I love field trips!

Last year on MLK Day, I went on a field trip to Brown Sheep Yarn in Mitchell Nebraska.  This year Lori at Cowgirl Yarns put together another annual trip (Thanks Lori!)  I took my neighbor Karissa, and off we went to Mitchell.  We went on the tour and then on to my favorite part:  the factory store!  Karissa was a great help as I went box-diving for roving to spin.  Here's what I came up with:

The blue/lavender fiber in the back row is superwash; all the rest are the wool/mohair blend of Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride.  I love all these colors, so spinning with them will be a joy.  Over 5 pounds of fiber for under $31.  WooHoo!

Karissa also helped me bag some roving to use to thrum slippers for all the daughters and their significant others for Christmas next year.  Then we went to the factory store to select Lamb's Pride bulky weight yarn for those slippers. Yellow, green, orange, blue, brown and grey tweed are the six colors for the six kids.  I also picked up some cream-colored wool to have some more fun with dyeing.  Dye pot, here I come!

The yarns in the front two piles (blue handpainted and grey/mulberry/heathered yarns) are Brown Sheep's new product, Lana Boucle.  I usually don't care for boucle yarns, mostly because the yarn catches on itself and doesn't have any life.  There's nothing that Brown Sheep can do about the stitches catching, that's the nature of the beast, but they have solved the problem of lifelessness by spinning a 100% wool boucle that is springy and fun to knit with.  I think the handpainted is calling out for a cowl for me (something around my neck, since these are my colors and enhance my eye color).  I am not sure who is destined to receive the ruffled scarf and wristers in the kit. The wristers are already knit in an afternoon, and the scarf is underway.  And thank you Linda for the kit!

I always feel like such a successful shopper when I go to the factory store.  $6.20/pound for roving, $12.50/pound for the yarn, except the handpainted yarns, which are $25/pound.  But this entire haul, plus a little I didn't show, came out to just over $100.  I promised John I would try to spend less than I did last year .... and DID! (by $2! But hey, a miss is as good as a mile!)

After the factory, Karissa and I went to lunch at a cute little bistro in Scottsbluff.  Then we fought the wind driving home.  But, all in all, a very satisfactory day!

More boot accessories

Since boot toppers and boot cuffs seem to be the rage this year (or so I'm told by some of those who follow trends) I decided to make some more toppers.  I did the brioche cuffs a week or so ago, so I chose a more commonly-seen pattern: cables and ribs.  I found the pattern on Ravelry and dug right in.  It took me a couple of evenings, and was a very simple pattern.  Cables are such a fun way to add depth to a fabric.  My only problem with cables is that I forget to count rows between cable rows, and then have to stop and backtrack.  Hopefully Hilary will like these.

Lace updates

A couple of days ago I showed a pic of a triangular shawl on the blocking board.  I took it off and finally got outside for natural light for a picture, so here it is.

I'm glad you can see the hearts.  Otherwise all that work was for naught.

I also got another lace shawl blocked.  This one is PurlBee Wedding Shawl by Purl Soho.  Not having access to 20/12 bamboo, and not really wanting to fork out the $ for it, I obtained 2 balls of Ella Rae Lace Merino at my LYS (on sale at her Super Bowl sale.)  When that was not enough, I went to Ravelry and begged 2 more balls from a wonderful person (who sold me her 2 balls for less than the LYS on sale.)  And the finished product measures 96" x 30" and looks like this:

I put this shawl on the blocking board Tuesday morning about 10:30 a.m., and got a call at 2:30 from a realtor who wanted to show the house at 6:00 p.m. (our house here in Cheyenne is for sale.)  I wavered about taking it up and re-blocking it again the next day, but decided that if someone would let a shawl on blocking squares in the guest bedroom be a deciding factor on the house, they really didn't want it anyway!  So I left it, and when we came home after the realtor and clients left, there was a note on the shawl reading, "Nicely done.  I am a knitter and spinner too."  I felt better, because I figured another knitter would understand why I had left it.

So I am planning to wear this shawl with a blush-colored mother-of-the-bride dress in August when our youngest daughter gets married in Kansas City, assuming the bride doesn't have other dress code ideas.

Odds and ends, bits and pieces

Another experiment in knitting for me : double knitting

I had wanted to try this for quite some time, and when I found the chart for the Tardis (a la Dr. Who) I decided to try it.  It is really fairly simple, except that my color changes kept getting twisted around each other, so my double-knitting was not a tube, it was just 2-sided.  But I will keep trying.  I was intending this to be a Kindle cover, as it is just about e-reader size, but it is a wall decoration for my friend Nancy (a Who newbie) to put in her office.

My youngest daughter caught me at Thanksgiving and showed me something on her Pinterest board and asked if I could knit if for her.  It was a big bulky infinity cowl, so I showed her the GAP-tastic cowl pattern on Ravelry.  She gave it the thumbs up, so I bought the yarn and got busy.  I had this cowl, plus a matching hat in a mock cable twist pattern, when I came back to Missouri at Christmas.  With the weather in KC this week, she could probably use a big bulky scarf.

Comfort knitting -- socks and lace

I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I find that there are types of knitting that have a rhythm or ease that make me feel good inside .... like comfort food, only comfort knitting.  I have two basic types of comfort knits: socks and lace.  3x1 rib socks that are stable and predictable.  Lace that emerges from the needles and forms patterns.

I always have socks on needles.  I shrunk the last pair of boot socks that I made for John, so these are a superwash wool/nylon blend to replace those.  (The shrunken socks are now my felted house socks, and boy do they keep my feet warm!)  I always love knitting the foot portion, and then it takes forever to do the leg and I think I will never get done with them.  These are full-calf legs, and I was ready to kill something before it was over!  So now, I need to get some nylon yarn to carry with some alpaca, and make myself some nice warm socks.

I love knitting shawls.  I have a dresser drawer full of them, and still can't stop myself from starting another, so I always have lace on my needles.  (BTW, multiple projects is why I will always have fixed circulars, as well as an interchangeable set.  If you only have one project at a time, just the interchangeables would be fine, but that will never happen in my lifetime!)

This shawl is Little Valentine, done with the additional rows after the shawlette size, and is knit in Brown Sheep hand-dyed sock yarn.  If I had stopped at the shawlette size, I could have done it with one hank.  It measures 6 feet in wingspan, and 3 feet in depth.  I love blocking lace and seeing the design!  I couldn't wait for it to come off needles to take a picture.

New year, new skills

I am feeling like such a lemming when I say this but  ...... I have started my New Years knitting resolutions.  I shouldn't call them resolutions, because I am not usually very resolved to do them! So let's say "good idea list."  However, I am resolved to learn some new fiber skills.  At the top of my list is brioche knitting, also called fisherman's rib.  "It's ribbing, how hard can it be," I thought to myself.  And actually, back-and-forth brioche is fantastically easy.  I mastered it in about 5 minutes.  It has taken a little bit longer to catch onto brioche in the round.  However, I think I just about have the knack of it.  The real trick for me is "reading" the stitches so that when I put it down, I can figure out what to do when I pick it back up again.

I decided I needed a project to see if I could actually do brioche, so I put together a pair of boot cuffs over the weekend.  They were done back-and-forth and sewn up, and took practically no time.  I think they look pretty cool.

Then I said, "Hey, if it was this easy, let's try another set of boot cuffs in the round.  Saves the sewing."  So I got out some remnant yarn, and have started a pair in variegated Red Heart.  The hardest part was finding small enough needles to do the project.  I don't think I am experienced enough in brioche yet to Magic Loop the round.  I was not sure how I would like the variegated, but I think it picks up the rib and sets it off, because the"V" stitch in the middle is slipped and the stitches on each side of it are purled or wrapped.  The slip stitch being in a different color actually helped the effect, I think.