Heat Wave

We have had an unbelievably hot July. I can’t remember having so many days at or above thirty (I think that converts to mid to upper 80s). I like the heat when I am away on holidays and don’t have to do much but it so hard to handle during regular life. This is the first morning I have been able to sit at the computer for more than a few minutes without both the computer and myself overheating.

There has been very little knitting happening in the heat. Just a bit of work on plain vanilla socks in a self-striping yarn. I have been daydreaming about knitting and spinning a lot though. I tried spinning with the spindle last month and after a couple of false starts I did get into a bit of a rythym with it. I am looking forward to trying it again once summer cools down and slows down.

It’s been a busy month – my brother’s wedding, a ton of projects starting up at work, and most weekends spent at the lake. I love being at the cabin and we go as often as we can. A couple of weeks ago our 5 year old nephew caught his first fish – an unbelievable 24 inch pickerel. It was huge. We were all screaming and snapping pictures and his Mum was crying. Fishing is a big deal in our families and nobody ever catches such a big fish the first time and right off the dock even. So, our weekends are full and everything else that needs to be done ends up compressed into the evenings Monday to Thursday and that hasn’t left much time for knitting or blogging. I am sure that fall and winter will result in much more frequent posting. I hope you will come back to visit me here then.

Too Many Possibilities

I mentioned in my last post that I took an one evening class in Koolaid dying at River City Yarns (www.rivercityyarns.com). Here’s some pics……

 

This is superwash wool on the bottom and alpaca on the top. Both were dyed in the same bath of Ice Blue koolaid. Out of all the fibres we tried, the superwash took the colour the most, followed by the merino, alpaca, and linen. The cottons ended up very light and the colours ran together more as you can see in this next picture.

Top to bottom – linen, cotton, cotton, superwash wool, merino, alpaca, and Lopi. The space dyed effect was achieved by pouring small amounts of three colours on the skiens, leaving a little space in between to let the colours bleed together a bit. For this yarn I used lemonade, orange, and cherry.

I think my favorite is the Lopi because it ended up blending nicely and has a bit of a sheen to it.

 I purchased plain Lopi and Trekking ProNatura to try my hand at dying at home. I may use Wilton icing dyes and see how they work out.

And, because I apparently feel the need to overload myself with possiblities right now ……

I bought the pink roving to start on before moving to the nicer roving in the kit. The directions scared the hell out of me – I am NOT as coordinated as it appears I need to be. My hubby is away on a fishing trip this weekend so I think I’ll try using the spindle so I can swear/laugh/cry with only the dog and cat as witnesses.

Summertime and the living is busy

There’s been some knitting interspersed with weekends at the cabin, working, and all the other activities of summer.

I finished a My So Called  Scarf made with 2 balls of Noro Silk Garden. This was a quick knit for me – just a few days. It helps that Noro is so addictive – I kept knitting “just one more row to see what is going to happen with the colours. It got me thinking about colour and colour combinations while we were at the lake. I was amazed at the sheer number of colours in nature when I took the time to actually look. We were fishing in the boat and the sky was light blue, grey, purple, orange, yellow, dark blue. The trees and bush were bright green, drak green, yellow green, blue green, grey green, almost black, red brown, tan. It was quite fascinating to notice what I hadn’t paid much attention to before.

Colour seems to be a theme for me this week. Last night I took a class in dying yarn with Koolaid at my LYS. I was surprised by the ways different fibers took up the Koolaid. There will be pictures to demonstrate as soon as everything is dry.

I’ll leave off with a picture of our dog waiting to go fishing. She LOVES it. She gets all excited when we catch a fish and has to lean over the side of the boat to lick it (hence the life jacket – I soaking wet 100 pound dog would be next to impossible to pull back into the boat). And when the fish is big enough, she barks.

Not Quite Up and Running

What’s that about best intentions?

I have loaded my camera program and I’m still figuring out how to download and post pictures.  Real life has an annoying habit of getting in the way of these things.

Until I get it figured out, here’s what’s on the needles. Note: this does not include the few sweaters that appear to have been forever banished to the deep recesses of the craft closet.

Mariah – http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter04/PATTmariah.html from knitty, knit in Paton’s classic wool dark grey. I love/hate this sweater. I dubbed it the “really hard sweater” because I’ve been learning all sorts of things knitting it – reading charts, doing complex cables, joining pieces and knitting them in the round. I have all the pieces knit and joined and currently I am slogging through the very long yoke rounds. I seem to only be able to do a couple rounds then my hands cramp from the weight of it.

Socks – currently just the second of a pair in a bamboo yarn in a pattern I made up while away in Victoria and the gulf islands a few weeks ago. There is yarn for another pair in line for my future sister in law. Her birthday was this weekend so I gave her the unknit yarn balls (I figured she’d understand) and she is looking forward to handknit socks.

 The Vest – Why oh why do I try make something good from bad yarn. Okay, the yarn is maybe not entirely bad but it’s not great – I think it’s Lion Brand suede. This was an emergency purchase at night when all the LYS’s were closed and I absolutely HAD to start a new project. What was I thinking?

Hope to have pics up in the next few days.

Intro

Is it the sweater(s) or the girl that’s half-finished? Both, actually.

I have been wanting to start a blog for months now after spending too much time reading knitting blogs and wanting to be a part of it all.

I will be posting about my knitting and thoughts on life in general.