Green Shawl Expansion

I've reached the end of the plate of plutolopi. At this point, I could bind off. Or I could continue with a second plate I have.

I could do something a little schmancier, like maybe add some ruffle yarn to the edge.

I want a bigger shawl, so I think I'm going to use at least some of the second plate of lopi. And then, when it's the length I like, I'll add the ruffle.

Maryland Day

It was Maryland Day today!  The weather was unusually chilly for late April, but it was still a good turnout.

There were lots of people and animals, both domestic and otherwise. Like horses:

And people dressed as horses

There were sack toss games aplenty as usually. Hole in tooth?

or holey cow?

Nothing like experimental cow pie bingo!

Sea of Green

I'm plugging away at the Icelandic triangle shawl. It's an extraordinarily dull knit. No wonder I banished this thing to the depths of the closet. It's so formless that I can't actually tell if it's growing. That might also be because the circular needle it's on is a little too short to stretch it all the way to its full length. However, I can see that the cavity in the middle of the plutolopi is getting bigger and bigger, so I'll take that as proof that all this boring knitting isn't for naught. There will be an end to this shawl eventually!

Long Lost Icelandic Shawl

I was digging through a bin of old, unfinished projects and found this:

It's a triangular shawl made from green plutolopi unspun from Iceland. It's about neglected for many a year so I think I'll get working on it.

Ruffles Old and New

I'm working on spinning some fine singles from the green Woolarina merino silk roving. I spun my last spinning project, that 8oz llama roving, into a bulky single in one sitting. This project will take a good while longer, plus plying time too.

I finished a ruffle scarf WIP that was lying around waiting to be finished.

And then I started a new one, because you should always have some WIPs lying around.

Fuzzy Merino Silk

This is 80% merino/20% silk from Woolarina, number rov202-1p/2p. I have 7.7 oz total in 2 braids purchased at Crafty Bastards 2009. Since this seems particularly fuzzy, I'm thinking of making a plied yarn, instead of the chunky singles I've been working on lately.

He's a beast!

Two-L Llama roving is now a mostly bulky single. I only predrafted very lightly, but even so, it didn't take much to overdraft while spinning. It's so loosely held together that I was half covered in llama fiber by the end. What I didn't end up wearing turned into this:

Mystery Shawlette

The 2011 Summer Mystery Shawlette is done, in time for summer 2012! I suppose a year late is better than having is it sit half-knit in my WIP pile forever. Better later than never!  The house is in a state as usual so I couldn't find any free space to block properly, so I hung it by the center and let it dry.

Running on Fumes

This is was the leftover yarn from the shawl. Yeah, that's me living on the edge ;P

Two-L Llama

For my next spinning trick, I will attempt to turn 220g of brown baby llama into a bulky single, in the style of Blue Sky bulky alpaca.

Three Bobbins Full

The Ashland Bay merino is spun. It was hard to keep my mind set on treadling slowing and drafting minimally over the course of spinning an entire pound of roving. The first two bobbins I spun were more consistently chunky, while the third seemed to come out a little bit thinner.

State of the Stash

I spent a weekend organizing the stash. It was a major endeavor, involving moving most of my fiber to the basement. Only my considerable sock yarn collection and the little bit of laceweight that I own stayed put. Everything else got moved to the basement, sorted by weight, and stored in big plastic bins with cedar and lavender to fend off bugs.Here's an extremely small sample of the yarns that made the trip.

The worsted/aran animal fibers:

The bulky animals:

The fancy frou-frou yarns:

The nonanimal natural fibers:

Lace Break

Found this in the WIP pile and decided to work on it:

It's Wendy D. Johnson's Summer Mystery Shawlette from last year, in Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label Fingering Weight.