Knotty Mouse

Proof that I actually still spin.. its a Falkland blend called “fall leaves”. I’m spinning this as a single. I loved the roving but I don’t really love this spun up at the moment.  I have a second bump of this in Merino (they looked different on the website  and were called different colorways so I bought both.. I blame my shitty monitor, not the vendor- who rocks.) which I will probably sell off since it really doesn’t thrill me.   I’ll wait to put a sale price on it until I start knitting with this to see what happens… often times I change my mind after seeing how it looks in a pattern.

Finally got my Christmas present I ordered for myself… 4 back issues of Gothic Beauty Magazine. I really enjoy this magazine even though I don’t know most of the new goth bands that are out there (I prefer the older stuff like Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, and Rasputina).. and some of the fashion is a little much for me now that I’m 30. I do love the makeup and hair though.. and the ads for the websites are worth the cover price, especially since I picked these up in a bundle pack which saves me money.

Playing a lot of Sims 1 – I am totally blaming this on Severina and her posts about gothic Sims (which I totally didn’t know were out there..  clearly this path leads directly to madness) and all of the cool free downloadable furnishings out there for dark creepy houses and creepy gothed out characters. I even have a household that includes a cyber-goth girl,  a Blue Man, and an Evil Scientist.   The goth girl and the Blue Man fell in love and got married, forcing her to become part of the family.. before it was just a totally silly Blue Man/Evil Scientist  bachelor pad.

* I’m trying out a 365 photo style spread here at Chez MousieBlog to keep myself active in  blogging.  I love photo blogs, some of my favorite reads are knitting/life blogs with mosaic photo collages  and  short descriptions.  I definitely won’t be posting every day but I’d like to post a few times a week so that the photos don’t get backlogged too badly.   I know that a lot of the folks doing the 365 photo project are using Flickr but I’ve yet to shell out the $24.95 for a pro account b/c of having my own webspace.. even though it would make my organizing of photos on Flickr much easier.

The weather here in Georgia has been gorgeous for the last week- in the mid 70’s and overcast- thanks to the tropical storms. While I feel like I’ve done nothing but open and close windows (not an easy task in an old house) because of the wind & rain – I’m loving the cool breeze and lots of curling up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and some knitting. Fall weather puts me in a crafty mood and I’m doing a lot of knitting & spinning lately (plus some other stuff) in preparation of re-opening my Etsy shop. While I will still be doing the knitting & spinning supplies, I’ve also wanted to introduce a line of hand knits made with my own handspun into the shop.. which required the creation of some patterns of my own.

These mitts are the product of my hit or miss pattern making skills – which apparently involve a whole lot of ripping, swearing, use of a calculator, more swearing, and prayer – and I’m pretty happy with them. They have right & left thumb gusset increases which I think helps to make a better fitting hand area.. something I’ve really had issue with in some of the patterns I’ve knitted for myself and ended up ripping out or giving away. I think its partially because I have larger hands and very slender wrists that many of the popular armwarmer/mitt patterns out there end up making me look like I had giant man hands even though they were perfectly gorgeous on 1500 other knitters.

The hands in the photo belong to my mother-in-law who agreed to play hand model for me the other day. I had to pry these mitts off of her hands because she first tried to run away with them and then tried to con them out of me as a Christmas present. The yarn is my own Two Paws Handspun in Spunky Eclectic “Leaf Peep” colorway & South African Fine wool. I like to re-name my yarns when I spin them because I find that the colorway that was given as roving changes into something else after spinning… but I haven’t come up with a name for this yarn yet. The mitts themselves will be going into my shop when I open in September.. unless MIL comes and steals them back!

Blah blah blah yarn blah blah blah handspun blah blah *cough sneeze* blah blah. Yes, I’m still sick and its making me miserable. If you’re expecting a package from me (not an order.. just a package.. ) they haven’t been mailed yet because I’m still in the “curl up under a blanket in the corner” phase.

The photos above are hand-painted Corriedale from Spunky Eclectic’s shop which I spun into 132 yds of worsted weight 2 ply…. The label says its “Rocky Mountain High” – which I’m sort of confused about since I lived in Colorado for 2 years and can’t place where green and wine ( I wrote “whine..” lol) come into play.. For the record, I’m calling it “Rose Garden” and it will be in the shop within the week. The stuff in the right hand corner on the bottom is my spinning in progress – a sport weight merino single in very bright colors.. which reminds me of Rainbow Brite.

I would have knitting to show you but apparently my gauge was WAY off and the Felicity hat wouldn’t even fit my son. Unfortunately I realized my error about 5 inches of stockinette into the hat so the whole thing is going to be frogged. My father in law has requested a hat (in black.. yawn..) that covers the back of his neck, so I’m in the process of either finding or tweaking a hat pattern to work for this. I found the Blue Hills Hat but unfortunately its bulky weight yarn and its just not cold enough for that here in GA… except for today.. because its 34 degrees outside and it was snowing this morning when I took Munchkin to the bus stop. Its supposed to be 66°F later this week. *boggles* No wonder everyone is sick.

Thanks to all of the comments I decided to keep Mousie Masala as the shop name and use “Two Paws” as the name of the yarns. I’m now having issues with Ravelry and its yarn system because I’d like to have photos of each individual yarn.. so I may end up naming things by colorway after all. *grumble* Its definitely not their system that is the problem.. its the fact that its set up for commercial yarn with set yardage, fiber type, etc. and all of my yarns vary from skein to skein. The actual problem is that I can’t get the page and the database to do what I want it to do.. best laid plans of mice.. and all that.

I wanted to thank everyone for their two cents regarding the Ravelry/yarn naming post.. I’m still working on emails from comments because (to put it mildly..) I’m sick.  Actually, I’ve spent the entire week doped up on cold medicine and  barely alive because I was hit with THE CRUD that has been going around Atlanta.  It started out with waking up last Saturday morning to the tune of yet another case of strep throat and the addition of some sort of sinus/ear infection and buckets of snot (was that TMI? you’re welcome).  If I blow my nose or sneeze one more time.. I’m going to cry. I don’t do well with adult cold medication (it makes me loopy- even at low doses) so I’ve been chugging grape kiddie cold medicine, eating cherry cough drops,  and walking around in a haze.

I have gotten a lot of spinning done because I lack the concentration to knit – so at least something good is coming out of this cold.  The above photo is about 55 yards of 2 ply worsted/bulky weight baby alpaca/silk blend handspun from roving that I picked up at Maryland Sheep & Wool 2 years back. I wish I would have thought to get more than an ounce or two but at the time I was a spindle spinner and didn’t think in ‘bulk’ roving.  Fortunately I have another ounce or two of a fawn colored alpaca/silk from the same MSW vendor that I could play with.  I definitely enjoyed spinning this fiber – its SO soft! Even my husband commented on the softness of this skein when I shoved it in his face and demanded that he pet the yarn – he’s pretty much used to living with a fiber addict at this point. I’m not sure what I’ll make with this because of the yardage.. but I’m definitely keeping it for myself.
Speaking of fiber addiction.. I’ve put my spinning ‘in progress’ up in my Ravelry projects list so it shows up on the sidebar.  My wheel has taken up permanent residence in the living room and my nightly routine has been to spin while watching ‘CSI:Miami’.  I’m hoping to have a few yarns for the shop available soon as I picked up a couple really nice rovings on Etsy from a favorite vendor.  They’re totally out of my usual color preference (purple.. purple.. & purple..) but I’m enjoying the change.

I’ve sort of been off in my own little world lately and have been doing a lot of thinking about where I want my business to go and how I want to get it there. Admittedly I try to keep the ‘business stuff’ off of this blog because I’ve been told before that people don’t really like when someone’s blog is all about their business. I can totally understand that but I also really love reading blogs that are written by women with their own shops & crafty businesses where they talk about their daily routines – be it cutting a million squares for quilts or knitting tons of hats for their craft show booths. I have a ’shop blog’ but I barely use it… its on blogger and I actually forget that its over there half the time. Its mostly a ’shop update’ announcement place anyway. I’ve been kicking around things about the business lately and when I got frustrated by having to explain so much to a non-knitting or spinning husband I was told that I should ask “the blog”- which is hysterical that he’d suggest something like that. (and he doesn’t even read Yarn Harlot.. lol)

So.. where was I? Oh yeah.. shop. I’ve decided that I am going to list myself as a “yarnie” over on Ravelry b/c I have been selling my handspun for a while, its likely that someone might have it in their stash, and I’d really like to pursue that part of my business further. I recently sent out a skein (in the photo) with the name “Two Paws Handspun” because its the name that I have all of my handspun yarns listed under on Ravelry in my own stash – and the name seems to have stuck. So this is where I get all confuzzled… In Ravelry you have a Brand name which also comes up under your user name in the “yarnies” section (say “Lorna’s Laces”for example) and then you can have different sorts of yarns (and LL has Shepard sock, Lion & Lamb.. etc) and you get a line that says where the person bought the yarn (”Knitch yarn shop” for example) or you can add in a website address. I’ve been sitting here for DAYS trying to decide how I want to list everything in Ravelry because I know that its a data base and would be a big fat mess to try and edit once its been done.. so I want it to work properly.

What I’m getting at here is that I basically need help deciding what name I should use. I could list the “Brand Name” (which would also be my Yarnie name) as Mousie Masala & then list ALL of the yarns as Two Paws Handspun – the whole whack of them regardless of plies or type. OR I could list the “Brand name” as Two Paws Handspun – then come up with catagories and names for the types of yarn I am selling/will sell (single, two ply.. art yarn.. etc). I really want to use Ravelry’s system to see IF anyone and how many folks have either stashed my yarn or used it as projects.. so I really don’t want to name each individual yarn by its colorway as I’ve seen some folks do. I have looked through Ravelry’s Yarnie section so many times that I’m starting to recognize people’s icons without looking at the names.

Where do I stand? I’m confuzzled to say the least. I’m not sure how I want to be “known”- whether I should go with my shop name of Mousie Masala that’s been out there for a few years.. or use the Two Paws Handspun as my brand (because Mousie Masala is technically the SHOP itself.. and Two Paws is the yarn..) and hope that people make the connection but then have to “name” all of my yarns. I’m totally over-analyzing this but I also want to be able to come up in the search thing when you type in a yarn. I *have* however changed the banner on my Etsy shop to reflect this name addition.. so I’m pretty committed to the name itself.

So, I’d really love to hear your opinion. I know there are some Rav Yarnies that read my blog too so that would be helpful to hear from y’all as well. Thanks in advance.

 As promised..  a photo of handspun yarn.  This is about 3 ounces of the “Wicked Witch” Corriedale roving that I bought before my birthday.  Its about 10wpi and is 90 yards of navajo plied 3-ply yarn.  The photo was taken before its bath so I’m hoping it will even out a bit and get a little less sproingy..  I think I plied it with a BIT too much energy!

I’m still a bit upset about my yardage issues with my handspun..  I even went online to see if there was something I wasn’t doing right with  the math and my niddy-noddy.  Apparently I still just spin too thick to get much yardage out of 3-4 ounces of roving. Boo-hiss.  More photos tomorrow of this yarn once its dry!

Right before my birthday (but after I realized there was no way I was going to be going to SAFF) I had what Yarn Harlot would call a “trip & fall” and when I got up.. I had accidentally purchased this roving from Etsy. Yes, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it (and it would be nice if y’all backed me up..) so there.   The colors in the roving range from a dark purple to a neon acid green – when I saw it I HAD to have it, especially since it was called “Wicked Witch” and is corriedale wool.. one of my favorite things to spin.  Usually every season I end up finding a color that I really love that is out of the ordinary for what I usually choose (jewel tones, purples, earth tones..)  and this time its neon green that has caught my eye.  I’m not sure whether I’m going to 2 ply this or navajo ply to keep the colors separate but I do know that its going to end up as a scarf ..  I haven’t decided what type yet.    oooh.. the timer in the kitchen (finally) went off..   dinner (beef stew-type-roast/with potatoes..) is done!

*photos return to the posts thanks to the kindness of The Hubby who gave me some rechargeable batteries for my camera this week. I’m not sure if he was tired of hearing me whine or what.. but we have PHOTOS! Hooray!  In crappy battery news… the battery in my digital scale died and I never realized how much I use the silly thing until faced with the purchase of a $5 8 volt battery.

I’ve been determined lately to get most of the UFO’s I have off of the needles so that I can start on a sweater for winter… and the next thing on my list to complete was my handspun half- clapotis. The roving itself was a Christmas gift from Ms. Jane and it was spun up in February (by me) while I was in Athens watching Sandy teach  Jodi how to spin on her borrowed wheel. I started the scarf shortly after that (looking back on the blog.. it was in March) but it languished in my knitting basket all summer.. mostly getting dragged around as car knitting. I finally got it out and finished it a few days ago.. and Munchkin took some photos for me today after he got home from school before my camera died (need more batteries). I apologize for the headless blogger shots once again, but this wasn’t my editing job! Yes, my son managed to lop my head off of nearly every shot… except for the one where I was clearly telling him “Push the button down” because my mouth is hanging open and I’m pointing at the camera. (and no, you can’t see that shot)

Pattern Stats: Clapotis – using the directions for a scarf sized version found at KPixie.
Yarn: Handspun Corriedale Pencil Roving from Crown Mountain Farms. approx. 6 ounces of bulky handspun
needles: addi turbo size 10 circs
finished size: 8.5 x 67 before fringe (about 80 inches after..)

I love this scarf! From the time that I learned how to spin I’ve wanted to knit a handspun clapotis-style scarf/wrap.. and I’m very happy with the results of this project. Its gotten cool enough here in GA for the last 2 days so I’m looking forward to wearing the scarf soon. I’ll leave you with the full length shot of the scarf while blocking so that you can see the different color changes in the yarn. (as usual.. click to embiggen)

Just some hand spun eye candy… The orange yarn is the Targhee/ Rambouillet blend I showed last week (about 4oz) which spun up to a sport weight 2 ply of 152 yds. At first when I saw this as I was plying I thought.. “ew”.. but its really grown on me. I’m just sad that its not enough to actually make a scarf, but I think that the other purple yarn in the photo may match enough that I could make a chunky striped scarf.

The purple is a sport/worsted single of Corriedale from Spunky Eclectic in “bruised ego” – about 148 yards. I thought it looked like peanut butter & jelly when I was spinning it.

My little one is still sick and has been up all night for the last few nights. He seems to be a little better today but I can feel myself getting the same symptoms that he has – and right in time for my husband to go away on a business trip! I’m planning on stocking up on soups and comfort foods (mashed potatos.. yum.) and hide in the house drinking hot tea.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Its entirely too quiet here at Chez Mousie today. My husband left this morning for a trip to Florida to play Airsoft with friends and won’t be back until Monday night.. and my son is at school. I’m enjoying actually being able to consume a whole English muffin and coffee without being bothered by anyone for any reason. I finally got up the guts to upgrade my blog to a newer version of WordPress – so please let me know if you see anything out of place. Everything appears normal on my end at the moment but I’m probably going to be showing up on your bloglines all day while I continue to edit things that pop up as problems.

I haven’t been doing much knitting lately but I have been spinning quite a bit. The photos in this post (as usual.. click to make with the big photos) are of some merino that I bought at Plying the Arts in Athens,GA last year that has been marinating in my stash. I was hoping for somewhere around 360 yards from this roving but I fell horribly short at 215.. a good amount for handspun but not enough for the hooded scarf pattern I had in mind. This yarn is about worsted weight to bulky with a nice tight ply to it.. I don’t particularly like loose plied yarns.  All in all I was very happy with the way this yarn turned out and how fast it came together because of ‘preparing’ the fiber by ripping it into thin lengths and pre-drafting.  The only other thing I did during preparation was to remove large strands of black from the roving so that the finished yarn wouldn’t come out too dark.

Here’s a shot of my yarn hanging out with a quarter.. because folks really seem to dig the combination of loose change and hand spun yarns around the spinning/knitting blogs. <g>

I’m planning on doing some catch up posting in the next few days because I’ve been really lazy with the blogging recently. I’ve been having a harder time this school year balancing out time for real life vs. computer/knitting/blogging stuff – it seems that from the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to bed that its a non-stop rush to get everything accomplished. I know that I already have in-law family stuff tomorrow but I’m looking forward to having at least the next 6 hours completely to myself. I’ve already gotten most of the dishes in the kitchen washing in the dishwasher, soaked & hung up a skein of hand spun singles (more on that this weekend I hope..), washed and hung my Danica scarf to dry (I’m hoping to soften up that Kureyon) and attempted the start of the search for my size 7 16″ circular needle that is missing somewhere in my office/studio. Unfortunately I was up this morning at about 5am with my husband for his trip, so I think my next order of business around here.. is a nap with the cat.

Just a little shameless promotion that I’ve updated the shop with 6 handpainted drop spindles! I’ve had a hard time shutting my mouth about my secret little project.. but I wanted to wait until they were done and up in the shop. I’ve “test spun” all of them – ok fine.. I admit that I played with every one of them and there’s some roving stuck to each one of them to prove it. After all.. I couldn’t just let them out into the world without making sure that they were ok.. right? RIGHT? yeah.. I thought so.
Funny thing about the one to the left.. it was going to be sheep on a blue background when I started it. How it went from sheep to the Buddha’s eyes.. I’ll never know, but that’s my “creative process” for you. Also during the making of this spindle.. I cleaned my brush in my coffee cup instead of the paint cup. Mental note.. move the brush cleaning water AWAY from your beverage!

Out of boredom the other day came the overwhelming desire to spin some coiled yarn from this tutorial. I spent most of the day filling up a bobbin on my Louet with about 100 or so yards of merino singles.. and then spent the other half of the day turning it into 15 yards of coiled novelty yarn. Yes, you heard correctly.. fifteen yards from about 100 yards of singles. Color me unhappy. While I have a new found respect for the spinners of novelty yarn and halfway understand why they charge so damn much for their product.. I’m thinking that’s all I gained from this experience.

So.. that’s what I’ve got for you today. Scary coils.. and a small reprieve from the shattering silence on Blog-Lines.  I’m sure there are a lot of folks who are currently rolling in fiber in Maryland… and I’m wishing that I were one of them instead of being stuck here in rather dreary and cool Georgia. I attempted some lace-knitting (the kiri shawl) but ended up throwing it across the room after about 12 rounds. There’s something about a bored 5 year old and a lace shawl pattern that just doesn’t work.

I usually don’t ‘prepare’ my fiber before I spin.. but I saw a similar photo on a blog recently (if it was you.. please let me know so I can credit you..) and a light went off in my head. A short time preparing fiber lead to a more even spun single and a lot less stopping and starting to tear up roving. Clearly I’m slow on the uptake on this one.. but I’m definitely going to be doing this more often because I love the results.

EDITED TO ADD: I’ve gotten a few emails about how I’ve “prepared” the fiber in the basket..  I split the roving in half so that it was equal parts for plying (should I decide to ply..) and then started splitting those bundles width wise until I got thin, equal strand which I rolled up and threw into the basket. What you are seeing there is about 2 oz of ‘prepared’ roving ready to be spun up. Its helping me get a lot more even results.

Kitty pictures are just because.. as if there had to be a reason for kitty photos? Clearly she’s got the right idea on how to spend a weekend!

I was having an online discussion earlier with my friend Amputeehee and she mentioned Sleeping Beauty. Since both of us are spinners.. we started thinking about what on earth she would have pricked her finger on since nothing on a modern wheel is sharp. Google-fu to the rescue!

In the story of Sleeping Beauty, Princess Briar Rose/Rosamond is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel, thus causing her to fall into a death-like sleep. The origins of this folk tale are sometimes debated by spinners, as most modern spinning wheels themselves lack a point upon which pricking a finger is possible. However the very old spinning wheels lacked the modern flyer and bobbin, and spinning was done off of the point of the spindle (see “Great Wheel” illustration above)and the constant wear made the spindle extremely sharp. One suggested explanation is that Rose pricked her finger on the point of a distaff. Another theory, proposed by master spinner Alden Amos suggests that Rose caught a bit of moldy flax (called boon) under a fingernail and suffered an allergic reaction.

That information is courtesy of Wikipedia’s spinning wheel entry.

By the way.. I’ve finished a toe-up sock and cast on for the second! I’m also half way through the Koigu toe-up sock that I posted about in the pointy sock post. I can’t knit on it right now because its in recovery from undergoing sock-toe reconstruction surgery… I’ll be posting some photos of its ordeal later in the week.

When I started spinning on a drop spindle I really wanted to make entire knitted items out of my own hand spun yarn. The first hand dyed roving that I bought was purple (of course) and from my first trip to Distaff Day at Peachtree Handspinners Guild.. While I was there I asked whether 8oz of roving would be enough for Clapotis from knitty because that’s what I was itching to make, and most were in agreement that I would be able to at least make a half-clapotis with it. Little did I realize that spinning an entire 8oz of roving on a spindle was a major undertaking.. and was more suited to when I had a wheel. I also found out that merino (which that fiber was) would pill like crazy and wouldn’t be something that I’d want to make a shawl out of… so I put the idea away for a later date.

At Christmas this year I was gifted with 8oz of Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms from my friend Jane in some gorgeous purple shades.. and I knew instantly that I would spin it up for a half-clap of my very own. This is the first bobbin of that fiber (spun at Jodi’s studio in Athens) washed, wound into a  ball, and knit up on size 10 needles. I’m in LOVE with this scarf. I’m using the directions from K-Pixie website and the “clapotis by the row” spreadsheet and so far I’m impressed with how quickly this thing is motoring along. I started it about a week ago (the progress in the photos is a few days old now) and I’m actually on the 7th drop-stitch row- its not nearly as boring when you only have about 35 stitches on the needles instead of over 100 and I think I’ll get a lot more wear out of this than the shawl version. I’ve had a lot of pooling of colors up farther but I’ve decided to just let the yarn do what its going to do and not tink back to remove any ’stripes’. I know that many people are not a fan of this pattern (to put it mildly.. ) but I think it really shows off a hand spun or hand dyed yarn while making it the center of attention rather than drowning the features of the yarn in a lace type design.
Unfortunately it was nearly 80F here today (!!!) and there doesn’t seem to be any scarf wearing weather in the future. I do think that if I get it done quickly enough that I can still wear it to the bus stop in the morning without looking like a crazy person who is just looking for an excuse to wear knitwear.

After a very stressful week involving work, money, parent-teacher conferences, weird stomach issues, and lots of other nasty junk.. I was invited to Athens with Sandy to do some spinning with Jodi. We had some breakfast at the vegetarian restaurant The Grit and then went on to Jodi’s studio at UGA to teach her to use the Lendrum wheel that she borrowed for a project.

After a short lesson from Hockey Mom- Jodi was spinning like a pro. There was much gabbing, goofing off, and talk of fiber that went on for hours. The small studio space was jam packed with wheels (my Louet s-10 in the front, Sandy’s Ashford Joy on the right, Jodi’s borrowed Lendrum on the left) and there was fiber all over.
I spun for about 3 hours on some gorgeous Corriedale pencil roving that was gifted to me by Jane for Christmas. This is the result of all of that spinning (that wasn’t very good for my back.. ow.. ow..ow..) from yesterday – 128 yards of dk weight singles. I’ve already got them washed and hung up to dry in the shower and will take a better photo when its finished since the flash washed out the color a bit. I’m not planning on plying these singles and am hoping to get enough to make a half-clapotis out of the 8oz of pencil roving that I have.
All in all, a pretty damn good ending to a crap week. Oh, there may have been an incident involving two carnivorous bloggers stopping on the way home at a certain drive-thru burger joint to supplement their healthy vegetarian breakfast of potatos & grilled veggies with a Whopper or two. I’m not entirely sure of the truthfulness of this statement since I believe the burgers in question were inhaled at the speed of light and chased down with milk shakes & frozen slushies. I’m sure my partner in crime will deny the whole thing.

Only one more day left after tonight of NaBloPoMo and NoroVember.. and I’m only going to be completing one of the two. My kureyon Danica scarf is at a stall and about the only thing getting done is the spinning for a christmas gift.. possibly a lace scarf for my husbands grandmother.  I’m definitely going to have to ply this fiber because the singles are thick/thin and have some ‘blobs’ in them from the way the fiber was prepared.. but I’m thinking that it might make a nice ‘branching out’ scarf or something similar.

Thanks for the hugs and the well wishes..  I really appreciate them. My life is doing this weird twisty-turn thing in the last 2 weeks and I’m rather confused by the path things are taking.

My sis Dragon sent me a link in an email and I thought I’d share it with you.. its called House-Mouse Designs and I think I have to buy this tote bag as soon as humanly possible. Holy freakin’ cute!

I figured out what was wrong with my time stamp.. apparently my blog options were set to the wrong time zone! I was -4 hours instead of -5 hours from their “standard time”… its all fixed now I hope!

Today I met up with some of the ATL bloggers at Peachtree Handspinners Guild for a “Social Spin”.. and then some lunch. I didn’t bring either of my wheels but I did learn something new.. Hockey Mom/Sandy taught me how to knit “magic loop” with a circular needle (psst.. your yarn and needle are still in my purse!) and Jen, Claudia & Pixie did a lot of spinning! Jane was knitting another Christmas sock & Janice was working on yet another gorgeous lace shawl.. 

We had a great lunch at a restaurant that I can’t remember the name of at the moment..  and I ate entirely too much bavarian pretzels with homemade mustard (with the mustard seeds.. yum! Interesting too because I actually HATE store bought mustard) and “Pierogi Primavera”..

Jen, Pixie & Claudia were nice enough to take me far out of their way so that I would get home safely and I appreciate it greatly! I’ve spent the rest of the night bloating on the sofa in front of the television with my husband and am now going to crawl into bed. I’ll update this post tomorrow with links and a photo or two.. but right now I’m going to take my overstuffed tummy and go to bed! (11:09pm)

I finally got around to setting the twist in one of the bobbins of corriedale that I spun.. and it ended up being 106 yards of singles. I won’t be plying it because I don’t want to mess up the color changes in the yarn that I have now. I’m actually really proud of this yarn because its a lot more even than I’m used to spinning.

(edited to add…) Prior to editing this post I mistakenly called this single ‘balanced’ but was corrected by Janice (of Knitting with Dogs..) and I quote : ”A single ply yarn by definition can’t be “balanced.”  You only get a true balance when you offset the twist of two yarns by spinning the together in the opposite direction (plying.) You may have a low-twist single that *behaves* as though it’s balanced.” … And now we know….. and knowing is half the battle.. or so said GI Joe.  Thanks for correcting my ‘beginner spinners myth’ there Janice, aka: she of vast knowledge in all things spinning…

 I spun this on my ‘new’ Ashford Trad – and it was a lot of fun to spin up. I’m glad that it got softer when I washed it because I have plans to make this yarn (along with the rest of it currently on bobbins) into a scarf.. possibly more entrelac. I would LOVE to make Lady Eleanor out of this.. but I know that the pattern calls for close to 1200 yards of yarn and I’ll never get that out of the fiber I have left to spin.

My husband agreed (rather unhappily.. but it is ‘on the way’) to run me by the LYS for the other two skeins of Noro Kureyon that I need to complete the entrelac scarf.. so I’ll be able to work on it again soon. Today we have to go to husbands grandparents house for dinner, and tomorrow I have to go out to assist on a job with him… so my weekend has pretty much been decided for me.