My friend B2 found this blog.
Well, his brother found it, and we don't know how, and passed the URL to him. Anyway, apart from Chris, he's probably one of very few people I know in real life who has read this blog. Hmm.. I should be careful what I say here.. don't want to make enemies now, do we?
Not a lot has happened over the past week. Work is still busy as ever, same old story.
On the knitting front, I have started on the test knitting I am doing for Figheadh. I hit a little bit of a problem, as is expected in test knitting, and Jen's corrected it so I need to go knit some more. Unfortunately, I was a little distracted by the Fibertrends pattern I received in the post. I used the yarn I spun from pencil roving to make this. I wanted to make the wide brimmed hat but thought that I may not have enough yarn for it. So I made the narrow brimmed one instead - it's the dark blue one in the center of the picture. I am so proud of myself! I started it tonight and completed it tonight. All that remains to be done is the felting - tomorrow morning!
I am at wit's end with that skein of Shimmer. I have tried another 2 lace patterns on it and it's still pooling strangely. I think I will try using it for a feather and fan stitch scarf or mini shawl. I don't know what to do if that doesn't work. Anyone used KnitPicks' Shimmer? What did you do with yours?
I also bought this pattern, this pattern and this pattern. Oh! And this one too. Isn't it gorgeous?! Hmm, I think I went overboard.. I will eventually get around to making all of them. Really!
Is it just me, or does the bluey green paper that Fibertrends uses hurt your eyes too? I don't know why they do that. Chris and I were speculating that maybe it is because the low contrast between the colour of the paper and the black print. That probably makes it hard to photocopy the patterns. Who knows, right? It sure does make the patterns hard to read, though.
I am also getting ready to put more hand painted sock yarn up on EBay. I am a little tired tonight, so maybe tomorrow. I have some bluey-mauve skeins which I quite like. I also have two skeins of pinkish coloured ones with bright pink and blue spots that should knit up quite prettily. The other skeins that I dyed were brown and green, sort of 'foresty'. It's deliberately 'spotty' and I think they will knit up really prettily too, because the colour spots are random and should not pool. If you're interested, keep an eye on my EBay sales page.
Oh yeah,I also washed the rose grey alpaca fleece I received. I think I'll need to get a pair of carders to prepare the fleece before spinning. So much for alpaca not needing any preparation, huh. I didn't want to be spreading sand and dust all over my living room so washing seemed like a good idea at the time. Mind you, it still does. The water from washing the alpaca fleece came out a really yucky shade of brown. Eeek! I will get my carders on Thursday, so I can't spin it till then.
Jenny taught me to spin cotton in the last class. I was convinced before that I can never spin cotton. Now I know I can! Over the weekend I spun up some thick thin slubby cotton (deliberately so! really!) and plied it with a bluey greeny single. It came out quite nicely, but I can't work out what to do with it.
