The Festival of Souls

This time of year has so many cool holidays/traditions that merge whether mainstream religion likes it or not. We have the Pagan All Hallows Eve that comes from the Isles of Great Britain; followed by the celebration of All Saints Day where we celebrate the faithful saints and martyrs, known or unknown; and then the Day of the Dead more of a Hispanic tradition that celebrates those ancestors that have passed with food and festivals or All Souls Day for the rest of the world where we celebrate the souls who have passed during the past year and to send them on to their eternal destination.

Also at this time in the past, were celebrations of the Harvest Year and hope that it had been a good one since this is what sustained everyone through the winter months. With our current shipping process this is not as big a deal as in our ancestors time but is still worth celebrating and giving Thanks.

Hope everyone has a fun time celebrating!

Link to recipes and traditions for Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos)

Pattern Knitting

The first weekend in October I went on a retreat with other knitters from our area. The topic Freedom to Knit or the basics on how to write a knitting pattern that fits you. After looking at the straight knit sweater we moved on to cables and stitch patterns. Our final was to come up with an idea for a sweater to knit for ourselves.

With that in mind I created the above swatch to get gauge and see if I would like the pattern. The yarn is Reynolds Top Seed Cotton (gauge 5st = 1” size US 5) which was bought for the Surplice sweater project because the Nashua Ecologie Cotton (gauge 5st = 1” size US 5) didn’t have any real colors that swayed me. However, after swatching up the yarn I was never able to even come close to the stated gauge and since it would have been a major effort to redesign the original pattern with the lace I finally broke down and bought the Ecologie in Chestnut (on Sale) to make the sweater. With the Ecologie I was able to make gauge with no problem. At the retreat I talked to several others who bought the Reynolds yarn and they had the exact same problem I did so unless you want an extremely flimsy piece of fabric this seems like an unrealistic gauge for this yarn, so swatch it.

Since I didn’t use this for my sweater project I now have around 8-9 skeins of this yarn to do something with and so this seemed like a good starting point for making a shell to wear next summer. The lace pattern is horseshoe and I will probably knit that to around the waist with decreases, then do straight stitches up with a v-neck front, and then do some sort of simple 7-stitch lace edging that won’t curl. Gauge is 5.5st x 9st = 1” on size US 4 needles for straight stitch and 1 5/8-inch (w) x 2.25-inch (h) for the 10 stitch pattern. Cast on date will be around March-April 2008. Yes I am already planning my knitting queue for next year. :)

What have I been up to...

Since mid-August I have been working on the Veil of Isis VoI, a simple stitch pattern that Andrea at BadCatDesigns took and created a shawl out of. So far I have finished almost 4 rounds and am still on the first ball of Malbrigo (~470 yds per skein). Only 1 round to go to the get to the border charts. This probably would have been done already if I weren't also working on...

Nina's Ann Arbor Shawl (NAAS). Another involved project with over 450+ stitches being worked was started in July. It is to be worked for 5 rounds or to 24". Well since I am done with 5 rounds and still WAY short of 24" it looks like 4 more rounds to hit that magic number and a decline in my interest level. This is a Christmas present for one of my nieces so I had better get on it.

Between the two shawls, I find the VoI to be more portable, more interesting to knit and at this point I don't really need to consult the pattern to knit it so it can be taken to knit night and worked on while conversing with others. The beading rows go a little more slowly, but otherwise, I can generally still knock out 5-6 rows in a 2.5 hour period in the evening. NAAS requires the pattern and some concentration for the beginning three 21-27 stitch pattern (depends on what row as to how many stitches are involved) before I can take off knitting. It also has a lot of different knit 3 together that I find slow me down more than a knit two. In an evening I can generally get 2 rows done in two hours. On the beginning and ending rows I can knock out 4. At this point I really need to be knitting 2 rows a night for 20 days so I can get this done before Thanksgiving, however I suspect VOI will be finished long before NAAS.

What's in my spinning queue...Some BFL (Hollyhocks Jubilee) from Lynne Vogel and some more BFL (Jewel) from C*eye*ber Fiber. Guess we'll see how much this spins up and then to decide what to make of it. :)

Spin, Spun, Ply

This past weekend the local spinning group met out at Little Barn fibers. While there we enjoyed socializing and the cool fiber treats that were distributed to all that were in attendance. You know free wools that had been processed as we were spinning to let us see if there was anything we couldn't do without. Since I spindle spin only at this point and all spindles were heavy with other fibers, I set the nice nuggets aside to spin later.

Happily I finished spinning the 16ozs of Shetland wool that I received with the 3 oz Louet spindle for the beginning spinning class that I took in August. In the class I spun 50 yards on the spindle and another 50+ on a Majacraft wheel. Then I plied the 50 yards with the Majacraft. After this class I spun another 300 yards on my spindle. Finally, finishing this weekend.

Another spindle spinner suggested using toilet rolls to hold the spun fiber, since I didn't have access to a ball winder. So with a shoe box, dowel rod, and two plumbing washers I have a place to hold the toilet rolls while I two-plied with the spindle.

On one roll I had quite a bit less than on the final roll that I spun. So I took some of the spun fiber I had left from my Majacraft spin and spit spliced it to the shorter single ply. From here I ended up with 112 yards and another 76yards left on the roll. I skeined the just plied yarn on my new niddy-noddy from Little Barn and tied it. Then I took both ends of the single ply and rolled it onto another paper roll so that I could put it back in the box and plied it for 38 yards. When I was done I skeined this yarn and did the final wash to set the yarn of both plied skeins.

And ta-da we have three skeins of Shetland ready to dye. 200 yards total. Can you tell which one was my first skein and which was spun last?

After all this work it was time for a nap. :)

Yesterday I finished spinning a sample bag of alpaca, so now it's time to ply this with the Louet and I will have both my spindles ready to go again.