superwash fibers with it.

5. Cutest Baby Hat - cute little rainbow hat from Fancy Image Yarns in Shelton, WA. My Mom bought this and asked me to knit it for a gift.

The Sherbet Roving is now a 3 ply yarn. While it was tempting to stay in my comfort zone of drafting singles from top, I wanted to push my boundaries and explore other options. Not that I’ve perfected singles or 2 ply by any means; if I had I think it would be even more difficult to branch out and make mistakes as I try new things.

So…I bought the roving purely because I enjoyed the color, the price was good, and I wanted something to experiment with. When I got home I immediately started spinning it using Tammy Rizzo’s Ply-on-the-Fly technique.

Fiber: 3.6 ounces of roving from Sugar Loaf Wool in colorway Sherbet
Yarn: first skein is about 75 yards, second skein is about 105 yards. I think it’s worsted to heavy worsted, but to be honest, I haven’t checked my WPI yet.
Spindle: Schacht Hi-Lo 1.1 oz
Notes:
With roving my singles tend to be lumpier/bumpier. Sometimes I plucked the little balls of fiber off, but I didn’t worry about them much. If I was going to worry I figure I should use top.

A tighter grip than what I have been using with top was sometimes helpful in smoothly drafting out the fiber. Letting a bit of spin run further into the roving also seemed to be of benefit at times.

3 ply can be quite fun since you get to see yarn forming right away.

After spinning this fiber I’m much more comfortable with starting/stopping, spinning while standing, and even putting spin on my spindle with my feet.

Last week I kept looking at my yarn, browsing Ravelry, and considering what I wanted to cast on for. There were actually several projects that I felt like I wanted to start right away, but I couldn’t seem to sit down and cast on. Each night I’d think, “maybe tonight I can sit down and start something” and then each night I’d get too busy or tired.

Finally on Friday I broke through and started a new project, then on Monday night I swatched for Dream. See both below.

1. Tryst Vest - ah shoot. I didn’t deal with this. Goal: re-block it this week so it can come off this list!

2. Sherbet Roving - Rather than overloading my spindle I decided to spin this in two batches. The first skein has soaked and dried. The second batch is just about ready to take off the spindle. I’ve been keeping this at work, spinning for as much of my lunch hour as I can.

Some sections look great and others are…umm…whoa, what happened there? I know what happened - it’s my first time spinning roving.

3. Imitation Ab Fab - it’s coming along well. I dare to say it looks better than those first photos led you all to believe (the light was rather harsh). The complete list of yarns is available on my Ravelry project page.

4. SIL: A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Details are in yesterday’s post. Goal: get started for real.

The second shipment of Shakespeare in Lace is out and it’s another spectacular combination of pattern and yarn! The theme for this shipment is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, designed by Judy Anderson. The yarn is, of course, dyed by Anne of Wooly Wonka Fibers. Hopefully as I progress through knitting Dream I’ll be able to show you the beauty of the yarn and pattern. The yarn color in this first photo is fairly close to accurate on my monitor. It has depth to the color though, that I can’t capture in a single photo.

My gauge swatch was knit on 3.75 mm needles with a long tail cast on over two needles. When I first pinned it out it wanted to be too narrow and tall. After measuring and re-pinning I got the width correct, but it’s still a tad too tall. My thought at this point is to cast on for real, but to be sure to cast on even more loosely - I think that will allow me to get the width easier, which will also bring the height down more. I almost always go up a needle size for everything I knit so that part is no surprise.

My goal when I joined this club was to get some experience with lace in a variety of patterns and yarns, and to extend my knitting skills. Considering the first two club shipments, I’d say my goals are getting fulfilled plus I’ll have some gorgeous shawls to show for it!

Isn’t that always the question with the Ab Fab afghans? I’m still undecided which way this one will go. One thing I do know - even if I don’t like it, I bet I know someone who will love it.

If you would have asked me two weeks ago what I would be doing today, I would have said, “shopping Linda’s sale”, but after seeing all my stash in one place I decided I needed to stash bust before buying any more yarn. All week long I had been considering various combination of yarns and pattern, all from stash. It wasn’t until yesterday I realized the six skeins of Colinette from a Vintage Knits kit kept staring me in the face. Take six skeins of Colinette, add one to two skeins of additional Colinette, one skein of coordinating tweed yarn, plus the Old Shale pattern and you have an Imitation Ab Fab afghan AND a whole lot of stash busting.