Breathess post from the road

I'm traveling but just popped my head into the fall Twist Collective and nearly fainted. There are so! many! beautiful! sweater! patterns!!!

Swoon.

Best of all there are some great colorwork sweaters, and guess what I've been craving?

FO: Easy baby cardigan

Pattern: Easy Baby Cardigan by Diane Soucy

Yarn: My handspun/handdyed in Daydreams of Spring, 100% merino

This was a quick little knit and such a great pattern. The construction is delightfully almost seamless (just the top of the hood) and so easy you hardly have to pay attention.

And that simplicity suits the handspun yarn, allowing all the nubbly variagation to shine through.

Man, I love knitting with handspun.

The toggles come from The Hickory Tree shop on Etsy. Check them out if you are looking for wooden buttons that look straight out of nature.

A return to Dyeing

I've taken most of the summer away from dyeing, partially because it's been hot and working over a hot dyepot does not sound appealing, and partially because I've had a lot of other fun stuff going on.

But this week I dipped a toe back into the world of color. A friend of mine had gotten two large cones of undyed sock yarn and asked if I would dye it for her. She wanted blue and green (hurray!) and here's what I came up with:

I was aiming for a yarn that would be largely blue with small patches of bright green and larger swaths of a kind of aqua. I think she liked it and I certainly enjoyed the process! It made me think about the differences between dyeing yarn and dyeing fiber and it turns out that there are many - both in the design process and the execution.

Tomorrow I hope to have a FO to show. Finally something finished from the castonathon!

Cast-onathon

Ahem.


Things have gotten a little cast-on happy around here lately, so in the interest of accountability I'm reporting in for a works-in-progress roundup.

Let's look at them individually, shall we?


Everyone knows socks don't really count as a WIP, so I hardly need to defend these. That said, the observant among you will notice that I've stopped right at the point when I need to turn the heel, which is really the only time that sock knitting becomes an actual project. So! The heel must be turned.


The back of the equestrian blazer has grown a bit, but it has been benched for now. It was born of demand (no easy knitting on the needles!) and supply (hey look! a sweater's worth of yarn in my stash!). But this is a cool-weather project and since fall in Virginia is still many months off there's no rush to finish it yet. And it's not like I don't have other things to keep me busy...


Oh right - lace.
I'm knitting a few rows here and there, but my favorite place to knit lace is on airplanes and for the next few weeks I'm not traveling. So progress has stalled.


New project #1! Some yarn never sees the inside of the stash bins. The Rowan silk-wool yarn that I got at an unbelievable sale price is such a yarn. And now that it is becoming a summer cardigan it has become priority knitting #1.

Or at least it was until this happened:

New project #2. Yesterday I realized I have some gift knitting to catch up on. So I opened the stash closet, picked the happiest color of handspun I saw, and got to work. This itty bitty hooded cardi is about the most mindless thing I have ever knit, and it is flying by, so hopefully I'll get back to my turqoise summer cardi soon enough.

Let's not talk about spinning projects in progress right now, okay?

Yarn call!

This weekend I went away to the most fabulous weekend of fiddling and dancing EVER but this is a fiber blog, so I won't bore you all.

Instead, here are some things that came in the mail while I was away:

Four skeins of goooorgeous naturally brown yarn from Topsy farm in Canada. It's far from next-to-skin soft, but it'll suit the project I had in mind perfectly. Very happy with this purchase!


Ten skeins of Rowan Classic Silk Wool DK in Porcelain, which just happens to be my very favorite color. This was an unplanned purchase, but the price was just so good that I jumped on it. Very happy I did.

And with all that yarn arriving I'd better get knitting! Here is the start of the back of Kate Gilbert's Equestrian Blazer which I'm knitting with the yarn recycled from my very first (and rather bad) sweater. So far, so good.

Distractible

I am without a chugalong knitting project right now and as a result I'm bouncing around and dabbling in several different things.

This weekend I...

...started spinning a cashmere and silk blend...


...fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with the tension on Margaret's Matchless that she has kindly lent me (I got it worked out last night! Let the production spinning begin!)...


...frogged my very first completed sweater and soaked the yarn for reuse...


...and cast on for a sock.

The brown yarn conundrum has been solved (I hope) and when the yarn comes in the mail I'll report in. Hopefully this means that I'll be casting on a sweater soon, which should help focus my fiber play time.

1/2 FO: Boxwood Primavera Sock(s)

Yarn: Wollmeise, from the sock yarn club

Needles: 0s! (I know! Zerophobia is healed!)

Pattern: Primavera

The first sock is finished and the second ball is still AWOL. This wouldn't be so terribly tragic if this wasn't my very favorite sock that I've ever knit. Sigh. I love this sock. And I will display it prominently so I can admire it until the other ball of yarn decides to come home.

I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend the Primavera pattern. It's wonderfully mindless (the fiddley bits are only every six rows) and the effect is lovely with a variagated yarn. I will be knitting many more of these socks. Or, you know, at least a full pair. (sigh!)