Let it snow... let it snow...

Well it appears winter has decided to overtake fall this year. (We had a very warm summer september and now it's snowing.)


Luckily, a box of alpaca yarn from Willowind Alpacas (bless their woolly hearts!) arrived earlier this week. I'm knitting them some hats and I decided to try out my mitten recipe with alpaca instead of wool.


I've heard mixed reviews about alpaca's ability to felt, so I swatched:

It felts beautifully. So soft and dense!
(the yarn is close to sport weight so I'm doubling it. Aren't the natural colours lovely?)


And then I cast on!

I love knitting mittens, and the weather really makes me want to. (Did I mention the snow?!) And these mitts are going to be WARM baby! I tested out my alpaca hat in the blustery weather and it is toasty! (It even does a better job at cutting the wind than some of the other hats I've knit from wool!)

While I'm talking about mittens, last year I knit some mittens for the Mitten Tree at my church (for inner city kids). This year I'm asking around to see if other knitters want to knit some mittens for kids too. I even have a pattern that I put together so if you are in the winnipeg area and would like to knit some mittens, post in the comments or email me: alleyDOTdanielsenATgmailDOTcom and I'll send you the pdf.

Now I think I need a cuppa tea...

Spinning the stress away...

Despite the fact that I'm in school, I'm still really excited about my fibre hobby. When I mentionned to my dad that I'd like to learn how to spin, he said he might be able to hook me up with a wheel. Well he did. :) A friend of his didn't want her wheel anymore and is GIVING it to me! (Thanks Carol!!!) She was even kind enough to to include some black wool :)

I'm can't wait to dive deep into the fibre world. :)

I'm also ordering a spindle from woolly designs (the "comets" one pictured here) to gain a feel for the fibre before I learn how to use the wheel, which seems a little more complicated.

I think it will really help me de-stress from my school work which is fairly heavy this term...

Kool-aid

So back in July (ok I'm still catching up!) my woolly bullies did a kool-aid dyeing workshop. It was fan-friggin-tastic. We each got some undyed sock yarn (Valley yarns Franklin in a large cone from WEBS) I got two socks worth and dyed one there and one later that week.

Most of the gals did the self-striping thing:


which basically involves making a really really long skein, giving it a bath in vinegar and then dipping different sections into jars with high concentrations of koolaid (April also used wiltons cake icing colouring- bottom photo) and waitin for the dye to be soaked up into the yarn.

I decided to be different and not do stripes on my first skein:


So I put the yarn into my crock pot, with some water (note: too much water=white spots) and poured the kool aid (3 packets grape, 2 packets strawberry lemonade+1 grape and 2 packets ice blue+1 grape) onto different sections of the yarn. I turned out looking... um... interesting in the ball.



I haven't knit it up yet. In retrospect I should have re-dyed some spots... we'll see how it looks knitted up.

Then a few days later I tried the striped method, not measuring or anything (yup. that's how I roll.) I used: ice blue, ice blue + grape and ice blue + lemon lime.



I was pretty happy with the result. But not nearly as happy as when I started to knit it up. I found this sock pattern: Circle Socks.


The stripes work so perfectly with the pattern, I can't even believe it. Seriously. Remember, I didn't measure the yarn or plan the stripes at all! I love it when this happens... :)

PS We visited two more alpaca farms (Circle O and Burton Alpacas)! OMG i love baby alpacas...

Where did summer go??

Wow. I guess the blog took a back seat this summer. I work outdoors doing biological field work (studying lizards) and I spend most of the summer living at a provincial park where there was only dial up. I did lots of knitting though! I even finished my boxleaf wrap. (will post photos. I promise!)

I wore it to Grandma and Grandpa's 60th wedding anniversary. It was a lovely family gathering and the shawl was lovely too. Silk... drapey.... long enough to wrap around a couple times.

This summer my knitting has taken on a new depth. My hubby is now working on a dairy farm and this has inspired us. We would like our long term goals (think 5-10 year plan) to include moving out of the city and having a small acreage with some animals. Alpacas are definitely on my list. The thought of spinning yarn from animals raised excites me so much! We visited the Willow Wind Alpaca farm and got a tour.

They gave me a "sample" of their yarn and I knit this:


I fell in love with those critters immediately. The thing is they're easy to look after! A perfect way to start out for a city girl turned country girl.

On thing though... if I'm going to have all that fibre... I should really learn how to spin...

Maybe a drop spindle from Tracy at WoollyDesigns? Stay tuned...

P.S. I'm going back to school this fall... so if my posting is more sporadic than usual, that's why...

The answer is NO

I've learned a little something about myself as a knitter. I'm not a monogamous knitter. I can't handle working on one project only. There is a very good reason for this. I like to complicated things (like lace, cables etc) but sometimes I crave a plain sock.

You know those days when you are just not with it? And the thought of doing something complex makes your brain hurt? On those days it's not a good idea to knit lace, you end up making mistakes and it goes slowly. Then there is car knitting. I discovered yesterday that knitting lace in the backseat of a stuffy car when you are a bit tired is NOT a good idea. I'm so glad my friend Esther had a dish cloth that I could knit on instead! Next time I'll bring a sock!

(as an aside we went to the narcisse snake dens :) as the snakes come out of hibernation, they form what's called mating balls. Looks kind of like tangled yarn doesn't it?)



So this is why I'm not going to finish my shawl in time... Maybe I'll have it done in time for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary in August...

Lace Marathon

So I came up with this brilliant idea to knit the Boxleaf Wrap from knitspot to wear to my friend's wedding. I don't have any "dressy" knits and my wardrobe of dressy clothes is looking a little shabby.

That sounds like a plan, you say. When is wedding? July? August? That would give me plenty of time!

Nope.

May 23, 2009.

I've never given myself a knitting deadline before... I feel a little like the Yarn Harlot at Christmas. But I usually do my Christmas knitting well in advance.

Here's the break down:

Whole Shawl= 20 pattern repeats
One repeat= 20 rows (every other row is a purl), 75 stitches across
Estimated time to knit one 20 row repeat=2hrs
Repeats completed= 3
Start date= April 30.
Deadline= May 22 to allow blocking time.
So...


Basically I need to knit for 2 hrs per day to complete one repeat per day, every day and I would finish by the 19th. Yeah.... I'd better go knit some more...

Think I can do it?

Coriolis effect...

So when I got New Pathways in Sock Knitting last winter, I skipped the little sky beginner sock and dove straight into the little coriolis. I loved it. It's such a unique way to make a sock. Then I read all about the fit issues people had with the "big" coriolis and waited a bit to try it, out of fear. I don't usually get scared off by a challenge in knitting (example: my first cable project was a celtic braid).

I experimented with the other sock architectures and found my groove (read: figured out that I was measuring my midfoot as half an inch bigger than it really was, therefore making all my socks half an inch too big around...miserable). I just bought some Mirasol Chirapa and it told me it wanted to be a coriolis, with a nice wide band. I finished the first sock in less than a week. I'm addicted, I love love love this pattern and it's fitting like, well, a sock :) super cozy!


In fact I'm thinking of ripping another sock (it's a little small) and making it into a coriolis too! :) maybe with yarn over increases to make "bubbles"?

I don't know why I waited so long...