Quote of the Day

"Does being quiet mean no crashing and banging, too?" --Little Mouse, about five minutes ago.

Yarny Goodness: Works in Progress

After promising knitting pix months and months ago, and not really delivering, I've finally got some! Okay, first up is the Embossed Leaves socks. The green is actually much deeper in real life--it reminds me of the deep, dark forest. This is Malabrigo sock yarn, and I love it. One sock is finished, and the other is barely begun.



This next one is a shawl called Queen Anne's Lace. I love the pattern, but I'm just not sure about the yarn. Although the individual colours are gorgeous by themselves, it reads as a sort of barfy orange, and this particular vareigated yarn is not thrilling me with this pattern. The yarn is Dream in Color Baby in the Flamingo Pie colourway.




This is the Rippling Rainbow shawl from the book "A Gathering of Lace". It is actually finished now, and was a birthday present for Little Mouse. She adores it, and it turned out so well, I am making another one for me, only I'm using hand-dyed yarns (dyed myself in my crockpot) for the rainbow colours.

Here's my first yarn ever, spun on a Schacht Hi-Lo spindle. I really like spinning--it's very relaxing, and I'm seeing improvement every time I sit down with the spindle. Eventually I'd like to be able to spin lace weight yarn, but as you can see from the picture, I'm not even close!

Here are the hand dyed yarns I'm using for my Rainbow shawl. I tried several times to get a red that I liked, but everything I was able to achieve was either too orange or too pink, so I am using the same red I used in Little Mouse's shawl, which is Knit Picks Palette, in Pimento. I'm also using their Palette yarn in Black for the main part of the shawl.

So that's what I've been up to lately! With all these fun new hobbies, summer is going by really fast (which is a good thing!).

Moving Day

The Chief and I went over to help his mother pack up her last minute stuff in preparation for her move to a new apartment tomorrow. I shall not tell you about how we were only supposed to be helping "get a few things down from high cupboards", and how the "few things" turned out to be the entire contents of her kitchen--the details are still too painful for close scrutiny.

I must, however, report the following conversation between The Chief and his mother, which I heard whilst wrapping her vast collection of china in newspaper and stuffing it in boxes.

Chief: (coming out of the bathroom with a cup full of toothbrushes) So, Ma, how many people actually live here?

Ma: (not quite sure how to take this question) Well, just me, of course.

Chief: So why do you need seven toothbrushes?

Ma: Well, I use a different one every day.

Chief: Why do you do that?

Ma: (completely serious, I kid you not) Because they don't wear out as fast, then.

Chief: (stunned silence)

Me: (from kitchen) *snort* (unsuccessfully suppressing giggles whilst crossing my knees to keep from wetting meself)

Yeah. It was one of those days.

The Spinning Bug

Okay, so this is bad. As if I don't have enough Hobbies That Cost Money. There I was, innocently knitting up a shawl, when the spinning bug crawled up my leg and bit me in the butt. I knew right then and there that I was going to have to get me a drop spindle and have a go. I got The Chief's blessing to spend a bit of his hard-earned cash, hiked up my skirts, and sallied forth to the local yarn shop where I got set up with a drop spindle and some beautiful hand-dyed fibre (which is far too beautiful for my feeble attempts, but we won't go into that now lest I become discouraged).

At any rate, I have made yarn! I have spun and it actually worked. Okay, it's really thick yarn and not the lace-weight of my dreams, but it is yarn!

I do believe I shall have to acquire a spinning wheel.

Which The Chief thought might be cool until he saw how much they cost.

Ah, well, I'll just have to work on him!