Finally Selfish!

Michele is doing the mystery knit along for the Rose City Yarn Crawl. She's the pattern designer. But the pattern is a shawl. I have enough shawls and not terribly excited to knit one right now. I have one I need to knit from yarn my mother bought me last year for my birthday. She's been asking if I've used the yarn, need to make it in the next few months. ;-)

Michele is doing another KAL, one for her Thrumbelina pattern, I thought it was one I could do for myself. I've knit samples for Knitted Wit and made a pair for my niece, Bailey.

Decided to use the Lamb's Pride in Bittersweet that I got from Friday and the free alpaca fleece from Bethany to make them. Since the fleece had been cleaned, I just need to pull out the locks and knit them in. Their length isn't long enough to make the suggested butterfly thrums out of them, so I'm just pulling the locks out the bag and aligning them in the same direction and knitting them as I go along. It will take a bit longer but overall not any longer than if I had made all the little butterflies in advance.

All the supplies

Michele had mentioned making her thrums a bit bigger than normal so that the slipper is a little more 'cushy'. Thought this sounded like a good plan so after the first row, thickened up the thrums a bit. The alpaca is so soft and will felt a bit with wear, so looking forward to how that happens.

Here's my progress after spending some time knitting them while at Pearl Fiber Arts on Wednesday:

Inside of the slipper - can't see the knit yarn!

Outside is a little messy looking, but will get cleaned up when I'm done.

I need to get these done so that I can start getting a couple projects done for Carina. Need to knit up her qiviut into a cowl. I thought I had the perfect pattern, then the Yarn Harlot posted this. I think it may work better than the other pattern. So I'll buy it and give it a try. Her husband, Ken, washed the socks that I made for her. It was lovely yarn, but not superwash. So after chatting with her about how nice superwash was. We met up at Pearl Fiber Arts so that she could take a look at the yarns available. Unfortunately, because dyers are getting ready for the Rose City Yarn Crawl, some of the local stuff wasn't available. She was able to find a nice skein of another sport weight yarn in her favorite colors - blue-green.

I cropped this down, but for some reason blogger refuses to see the cropped version or even that I renamed it as the cropped size. So you get all the stuff around it. 

For some reason this blue-green yarn is really hard to photograph the true richness of its colors. Then I went to look and I'm not the only one. Check it out here on this site, its color 1220 Blues. Still have to find a pattern to do with this. It will be fun with the long color stripes.

Christmas Knitting and Turkey Canning

I was having a really hard time doing gift knitting. I came back from the beach with the turkey carcass and leftovers. We had one more dinner off of it that Sunday night for our gaming group. Then I popped it into two pots and started cooking it for broth. I had pulled off the excess turkey. Realized that I had leftover carrots and celery as well as a pressure cooker. Pulled out the pressure cooker, rounded up jars and lids and then started canning turkey broth and turkey soups.

This was the first batch out - notice the color difference?

This is the second batch out. Not sure why the broth looks so 'milky', might be less fat?

So ended up with lots of broth and enough jars of soup that I gave some to family as part of their Christmas gifts. Those along with jars of jam helped so I didn't have to knit as much! I did give some pre-yarn crawl knit along items as gifts. Worked out well for me that way!

This left me with knitting some hats for one niece and three nephews. Logan got a couple of books and Cole got a stuffed toy and a bunch of socks. His dad, my brother Scott, said that he really needed those too. A week's worth of fun socks to wear may not be really really exciting to receive, but parents ultimately appreciate it!

Bailey's hat:

Pattern: Making a Memory

She said she liked it. I'll have to see if I can get my sister, Tanya to take pics of her wearing it. ;-)

Garrett's hat, the Half-Pipe, I had planned to use the Berrocco Alpaca, but The Knitting Bee doesn't carry it any longer. Since the pattern calls for using two strands of DK together, Trish and I decided that using an Aran weight would work. I didn't want him to worry about washing, so got some 220 Aran Superwash in a nice Charcoal. I need to get a pic of him wearing it, just have him opening up the package at Christmas:

He's wearing a hat, so hats are good. ;-)

We had dinner with my dad and sister and brother with their families after Christmas, but before New Year, so still in the ball park. Here's Keefe with his hat:

I'm chewing, just a second! Pattern: Ola!

Nice big smile!

 Little brother Cole, liked the hat so much that he put in a request for one 'just like it'. He's three. He asked, so he'll get a hat. Not sure when I will see him next, because he's not always at family events. I'm also almost out of that green, so it may be in a different main color but same blue.

Adam got a Turn A Square Hat in a variety of colors. I think he likes it. He was wearing it for awhile. So it wasn't an on to make me happy, then right back off. I figure he can wear it under his helmet when he's four wheeling with his dad and grandfather.

Again, I was knitting this hat just an hour before giving it to him. I'm so burned out on gift knitting. Maybe if I saw things being worn, I may be more excited to knit and gift things to people?

I did chat with Carina at 12th Night. I still have the qiviut I spun for her. Confirmed that yes, she does want a cowl out of it. So found a pattern that I think will be nice, just need to get it knit up! First though, I really need to knit something for me!

November Spinning

First I was spinning. I spun up some qiviut that Carina brought back with her from Alaska. She used to live there and so had a source for some inexpensive stuff. Less expensive because it still had the guard hairs in, but still nice to spin up:

One ounce on each bobbin

All plied up and ready for a nice soak

217.4 yards of lace to light fingering weight yarn just before dyeing

Carina was hoping for a teal and we kind of got a green, she's happy with that

Carina originally had planned to have me knit it up into a pair of fingerless gloves. Her husband thoughtfully pointed out how much wear and tear they would take on her hands and thought something around her neck might be better. I thought of a cowl/smoke ring idea and showed her Ice Queen and my Green Ice Queen. She loved that idea. We might now have enough yarn though so I'll have to see what I can do. Maybe go up a needle size and make it lacier?

While we were playing with the dye and over-dyeing dark yarn I brought along my pygora, then remembered I had a small ball of light green it would be fun to change the color of so added them to the dye pot:

Pygora, qiviut, merino

After I dyed the merino, I remembered I had been frogging the last block I was doing with it for the Barn Raising Quilt because I needed to add a few rows to it. Now I have to decide to do it in the new color or frog that part all out and use it to start a new block or what. No biggy. It will work out. I may have to frog the whole block though.

The last few weeks I haven't been spinning and I miss it. I still have eight ounces of the blue-red superwash merino to spin up. Might be able to get that over the weekend or next week to wrap up the month. Will see. ;-)