an ent knits

three pictures

This was the view out my front window this morning.  Snow!  Enough to stick!  The best part was that there was just barely enough to crunch under my sneakers, but not enough to make it tricky to walk to work.

I played around with kool-aid dyeing again last week.  This is about 3oz of Amy Boogie's wool blend, with several packets of various flavors of kool-aid.  Lesson for next time: grape is really powerful. 

I've also been knitting away on the second fire sock.  Most of the ribbing was knit during the Värttinä (Finnish folk-rock) concert I saw last Thursday--they were excellent, and I'd highly recommend seeing them if you get the chance. 

And that's it for me for today.  Work is really busy, and I haven't had the energy for a lot of fiber stuff, but there'll be fiber night this week, at least. 

wow!

I signed up a while ago for the Spin to Knit handspun swap thingy, which is sort of like a secret pal thing except it's just two skeins (or more, if one feels like it) of handspun, going to another spinner who signed up as the same skill level. 

I'm still working on my outgoing January skein, but I got this in the mail yesterday:

Plus extra fiber:

My pal said this blend is from her spinning guild's "garden party", wherein everyone brings some fiber, everyone's contributions get blended together, and everyone leaves with the weight of fiber that they contributed.   I love the way it turned out (although it's a little more in the pink-and-purple realm than I usually wear), and I may need to organize something like that garden party in Philly.

And the loveliest Chanukah candles ever:

I am now prepared for next year.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with the yarn...it's way too nice to use my fallback of "knit something for Dulaan".  (Sorry, Mongolians, you can have my handspun, but not gifted handspun.)  I'm thinking it may become something like this elephant from Knitted Toys:

Any other suggestions? 

playing catch-up

I am in the middle of a just-over-two-week period which has/had all of three days, I think, with nothing [social] scheduled.  I wound up cancelling some of my plans and diverting an evening or two to alternate plans, but things have been busy.  There've been lots of things to blog, but very little time with which to do so.  Here, then, since I am still quite busy, are a few bits.

Food.  After the end of the One Local Summer challenge, I decided that my next cooking challenge would be to cook "real food" at least once, preferably twice, each week.  It hasn't been going as well as I'd've liked, but I'm still working at it.  Last week, however, I managed twice, with one meal large batch of food being mostly local, and one batch of food being OLS-compliant.  Here's a picture of the partly-local food, in its reincarnation as lunch:

That's sautéed local rainbow chard, with bulgar salad adapted from Mac's recipe--the carrots were local, the cranberries, almonds, and bulgar were not.  (I also toss in a good bit of sumac in this stuff, but it can be hard to find.)   The other batch of cooking was locally made whole wheat linguine with local tofu, carrots, and broccoli.  I still have some left, and it turns out to be much better with [local] cheese.

__________

Plants--because what kind of catch-up post from me would it be without at least one picture of a plant?

This year, my christmas cactus decided to honor Veterans' Day.  I had hoped, when I saw the buds, that it would be a birthday cactus, but 'twas not to be.  Still, I'm always happy to have flowers on my plants, especially as they're getting scarcer outside.

Fiber.  The conspiracy is sucking me further in.  I have now played with handcards, and it was fun. 

Three rolags from last night, hanging out at Sarah's, with a 20p coin for scale (a bit bigger than a US nickel).  Pretty much all wool, with a couple of teensy bits of alpaca and silk, mostly the brown corriedale I bought when I first got my spindle and then decided wasn't pretty enough or enough fun to spin.  I like it a lot better now.  (It doesn't show up all that well, but the rolag on the far left is sorta greyish-brownish-greenish, and the middle rolag is reddish-brownish-slightly purple.)

festival stuffs

Jody posted last month about a pact she'd made with Christy.  They agreed that they were each going to knit half of their 2006 festival purchases before MDSW 2007.  Partly inspired by that and partly inspired by the desire to have less stuff*, I've gone through my records of things I bought at the three festivals I've attended.  The annotated composite graphic is in the extended entry, along with my plans and goals.

*which was, in turn, partly inspired by the process of moving last summer

spinning and things

I've said this before, and I expect it will come up again... Anj is a very talented and generous enabler.  This time, she spent some of her limited Rhinebeck-time to look for a few things for me, and brought back a pair of beautiful, beautiful bobbins.  I am very happy--now I can have a two-ply and a three-ply going at the same time.

In further discussion of New Things...  I hadn't intended to post my birthday presents here, but I thought y'all'd appreciate this one: Anju and Tim gave me a Lantern Moon needle roll.

(All the stuff in it was already mine, I just stayed up really late on Saturday to transfer things from the bin o' needles and stuff to the fancy new organizer.  Because organizing my knitting needles was more urgent than sleep.)

And now for some evidence that I've used (one of) my new, pretty bobbins:

I had started spinning this last week, and gotten most of one bobbin spun up, but the second bobbin and the plying were all Saturday evening.  I had decided to use this stuff (green romney top from Rhinebeck '05) for the freeform blanket I'm knitting, and I wanted it to be socializing-spinning, so I decided not to worry about evenness.  It varies between fingering and worsted, mostly as dk-ish, and this is about 160 yards.

I also recently acquired some more Boogie fiber.  I had been thinking about getting some superwash merino to spin up for socks (and to try spinning superwash), and then she posted a lovely green with greyish and brownish bits, and I bought it.

Isn't it pretty?

This is a teensy (three-yard) sample skein I spun and plied last night.  Soooo soft.  And it doesn't seem terribly different from regular merino, at least so far. 

hey, look!

I have knitting to show! Not all that much of it is recent, but I've resumed work on my ginormous green to-be-felted totebag:

Lest it decide to swallow my cat and start engulfing my armchair, I think I'm going to start the handles/straps after I finish the skein I joined on Saturday. It'll be really nice to have this thing done...whenever that actually happens.

And...I know, my stated plan was to spin and knit from my stash and what I bought at Maryland and not buy more fiber until Rhinebeck, but I couldn't resist this:

A very kind, generous person offered to buy roving mill-ends from Brown Sheep, at their factory, and send them to various other people at her cost. And I'm not to a point of being able to refuse pretty roving at $7/lb. So I now have two pounds of wool in that lovely cranberry color. I'm hoping it'll turn into a sweater.

And, to continue the red, and just because it was there, I present a photo of one of the poppies I bought at the farmers' market last Saturday:

mmmhh

I needed that. Not just the still-incredible and -overwhelming amount of fiber and number of people at Maryland Sheep & Wool, but the relaxation of a weekend away from work, away from the shambles that is my apartment, and away from the noise of the city. It was amazing to wake up and hear more birdsong than anything else, and to fall asleep to crickets and spring peepers. I need to get out of the city more.

Of course, I wasn't just camping... It was lovely to see a whole bunch of people I don't often see, and spend lots of time with a few people I do often see, and all in the presence of many, many fibery animals and lots of fiber.

And I had to buy some...

This is plain white cormo top, copper-colored corriedale to match the redwood bfl, a show-logo t-shirt, a gorgeous silk cap, dark red and grey ramboullet, grey-green & orange wool-mohair, wool (from a sheep named Sandalwood, I think) and alpaca in various lovely shades of brown, a green Grafton Fibers pouf, a wraps-per-inch tool from Woodchuck Products, two skeins of Tess's sock yarn (chocolatey brown & mahoganyish brown), a skein of Spirit Trails sock yarn in flame colors, and some merino-mohair in olive & brown & red & gold, also from Spirit Trails. You'll get more details as I start to use them.

Here's a better pic of the wpi tool (click for detail):

And I was ordered to take some pictures of the animals, so I figured I'd post a few of them here as well.

I'm yawning incredibly now...this whole 'getting up well before seven a.m.' thing means getting tired a lot earlier. Funny, that.

on behavior

An open letter to yarn shop owners and managers:

If I e-mail you saying I plan to return to your store with an item I wish to exchange, and mention in the e-mail that said item was special ordered, the proper time to tell me that it's store policy not to accept exchanges on special-order items is as soon as you read my e-mail, NOT after I've schlepped the yarn (and myself, and, incidentally, my parents) to your store. If you are unable to reply to my e-mail--if, perhaps, you only check the store e-mail every two days or so--then please, please have the decency to politely and respectfully tell me, "Sorry, we can't accept returns or exchanges on special-ordered merchandise." Don't say something like, "Well, okay, we'll make an exception this once, but you really should know that custom yarn over the internet may not be exactly the color you think it'll be, and we can't do this in the future." Conveying in your attitude that you think I'm an obnoxious idiot to not have realized that special orders were exempt from the returns policy on your website and invoice and to not have thought about the immense hassle I'm putting you through by having you find an entry in your inventory system for my un-bar coded yarn is NOT the way to get me to like your store. Treat me like an intelligent adult, don't make me feel like an errant child, and I'll be happy to respect your store policies.

Sincerely,
Naomi

[names withheld because my other experiences at the store in question have been good]

In more positive news, my family seder last night was very nice once everyone arrived and things got started. My one and a half-year-old step-cousin was quite a cutie, and it was fun to have her there, despite all of the running around involved in having a toddler in a completely un-childproofed house.

color!

Yesterday was a rather dreary day, threatening or raining and then with thunderstorms in the evening. (I actually like such weather as long as I don't get soaked on my walk to work, but it was quite a contrast from Sunday's "come play outside!" sun.) Anyway, the greyness meant that I was almost (pleasantly) blinded when I got home and opened my box of Boogie fiber:

I bought an Almost Solid sampler, plus some extra BFL in Redwood and Red Maple. Soooo pretty. Mel seemed interested, too, but I think his camera pose was to try to convince you that his presence on the dining table is actually approved rather than merely tolerated. (I've given up on keeping the dining table cat-free in favor of keeping the board that supports my stereo cat-paw-free.)

Here's my new wool sorted by subtype. The front left clump (including the azalea, which is hiding behind that blue) are the Wool Blend, behind them is the pile of merino, the front right pile is corriedale, and the large pile in the back is the biffle.

I wish I could show you a bobbin of some freshly-spun biffle, but I couldn't get it to work. It's lusciously soft, and I enjoyed drafting some of the Red Maple sample bit...but I had problems. I think it's a combination of adjusting to having a brake band and having to set up a leader for the first time. (Is there a right way or a best way or a wrong way to set up a leader? The first way I tried was definitely wrong, since it didn't wind on at all...) I had the hardest time getting take-up without having the wool yanked out of my hands... I did spin a bit of the Azalea onto the bobbin I'd been using before, but I will probably take it back off the bobbin so I can have my skein of blue and teal and black without pink. (Oh, how I hate the way pink and purple find their way into nearly every variegated yarn!)

On a happier note, though, I've got a few other new fun acquisitions:

My copy of Knitting Rules came yesterday. I haven't finished it yet, mostly because I was trying to spin and because I want it to last a few days. Yay, Yarn Harlot! I picked up the copy of Knitting Vintage socks and the bag of lemon-ginger-myrtle tea on Saturday, when Miriam came into town from a visit to the suburbs. I keep forgetting to try the tea--maybe tonight!--but it smells heavenly.

eeee!

I've been busy in lab, and I'm getting sick, but I had a very nice evening once I got home. I don't have time to write much, since I have to be up early and I need sleep to kick the sickness, but I present you with a pair of pictures.

Lace! I've wound all of the very red laceweight and started Mim's Mountain Peaks Shawl with it. (Are there buttons for the knitalong? Maybe I should put one up.)

And I got green laceweight from Amy Boogie this afternoon:

Isn't it pretty? I don't think I mentioned it here, but I got my Fleece Artist yarn, and it really wasn't the color I wanted (the problem with e-mail for someone as color-picky as I am with greens). Amy liked it, though, so we swapped, and I now have this lovely green yarn for a Peacock Feathers Shawl for whenever I finish the Mountain Peaks Shawl.

I have another, even more squeal-worthy announcement to make, but it's going to wait until I've got pictures. And now it's bedtime.