Fair warning: I will be moving this site to another host in the near future. During the move, this site will be down for a while, perhaps for a day or three.
My plan is that no one will notice the difference, once it’s up and running again… but plans have a tendency to head off on their own.
Hang on with me, and we’ll see what really happens!
Posted in My Projects
Things have been pretty exciting around our family lately!
Our newest grandson arrived in a hurry, without any complications, and went home with mom the next day. Fortunately, she had just packed for the hospital the day before, even though she expected to have to wait a week or more. Of course, babies are notorious for not paying attention to anyone else’s plans – including our plan to have his blanket all done in time to come home.
So we punted. I got the last bit done on the main part of the blanket the night he was born, finished off the loose ends and washed it, then dropped it off at the hospital on my way to work the next morning in plenty of time for his homecoming. It still doesn’t have its border, but I’ll get it back soon to finish it properly.
I think it’s only fair to state that the last-minute status of this blanket is not all on my shoulders; my daughter and I spent quite some time finding just the shade of green she had in mind, then ordering the yarn in both cotton and superwash wool and wash-testing the swatches before the final decision and ordering the yarn. In the meantime, I searched for just the right pattern. It needed to be something that would keep me from dozing off while knitting, and I wanted it to be reversible. I decided that a traditional tumbling blocks pattern done with different stitch textures would fill the bill, but to my surprise, couldn’t find what I was looking for! So I designed one. Once I get the blanket completely finished, I’ll write up the pattern and post it here, with a link from Ravelry.
Baby T and his Optical Blocks Baby Blanket
In the meantime, I’m working on his Christmas stocking. Since it uses 12 colors of yarn, it’s not exactly a take-everywhere project, so I started a pair of socks for him, too. And then I realized that while I was making a sock to fit his tiny foot, the stocking will be nearly large enough for him to sleep in! Well, probably not any more, at the rate he’s growing now… I’d better finish the little socks before he outgrows them, too!
Both for the same little guy!
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Posted in My Projects | Tags: baby, blanket, Christmas stocking, grandson, socks
Shortly after the Kansas State Fair, I got to do something I’d been thinking about for a long time… I went with a bunch of spinning and weaving friends to tour Mid-States Wool Growers Cooperative. This came awfully close to sensory overload for us fiber types!
Here are a couple of views of what we saw on entering the warehouse area:
Bins full of wool
Way more than "three bags full"!
Wool expert Alex McClure explained how shipments arrive from all over this part of the country and are tracked for each individual grower, then graded for quality and sorted…
Our guide, Alex McClure
Where the grading is done
One of the grading criteria - staple length
Baler
… then baled and sent on to processors. He was very patient, and answered all of our questions.
He had even set out a number of fleeces of varying fineness and quality for us to look at, handle, and ask even more questions about!
The whole happy group
Then, best of all, we were able to pick out and buy any fleeces we wanted! Laura (Sugar Bunny Boulevard yarn shop proprietor) and Marsha scored the reserve champion fleece, splitting it 50/50.
A pair of happy fleece owners
One of the advantages of being the tour arranger was that I got dibs on the grand champion fleece!
My lovely, lovely wool
I think it would satisfyingly complete the cycle if I spun and knitted something from this fleece, then entered it in next year’s fair, don’t you?
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Posted in Handspun, Spinning, Tech Tips, Travel | Tags: fleece, friends, Kansas State Fair, Sugar Bunny Boulevard, tour, wool
I happened to have a few pictures to illustrate the steps from beginning to end, so thought I’d share them with you.
It all started with the visit to a local alpaca breeder two years ago (Sunflower Alpaca Farm, shortly before they moved to Fort Scott, KS). I was completely charmed by the animals, and took quite a few pictures.
L to R: Frosty, Mocha, Molly (in front), Levi (in back), Dulcie
Of course, I had to buy some wool in all the different colors!
Gorgeous colors...
Having specific motivation at last, I started spinning it in August (two years later)…
Five of the six colors: from the top, Levi, Frosty, Molly, Mocha, Taffy
Add white to those shown above, and you’ll have all the colors I had to work with. Once I started knitting swatches, the light grey turned out to be a much greater contrast to the white than I had expected, so I blended two other colors to use in between.
With all the ripping (I probably knit enough for a third glove!) it took longer than I had hoped to finish the gloves I’d planned from the beginning. After an all-nighter, I did get them finished just in time to check them in at the state fair.
Finished Alpaca Fair Isle gloves
I may find out tomorrow how they placed in the new ‘item-knit-of-handspun-yarn’ class, and will let you know. But whatever happens there, I’m delighted with my first pair of gloves, and will definitely knit more!
UPDATE: I just heard from a friend – my gloves won the class! There was at least one other entry, and I hope the class will have even more entries next year!
*End of post* I see that there is advertising below, at least on some views. Please feel free to ignore it!!
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Posted in Handspun, My Projects, Spinning | Tags: alpaca, Fair Isle, gloves, Kansas State Fair, Spinning, stranded
It’s that time again – the Kansas State Fair is nearing (all too soon for me)! Since there is a new class this year for “Any Hand Knit Item – made with Hand Spun” I feel honor bound to enter something.
Back in June, I decided to make the pair of Fair Isle gloves I’d been thinking about ever since I bought several colors of alpaca wool. That seemed like a pretty do-able time frame. Of course, life gets in the way, and this year I can easily blame the record-setting heat wave. We have been spending quite a bit of extra time the past 6 weeks or so trying to keep our rabbits from getting too hot. We don’t have a hope of keeping them actually cool in temperatures up to 112 degrees, but if we can relieve the heat stress and keep them alive, we’ll be satisfied. So far, so good – but it means watering four times a day (eighty-some-odd cages), and usually putting frozen water bottles out for the ones who need it in the afternoon.
Anyway, I didn’t get much spinning done for a while. Fortunately for me, gloves don’t take a whole lot of yarn, and Fair Isle knitting goes fast because it’s so much fun! I have just finished spinning and chain-plying the five small skeins of colored alpaca, and am ready to start on the white.
L - R: Taffy, Mocha, Molly, Frosty, Levi
These skeins range from 24 to 35 yards. When I took the picture, the dark russet from the alpaca named Mocha had just been skeined, but not washed. Perhaps you can tell that it hasn’t ‘bloomed’ as the others have. They were all spun from the raw wool, which was quite clean and almost completely free of vegetable matter (VM – hay, grass, whatever). The three colors on the left are the darker shades, the two on the right (plus white) will be the lighter background shades.
The raw white alpaca fleece looked very dingy, so I washed it first. This was the first time I had tried adding washing soda (Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda) – and I was very, very impressed with the results. A small amount of the wool washed with Dawn wasn’t satisfactorily clean. Dawn is great for grease, but alpaca fleece doesn’t have the lanolin that sheep’s wool does. After that wash, it just looked wet and dusty. But after adding the washing soda, it practically sparkled!
It will require more preparation than the hand teasing I was able to use for the colored wool, though. So this will be the first real test of my refurbished drum carder. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
I will also knit some a swatch or two for gauge, then make sure I choose a main design that will fit on the back of the gloves, make several other design decisions, cast on and hope to get them finished in a month!
Posted in My Projects, Spinning | Tags: alpaca, Fair Isle, gloves, handspun, Kansas State Fair
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email: prairiespinner at yahoo dot com
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