My Sporran

I received my package yesterday from my spoiler in the Voyager Swap I am participating in. Neila put together an awesome sporran for me, beginning with some stitch markers with thistles on the beads. Here we have a group shot, some Whiskey Fudge (which doesn't have any chocolate in it to my surprise, but it does have a good strong whiskey flavor!), a cute patterned tin of tea which smells wonderful, a teapot cozy in a gorgeous yarn, a tea measuring scoop, and a pattern and yarn from Patternworks for a cowl/hood project.

And this gorgeous Chinese porcelain teacup with a lid and a built in strainer. I love all of my gifts, but this one the most!

And last but certainly not least, some authentic Scottish treats, ginger border biscuits and caramel chocolate wafer bars, both actually made in Scotland. How fun is that.

And here is my teapot wearing its cozy. I explained to my husband that a teapot is one thing which actually needs a cozy to keep the tea hot longer.

I love my package Neila, THANK YOU!

Purple and Green Handspun

I finished spinning the purple and green stuff that I dyed at Amy's party. It looks better than I expected it to. I think these colors will make something cute for my daughter. I have about 300 yds of it, about worsted weight. It is softer in the yarn than it seemed in the roving. I still don't know what kind of wool it is, but it doesn't matter too much.

FO: Dane Shawl

I finished another alpaca shawlette last week, so I thought I'd better get it on the blog! I really love these little shawls for so many reasons; they are quick, fun because of the lace, a little bit fancier than a scarf (in my opinion), surprisingly warm, I can wear it instead of a hoodie on a cool day. If you haven't got at least 5 or ten of these, get busy, there's no excuse, there are so many free ones available. This one took just over two skeins of Frog Tree alpaca sportweight. The pattern is a free one from Jane Tanner called the Dane Shawl. I did have a bit of a hard time with this one because of all the purling involved, she has altered the original oriel lace pattern from the Barbara Walker book to improve the appearance of the wrong side. (All pictures here are of the right side.) I don't think the wrong side looks that great either way, but my yarn is kind of fuzzy, so maybe in a smoother yarn it would matter more.

I do love the way she increased the row before the bind off so there isn't a problem with tightness in the bind off, she also did a neat method of binding off, but I don't know the name of it, so you'll have to look for yourself.

I used a size six needle, and did not alter the pattern in any way.

Starship Scarf

A few months back I developed a fascination for some of the art yarn that my friend Bohoknitterchic (ety shop here) was making, and at the same time, began noticing that my spinning was becoming a little too uniform, and somewhat boring. So I looked around etsy and found a neat little shop called Moa HandKnits Fiber Shop. I purchased this textured batt from her called Starship. It says it only contains kid mohair, but there is also a little bit of what looks like silk noils (according to Britney). Little puffs of orange stuff. I had a little trouble spinning it at first, I was still being a bit OCD about my spinning, and was trying to spin it very fine. I asked Britney about it, and she suggested letting it be a big larger diameter, and sort of letting the fiber control the spinning a little bit. So I relaxed a bit, and stopped trying to turn my textured batt into a perfect, smooth yarn, and came out with this.

I still wasn't too sure about it, but my Ravelry knit night friend assured me that it was really neat, and so I took some pictures and got ready to put it in my etsy shop. Then I couldn't figure out how to describe it, the wpi was quite variable throughout the skein, and I just didn't know if it was good enough to sell. I finally decided a couple of weeks ago to knit it into a scarf.

I knit a simple squishy ribbed scarf from it with a flare at each end, and it is very pretty after all, and amazingly soft. I love the contrast between its rough appearance and soft feel. I can easily wear it around my neck without itchiness.

So I put it in my etsy shop after all!

It was somewhat difficult to photograph, so I look very pale in the photo, but the scarf is accurately depicted.

Amy's Hand-Painting Party

We had a wonderful dyeing party at Amy's house in Monmouth Saturday. The weather was gorgeous, which was surprising after a day of rain on Friday, so we were able to take over the back yard as well as the house. Here is Donna, who I have to call Queen of the Dye pot. She taught herself most of what she knows, and we all benefited from her help. She also brought the camp stove, a bazillion acid dye colors, and a bunch of other things we were grateful to use. Stephanie brought something like 6000 (yes, really) yards of very fine cotton yard which she dyed with a tie-dye kit. She got some great colors out of it, nothing neon, which was what I would have expected from a tie-dye kit!

Anne and Amanda watching Amanda inject dye into her merino, it came out a really lovely amber color.

Jocelyn, well I can't recall exactly what she was doing here. Possibly squeezing excess liquid out of her sausage. So many off-color jokes available here, but I will refrain.

Laia, who has resolved not to mix beer and dye and yarn in the future. (I don't know why, it was kind of fun to watch.)

My roving, which came out more Jello colored than I intended, but I do have a 5 year old who can wear stuff like this.

Amanda and Donna trying to get the merino out of the dye pot.

I think I can safely say that we all had a great time!

FO:Cupcake hat

Here is the yarn I spun from some BFL locks I purchased at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival a couple of weeks ago. I opened them up a bit with a hair pick and tried to leave some curls sticking out a bit. There was quite a lot of dirt in them which got all over me whenever I was working on it. I also washed it in 3 sinks of water after that, and there were still some small bits of stuff in it, but it was so pretty I wanted to knit something with it.I spent the better part of this week trying to figure out what I could make with it, and after a bit of trial and error I decided to make the top of a hat with it.

I wrote all the details on the Ravelry page, and don't feel like rewriting them here, so I'll just show you the result. A hat which to me resembles a cupcake. Unfortunately I am a bit too old to look cute in a cupcake hat, but I still like it because I love the yarn.

I knit the bottom in Ultra Alpaca that I had leftover, and finished it off with an I-cord bind-off.

FO's: One Day Beret and Bunny Ears Hat

I have been slow on the knitting of my sweaters lately because I was distracted by a couple of side projects. I found this funny yarn at my LYS in the free bin, Esslinger Wolle Geisha, and fell in love with it despite its rather low natural fiber content (85% acrylic, 15% mohair.) For some reason I love this color too. The photos aren't showing it very accurately I am afraid. I decided to knit Kirsten Kapur's One Day Beret. Even with my enlargments, it still isn't quite as floppy as I thought it would be, and the edge isn't as defined. Part of the problem is the yarn, I think you need to be knitting a pretty tight gauge so the fabric is more stiff, and I wasn't. I also didn't block this because I thought it pointless to block a mostly acrylic yarn, but if that isn't true, please let me know!

I knit a bunny ears hat for my friend Dana who wants to photograph newborns in it. I made this one out of Peter Pan Double Knit yarn (by Wendy.) Again a nylon/acrylic blend so as to be sure it won't itch the baby. Since it is to be used first with a boy I used i-cord ties instead of ribbon. They do need the ties for the ears to look right.

Next on the schedule is a bear ears hat.