Taking off!

And this is what I’ll be working on:

Plain stockinette sock in Vesper Sock Yarn (June Sock Club installment) in Lovely Lollopop Sky. Note that it’s a 4 color stripe not the usual 3! I call these my clown socks as the colors are just so bright! I would like to try an afterthought heel with these, wish me luck!

When I first got this yarn, Madelinetosh Sock in Chamomile, I knew they were destined to become Marigold Socks by Pamela Wynne. The pattern repeat is a lot of fun and I can’t stop!

And since I’m casting on all these new socks I had to finish at least one pair of socks, so I picked the Tipsy Socks in sport weight yarn! The yarn is Sleeping Dragon in Mossy Frog. I should have those done in no time!

We’re taking off tomorrow for the Adirondacks and will be back next weekend. I don’t think I’ll have any internet access during the week though. So I hope to get lots of knitting done, and, if I can fit my spinning wheel in the car, some spinning too!

See  you next week!

Spinning Monday’s back!

Last Sunday or maybe the Sunday before that I had this sudden urge to spin something. It had been quite a few months since I’d last spun anything so it was nice to sit down at my wheel again.

I went through my spinning stash and decided to try one of the Crown Mountain Farms pencil rovings that I purchased last April.

I picked the Spring Blooms colorway

and started spinning.

I try to spin a bit every day or every other day. I haven’t weighed the ball of roving yet so I am not sure how much I’ve done so far. But this is what it looks like, or rather what it looked like a few days ago.

I think that I will just spin it into a 2-ply, and with 8oz to begin with should have a pretty good size skein when I’m done.

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I’ve also done some knitting; I finished my Noro Silk Garden Sock cowl, I finally finished my first Celebrations socks and am a few rows away from finishing my second Noro Kureyon sock. You can expect a FO post pretty soon! For those interested in sewing I’ve also finish my doll-size quilt and made great progress on my pinwheel quilt, so maybe another sewing post soon.

Great swap and contest results!

A couple of months ago, Keri from Knitty Gritty Thoughts and I decided to have our own little swap. I had been admiring her battlets in her etsy shop and I offered to make her one of my box bag for some of her spinning battlets.

We both send each other’s package last Monday and both received ours on Friday. I think I got the best end of the deal… Look at all the goodies she sent me!

There’s some fiber there, a cute notebook with and Eiffel tower key chain, the cutest fabric fat quarter and some of her awesome Spinning Project Cards.

Here’s a close up on the fiber she sent me:

4.3 oz of A Little Dotty on the left and 3.6 oz of Woodins on the right

The fabric has cute sheep, ducks and hedgehogs on it… I’ll have to find a pattern worthy of this fabric!

Make sure to check out her etsy shop, she dyes great roving and makes beautiful spinning battlets. She also sells cute little project bags although she has none in stock now. Thank you Keri, what an awesome swap!

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And now for the contest!

It’s taken me the longest time to finally pick a winner. I had 45 entries with a choice of over 100 possible names, you guys have an awesome imagination! I quickly narrowed my choices to my 5 favorites, but then it got really hard and it’s the reason why it took me so long. Last night I finally narrowed it down to 3 names that I really liked and I got rid of one only because it’s already an online store’s name.

Here were the final 3 contenders:

Atelier Champignon by Greely

Pink Mushroom suggested in some form by Maryse, Heidi and Miss T

Stitching Mushroom suggested by Sidney

At that point I decided to let the random generator make the choice for me… And the winner is Sidney with “Stitching Mushroom”! Sidney, I will be sending you an email shortly so make sure to check your spam mail if you don’t see anything from me!

Thank you very much to everyone who participated and for all your wonderful suggestions!

Random Wednesday with an S

Stash Enhancing

This is some Kauni Effektgarn 8/2 that I bought at Tricolaine, Carouge when I was in Geneva 2 weeks ago. Annelis, the owner is a wonderful person. I met her 2 years ago when I was on vacation there and had the chance to be a be able to spend a couple afternoons knitting with her. You can see a picture of her holding my Kureyon sock if you click here (make sure to look at her gorgeous sweater – I’ll have to ask her what the pattern is). I don’t know yet what I’ll be doing with the Kauni yarn, probably some lace when I have time for that sort of thing. In the mean time it will just grace my stash with their beauty. (The skein on the right has stripes of brown, blues and burgundies like this.)

Spinning accessories

I’ve finally purchased a tensioned lazy-kate and a larger niddy-noddy for myself. The lazy-kate was ordered for me by Debbie from Iron Horse Farm and I bought the niddy-noddy from Mind’s Eye Yarns at their booth at the Gore Place sheepshearing festival in Waltham, MA back in April.

Sewing project underway

I finally cut up my pattern pieces for the Frenchy Bag. This was back on Sunday and I haven’t had a chance to do more. I really wanted to have finished this week but I don’t know that it’s going to happen.

Special Swap Sweet Treats

I received yesterday my Special Swap Sweet Treats swap package from Yarn Yenta. She sent me an assortment of fun goodies including a muffin mix, cute patterns for felted toy animals, a chibi and a tape measure. I’d been wanting a chibi for a while now and now I have my own!

Socks in progress

On the left you will notice my Noro Kureyon Sock. It’s knitting up fairly well. The yarn is rough and has uneven spots here and there but I’m not disliking the process at all. There was a break in the stripe continuation mid-heel and at first I just knit it like that. Then, after having started the leg I just ripped it all out and decided to keep the striping sequence and split-splice the yarn together. This is the sock that I will be bringing on my trip to TNNA tomorrow. Donna and I are driving out to Columbus, OH for the show. We’ll both be driving so there will be time for some knitting. I’m really excited about going to the show, I think that it will be crazy but super interesting. We’ll be stopping here and there at some yarn shops so if you know of any in the area, make sure to let me know! I’ll be back Tuesday with details about the trip! The sock on the right is a Rococo sock by Knitspot knit in O-Wool Classic 2-ply. I only have 8 rows left to knit and then I can bind off. The pattern is very fun and interesting without being difficult. I love how the sock looks and I’m looking forward to having a pair.

So this is what’s going on at Knitting In Pink’s. I hope that once all these trips are over that I’ll have a bit more time for crafting and blogging and will be able to post more often.

Talk to you next week!

 

Spinning Monday

Over the weekend I had time to spin the other half of the Iron Horse Farm roving I posted about last Monday. I also made sure to ply it and skein it so I could have some photos for today.

The roving didn’t come with a name so I asked DH if he could name it for me. He picked the name: The North Side of the Tree because it the yarn looks like moss. I liked the name so it stuck!

I found out more details about how the roving was made. It is made of long strips of 3 different colors that were carded together to make one strip. The first half of the roving I spun as is, leaving the 3 colors together. The second half I tore the 3 colors apart and spun one color after the other. That way I would have a subtle striping effect if and when I knit it.

I didn’t split the roving in two really well so my first half ended up being quite bigger than the second half. So I ended up with only 150yds of a fingering/dk weight yarn.

My friend Debbie from Iron Horse Farm told me to make sure to not overtwist it because the yarn would feel like rope if I did. So I tried to keep the twist to a minimum and I think it came out pretty nice.

The yarn still needs a soak but I didn’t want to wait! I’ll practice my Navajo-plying on the rest of the single but I’ll have to wait a bit for that.

I’m not sure when I’ll next get to spin because the next several weeks are going to be very crazy with my new job and two big trips, so maybe my next Spinning Monday will be in June!

Spinning Monday is back!

Yes, I have been spinning again! I’ve decided that with all my new crafty interests, I’d have to make time for all of them, including spinning. So my new plan is that every weekday I’ll work on a different craft and last Friday was spinning day.

I’m not sure what made me chose this as the roving of the day,

Maybe because it’s the last roving I bought, I don’t know. This roving is 70% Shetland, 30% Mohair from the Iron Horse Farm. This roving doesn’t have the colors in sections like other rovings I’ve worked with. Instead, it’s like the 3 main colors were blended together. You can see it a little better in this picture.

As I was spinning this I realized that the ply I was getting was mostly dark green with a few yellow spots here and there. I considered Navajo-plying it but there isn’t enough color definition to make it worth while. So instead I’ll just 2-ply it.

The resulting yarn will be a nice deep green, I’m looking forward to seeing this! And hopefully I’ll be able to take flashless pictures next time.

Spinning Monday

A couple of weeks ago i had the chance to be taught Navajo plying by Debbie from the Iron Horse Farm. One evening, blogless Danielle (Ravelry link) and myself went to her house with our wheels and after about an hour we had it down!

I had a lot of trouble with the single I brought with as it kept on breaking and I couldn’t get going with the plying. Debbie lent me some of her roving that she’d spun so that I could still practice.

At first I didn’t really pay attention to how the colors were working out but after a while I attempted to keep the colors together although without much success.

Debbie suggested I respin my single to add some twist into it and hopefully prevent it from breaking so I did that the next day. As it is best if the single rests for a couple of weeks before Navajo-plying I waited until this weekend to try again.

My single was so full of twist that it was a bit difficult to control and I ended up having little squigglies here and there sticking out of my 3-ply. But I was able to ply it entirely and got a good practice out of it. My single was a solid color so I didn’t get to practice keeping the colors together. But I’ll make sure to pick a multicolor roving next time I do this!

I don’t know when I’ll start spinning regularly again as my eyes and fingers are more attracted to my sewing machine than my spinning wheel but I’m sure the bug will bite me again some day!

Move along, there’s no knitting to see here!

Yup! No knitting at all! Are you surprised? Actually, there has been lots of knitting, but you wont see it today! : )

Coming back from Rhinebeck and the purchase of beautiful fibers led me to cleaning out some of my bobbins.

I still had some Ashland Bay Trading Co. colonial combed wool top on a bobbin, Still River Mill Mystery Bump on another and 100% merino top from From Mielke’s Farm Fiber Arts on yet another bobbin.

I decided to 2 ply together the Ashland Bay and the Still River Mill and this is what I got

I also plied together leftover Ashland Bay with the Mielke’s Farm

I got about 172 yds of a lace to fingering weight yarn out of the top skein and about 98 yds of fingering to DK out of the bottom skein.

Yesterday I also did something unusual. I got my sewing machine out. I’d been wanting to try sewing again and decided to make myself an Artsy Clutch from the book Bend the Rules Sewing. To practice, I used some stash fabric and this is what I came up with

The finished product is far from perfect but it was fun to do and it is quite usable even if it is on the small size. The next one I do I’ll up the sizing to double the finished size I think. I also didn’t use any facing as I really wanted to make it easy for the first time around. But next time for sure. I definitely see more sewing in my future!

I’ll have some knitting content in my next post..

Spinning

I finished spinning the Hello Yarn BFL in Slideshow over the weekend and on Sunday morning I plyed/plied? the two bobbins together.

I wanted to take pictures of the singles but I forgot, so here’s a shot of it on the bobbin after plying.

The yarn is mostly red with short areas of color; green and grey mostly. I’m getting better at getting an evenly spun single, although it is far from perfect yet!

This time I got about 240 yds out of 4oz so definitely enough to make something.

I plyed together some of the Aqua and Brown and some of the Slideshow that I had leftover and this is what it looks like:

There’s about 16 yds of this gorgeous aqua and red combo. I really love it! I need to find some rovings in those colors and ply them together. That would be really pretty.

Yesterday evening I started working on the Still River Mill Mystery Bump that I got at the Connecticut Wool and Sheep festival. It’s got Merino in it (I think) so I was afraid that I would have a hard time at it. But whatever else is with the Merino compensates. The single is very hairy and not very soft. So I’m not sure what I could do with the yarn I’ll get from it. Any suggestions? I’m thinking that maybe I should ply it with a solid BFL, that might soften up the yarn and tame the crazy color changes of the Mystery Bump.

I’m really enjoying spinning and am really glad I did get a wheel. Now I’m thinking of buying a wheel I can travel with easily and owning another wheel with bigger bobbins…

Knitting content in a couple of days.

My first spinning wheel

Let me introduce to you the new member of the family, my new spinning wheel:

There she is, still at the spinnery. I’m going to need help finding a name for her. Fricke is a name difficult to alter in a pretty way so I’ll take all the help I can get! Maybe I’ll even turn that into a contest… The best name wins something cool and fibery?

I bought my wheel from Twist of Fate Spinnery . They are located in Portland Connecticut.

These are the two owners of the small company. The guy on the right just didn’t want his picture taken… Was afraid that his picture might end up on some blog or something! Lol! I did confirm to him that the picture would, indeed, end up on my blog.

I didn’t get a chance that first evening to spin on the wheel, but the next day I dug into the 8oz Romney that they gave me and started spinning away. You can see the results of my first few bobbins here and here.

Here I am showing off my 3rd and 4th bobbins all plied up together.

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

I’ve spun up two more bobbins to practice plying some more. Also I ordered the book “Teach Yourself VISUALLY Handspinning”. Since I am teaching myself how to spin, I hope that this book will be a great help. I’ve also ordered some Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farm for when I’m a bit better. Also, I still need to buy a niddy noddy (I used a hanger to skein the yarn you see above). I’ve really been enjoying my spinning time so far. It hurts my back though, so if you have suggestions as to how I should be sitting or what kind of chair I should be using I will gladly hear them.

More knitting content in a couple of days…