Month: May 2010

My Pretties…

But first, that FO!

This has been in the UFO pile long enough. It’s now done, and I can use it. It’s a linen facecloth. I’m not doing the whole Project Details thing on this one. The yarn is Euroflax linen, the pattern is from Knitters’ Stash. Here’s the Rav link for the pattern. This one is the Lacy Vine pattern. The needles I used were 3.75 mm. I probably will make more of these, if only because I have a bunch of this stuff in the stash, all in different colors, of course, so I can’t use it for much else. The Euroflax is sort of stringy and harsh feeling while you knit it, and splits like crazy. It softens up amazingly when you wash it though.

Enough of that. On to the “pretties” of the title. Click on these photos to really get a good look. Try not to drool on your keyboard.

Those are all of my spindles, out for inspection. Well, all of them except the Ashford boat anchor. Oh, OK, I’ll show you that one, too.

That thing weighs over 2 1/2 ounces, compared to less than an ounce for most of the other ones. Next time I get each of them empty, I plan on weighing them and recording it for future reference. Somebody remind me to do that. I usually think about it when it’s close to full and I’m wondering how much fiber is wound on. It would be very handy to know what the empty spindle weighed.

Here’s another photo of the pretty ones. Clickety-click.

From left to right:

1) My latest acquisition, a Greensleeves Damsel Monique. Very lightweight, great for lace. The whorl is redwood burl with purpleheart, and the shaft is mahogany. The fiber is an Abby Batt, in the color Glitterpigeon.

2) Cascade Spindles Mt. St. Helens. This is just a great dependable spinner. The fiber is a merino silk blend, I think it’s from Louet.

3) Bosworth Midi, in Zebrawood. I want a Bossie in every size and wood, really. The fiber is a merino-sparkly blend that I got at the spin-in on Whidbey earlier this year. I’m actually almost done with the plying here, fortunately. I’m not sure how much more I could get on this thing.

4) Another Cascade spindle, this time the Cougar. This one weighs next to nothing and is terrific for lace. The fiber is more Louet, 80/20 merino silk, color Golden Hibiscus.

5) Last but not least, my first Butterfly Girl spindle. This has a whorl made from Italian resin. It’s also quite lightweight. I say first since there might just be a second one from her shop on the way. The fiber is also hers, a merino/bamboo/firestar batt called Blue Morpho. There might just be some more fiber coming this week, too.

You might note that while I seem to be happiest with only three or four knitting projects going at any one time, I seem to have absolutely no problem having a spinning WIP on every available spindle and bobbin.

After I got my wheel, the spindles sort of sat around some. They’ve gotten a lot more use in the last few months, and I’m rarely without one close at hand. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my wheel, but if somebody put a gun to my head and made me choose, I’d pick the spindles.

I’m off to check the mailbox for the umpteenth time today. Have a good weekend, everybody!

Lunchtime Knitting

Just because I can.

This is another UFO out of that big UFO pile I showed you a couple weeks ago. It’s a washcloth, so you’d think it wouldn’t have taken me two years or more to finish the thing, wouldn’t you? I picked it out of the pile after the Baktus was finished as an easy one to get done. I’m on the last pattern repeat, then a simple garter border, and it’s done.

And done will be done, even if it’s only a washcloth.

By the way, John reminded me that I never shared our Williamsburg photos with you. He put together a Picasa photo album, if anybody is interested!

Baby Blue Baktus

Finally, something finished around Chez Knitting Doctor! This came off the blocking board this morning. We had a bit of a discussion about whether it was acceptable for John to take the photos while he was still in his bathrobe, but once we got past that, it was blog-ready.

What do you think? I even put on lipstick for the event. Per his request, we have no photos of John in his bathrobe.

Project Details:

Started: Um, how to answer that. I started a plain ribbed scarf with this yarn way back in 2008. It sat in UFO-ville for a very long time. I dragged it out earlier this year, didn’t feel the ribbed scarf love, and ripped it all out. I found the Baktus pattern and started over with that in February of this year.

Finished: Officially this morning. I finished the knitting on it last week, and washed and blocked it this weekend.

Pattern: Lacy Baktus. The pattern for the lacy version is on the Flickr page.

Yarn: Butternut Woolens Silk Garden. The color name is Blue Flax. It’s a 50-50 merino silk blend, and you can’t get it any more. I should have bought this stuff by the truckload. It’s a DK weight, and just the softest, squooshiest stuff you can imagine. This was 252 yards per skein, and I used two of them.

Needles: Size 5.00mm straight needles from my faux tortoiseshell collection.

For: Me

What I learned: Sometimes you have to experiment a little to get the right pattern-yarn combo. This yarn would have been totally wasted in a plain ribbed scarf. This is a pretty versatile pattern. You start with one of the corners and four stitches, knit and increase along one side until you’ve used half your yarn, then decrease till you have four stitches. I learned that being cocky, as usual, is a recipe for ripping. I knit till I’d used what I thought was half the yarn, started decreasing, and ran out, had to rip out half the knitting and start over. You can use any weight yarn with this pattern, and it works well with sock yarn, especially in the plain version without the lace holes. If you wanted to make a bigger shawl with this pattern, I’d probably recommend doing the increases and decreases at a more rapid rate. This one measures just a little over 8 feet long, and 22 inches down the center spine. If you did a full size shawl with this, it would have 10 foot tails.

Check out the Ravelry pages for the lacy version and the original to get an idea of what you can do with this pattern.

I’m more than happy with this one. I predict that this will be worn often. I also predict that this will not be the last Baktus around here. This would be a great pattern for those hand spun skeins that are accumulating in the stash!

More Williamsburg!

We’re still here on vacation, and I’ve managed to take hundreds of photos. There is a ton of stuff to see and do here, and we’re making a grand attempt to take it all in. Today is our last full day here, then we drive back to the DC area for a day, then home.

I did manage to find the yarn shop, and even bought a couple of things. Now there’s a surprise!

I also found some lovely sheep. These are in Colonial Williamsburg. They keep them in the pastures around the old reconstructed town. They shear them every year, and you can buy their wool in the shops. John drew the line at me buying a fleece and trying to stuff it into the overhead bin on the plane, so I settled for some finished wool. I’ll show photos of the loot in a different post when I photograph them. The sheep are Leicester Longwool, an 18th century breed from England.

This next photo might be familiar to those of you in the medical profession who use digoxin in your practice. This stuff (foxglove) grows all over the place here.

The nice thing about having a timeshare is that we have a kitchen. Even I can get tired of eating out for every meal. We tend to have lunch out, then cook dinner at “home”. That way we can have wine with dinner and nobody has to be the designated driver. Here I am stirring the stew pot.

Notice that like any good Colonial woman, I’m doing two domestic chores at once.

Speaking of spinning, I found the weaving and spinning cottage in Williamsburg yesterday. John gets the award of the week for standing patiently while I took photos and asked the very knowledgeable women every question I could think of.

The last place we toured yesterday was the Decorative Arts Museum, which has a fabulous collection of Colonial (and some later periods) furniture, pottery, quilts, and other household decorative items. I could have spent days there alone. The museum is on the site of the former Public Hospital, which was an insane asylum in Colonial times. A corner of the museum has a display of some of the items from the hospital. Here is John, demonstrating that perhaps I have driven him crazy after all.

Today we take the ferry across the James to the Smithfield area. It’s supposed to be hot and humid. The weather here makes me appreciate the Pacific Northwest. If I don’t melt in the heat, I’ll be back again with more photos next time!

Vacation!

We’re off on another adventure. This time it’s to Colonial Williamsburg. We’re using a week of timeshare as a base of operations. After a bit of a hectic week at work, I raced home, packed in under an hour, and we headed for the airport, where we spent the night. We got up Friday morning to catch an early flight. Here we are, starting the morning properly.

We went to the Jamestown Settlement yesterday and spent most of the day there. There’s a terrific museum that gives a very good overview of the Colonial period, and a reconstructed fort. We also visited the full size replicas of the ships that brought the colonists from Europe, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. I surprised the nice young man stationed on the Susan Constant by asking for his photo. I’m pretty sure nobody has ever handed him a partly-knitted sock before. He was a good sport, though, and smiled like this is a normal activity.

As you can see, it was a beautiful sunny day yesterday, even if it was a bit windy. I’m pretty sure that crossing the ocean on any one of these ships wouldn’t exactly be like a cruise. I never did find the bar on this one.

Our friend Byron lives near DC and is here for part of the week with us. Here he is with John and another friend we met along the way.

We’re off for another fun day. We’re heading back to Jamestown today to see the original historical site, then to Yorktown. I’ve already scouted out the yarn shop in Williamsburg, but don’t let the boys know that. I’m keeping that as a surprise for them.