I envy the people who keep project books, with samples, labels, pictures. I've even started them, several times. It just doesn't appear to be how I roll.
And I started the "Demon Thread" blog to attempt to do that again. Separate from my "life" blog, this was supposed to have all those details. Nicely organized. Talk about each project.
Again - that's not how I roll.
So I'm just going to list where I am now. Maybe at some point it will become coherent. Like my other blog, I'm just going to do some brain barf.
What's going on now. I just finished spinning and chain plying some BFL/silk in the "Sunset at Manzanita" colorway from Capistrano Fiber Arts Studio. I had gotten this to spin in the hospital while I was there with Bob, on my nano. And I did. And for obvious reasons stalled out. But it's finally done, and beautiful and I might knit it up in the "Dragon Wing" pattern.
Knitting. There's something where I seem to have lost my mojo. I used to knit a lot - while watching TV, riding in the car, waiting at the doctor or dentist or at jury duty. I kept my knitting bag hanging up where I could grab it during the time that Mom seemed to end up in the ER a lot. I knit while sitting beside her in the hospital, and in the hospice house. I knit incessantly while in the hospital with Bob (3 projects for different levels of stress).
And, other than casting on and knitting for a bit and then deciding that the yarn color and pattern weren't friends, I haven't knit since I came home almost two years ago. Those three projects? They've all been unraveled and turned back into balls of yarn and been tucked away.
But I digress. I have finished this yarn, and it's beautiful (greens and golds and oranges). And I love this pattern. I've made it before - must find my own picture but this is what the pattern looks like.
And I've spun a few samples. I had some while back gotten an order in of some gray penduncle silk, and some Gotland roving, which happened to be the exact same color. I've done two sample skeins - one where I spun a single of each and then plied, and one where I carded them together - I far prefer the latter. The gotland roving was somewhat difficult to draft, but the mix of gotland and silk (75%/25%) was lovely.
Just saw that I have this picture too. The roving was a bit compacted, and one way of dealing with that is to steam it, which helps reactivate any crimp and sort of "wakes up" the wool. Just simply holding it over a teakettle makes a noticeable difference.
Those skeins are now in my "to be considered" bin.
I recently cleaned up some of my fiber stash. In addition to all of the bins in Chez Wicca, and my storage cabinet in the den, I also had a set of plastic drawers and a basket, and stuff piled up on top of the drawers. I decided to clean that out a bit. There were a *lot* of small bits and blobs and samples of fiber. I swear, Scout's honor, that when I stuff a sample of fiber into a baggie that I stick information in there with it - but a lot of this stuff was unlabeled. And a lot of it was small samples, a quarter ounce or so. I gathered them all up, went down to Chez Wicca, and carded it all together. So there's various wools, quite a bit of alpaca, some silk, some bamboo. A lot of dark natural colors, with copper and green bamboo and some other greens and blues and orange (I opted to leave out any bright reds). To add to the fun, I'm spinning on my great wheel, which I have not used in years. I had forgotten how fast and graceful it is.
And I'm still working on the Eternal Corriedale Fleece. I'll have to see if I still have the date - it's one that I got off of FB, the "Dirty Fleece" page, a whole large fleece for $20. Usually you get what you pay for, but that wasn't the case for this one. It's lovely, dark brown and soft. I've likely been working on it for at least three years now - it's my "walk while spinning" fleece. I've been hand combing it, which takes forever but then is lovely to spin. The pile is very slowly getting smaller. The pile of yarn is slowly getting bigger.
And yesterday I took the time to give my Jenkins wheel a good cleaning and rubdown with Howard's feed and wax.
To be continued . . .
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