sweetgeorgia

Happiness is also a finished object

Summer of lace, eh? What else to do when the weather gets (sort of) warm and you want to shrug off all your chores? Watch countless hours of Buffy and knit your lace shawl. So armed with seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy and a full box of kleenex (who knew slaying vampires could be so emotional?) I finished my Paisley Lace Shawl this weekend:

Paisley Lace Shawl

• Pattern: from Spring 2005 Interweave Knits
• Yarn: Jaggerspun Zephyr in Lilac (50% merino/50% tussah silk)
• Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm Addi Turbo’s
• Changes: none!
• Finished Measurements: 35″ x 35″ (blocking board was too small!)
• Zephyr is so soft and springy… and easy to rip back if needed.

Yes, the picot edge trim takes forever, but it’s worth the nice frilly finish that it makes. I’ll be wearing this to a wedding this weekend!

Happiness is a hand carder

Since I signed up for the Natural Dyeing and Spinning for Sock Makers workshop at the upcoming Salt Spring Island Fibre Festival I’ve been gathering the required equipment — hand carders and a lazy kate.

The kate is the Ashford Precision Lazy Kate that I ordered from The Woolery. It came unassembled and unfinished — I just screwed the pieces together and didn’t finish it. Too bad it only fits Ashford bobbins — my Woolee Winder bobbins are too long for it. Ah well.

But here are my new fabulous hand carders:

I spoke at length with the Shuttleworks owner, Cal, before deciding on these carders. Originally I had thought to buy cotton cards because of the finer teeth, but he steered me towards the wool cards instead. These are quite fine wool cards at 190 teeth per inch (tpi) and eventually when I get a second set of cards they will likely be around 72 to 120 tpi.

These wonderful hand cards have allowed me to finally fluff up the accidently felted rovings and spin happily!

I’ve just been practicing using the cards and spinning either off the card directly or off rolags that are made with the fibres parallel. I did try spinning with some rolags that had the fibres laying horizontally but it made the spinning a little lumpy. Hand carding is slow, oh so meditative, and perfect for these small amounts of fibre.

Good long weekends

On Saturday, the DH and I hosted our annual backyard BBQ, sort of in celebration of the Canada Day long weekend. Since he discovered the idea of bbq competitions and championships, he’s become a little obsessed. Last year, our friends and I bought him a big smoker that he’s learned to use to make pulled pork. He smokes the pork over 12 hours which means that on BBQ day he’ll get up at 5:30 am to set up the smoker. Crazy, I say… but here he was by the time I woke up (6:30 am):

By the afternoon, some of our friends had arrived for an early poker game (this year the DH received a 500-chip poker set for his birthday)…

Of course, there was food and drink…

…and of course, there was a little knitting:

All the rest of the BBQ photos are here in the gallery »