ready, set, STOP.

I am so very thrilled with how my handspun cardigan is turning out that I was knitting like crazy on it last week. Unfortunately, it has slowly become obvious that I will not have enough yarn to finish the project. I was foolish enough not to keep the tags telling me the color names of the three rovings that Scott spun into this watercolor-like yarn, so I spent some time this week browsing Ashland Bay vendors to try to figure out what I need to order. I think I have the solid colors figured out - Blueberry and Peacock - but I'm still stumped on the multicolor roving's colorway. I put out a plea for help to Audrey at Pixie Sticks, since that's where I bought the roving about a year ago, and she's checking into it in an effort to help me. Meanwhile, this project is on hold (and we'll deal with that rolling hemline later too).

I put two more sets of buttons on Glastonbury Glassworks today. These sets have been on my desk for a few days and are gorgeous. They have a bit of an iridescent quality when the sunshine hits them and the dome button shape feels soooo cool and smooth. They're a little larger than the buttons Scott was making previously, which gives him a bit more room for playing with the glass and might be a better size for some projects.

This set is my favorite this week. Ethereal, mist-like, floating. I came home from dinner with a friend a few nights ago and tossed my earrings on my desk as I was shutting down the computer for the night. I had to laugh when I got up in the morning and noticed how well the buttons complement my earrings.

I want to knit-knit-knit to make sweaters to go with all these beautiful buttons, but for now, that too is on hold. My wrists are giving me some signs that they need a break. Given that I make my living by tapping on this keyboard, this is a very scary thing and I need to pay close attention when my wrists send messages. So, for now, I'm holding off on the knitting and I'm turning down extra work. I felt kind of lost yesterday evening, while the kids were playing with a friend who was here for a sleepover. I didn't quite know what to do with myself that didn't involve a lot of pinching beads/wire/yarn, mousing/keyboarding, or other fine manipulation. Then it occurred to me that the inkle loom we borrowed from a friend would involve more gross than fine motor skills, so I figured out how to warp it and did a little strap weaving. I made poor choices of warp yarn, so it'll go into the trash soon, but at least it didn't seem to bother my arms. Yeah! Then this morning, while I was printing the day's work, I just happened to be listening to Christa Giles' podcast interview of Syne Mitchell from Weavecast. (BTW, it was the first time I've listened to either of them and it was thoroughly enjoyable, so I just subscribed to both podcasts.) They talked about repetitive strain injuries and Syne specifically said that weaving is easier on your hands/wrists and can be a good choice for people whose wrists need a break. See? Now I need to turn some attention to weaving. :-)

There are a couple of new K'nex creations on Jesse's blog, The Builder Blog. We also made a small Van de Graaff generator out of household stuff last week -- need to get pics up soon! -- but the wrists are ready for a different activity now.

the secret handshake

Yesterday afternoon, I headed to Mass. to meet up with someone. I knew she had some sort of interest in the fiber arts, but I didn't know details or extent. I walked into her house and our very pleasant conversation began. Since there is no official secret handshake for fiber freaks to exchange upon meeting, we both pretended to be normal ;-) and talked about our dogs at first, since hers looked like a miniature version of mine and that was a natural starting point.

After a while, I noticed a spinning wheel in the hallway.

And circular knitting needles on an end table. And a big quilt hanging on the wall.

And then she showed me her loom room...and the wall of yarn...and the bead spinner.

While she showed me something in the basement, I noticed an inkle loom off to the side.

Back on the first floor, I noticed two cones of thread/yarn on the kitchen counter.

Then she revealed that the large, many-drawered cabinet in the foyer is where all her beads are stashed and she showed me a gorgeous jacket made from her handwoven fabric.

Once we got going, we couldn't stop. We chatted. We bopped around her house. She's not knitting much anymore, so she asked if she could send me home with a box of leftover yarn for Leah's stash:

Yeah, that's about 20 skeins of Dalegarn Heilo, five skeins of a black and gold silk/mohair blend, two huge skeins of bulky hand-dyed yarn, some handspun wool, about 10 skeins of a rayon/cotton blend, a bunch of odd skeins, a cone of laceweight natural wool, a few big cones of chenille, and more. Just because. From someone I had known for less than an hour. Wow! No secret handshake necessary when enthusiasm and generosity are as obvious as they consistently are among fiberfolks.

---

Coming up soon: A parade of FOs. Just waiting for the knitter of a good many of the items to come home from her third sleepover in four nights, so she can model her most recent projects (and squeal upon sight of this pile on my desk)!

echoes

Remember a few days ago, when Scott and Leah were spinning one evening? Here's what they were spinning (L from Sereknity, R from The Painted Sheep):

And when I walked into my mom's room at the rehab place (for therapy after total knee replacement) the next day, here are the flowers on her windowsill:

Kind of cool how the colorways echo each other, isn't it?

And tonight I will be holding these handspun skeins close to my heart, staring out the window, and dreaming of my dear family, so far away at a friend's beach house in Rhode Island. :::sniff sniff:::

bwahaha! They really are having a blast with friends for a sleepover at a beach house, but anybody who knows me knows my evening is more likely to involve Magic Hat #9, rockin' tunes, and doing whatever the heck I want, without interruption or anybody requesting anything of me. YaHOOOOOO!

mocs that rock

After four years of wear, Scott's felted clog slippers are worn through, so this time I made him a pair of felted moccasins.

You saw them in pre-felted stage here. After a couple of cycles through the washer in hot water, I stitched on some suede soles to make them less slippery, threaded shoelaces through the appropriate places for snugging up the back end, and...ta da!

Mocs that Rock!
Pattern: Felted Moccasins by Bev Galeskas, from Felted Knits
Yarn: Paton's Classic Wool
Another excellent pattern that works up quickly,
with great results.

You see those nicely stitched on soles? Those and half a sock foot are the grand total of my progress on projects in the past week. :::sigh::: And now, since the guys are at a rocketry conference (where Jesse won a $50 gift cert and they're hooking up with a bunch of friends for a party this evening!) and Leah has a friend here for a sleepover, I'm going to spend the evening getting reacquainted with a certain green sweater that's calling my name.

tis the season

This is a quickie because I am Not. At. Rhinebeck. and, even though it makes perfectly good sense for me not to be there, I'm just a wee bit pouty about it. As if I need more yarn and to burn a tank of gas to hang out with sheep. D'oh. Luckily, I can do the same thoroughly irrational things on a smaller (and closer) scale next weekend. :-)

Meanwhile, 'round here there's been sewing of the Halloween costume in time for yesterday's party...

and team weaving of Scott's handspun yarn with friend who was here for a sleepover. This and other similar woven triangles will be made into a shawl for Leah to wear in her role as the...wait for it...weaver in a play she'll be performing next month.

Leah has often asked how I learned to knit. I can't remember the first stitches exactly, but I was under 10 and I'm sure my mom or my Gram taught me. I remember the first things I knit were some little pumpkins.

Zayre's orange acrylic purchased on sale for $0.99/skein, a few garter stitch rows, a few stockinette rows to make the pumpkin sections, sewn up the back, stuffed and gathered top and bottom. Glued-on felt face. I made a bunch of them because they were small projects. See, I didn't know how to fix mistakes, so when I screwed up, I'd just throw it away or tear the whole thing out and start over. It was fun to be at my mom's to celebrate nephew Zach's b'day this week and notice one of those old pumpkins out among the decorations!

And that brings me to the end of today's post because there's a stealth UFO that's about to become a FO!

a multicraftual kid

Since Leah so far has escaped the Virus of Doom (not flu, btw, according to Jesse's testing, but he's still a pretty sick kid) that has turned the males of this household into pathetic sofablobs, she continues on her merry way with a perpetual assortment of projects.

When a friend was here for a sleepover recently, pre-quarantine, they decided to sew patchwork bags for themselves.

Lots of previously sewn quilt blocks, paper piecing experiments, and scraps were included. The friend hadn't used a sewing machine before, but Leah showed her how and the two of them had a blast, making it all up as they went along. I wasn't home to get a pic of her friend's bag before she left, so I'll try to do that when she comes back to line it and embellish with tassels and decorative stitching. Leah's using her bag, even without the lining, and is pretty psyched about the results.

I prefer magic loop, but Leah likes to knit socks and fingerless gloves on DPNs. She does not, however, like having to track missing ones down or picking up stitches when a needle slips out, so she got a package of goofy pencil toppers/erasers(?), poked a hole in a pair of them, and secured a length of elastic cord from one topper to the other, knotted through the hole.

Now, when she's putting her knitting away, she can gather the four needles and tuck their ends into the toppers, held in place by the lightly stretched elastic, with no fear of losing her needles. Bonus: No needle-poked holes in tote bags!

The love of Celtic knots and making her own outfits from periods throughout history (examples here and here and here) continues. Most recently, she's converting a hand-me-down gold satin evening gown and Goodwill-found velvet dress into a Renaissance style gown, complete with embroidered stomacher and sleeve inserts.

Lots of library books and Internet research for information. She's putting lots of effort into this dress and has a very clear idea of what she's aiming for. So far, the results are better than either of us could have anticipated. Go, Goob!

early morning

After a raucous evening of sleepover fun, including karaoke, baking, games, face painting, hair-doing, and who knows what else (but I suspect not very much sleep), this is how Leah and a friend spent some quiet time early this morning.

Leah had spun the singles in the past couple of days and plying was the perfect thing for her friend to try, having never used a spinning wheel before. Nice teamwork, nice yarn!

good morning sunshine!

After many days of rain, the sun peeked out for a short time yesterday, which of course caused us to celebrate the increasing signs of spring with a campfire dinner while kids were in the treehouse. Nephew Zach is here for a sleepover. He and Leah were up bright and early this morning to greet a crystal clear day. I suggested they find something quiet to do while Jesse was still sleeping. I came down the stairs a little while later to find them happily spinning and listening to Jim Weiss storytelling while the solar-powered crystal spinner projected rainbows all over the first floor rooms.

In case there's not an avid fisherman in your life and you weren't aware, tomorrow morning is opening day for trout season. Scott fishes for whatever's legal year-round (yes, including ice fishing, fly fishing, deep sea fishing), but opening day is special, so I'm told. Calls from the fishing buddies, most of whom we've known since we were all about 15, and the weekend's camping plans started weeks ago. The guys are atwitter, especially given the stellar forecast, and the rest of us are equally enthusiastic about seeing them so excited. Go get 'em, fishermen!

the girl's got it bad

Oh yes, the Goobergirl is a confirmed fiber junkie. She flits about happily from project to project, usually listening to a good book-on-cd while she works. She's definitely getting more comfortable with weaving on the loom, so I guess someday soon we'll need to learn how to warp it ourselves and set up a "real" project of her choosing.
She's also pretty nuts about sewing right now. Having made lots of doll clothes, she has now decided to refine her seaming skills, so she's working on better alignment of her fabrics and nice, neat seam lines.
Luckily, besides the stash that I've built up over the years, she has also had strips and squares received as awesome gifts from the stash of Grammy, Quilter Extraordinaire. The strips kept her busy for a long time and now she's mesmerized by the options afforded by patchwork squares. She didn't want any help from me or anybody else, so she discovered that a 9-patch gets a little bumpy and bulky if you don't press the seam allowances flat and in sew them in opposing directions.

You should have heard the squeal when I pulled a flannel sheet out of the closet, thumbtacked it to the wall, and showed her how the squares and strips will stick to the flannel and can be moved about in any configuration -- instant design wall! Made me laugh because she was just about as ready to burst with glee as I used to be when I'd come home from Murphy Mart in Cheswick, PA, on a Sunday when Red Heart yarn was on sale for $0.99 a skein and I'd buy a whopping $30 worth to make the crocheted clowns that I used to sell, and I'd arrange all the yarn by color in the toy box that became a yarn box (and then became a toy box again when Jesse and Leah were little), and all was right and good in the world and nothing could go wrong because I had all that glorious yarn, yarn, YARN and the Steelers were on later in the afternoon and my whole family would watch the game and have a blast and everything was GOOD. Squee !

Ahem. So, yeah, that's how Leah was with the quilt stuff the other day.
She's also doing a fair bit of spinning. This is some of the Fleece Artist roving we bought in Nova Scotia earlier this summer. In the background you can also see some bobbins of a blue-purple blend from Grafton Fibers.
She's also in the process of turning a heel on a sock she's knitting, but I don't know where she has that stashed (possibly with her at friend's house for a sleepover), so pics will have to wait until another day.

And she's ga-ga over morphing t-shirts into other articles of clothing, with little to no sewing, a la Generation T. We've been doing our own version of this for various costumes through the years and have seen some similar ideas elsewhere, but she got really jazzed about it last weekend, when a friend offered to loan her the Gen-T book the next time we get together. I better clear the calendar when that time comes because I have a feeling there will be a wild flurry of t-shirt deconstruction!

Her #1 request for our upcoming vacation is to learn how to make Belgian lace while we're in Belgium. I haven't made the arrangements yet, but I think I've found the perfect fit: a private lesson in a lacemaker's home in Brugge. My mom already told us how beautiful Brugge is, and Rick Steves confirmed this, so I think we'll have to go there ourselves and see! 

bearly here, then off again!

Okay, queer title, but it's how things feel. Within the past day or two, we finally feel like we got settled back in from the trip to Pennsylvania -- mowed the lawn, caught up on laundry and work (oh so much work), visited and chatted with many friends, etc. -- and off we go again to Nova Scotia tomorrow. Still, we're definitely looking forward to it because we'll have a cottage on the beach and lots of interesting places to check out while we're there!

The little bear above is Leah's own design, knit as a birthday gift for a friend. It's a mini version of the bear she made in April, which was donated to the Mother Bear Project. She is especially proud that her own handspun yarn was used for the bear's shirt. It makes me happy to see her just dive into a project from her imagination, confident that she'll figure out how to make it happen, and usually quite successful. (Sorry for the cruddy picture quality. We were rushing out the door when I snapped the shot and must have had a setting wrong on my camera or something.)

Jesse is tickled that his invention demonstration videos have been viewed over 80 times! Inspired to do more, now that he's found a way to show his stuff to others besides his family, he's working on something top secret right now that involves wire cutters, paper clips, balloons, a Nerf gun, and K'nex. Hmmm...

One of Leah's pals is here for a sleepover. They put on fancy dresses, set up a tent in her bedroom, and spent the evening sewing doll clothes in there. ??? :-)

I'm off to work on my own top secret project, which is coming along nicely, except for my increasing concern about a possible gauge problem. I am perplexed by this, since I did a gauge swatch at the beginning and all was good. So this project may end up being scrapped after all. We'll see.

Talk to you all when we get back from Canada. The newest issue of Spindlicity magazine should come out while we're away and Leah will have another article in there, so check it out!

weekend meanderings

No, we didn't make the doo-dad above, but it seems to illustrate the past few days quite nicely. We have gone in all directions, together, in pairs, and as individuals, to try a little of this, experience a little of that, visit with this person and those folks, intermittently checking back in at home and focusing on things here too.

It all started Thursday, when a 36" floor loom, much like this, came into our lives as part of a visit to the beautiful northwest corner of Connecticut.

Then there was the sewing. The Goob has used the sewing machine off and on over the past few years, but is lately consumed with making clothes for herself and her dolls. So there have been small skirts and shirts, working up to her plan of making herself a dress very soon.

I have no idea what prompted them all, but Saturday morning there was a string of calls from old friends. Leah and I were on our way to Vermont, so we missed them, but Scott got to chat with everybody and passed along their news later in the day. Meanwhile, Leah and I spent the day at the Jamaica VT Fiber Festival and Webs for their tent sale, running into friends and acquaintances at both destinations. Hoo boy, did we come home with some fun goodies!

Scott and Jesse had an outstanding time at Armed Forces Day, Three Centuries of Soldiers and Their Weapons at the Springfield Armory in Mass. Jesse finds this place fascinating even when there's nothing special going on, so he was absolutely in his element for this big event and told me all about it, with such enthusiasm, when we were together again in the evening. If you know Jesse, read the itinerary at the link above and I'm sure you can imagine his delight. :-)

Leah was away for a sleepover on Saturday night. Scott and I bumbled our way through putting the new loom together on Sunday morning. Anybody with half a clue about weaving would've laughed at us -- the blind leading the blind -- but with the help of the internet and some library books, we think both looms are put together properly and ready to warp with the yarn from Webs.

In between all this was painting of a bathroom, installing some refinished doors, fixing basement stair treads, clearing out the fridge by making many lasagnas, that pesky work thing, getting new tires on the Jeep, and winning a $100 gift card! The second sleeve of my sweater has also been lengthened and I spent some time with an awesome weaver doing a demo on a 300-year-old loom (kids were busy with a geography puzzle/game, so they chose to stay home).

A forecast of thunderstorms and hail caused us to cancel a picnic and fishing jaunt with friends Sunday evening, so we instead fetched a triangle loom and figured out how to use it. Clever, clever, clever! At bedtime, Leah was weaving in her room and Jesse was working on a Lego safe and plans for something that involved plumbing valves and the shop vac as an air compressor, so I can't wait to see what they pop up with this morning.

ode to Leo

All this talk about Leonardo daVinci's contribution to the modern spinning wheel and the next thing you know, Scott decided to give some of our fiber a whirl...whorl. Heh heh. Oh, never mind.

Scroll down to the March 4 entry of this blog to see the loose fiber, bought at Pixie Sticks, that Scott is blending at random intervals to make this yarn. The tencel gives it a beautiful sheen. Scott's down now with the illness that's making its way through our family, and he's finding the slippery tencel to be a bit of a challenge for him, but even he is tickled with the way it's turning out.

While I've been sick this week, all I could muster was the energy to knit on some socks. Couldn't think clearly enough to trust myself with the stranding on my Philosopher's Wool sweater, but socks I could handle. Somewhere in the haze that was this week, I helped Leah cast on for her first pair of socks too, in an awesome purple-green Socks that Rock colorway. And Jesse, in his own creative way and inspired by an Edison bio read earlier this week, is working on a concoction in his laboratory (er, treehouse) that he hopes will eventually become a new power source. He's also working on becoming a golfer and guitarist this week. :-)

Off to pick the Goob up from a sleepover and then to Nutmeg Spinners Guild. Whee !!! 

fluff

Yesterday we spent a delightful sunny springtime morning with the Woolybuns angora rabbits who will be the topic of Leah's second Spindlicity article. Chris answered all our questions, let us watch the shearing process and snuggle with her oh-so-soft babies, and sent us on our merry way with a big bag of spinnable angora fluff (blended with shetland wool) that's indescribably soft. Leah and Scott are both looking forward to spinning it up and knitting it into something -- Leah says a scarf and Scott says a liner for his winter hat -- maybe both! Jesse got to carefully snuggle one of the littlest babies, only a couple of weeks old, and then decided he was just as happy romping with Chris' dog, whose boundless energy was a good match for an 11-year-old boy. The forsythia surrounding Chris' yard are on the verge of blooming and we had fun peering at the woods along the highway to spot the teensiest traces of buds on the trees, while listening to a book on cd about Australian Aborigines.

Kids then headed off for a sleepover with friends. I'm not sure who was more excited -- us or them! ;-) Scott spent the evening melting glass and I relaxed with my knitting, in between bronchitic coughing spells and sniffles.