Tour de Fleece Week 1

So, I've got this relationship with the Tour de Fleece.  This is my sixth year playing along (that's crazypants right there), and it's probably one of my favorite times of year.  This year is no exception! Here's what I've been working on so far:

This is 8 oz of 2-ply sportweight, spun worsted.  1 ply is Sour Fig in Shetland by Hello Yarn, and the other is Rambutan in BFL by Into the Whirled.  I still need to check yardage, but I love this yarn unabashedly.

Also on the wheel was 4 oz each of BFL and Falkland from Pine Star Studios:

 

The fast and furious plying on these started last night, and I'll hopefully have it finished up today.  I should have probably around 800 yards, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  But I'm excited to move on to the next project! 

One thing I forgot to mention in the whirlwind of last week (thank you all for your kind words, by the way!) is that I got two fleeces back in the mail from Morro Fleeceworks.  I had sent them off during The Great Beetle Scare, which helped me be realistic about the actual likelihood of me washing those fleeces in my closet.  So off they went, and two of them came back to me last Tuesday.  Want a peek?

This is a CVM/Romeldale lamb fleece I picked up at Rhinebeck in--wait for it--2008.  It was an absolutely stunning fleece and I wasn't doing it justice by keeping it in the closet.  I can't wait to give it a spin! What are you working on for TdF?

A Big Week

So this week, I had a pattern release on Monday with Quince & Co., two patterns with Brooklyn Tweed's Wool People 3 on Tuesday, and chopped my hair off on Wednesday.  It's been a busy week! Let's start at the beginning.

(All Gemma photos by Carrie Bostick Hoge!)

The Gemma Shawl was a project that I absolutely loved knitting.  It was my first time knitting with Finch, Quince's fingering weight, and I went into it knowing that it was one of the springiest yarns out there on the market.  I wanted to respect that and not force it to block into serious lace, so I decided to play with simple textural stitch patterns with a single lace detail along the edge.   I was absolutely thrilled and delighted to block this and find out that, in addition to some amazing spring, this yarn has incredible drape as well.  I love it! I'm in the middle of a new project using it, and I'm loving it even more.  Stay tuned for that in the next few months!

Gemma is knit differently than my typical top-down shawls; it starts with only a few stitches and increases slowly only on one side to create a sideways triangle.  I loved the subtle asymmetry that creates!

The shawl takes 5 skeins of Finch, and can be found here on Ravelry. 

So that was Day 1! Day 2 dawned bright and early with the release of Auden and Bayard.  Eagle-eyed readers might recognize Auden as the sweater starring in the knitting catastrophe of a few months ago.  There is really nothing more *awesome* (sarcasm) than having to email Jared Flood with "the cat destroyed my sweater", but he was really awesome about it and gave me a couple extra weeks.  I was really glad, because I actually had the chance to change a few things from the first version of the sweater that were bugging me! (For those interested, Jashu is just fine--he's currently talking to himself in the other room.  Silly cat.)

(All Wool People 3 photos by Jared Flood!)

Auden is knit from the bottom up in the round, and then split to work back and forth for the armhole.  The allover pattern utilizes a series of smaller and smaller cables to create a gentle, delicate fern.

Auden uses Brooklyn Tweed's fingering weight Loft yarn, which I can't say enough good things about.  It blocks so beautifully in lace, cables, stockinette--you name it.  And the colors? Love 'em.   You can find it on Ravelry here. 

The colors of Loft were what drew me to design Bayard.  I must have spent an hour in the yarn room when I first decided to swatch for it, ending up with about twenty different possible combinations! It was almost a relief when I was assigned a color combo--it would have been really hard for me to choose.

Bayard is knit from the ribbing up, and utilizes slip stitches to pull one side of the hat shorter than the rest.  That lets the hat slouch without adding too much bulk.  Bayard takes less than a skein of Loft in two colors, and it's on Ravelry here!

The sample was knit in Old World and Woodsmoke, but I wanted to show a few other color combos that I wanted to explore as well!

Top row, L to R: Tent and Artifact, Blanket Fort and Plume, Nest and Sweatshirt
Middle row, L to R: Tent and Foothills, Homemade Jam and Wool Socks, Long Johns and Pumpernickel
Bottom row, L to R: Hayloft and Meteorite, Sap and Birdbook, Woodsmoke and Barn Owl

So many to choose from--these didn't even make a dent!

So on top of those, yeah, I cut all my hair.  When I realized I'd be going into a hot and humid Maine summer with buttlength hair, I balked, and off it came.  And yes, it's still long--but it's short for me!

 

I have committed myself to being a curly girl again! We'll see how long that upkeep lasts.  (Yes, it's in a ponytail right now.)

So that was a pretty awesome week for me.  But it's not over.  Because you know what starts tomorrow?  Oh yeah.  Tour de Fleece.  It's on.

The View from Downtown

 
 
 
 

 

Sometimes the other knitters and crocheters of Portland are pretty darn cool.  Also cool? The fact that this has been up in the middle of downtown Portland for at least two weeks, and no one's either defaced it or tried to take it down, not even the authorities.  Another reason to love this town! (Also, can you imagine how long this took?!)

Catching Up . . . and Catching Bugs

Oooh, hey blog! It's, uh, it's been a while, hasn't it? But there's been so much going on!

I planted a tiny salad and herb container garden!


(I also planted a raised bed garden, which was then followed by two steady weeks of torrential rain.  I'm not showing you that one.)

We had Cake Day!


(Lucia's completely yummy pumpkin whoopie pie cake pictured here.  It didn't last long.)

I finished spinning some yarn that I started at last year's SPA!


(Fiber is BFL in the colorway "Seaweed" from the Portland Fiber Gallery.  I snagged it right before I left for New Zealand.  Yardage is around 650 for 7 or so ounces, fingering to sportweight.)

I hung out with Maggie's foster kittens! (And hung out some more.  And then some more.)


(This is Waffles.  She's adorable.)

I visited the Maine Fiber Frolic!


(One of the gorgeous merino fleeces at the fleece tent.  I did not succumb, but it was a hard struggle.)


(Lunch.  I LOVE fair food.)

But besides these things, and work, and designing, and running (did I mention I started running? I'm sidelined right now with a foot injury, but can't wait to get back out there!), the big thing I'm battling is beetles.  Right about when we were having the first of our really rainy periods here in Maine (the first of MANY), I started noticing these little beetles near the front door of my apartment.  There were two kinds, one bullet-shaped and dark brown, and one round and zebra stripey.  I just figured that they were lost or coming indoors because it was rainy, and didn't pay them any attention.  To be honest, I thought that I was just seeing the same two bugs, hopelessly lost and befuddled by my apartment.  One night right before bed, though, I googled them (note: never google suspicious bugs right before bed), and found out what they were.

Drugstore beetles and carpet beetles.

CARPET BEETLES.

MY WOOOOOOOOOOL!

So after not sleeping at all that night due to hyperventilation, I enlisted the help of my saint of a mother the next weekend, and we went through Every.  Single.  Skein. of yarn in my stash.  And all the fiber.  And all the weaving yarns.  And the swatches.  And the sweaters.  And the scarves and shawls and socks.  Let me tell you, I didn't really think I had that large a stash (though what I do have is disproportionately chartreuse) until I pulled it all out into one place.

So we went through every single piece of fiber in my house, and you know what we found? Five beetles, all in stuff that had been out in the open or by the front window.  WHEW.  After thanking the fiber gods profusely, we spent the rest of the afternoon shoving every single thing into a Ziploc and sacheting it for all it was worth.  Here's what my stash looks like now:



Since then, I've seen a few beetles, but I've been pretty vigilant about keeping everything tucked away and clean.  In addition, the sachets I made are helping to keep the critters away, so I thought I'd share the recipe here for those with, god forbid, a similar problem.

Beetle-Be-Gone Sachets:
2 parts cedar shavings or chips
1 part lavender
1 part thyme
1 part rosemary

Combine and stuff into mesh teabags or cheesecloth. 

I found bouquet garni bags at the local Whole Foods that have been working wonderfully.  These also make your wool smell lovely!

So now that the beetles are on their way out, I'm hoping I can breathe a little sigh of relief and get on with my summer plans.  What are you up to this summer?

When people ask what my favorite yarn is, I have a very, VERY hard time narrowing it down.  I am a wooly girl for sure, but surprisingly, over the last few years, among the raves about Shelter and Puffin and Noro, a little linen birdie has flown into the mix.  Sparrow, the fingering weight linen from Quince, is a seriously wonderful yarn.  Which is why, when I talked to Pam at Quince about designing some shawls for the spring, it was at the very top of my list.
One of those shawls came out a few weeks ago--meet Rue!



I started working on this shawl design right as winter was turning into spring here in Portland.  In my walks around my neighborhood, the sidewalks were starting to show through the dirt and sand of the winter and the new grasses were starting to come up through the old, frost-bleached ones.  Later, as time went on and I was knitting the sample, the tiniest of the early spring flowers started appearing.



The shawl was designed to mimic those seasonal changes--the transition from cold to warm, season to season, linear to organic.



And let me gush about this yarn a bit further: holy GOODNESS does it hold a block beautifully.  The crispness and the drape of the lace pattern wouldn't be possible without the wonderful staying power of the linen.  I can't wait to work with it further!



Rue is knit in a traditional top-down triangular shape, and calls for 5 skeins of Sparrow in sans.  You can find it at Quince here, and on Ravelry here!

Sunday Funday Silence

I know I've been pretty quiet over here for a couple weeks.  Things have been busy at Chez Blackbird, but they only reached fever pitch two Sundays ago.  Want to hear the story?

So, I have this cat, Jashu.  He is, 98% of the time, a wonderful, magnificent, goofy beast.  I have conversations with him more than I'd like to admit.  And he'd never really shown an interest in my knitting! I counted myself lucky that I was able to knit with him next to me or on my lap, and he'd never try to catch the yarn or get in the way.

 

The not-so-wee beastie in question.

So, the Saturday of the 14th, I finished a sweater that had a deadline of May 1st for pattern and sample.  No sweat! I thought, merrily got it blocking on the blocking mats on my floor, warned Jashu off the pins until at least a day had gone by (he likes pulling them out), and ignored it for the rest of the weekend.  I've blocked tons of things there, never had a problem except for the aforementioned pins.  Tra la, I thought, I have plenty of time!

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon, when I am working away on the loom on my project of many (chartreuse) hues, when I saw Jashu make a beeline to lie down on the sweater.  Not good, I say to myself and head over to shoo him off.  When. . . I see it.  Them.

The holes.

The large, shredded, gaping holes.

 

Any shaky camera work is entirely due to the "oh my god what have you done" adrenaline running through me at that moment.

Jashu apparently really liked this sweater.  Enough to use it as a scratching board.  Upon closer inspection, it turned out that all the holes were above the armhole split, but that still meant about thirty hours of knitting gone in the swipe of a tiny claw.  After copious wailing and some choice words and maybe a stiff drink or two, there was nothing for it but to r-r-r-rip!

 

Evidence.  I hope this cat knows how lucky he is to be alive.

All other plans for the week were abandoned, and every waking moment was devoted to re-knitting this sweater.  It came back off the needles this past Saturday, and, after a trip to Home Depot for some wire shelving, went straight on the blocking boards.  It is covered by wire grid and a towel and I am thinking of investing in an air horn for when the cat gets within two feet of it.  But it's done, and after this coming weekend, I may have some Sunday Fundays to myself again!

And the cat?

 

Try as I might, he's just too cute to stay mad at.  But just don't let him near my knitting again.

I May Have a Problem

So in the course of prepping for today's Sunday Funday, for which I am very excited (and will be revealing more about later), I compiled a few yarns in similar tones of my favorite color.  I had put a bag of leftover scraps together a while ago, and then ransacked my sock yarn stash for a few more.  And then my normal stash.  And then the back-up stash (don't ask).  And. . . well.

 

This may come back to haunt me at some point.

After doing some deep breathing, and a tiny bit of hand wringing, I stuffed most of it back into its respective cabinets and was left with the bag of remnants from the very beginning:

There are bits in there from two different dyelots of Kelp in Quince and Co's Tern, from my swatching and knitting of Alys.  There's a partial ball of Buoy in Tern, from another project I'm working on.  There are handspun scraps from a goof-off project I don't think I ever posted here (oops).  There's a couple bits of hand-dyed Brown Sheep Naturespun that I dyed for my Fair Isle Knitolution two years ago.  And there's a full skein of the most gorgeous handspun from my friend Jan, who I taught to spin and dye as an intern at the Fiber Gallery back in 2008.  I've got some pretty big plans for this stuff, which will involve the lovely piece of equipment in the background of the picture above!

The other thing I've been working on for the past few Sunday Fundays came about, spur of the moment, when we got a freak heat wave here in Maine.  I even had my window open! And you know what that means--suddenly, it's fleece washing season.  The problem I realized as I spun the excess water out of the washed fleece: this is the first time I've washed a fleece in my apartment.  This became painfully clear when I couldn't find a darn place to put it to dry!  I became very thankful that I had done dishes earlier that day.

 

 (the house was built in 1805, and has settled to a point where the cabinet doors don't shut there.  I hate this; my cat loves it.)

On the right is a fleece from Fleecewood Farm, and on the left is a CVM lamb fleece I bought at Rhinebeck back in 2008.  The first washed beautifully; the second I'm waving the white flag on and sending out to get commercially processed.  But last Sunday I got started on combing up the Fleecewood fleece!

 

I'm already dreaming about the Tour de Fleece when these are going to be my go-to.  And yes, I haven't forgotten about my Ursa--she's getting a dutiful few sleeve rows every Sunday.  But there are some other exciting things going on!