The Knitting Pirate

While the kittens get free run of most of the house, my knitting has been banished to my room upstairs. I keep the door shut so there won’t be any curious paws and claws tearing up my stuff, but as a result it’s very stuffy in there… so I think I’ll be knitting in the living room again, and trying to train them to leave my yarn alone. Aubrey is putting on a good posture of innocence here, but I’m not fooled for an instant. She noses her way into everything you want to do.

(I’m not complaining about this too much as it’s totally adorable, but every once in a while I’d like to write an email without an insistant mewing at my feet. Mama, I can’t reach you! Mama, pay attention to me! Mama, I want petting!)

Unlike his sister, Floyd is not nearly as good at looking innocent. Most of the time I just see a little black silhouette of a kitten trotting around the house intent on mischief. If something moves, it belongs to Floyd. If something isn’t moving, it can be poked until it does. If it can be upended, knocked over or spilled, Floyd’s there to take care of it. I’m betting he’s the one who will cause the most trouble with knitting.

Fortunately, kittens sleep about 18 hours a day, so I should be able to find some time to knit when they’re passed out in a corner somewhere.

While my friends and neighbors at Pennsic said that I’d made amazing progress on Mom’s sock, I’m actually a little disappointed. I made it past the heel and through the gusset decreases, but I’d hoped to get the entire first sock finished while I was there. It was really just too hot to knit much of the time, and there were other things going on, too. That said, it’s coming out beautifully. There’s a little bit of pooling around the gusset, but I expected that. I love this yarn just as much as the first time I used it. I’m using almost exactly the same pattern; the only change I made was to take out four stitches, because Mom’s feet are just a little bit smaller.

My Pennsic-friend Alaric makes wood and stone drop spindles, although he himself doesn’t spin. Last year I bought one from him to give to Gaerwen, another SCA friend, who was receiving an award for her skills in spinning and natural dyeing. This year I came home with a twelve inch long, 25 gram, cherry spindle of my own. He had some which were all wood, and some with stone whorls, and some with double stone whorls that could be swapped in and out to get different weights. Every time I see him, I tell him to get an Etsy shop set up and then to advertise on Ravelry!

I really liked this particular spindle of the ones he had, and it fits well into my collection – now I have a 14g (from the Spanish Peacock) for really fine stuff, this 25g for medium, and a 34g spindle (the Cascade Little Si) for slightly heavier yarn. I generally like spinning at the wheel a lot better than using a drop spindle, but there are times when spindles are convenient. They’re certainly lighter to carry and take up less space, but also I’ve found that it’s easier to teach new spinners on a spindle.

Say hello to Floyd (the black one) and Aubrey (the grey-and-white one):

All knitting is hereby banished to the upstairs room until kittens can learn that yarn is not for attacking.

This is the stuff that was mostly done before I went on vacation…

The three skeins of Jacob yarn had been plied during the Tour de Fleece, but I didn’t get to washing it until after vacation. The yarn came out so unexpectedly soft – the darkest one is the softest. I’ve been told that the different colours of wool on a Jacob sheep will actually have different staple lengths, but as I got this fibre already prepped into roving, I didn’t notice. I’m still looking for the perfect colourwork earflap hat pattern for this yarn. The two darker colours are closer in value than I’d like, but I think that can be worked around. I have 104 yards of the darkest colour, and 92 yards each of the medium and white – plenty for a hat!

This is the corriedale from EthnicityGoddess on Etsy. I’d spun and plied this just before the Tour de Fleece began, but again, was lazy about the washing. Now it’s 218 yards of a bouncy three-ply yarn with subtle colours. Pirate-Husband suggested that it would be great for making thick flip-top mittens, and I think I agree with him. But that will be a far-off future project, since I already have so much planned for the near future.

I was incredibly surprised when I found out that I’d won a prize in the Tour de Fleece. Sure, it was a random number generator that chose me, but that doesn’t make it any less cool to have won something! I had my choice of prizes and went for a four ounce blend of fibre I’ve never spun before – BFL/tussah – in a colourway that is about the farthest thing from ‘my colours’ as I could get. It’s called ‘Sherbert and Ernie’ and it’s from Susan’s Spinning Bunny. Thank you so much for donating a prize and making the Tour de Fleece that much more exciting!

Back from vacation with 2/3 of a completed sock. It was too hot to knit, most of the time. More later! :)

Pirate-Husband, the sock, and I are going on vacation; I don’t have any posts queued for while I’m gone, so there’ll be nothing from me for a little while. Be good, knit lots, and I’ll see you in a week and a half!

I decided on Friday afternoon that even though I have unfinished socks on the needles, I really do like starting a new sock project on the first day of vacation. So I got to winding up the yarn for Mom’s socks. The first winding attempt came out too tightly, which always happens to me when I’m unwinding directly from the swift. I rewound it in the opposite direction, but then it came out too loosely. The third time was the charm. Maybe it’s a little tight, but since I’m going to knit with it right away, it doesn’t matter that much. The yarn-cake will lose a lot of tension after the first dozen yards are out of the centre of the ball.

“What is that noise?” Pirate-Husband called up the stairs on Friday night.. “Are you packing? We’re running late!”

I looked at the whirring swift and ball-winder. “Um… I’m… sort of packing! I’m winding yarn. Talk louder, I can’t hear you!”

“You’re winding yarn that’s coming with you, right?”

I yelled back, “It sure is! It’s the blue yarn for Mom’s socks! I just have to wind it up!”

“Well,” he shouted, “if it’s yarn that’s coming with you, that definitely counts as packing!”

Brownie points for Pirate-Husband!

I was winding this Cascade Heritage Paints in the “Isle of Skye” colourway. It’s going to become a pair of ribbed socks that’ll be both birthday and Chanukah presents for Mom (one sock for each gift!) I started knitting on Saturday morning while we were waiting for our campsite boundaries to be finalized, but helping to set up camp meant that I was only able to get about fifteen rounds of the cuff finished before we came home on Sunday afternoon. Besides, it was very hot and I was knitting very slowly.

I didn’t want to forget about the Time Traveler socks, which are about 65% done now, so I brought those with me too. I can switch off socks if I get tired of working with one. There will be plenty of down time in which I can knit, if the weather isn’t too brutal.