Fiber Arts & Furry Critters

Christmas season!

OK, now it feels like Christmas is coming!  I'm making good progress on the purple cabled sweater for my great-niece (grand-niece?  DH's niece's daughter...).  It's the "Lavanda" pattern by Elena Nodel.  I'm probably about half done.  I still have the black hoodie to finish, and hope to have time to do a couple of "Pirates" hats and one other toddler cardigan.

The big news, though, is that today I ordered my "Big Tom" motorized drum carder from Fancy Kitty!  I have to thank my wonderful DH for coming up with a most awesome gift idea!  Can't wait til it arrives, even if I will have to make myself wait for Christmas knitting to be finished before I play with it!

This is the first half of Lavanda - still have about 1/3 of the body left to go (and the pockets) as well as the hood and the sleeves.  I love how the Patons Merino works up, though!

New Arrivals

Knitting continues apace.  Right now, besides the Clapotis for myself that was interrupted for Christmas knitting, I have one more baby sweater on the needles (in black Wool-Ease), a child's sweater in progress in purple Paton's Classic Merino, and socks (one half-done so far) for a friend at church.  I also have a hat started - the "We Call Them Pirates" pattern - and one other children's sweater I'd like to make.  We'll see what gets done before Christmas!  I finished the body of the Wool-Ease cardi.  It's a 12-month size, and just needs sleeves and the hood (and buttonband).  My focus will be the purple sweater; everything else will be extra.

Meanwhile, a couple of new residents arrived yesterday.

Buffy is on the left, Cookie is on the right.  On the other side of the fence are the two Jacob wethers, Daniel & Jack.  Cookie is 7 years old - rather elderly for a sheep, but she is a Corriedale/Shetland cross, and Corriedale, from my research, tend to be a little more long-lived than other breeds.  Buffy is her 3-year-old daughter, again crossed to a Corriedale (so 3/4 Corrie, 1/4 Shetland).  Both of them have been bred to a colored Corriedale ram, for April lambs, God willing.  Both have lambed before, and have only had singles.  Despite the poor coloring in the picture, they are shades of gray.  Buffy has a gorgeous variegated fleece.  They are a little bigger than the Jacobs, but not huge.  I am looking forward to spinning those fleeces next year!  (The Jacob boys are growing some wonderful spinning wool for me, too!)

Just a little obsessive...

Still knitting!  This morning I finished a baby sweater from the Baby Sophisticate pattern, which I got for free on Ravelry.  This one took me about two days.  All the ends are sewn in, and I have buttons for it, although I haven't attached them yet.  I could have finished it yesterday, but there were two church services so it didn't get finished until this morning.

Next up is the Toddler Raglan Hoodie.  This was another freebie pattern found on Ravelry.  I started it this morning with the intention of using up the rest of the green Jelly Beenz yarn, but I'm convinced I wouldn't have enough of that yarn to do the whole sweater.  I don't have anything that would work for the yoke stripe, either - I have no idea what else would look good with this green, in the amount required for the large contrast yoke, without looking garish.

While trying to find some yarn to work for the yoke, I came across a long-ago abandoned sweater.  This was something I started for DH out of Wool-Ease "Sprinkles" held double, probably 10 or 12 years ago.  I disassembled the whole thing, separating it into two piles as I went, and re-wound it on my ball winder.  I ended up with 29.2 ounces - over 9 skeins' worth of yarn!  So I started the Toddler Raglan Hoodie over in this yarn instead.  I certainly have enough of it!  It's the right weight for the pattern, too, even though Wool-Ease tends to be on the light side of worsted weight.

Prolonged knitting time is being enhanced by watching episodes of Star Trek: DS-9 on Netflix!  I'm also spending lots of time reading everyone's Ravelry write-ups on the patterns I'm doing (and planning on doing in the near future), and exploring options for new patterns.  I have a couple more children's sweaters I'd like to get done before Christmas, but I'd also like to weave some towels...  and there's also those corn bags I need to sew up and get mailed.

In any case, being too busy here is far more compelling than braving the Black Friday sales at the stores! :D

More yarn

I finished washing both parts of that fantastic CVM fleece, but haven't done anything since.  I think the first two fleeces (small CVM and big Jacob - or whatever the two-color one is) are finally dry, and I plan to bag them in big Ziplocs and add them to my fiber closet.  The big CVM fleece still needs probably another day.  I have two more raw fleeces that need to be washed - one is dark brown and quite small, and the other is a gray one I purchased from Georgia Wolterbeek in Rindge, NH in 2001!  That one is big, and heavy.  It may need a very hot soak before I wash it at all, and I'm pretty sure it's going to have to be washed in two parts.

DH has offered to buy me a motorized drum carder for Christmas.  I've decided, after comparing what I think are all of the motorized drum carders on the market, to get a Fancy Kitty "Big Tom."  I'm looking forward to making wool/alpaca/angora blends!  I've also been watching some videos on getting a batt off the drum carder in a roving form (using a diz).

Other than that I've been knitting.  I seem to have landed full force in the middle of Christmas knitting.  I started and finished the (hopefully) size 3 top-down toddler sweater.  It still needs buttons, but all seams are sewn, and ends run in.

As it turns out, I had decided to make the other grand-niece a sweater in something closer to a size 6 or so.  I think she's 3 now, and I want to make sure I make something that will fit for a while.  The green Jelly Beenz yarn I got at the yarn crawl, though, won't be enough to make a size 6, so that is being re-routed.  I found a pattern on Ravelry called "Lavenda" that I really like, and got some dark purple Patons wool from the basement that will be sufficient for that sweater.  Can't seem to find a picture or pattern reference outside of Ravelry, so that will have to wait until I have my own picture to post.

In the meantime, the green Jelly Beenz may become two sweaters.  I've started with a 6-12 month size baby sweater called "Baby Sophisticate" (another freebie on Ravelry) and I'm about half done, just in one day.  There is a second pattern I'm interested in, a toddler "hoodie" cardigan, if this first baby sweater doesn't use more than two skeins of this green.  We'll see how it goes.  I'll get a few Christmas gifts done while the knitting fire is burning, anyway!

FiberArts Galore - and more Furry Critters

Last week I made a trip to Rumney, NH and purchased two ewes to join my small spinner's flock.  Some time in the next week or two I'll go pick them up, after they've been bred.  Cookie is a 7 year old dark gray Shetland/Corriedale cross ewe, and Buffy is her 3 year old daughter (3/4 Corriedale) with a fantastic variegated fleece.  Both will be bred to a black Corriedale ram.  We should have lambs in April!

I have been busy with Christmas projects this week.  I've had a tremendous case of start-itis, so I thought I'd get going on gifts.

The Berga Ullman loom has a waffle-weave warp on it that's been sitting for months.  I was unhappy with the shed on the loom, and very unhappy about breaking warp threads.  One thing I've considered for some time is replacing the string heddles with Texsolv ones.  It occurs to me that replacing them with slightly shorter heddles might improve the shed, too.  This is a countermarche loom, which means each treadle will pull some shafts up, and the rest of the shafts down. 

Today my heddles arrived.  I ordered them from The Woolery on Monday.  Great service, and free shipping!

While waiting for the heddles to arrive I did start winding a warp to go on the Harrisville 4-harness jack loom.  That one will be orange-and-white log cabin towels.  I got about 80 threads done, of a 440-thread, 10-yard warp.

I've also been washing fleeces this week.  So far I've washed a small amount of a CVM fleece (I think that one was the neck fleece and "seconds" as it's a little uneven in length and on the short side, but gorgeous colors), and an incredible black and white fleece with a great staple length.

I was thinking this may be a Jacob fleece, but I'm not certain; there was a tag in the bag that said "Elderberry", but nothing else.  It has quite a silky handle to it.  The locks are actually variegated, though, with a really dark black on one end (very little brown) and white on the butt ends - as if the sheep was changing color or going gray.  Interesting.

Today I washed a CVM fleece.  Great crimp, great staple length, great color!

It was big enough that I had to split it in half to wash it in the machine.  I had to get a "before-and-after" picture of this once I had the first half out of the washing machine.  It got much lighter, showing off the gray, and very fluffy once washed.

This is a close-up, showing the crimp in this fleece.  There are a few sections with darker brown coloring, too.

I would so dearly love to find a CVM ewe or wether to join my growing little spinner's flock!

I went through the basement to see if I could find any other unwashed fleeces.  I found two.  One is a small amount of unidentified dark brown fleece, and the other is a fleece in shades of gray that I bought in Rindge, NH in 2001.  About time that one got washed, I think!

I'm also working on a couple of baby sweaters.  I'm doing one in a DK weight yarn in pastels (in my Ravelry queue, for those on Rav) in a child's size 3.  This one is being done top-down.  The yarn and pattern were acquired during the North Shore Yarn Crawl in Massachusetts last March.  I have one other child's sweater to knit after that, with yarn & pattern bought during the same event.  The current sweater has only taken me 3 days so far, and might get finished up tomorrow.  This one, the child's sweater, and a pair of purple variegated socks are all slated for Christmas gifts, as well as something from the loom and possibly a few corn heating bags.