Fibering heaven

Last year for Christmas I asked Santa John for a drum carder.  He told me to order what I wanted, and I started looking around at different models.  The one I really wanted was an Ashford carder, but they are about $700 new and it's next to impossible to find them used.  I was getting ready to bite the bullet and buy one new when my mom fell, and all plans for anything fell to the bottom of my attention span.  Fast forward to last Friday night.  As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I decided to get onto craigslist and see if any drum carders came up.  And as luck would have it, someone had just posted a drum carder on Thursday.  However, it was part of a complete setup, and the seller was not splitting the lot.  So, for $775, I walked away with the drum carder (Ashford, as I had wanted); an Ashford Traditional spinning wheel with spinning stool, jumbo and standard flyer and bobbins; carding combs, niddy-noddy, drop spindle, yarn winder, spinning books and magazines, and 3 garbage bags of wool.  I'm like a kid in a candy store.  I now have a spinning wheel for each of my two permanent houses.  And with the drum carder, I hope to bring some wool here to Missouri (where I have a top-loading washer) and start prepping some roving.

The seller lives outside Springfield and was going to be gone for Thanksgiving, but she was traveling to St. Louis today, so we met in Lebanon and traded.  She got a whole lot more room in her car, and and envelope with cash, and I got a lot of fiber dreams to get started on.

More shawls

I have discovered I love knitting shawls.  I don't know why, but I do.  I have a lace shawl on the needles right now, and recently finished these two.

I find self-fringing a fascinating (and frightening) adventure.  This is a pattern called Fringed Benefits, which I adapted by using 3 stitches at the edge for self-fringing instead of the 5 the pattern called for.  The reason I say this frightening is because you bind off all but the end stitches on each end, then unravel and tie off each row of un-bound stitches.  I worried a great deal as I began this.  And believe me, I tried it on a test-knit before I attempted it with the finished project!  This shawl was made with 3 balls of Bambool (I guess you got that is a bamboo-wool blend!)  Since 3 balls made a shawl that is 48" tip-to-tip, I think I will try again with the one ball I have left, and make a shawlette with it.

I absolutely love knitting with bamboo.  I love the softness, the drape, everything.  So I made another shawl, this one with Caron Spa yarn that I got on clearance for $2/ball.  Since it took 3 balls to make this shawl, I think the $6 was money well spent!

This pattern is the Firefly yarn Dayflower Shawl.  I made the end and short row shaping with one ball for each end, and used the third ball to add shoulder-to-shoulder width in the full depth of the pattern.  It is 72" long, which provides plenty of length to tie in front or drape long.

My own designs, start to finish

I finally got it together and have begun to knit with my handspun yarn.  The earwarmers below are from my early efforts at handspinning, and are knit with a pattern of my own creation that is listed in earlier blogs.  The earlier pattern is for worsted weight, and I adapted it for the chunky weight that these yarns turned out to be.  The yarn was spun from 4 oz each of Mountain Meadow roving.

Long time, no blog

Haven't been here in almost two months.  Wow!  But I have spent a lot of time knitting, mostly charity things.  The church group that I knit with donates prayer shawls to the VA hospital and hospice here in town, so I have knit a couple of long rectangular shawls.  These are a simple chevron pattern that is perfect for car knitting, which is where one of them was done.  They are 55 inches long and 17 inches deep, and are knit from 3 skeins each of Caron Simply Soft.

The other charity project that I participate in with my church group is hats for babies and children.  Last year we donated over 500 hats from preemie to adult.  The hats were made for church members, kids at the Boys and GIrls Club, and those served by the homeless shelter and domestic abuse shelter.  I have discovered my new favorite hat, that can be made in any size simply by changing yarn and needles.  The pictures below are from sock yarn (preemie hats), sport weight (baby hat) and worsted weight (kids and adult hats.)  The pattern is called Aviatrix, and is on Ravelry.  It is simple to memorize, and quick to knit.  I used up leftover yarn from my mom's Red Heart stash to create solid/variegated hats. 

Not new, but ...

... still worth a look, I think.  In 1987, I cross-stitched this map of the U.S. for a dear friend of my mom's.  When she passed away a few years ago, her family were thoughtful enough to remove it from the frame and return it to me.  I have to get it framed so I can display it somewhere.  It was a ton of work, and deserves to be seen.  The stitched area is 30" by 20".  I remember being very frustrated trying to get all the state lines to count out!

Hearts and flowers

Found a really fun crown-out lacy hat pattern called Coeurs et Fleurs (Hearts and Flowers).  I love doing lace, especially in a pattern that won't be a lifelong commitment to get it done!  This one is knit in Ella Rae worsted weight superwash wool in colorway slate. It is a deeper color than the picture.

I have been working on small projects in between shawls and hats for my mom's caregivers.










I have finished another shawl, bringing me to a grand total of 6 shawls and 2 hats for caregivers since mid-April.  This one is Passione Amarosa, knit with one ball of Patons Lace.  I literally had one inch of yarn left after I finished the picot edge and got the ends woven in.  But I guess a miss is as good as a mile!

Finally found the perfect pattern for this yarn

There are two types of yarnies in this world:  The ones who pick a pattern and then find the yarn, and the ones who love a yarn and search for just the perfect pattern.  I am in the latter category.......I cannot resist buying yarn, so I just buy as much as I can get of any yarn I love, so that I'll have enough when the perfect project appears.  With this yarn, I found some at the Tuesday Morning store in Fort Collins and some more at the store in Lincoln Nebraska.  I ended up searching 3 other locations where I didn't find any.  When I finished my search, I had 6 balls, so I got on KnittingParadise and asked if anybody had some.  A wonderful woman said she had bought 4 balls because she really loved it but didn't have a pattern in mind, so she sold it to me at her cost plus shipping.  And it turned out to be just enough yarn to finish the Cuff-to-Cuff Sweater on the Red Heart website.