Greetings from the Northern Hemisphere!

One bad thing about spring is that it's no longer wool season, at least not for half of the world. Fortunately, there's a whole other hemisphere to knit for!
These hats (Center Square on the left and Fake Isle on the right) are going to my cousins in New Zealand, who emigrated there last year from the Philippines. They aren't enjoying the colder weather. Well at least they say it's cold there, but I think it may be more a relative term. I did some googling and found that the average temp during their coldest month (July) is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Hmmmm, not what I would consider cold, but I guess if you're coming from constant 90 degree days, that's pretty darn cold.

I also modified a Lion Brand mitten pattern to incorporate the Center Square colorwork:
It worked out pretty well. I added four stitches right after the thumb shaping to accommodate the 8-stitch repeat, which fortunately balanced out the narrowing caused by stranding the two colors. I was so proud of myself that I forgot to decrease by 4 stitches after the motif. This led to a lot of head-scratching when I got the crown decrease: Uh, why are there four extra stitches? (long pause) Doh! I blame the Hoyas. Their come-from-behind antics totally distracted me.

What Time Is It?

The daylight saving time change had me browsing through my electronic calendar looking for scheduling glitches. My Pocket PC didn't make the transition at all, despite how many patches and updates I tried on it. Anyway, it occurred to me that Jersey Baby's birthday was coming up and maybe just maybe I should get started. You know, get an early start on (and perhaps even finish) a project instead of procrastinating. Maybe. Or maybe I could give you WIP updates instead:

The Broadripples are done:
Two tulips. Two socks. Hooray! The fit's not great, and as I said before, the yarn can be a royal PITA, so I am truly done with this pattern. Also in sock news, my brother's shoe size is smaller than I thought (nah, nah, my feet can almost beat up his feet!)
so his Red Cross socks shouldn't take too long to finish. He's going hiking in some park this summer (yes, I'm completely up to speed on his life). Maybe these socks can go with him.

As promised, here's the camel:
I really love the rich brown color. Spinning it takes some getting used to though, since the fibers are a bit slick and not as fine as wool, so I had to be careful and not let it slip through my fingers and get too thin as I spun.

In "not-knitting-or-spinning-but-still-fiber" news, the doggie got a haircut:
He was looking pretty raggedy (though still cute, in a sad hobo dog kind of way), but after an appointment with his Petco stylist (hah!), he's all shiny and dapper again. I wonder how long this will last?

S is for Sunday (but posted on Monday)

Shawls

The second shawl is blocked:
Ooooooo, resplendent in its bright bright bright Koolaid glory.

Pattern: Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl
Yarn: Lion Brand Fishermans Wool, dyed with Tropical Punch Koolaid and orange icing dye.
Needles: Boye Needlemaster, Size 6
Preblocking: 48"x24"
Postblocking: 62"x29"

In my eternal (infernal?) impatience, I started looking for a new shawl project a few weeks ago and decided upon the Feather and Fan Triangle Shawl from from Folk Shawls. It's knit with plotulopi, an unspun Icelandic wool. I found a nice Etsy shop, Ammafrida, that offers unspun in a bunch of colors - and they ship straight from Iceland! Who wouldn't want packaging you can almost understand (sort of)
I think this means "Open here. Pull up." Anyway, I did get the box open and handled the roving gingerly while I swatched.
I say "swatch" but really I just knit on the beginning of the shawl, since it starts small and grows. The photo may be crappy but the knitting was too. First of all, the pattern was vague and I'm not sure I understood it completely. It says to cast on 7, but the chart starts with a row 1 composed of something like 41 stitches. Did I miss the setup rows? Were they in another part of the book? Anyway, I tinkered with it until I had enough stitches to start the chart, which was oddly divided over a two page spread. The writer/editor tried to help by providing a two column overlap (two stitches that showed up on both the left and right side pages, but were only knit once), but I think that just confused me more. Oh yeah, and there were increased on both the RS and WS, so the shawl was a foot and a half wide even though it was only maybe 4-5 inches deep. Isn't that odd?

Anyhoo, I wasn't having fun knitting it and it seemed kind of ugly to me. So I ripped and opted for something simpler, basically stocking with 2-st garter border:

Cast on 7.
Row 1: k2, yo, knit to before the center stitch, yo, k1, yo, knit to last two stiches, yo, k2
Row 2: k2, purl to last two stiches, k2

I think this will show off the yarn better. Having no twist, the unspun is very light and sproingy (yes, that's a word to me). The picture makes it look blue-grey but it's actually dark green. The resulting shawl will be dark green, light green and light grey. The unspun isn't as fragile to work with as I thought. True, you can't really yank it out of the plate/wheel that it comes in and you need some care when ripping back. But in regular knitting, kid gloves aren't necessary, and once knit, the fabric is quite strong, since the fiber's staple length is much longer than any single stitch.

Spinning

I'm spinning the camel that Autumn sent. It's a long, coarse fiber, with a nice luster to it. Sorry for the lack of photo. I'll have one by the next post

Project Sesame Update: I'm predrafting the rest of the batts, a nice mostly mindless activity that's good for TV watching. There's some veggie matter to pick out, but that just breaks up the monotony.


Socks

One Broadripple down:
One to go. The Red Cross sock is taking longer. It's for my brother, whose shoe size is (I think) 10.5. Oh the toe is so aggravatingly far away!

SP10 Questionnaire

Hi SP! My questionnaire is here.