Sunday Funday: Of Matching Missteps and Magical Merino

Today's Sunday Funday is apparently brought to you by the letter "M".

I've been bouncing back and forth between projects all day today--the time shift has me all discombobulated, and I've been hopping around, running errands, doing chores, and cooking on a whim all afternoon. (By the way, pizza with sun-dried tomato feta, caramelized onions, peppers, and bacon? Well worth the fact that I ate dinner at 9:00 this evening.) Today's crafty projects have been the same: I've knit a few rows on a work project, spun a little bit, prepped some other fiber for spinning for a sweater, knit, then un-knit, then re-knit, then un-knit a few rows of the sleeves on my Ursa sweater. I can't seem to settle, and I'm starting to guess at the reasons.

(The offending sleeves think about the consequences of their actions.)

The big one is that for Lent this year, inspired by Leah's yearly escapades, I gave up video. I don't own a TV, so everything I watch is computer-based, and that can often lead me down a path of watching random crap just because it's there. So until Easter, there's no Netflix, no Youtube, no Hulu, no DVDs. My one out is that I can go see a movie, but I've been content so far with listening to audiobooks and reading on my Kindle while knitting. I hit a snag today, though--both projects I'm knitting at the moment are a wee bit too complex to work on while reading (hence the Matching Missteps of the title: it took me seriously an hour to sort out my sleeves and get them back to the same length), but the book I'm reading is an old favorite and I can't bear to put it down! So I waffled, putting this project down and picking that one up, finishing up some loose ends and contemplating new ones.

One of the nice things is I actually finished a tiny spinning project (the Magical Merino) while the onions and peppers were caramelizing and while I was trying to keep myself away from the last little bit of banana date bread in the kitchen. This was leftover from a PortFiber batt I had bought to try corespinning, and I had started spindle spinning it a few months ago on a whim. The funny thing happened when I started wandering back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen as I wound the yarn for Andean plying; unless I was hallucinating, I had some very different yarn on my hands depending on what room I was in. You know those times you try to photograph something, and the color in the photo is completely different depending on the lighting? Typically that color change will show up in the photo, but not necessarily in person. This yarn, however, was plain as day different from room to room.

Here's the dining room:

And the kitchen:

Wild, right? I have no idea how this happened! The best part was Andean plying on the threshold between the two rooms; the yarn on the palm of my hand was lit by the dining room and was pure olive green, while the yarn on the back of my hand was lit by the kitchen, and was pure orange!

So even if I didn't make huge progress on any one project today, I at least amused the neighbors by running back and forth between my kitchen and my dining room, staring at yarn. As you do.

(The other thing giving me ants in my pants? Spring's on its way. I can feel it!)

I Made a Bowl!

First off, thank you all for your kind words about my last post. Hearing about Betty's passing was a big blow, but I know she's proud of what she's helped me accomplish. One of the projects I worked on (on Sunday Funday!) while the shawl winged its way across the ocean to me was wetfelting around a resist to create a vase or bowl, a technique I learned at the Teapot Valley felting weekend that Betty brought me to back in February of 2010. It's a class I'm planning on teaching at Medomak, and I wanted to play with different resists to see what shapes I could achieve.

The fiber is carded Polwarth roving from Gnomespun in the colorway "Deciduous" that I bought at Rhinebeck 2010.

I didn't have a washboard at the time, so the sides are less felted than I'd like, but it's definitely a starting place!

Changes

I got some sad news in an email a few weeks ago. Betty, one of the wonderful women who shaped my trip to New Zealand a few years ago, passed away on January 23rd. The friend that emailed told me that she had been out at her family's camp in the backcountry when things took a turn for the worse. Susie said that she had been doing some amazing work with her felting and her fiber, and had been really happy. And for that, I am incredibly grateful and proud. To be able to go surrounded by people you love, and knowing that the work you're doing is fulfilling and right--that makes it all worthwhile.

The friend also asked if I would like the shawl back that I knit for Betty while I was staying with her. It arrived on my doorstep earlier this week, and it was . . . it's hard to describe what that piece of knitting means to me. It was the first lace pattern that I'd ever designed, and I spent many hours on the couch at Fleecewood and in the huge, comfy recliner at Betty's wrestling with the pattern. It's knit in yarn that I spun while at Betty's, from roving made from her own alpacas (and from her llamas and some nondescript wool where I ran out of the original yarn on the last few inches of the border). I spent five minutes when I opened the package searching out the mistake in the lace I knew was there. It even smells like the perfume that Betty loved.

But even more than all of that, it signifies a big step into the unknown for the me of a few years ago. I had been surrounded by strong women who were doing what they loved and making it work. They weren't playing by the rules. They helped me realize that I didn't need to, either, that it wasn't necessary for me to be a good girl, go to grad school, and get a nice, inside-the-lines non-profit desk job, especially since that's not what I wanted. Betty and this shawl helped me see that making my own path was worth a shot. So thank you, Betty, for everything.

Sunday Fundays: yeah, I missed a couple

Even though I haven't blogged about them, Sunday Fundays are still a seriously big deal around these parts.

Last week I caught a gorgeous ray of sunshine hanging out on the now-completed back of Ursa, and you can also peek at the progress I had made on the two fronts, which I'm doing simultaneously. I say "had made", because I have a problem. It occurs when I'm not knitting on something every day, and think I'm smarter than I am. I was knitting along and watching the latest episode of Downton Abbey last Sunday (by the way, OMG Downton Abbey), and noticed that I had somehow forgotten to do the decreases on the inside edge of one of the fronts. And, now that I looked at it, I had missed the corresponding decrease on the other edge! How silly of me. Perhaps I can ladder down and fix it, and shift the extra yarn over to the edge where it'll be hidden in the seam? Well, no, now it looks like the dog's been chewing on it. Sigh. Oh well, nothing for it; I suppose I'll start by ripping out the other front. Off the needles it comes!

. . . Seven ripped rows later, I remembered I wasn't supposed to do any decreases on the inside edges.

At least the back's really pretty. :)

Sunday Funday: January 22nd

This past weekend's Sunday Funday took place at an illustrious and annual event: Pie Day! Check out the run-down of our over-achievement on this post by Leah, who was our wonderful hostess for the afternoon. All I can say is the pies were amazing, and thank goodness we are starting to remember to bring tupperware.

The event started at 1pm, and I worked dutifully until 2 on work projects, then joyfully brought out Ursa.

I'm in the home stretch on the back, with only a few more inches to go before I bind off at the shoulders. I can't wait to work on it this weekend! What did you get up to on Sunday Funday?

2011: The Year in My Knits!

I didn't want to let 2011 go by without talking about what I managed to work on, as well. Though I was pretty awful at taking pictures of everything, a huge amount of stuff came off the needles and the loom this year. My first FO of the year was the Brachyura Henley, finished in the wee hours of January 1st, and my final FO was my New Year's Eve challenge scarf. At 4:30pm, I wondered if I could weave a scarf from fingering weight yarn from winding the warp to cutting it off the loom, and at 9:30pm, I found out that the answer was, yep, sure can.

1 skein of Noro Kureyon sock yarn each for warp and weft, sleyed at 12 epi in plain tabby. It's a bit bright for my taste, but I wanted to try weaving with Noro and apparently I had chosen the two most obnoxiously bright colorways for my stash. So it might find its way to a new home!

In between those two projects, I finished twenty-three other knitting projects, ranging from a pair of handspun stripey socks for myself, to six samples for other designers (yes, that's five, but number six isn't out yet!), to another seven samples for my own designs, to a long-neglected pair of socks for my brother. I wove a blanket for my friends' wedding and another scarf on a lark. I spun 2,000 yards of hand-dyed silk (let's not talk about the actual knitting yet. . . ) and took some wonderful field trips to Harrisville, SPA, and the Common Ground Fair with my knitting friends. I spent one of the best weeks of my life at Medomak, and another amazing week at SOAR. All in all, a busy, full, and amazing year, and to be sappy for one second, it wouldn't have been half as good without all of you.

Sunday Funday: January 15th

When I was thinking about what I wanted to do for the new year, one of the big things that was on the list was making a bit more time for me, both in terms of crafting and in terms of life in general. I therefore declared Sundays after 2pm officially off-limits to work or chores, and christened the experience "Sunday Funday" because I'm a huge dork. Today's Sunday Funday haul:

A bobbin and a half of softly spun wool/alpaca batts that I carded from bits and pieces in stash; this is the last of it! I now have a pound of gorgeous dk-weight salt-and-pepper singles that may end up being a Larch Cardigan.

I also swatched and started knitting a cardigan that's been in the plans for almost three years, Ursa. I bought this pattern early in 2009, and then spun the yarn for it (another one carded from bits and pieces; this one containing alpaca, angora, merino, BFL, and cashmere) in the 2009 Tour de Fleece. It's about time I started! I just put it down, but managed to get about ten inches of the back done. It'll be hard to leave this alone until next Sunday!