Stitching for Sanity

My internet access has been out most of the evening and I almost forgot to post.  Today’s marks six years of blogging here and, no, I never thought I would still be doing it after this long.  The image is from Wordle, it’s random words pulled from my RSS feed, a fun little toy.  Real post tomorrow!

I’m still spinning every day but it feels like I’m not making any progress on this Cotswold.  I’ve plied my first two bobbins of singles and I have one more that’s full and one that’s just about full, so I just need to finish up that second bobbin and then I can do more plying.  I need to wind this yarn off and see how my yardage is and then decide what I’m going to make, this yarn is promised to my mom.  I’m happy with how the yarn is coming out so far, it’s soft and light and fluffy, I wish it was a little more consistent but there’s a little bit of grease on some of the roving which is making it hard to draft evenly.  It should all even out in the end, though, so I’m not worried about it.

On the knitting front, since progress is so slow on Irtfa’a, it’s taking about 30 mintues to knit a row now, I decided to cast on a sock.  I spun this yarn up a while back but never put it on Etsy so I decided to keep it.  The color here isn’t exact, it’s close, the real yarn is a little darker, but still very cranberry.  The pattern is Hydrangea from The Eclectic Sole by Janel Laidman.  I’m not sure how I feel about this sock yet, I like the pattern and I like the yarn, I’m just not sure how I like them together, and the cuff just isn’t long enough yet for me to decide.  So I guess I’ll knit on it until I start the heel and then decide how I feel about it.

This morning I about had a heart attack.  A storm woke me up early and when it was over and I booted up my computer and Windows didn’t recognize my password.  I tried five or six times to log in under my username, as owner, admin, user, anything I could think of and it just wouldn’t work.  I used my recovery disk (I’m so happy I thought to make that) to try to get into system restore but all my restore points were gone.  I looked around on Google to try to figure out what to do for two hours and all I could think of was that I was going to have to reinstall Windows and that I’d loose all my documents (and all my paperwork for KnitPicks) and music and pictures, I was so upset.  I finally tried one more time to log in, this time as Owner (with a capital O) and it worked.  I can’t remember the last time I felt so relieved.  I was able to restore a back up of my registry that I happened to make yesterday (!) and that has all my problems sorted out, I did a registry clean up yesterday and I guess the program that I used (nCleaner) did too good of a job deleting registry items.  Now, I’m no stranger to mucking around and changing and deleting stuff in the Windows registry but just because of what happened to me, I can’t recommend this program.  I figure that if someone who screws around with Windows as much as I do messed things up that bad, the someone who doesn’t know anything about Windows would do even worse.  I still say that if my modem would work with Ubuntu, I’d install that.  Ugh, I hate Windows.

Anyway, geeky digression over, the rest of the week holds more spinning, more sock knitting, and maybe I’ll finally get around to taking a picture of Irtfa’a.

I’m babysitting my cousin and she’s in zombie mode in front of the TV right now, so I’m sneaking and blogging before I have to start entertaining her again.  This is my spinning from this weekend.  It’s a few ounces (I don’t know exactly how much) of my pretty blue Cotswold.  I’m spinning it to about a worsted weight.  I’ve already plied these two bobbins and started another bobbin of singles, I just didn’t get a picture of them yet.  The yarn is very loft and soft and light.  I have about of pound of this fiber so I should be able to make something big, like a vest or a cardi, for my mom (since she bought the fiber).  I’ll be spinning up some more of this this week, I want to get at least eight ounces spun by the end of the week.

My current Knit Picks project is totally finished and ready to be shipped off.  This was a fun little project that is going to be in the next catalog and I can’t wait to show it off.

I’ll also try to get some Irtfa’a pictures this week.  I need to get some blocking wires.

Since I’ve been sick this week I really haven’t done much of anything except my Knit Picks project (which is all done and ready to be mailed off) and a small amount of spinning.  I’d like to get back into the habit of spinning every day again and start churning out some more yarn, more like I did last week.

This week I have four little skeins to show off.  The two on the left are some beautiful blue Cotswold that I got at the fiber fair a few months ago.  My mom actually bought the fiber for me to spin and knit something for her (we’re thinking a vest).  I spun some little samples Monday, trying to see what I could get.  The left skein is about a sport/light worsted weight, the right is bulky, they haven’t been washed yet, though.  I think I like the left skein better but I’ll have to see how it looks washed.  The middle skein I posted about Wednesday, it’s a little bit of everything I have with some silver eyelash wrapped around the yarn in spots.  To show just how little spinning I’ve been doing each day, I have the yarn on the right.  It’s about 50yds of a light fingering weight that took two days to spin.  I spun the singles last night and plied today and I really don’t feel like doing any more spinning.  This is pretty much the same as the last natural colored yarn I spun.  It’s Morritt, Shetland, Rambouillet, Llama, Alpaca, Mohair and my mixed mystery wool.

So, that’s it for this week.  Next week I’ll have more spinning and some progress on Irtfa’a.  Maybe some other things, just depends on what I feel like doing next week.

I’ve been a bit blah and not feeling like doing much of anything this week, I’ve got the flu, so I’m taking it easy.  I have been spinning for the Tour de Fleece, though.  Monday I spun some little Cotswold samples that I didn’t take a picture of, rested yesterday (it was the “official” day of rest), and spun this up today.  It’s little bits of stuff leftover from other yarn with some crazy silver eyelash yarn wrapped around spots.  It’s a strange yarn and it is much more colorful than it looks here.

I’ve been really trying to finish my work project.  I still have about a month until it’s due, I just want to finish it.  I think I’ll have both my projects in the next KP catalog, though.  I know what I’m working on now will be, but I’m not sure about the last project I did.  I’ll show them off here when I get my catalog.

Here’s some of the squares I’ve woven with my Loomette.  The top left is Regia Jacquard sock yarn, the brown is Lion Wool (I have plans for this square, I just hope it works) and the rest are handspun sock yarn.  The Regia yarn I used doubled and it made a really firm fabric, I’ve been using it as a coaster.  The handspun is way too thin, I wasn’t happy with it.  But I like the brown one.  The texture is nice, it looks really good in person and it’s sturdy  but it still has some drape, it’s not stiff.

The rest of this week I’m going to spend working on work stuff, I have a lot of finishing to do, and spinning for the tour and maybe some more weaving.  I’ll be sure to take pictures!