moonfrog

Lucky bunny that I am, spent a wonderful four days at Black Sheep Gathering again this year. First, there’s the drive up the Oregon coast, which is always a treat. We traveled with our usual good company, Connie and Erik. This year they brought their brand new travel trailer, so we camped in style, despite a few light thunder showers.

Then came spinning and shopping and sheep — and the lovely wool from those sweet beasties. As always, my favorites are the alpaca, not the sheep. These are two of the reddish brown ones, which are my favorite color on the hoof. They were very young and shy and spun in circles while crying nervously while I took this photo. Poor babies!

Here are some of the lovely products that these lovely animals provide for us. And lucky me, while I was off buying yet another fleece (a white Romney/Merino cross) my sweet husband was buying me some lovely alpaca and some merino to blend with it. It’s the lovely white with reddish tan on the left, so soft.

I was also fortunate to get into a class about how to adjust and care for your spinning wheel that was taught by Judith McKenzie McCuin, an expert spinner who judged the wool last year. I have been using her book Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning in an effort to improve my spinning. I learned about tensioning and worsted spinning in the class. I think I like long-draw woolen spinning better! I did manage to finish spinning two spools of blue colonial wool top, one before Black Sheep and one during and after. Oh, do you see the different bobbin there? Well, I saved up the pennies this year and bought a Woolee Winder. I love this thing! It really makes spinning easier and more enjoyable as it moves the yarn along to wind it evenly on the spool. You can see what a nice even wind is on the new spool compared to the wildly uneven placement on the other. Now I can just pay attention to the wool I’m trying to tame.

You can see the Woolee Winder flyer on my wheel with the Corriedale cross that I started spinning when we got home. This is the fiber the Man bought me with the wheel last year. I’m using long-draw with it and it’s going really well. Except . . . see that crack on the top of the spinning head? Yeah, that’s the real reason I took the picture. I’ve sent off the dimensions and Majacraft will be sending me a new head. They think it is just a sappy flaw in the wood, but I am quite sure that is a crack. Better replace it than be sorry later. Can you see the crack?

I’ve also been doing some knitting lately. Knitting and frogging. I have made progress on the Nordic Sock Sweater — two out of ten balls knit! I also started the Branching Out scarf as part of a KAL on Ravelry, but frogged it. I think I’ve finally decided on the yarn to use now, so I will cast on again today.

Well, it’s time to pack my bags again to get ready for the Kate Wolf Festival, another yearly adventure. I’ll check in again when I get back. Hope your summer is busy and happy!

After the drastic sock-frogging mentioned in my previous post, a new saying was born around my house. We don’t say ‘I’m going to clean your clock’ or ‘knock you block off.’ The words that strike fear in the hearts of mere mortals are ‘Watch out or I will frog your socks!”

But I am moving on to a new project. I will cast the socks on again, but there is no hurry. So, what is the logical thing to start after some worsted-weight socks? Why, a sweater in fingering weight sock yarn, of course! And that is just what I’ve been working on lately. It’s the Drops Design Jacket that I mentioned last month. I’m going to dub this the Nordic Sock Sweater. I love the colors, and watching them change as I knit is entertaining. The construction of the sweater will be interesting, too, since it switches directions a couple times.

The one thing I worry about it that this will take a long, long time. Will I lose interest? Get burned out? I guess I will just have to chance it. I decided that instead of looking at the rows or inches, I’d count balls of yarn completed. The estimated total is 10 balls of yarn. I’ve used one. Hmmm, that does not impress me much. I figure this will be my slow-but-steady project and am not forcing myself to knit it exclusively, so maybe I will make it to the end. Right now, I’m enjoying it thoroughly.

I’ve also been playing with yarn in other ways. I bought a yardage counter and have been measuring and re-skeining some yarn that doesn’t have labels. I’ve also been spinning a little and looking forward to filling a bobbin or two so I can run that through the yardage counter. Nothing like new toys for a good bit of entertainment!

AudioBook Blurb

I’ve neglected reviewing quite a few books in the past few months, then haven’t listened to much for a month, but I want to tell you about my latest reading that really impressed me. It’s a three book series called The Bartimaeus Trilogy, written by Jonathan Stroud. The series centers around a young magician, a rebellious girl, and a sarcastic djinni (genie.)

The tale is set in London, and the timeframe is a mix of historical and modern. (It’s a little disconcerting to have automobiles and ‘the American colonial problem’ existing at the same time.) The world that Stroud creates is magical and political and socially intriguing.

While some aspects of the story follow traditional lines, there are some deviations that make this narrative different from others I’ve read. Conflicts do not always have happy endings, although there are plenty of those. The characters do not always meet expectations, but are well-developed and complex. The telling of the story is concise and held my attention well.

I would recommend this series to young people and adults who like fantasy. It was a great break in my day. I wish it could have gone on longer.

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Well, I’ll start with the bad news, so that we can end on a happy note. No, the bad news is not that it has taken me a full two weeks to dredge up a blog post . . . sigh. And in the scheme of things, it is not terrible news, just a little disappointing.

Remember the socks I was making for the husband? The ones that were following Cat Bhordi’s Sidestream pattern? They were almost to the heel. Then I started feeling like I was knitting these for Horton the elephant. The man in residence has narrow feet. These socks? Not so much.

I was knitting them in his size. My gauge was true. I thought I had measured the circumference of his feet, but somehow that measurement did not get included. It seems I used the standard men’s measurement instead. Evidently, his feet are far from standard!
So they have been frogged. I will start again soon. I enjoyed knitting them so far, so it is not such a waste of time as it might seem. They kept me busy while traveling here and there. But today I am swatching the sweater in the Fabel yarn from my last post. It is sock weight, too. It’s a change of pace of sorts.

Now for the good news. I had a birthday while I was not blogging. I feel bad that I didn’t share it with my blog readers, but such is life. Work makes me tired, so I get little more than the essentials done when I’m not working. But I did take time to celebrate with several of my friends and family. It was utterly enjoyable! The man-about-the-house grilled ribs, Mom made tater salad, and I even kicked in and made my favorite bread recipe, an onion braid. I hadn’t made it in years and it is so pretty. Basically, just add sour cream and onion soup mix to a standard bread recipe and shape it into a braid before baking. (If you want the recipe, drop me an email.)

At the dinner party, I was blessed with a special gift from my mom. A beautiful and practical scarf! My love of practical and useful things often outweighs my sentimental side, but not in this case. This gift made me realize how much more than yarn and needles and time goes into something handknit. Besides loving the scarf itself, with its soft, warm ribs and the cool hand-warmer pockets, I find precious memories knit right into it.

Many years ago, I crocheted a pocketed scarf for my sister. She loved it as much as I love this scarf. It was an unspoken token to her that I cared about her, in spite of the many years of kid-sister treatment she had to endure at my hands. Even though my mom and I share open expressions of love quite often nowadays, I still look forward to the cold days of winter, and being able to wrap this scarf around me and think of how much my mother loves me. And a special extra will be that it reminds me of my little sister and a scarf I made for her many years ago. Such a gift!