sweetgeorgia

San Francisco!

Yippee! I’m going to San Francisco in November for a little weekend in a bigger city! My husband’s childhood friend who now lives in San Francisco is pregnant with her first baby, so we want to fly down and visit the mom-to-be… PLUS, I want to do some shopping! Any recommendations on fantastic, must-see yarn shops in San Francisco? I’ll also be attempting to get myself to Carolina Homespun to try out a couple different spinning wheels and buy a ton of fibre! Yay!

‘Tis freaking done.

River is done, done, done! I love the finished product but this wasn’t really the most fun I’ve ever had knitting. I memorized the lace chart, but sometimes I’d lose count and it’s not as easy as Birch to fix mistakes. But ah well, it’s done!

Oh, and I made the little so-called scrunchy thing too.

River

• Pattern: Rowan 38, designed by Sharon Miller
• Yarn: Rowan Kid Silk Haze in Smoke
• Needles: US 10.5 / 6.5mm Addi Turbos
• Changes: none! except that I blocked the stole a little wider…
• Finished Measurements: 50‚Äö√Ñ√π x 21‚Äö√Ñ√π

I think I may try wearing the stole with the little beaded do-dad. I find having to adjust and hold on to a shawl kind of annoying so anything designed to keep it in place and my hands free is awesome. Plus, it’s got those pretty sparkly beads in it!

And how fabulous is my brother? He just got back from Toronto, home of Lettuce Knit, where be bought some roving for me:

I left the colour choices up to him and must say, he has some good taste! I love these and will get a spinnin’.

Speaking of spinning, I have packed my wheel today since I’m starting a spinning and dyeing class after work today! It’s being held at Place des Arts in Coquitlam with Irene Weisner. I think she’s the head of the Coquitlam Weavers and Spinners Guild or something like that. In any case, there will be wheels for the students to use, so maybe I’ll get the opportunity to try some new wheels out! (yes, yes, have been thinking about buying a second wheel! whee!)

So ugh, I’m off to work now. I must say, I’m going insane here — for some reason the tenants in the office below me are CONSTANTLY renovating and drilling directly into my floor. Our building is concrete, so every ten minutes it sounds like a jackhammer going off right underneath my desk. I get interrupted when I’m on the phone with clients — it is just driving me crazy. Sigh, off to get more coffee.

Wild and Wooly

…that is, spinning “fat and hairy”… The yarn for the Jayne hat is spun up!

Usually when I spin, everything feels so precious. The need to make everything smooth, fine, even and perfect is overwhelming. So everything about spinning woolen yarns — unsupported long draw, fibres that are perpendicular — it’s the exact opposite of my nature. But spinning for this Jayne hat, I just relaxed and spun thicker singles, ignoring the slubs if they happened. It was cathartic.

The orange yarn was made by carding bits of yellow and red together and I think it worked quite nicely. Nothing is perfectly even either in colour or grist. It’s all so very rustic… I plied these using the homely centre-pull ball method and set it in hot water with some lavendar-scented Eucalan. The skeins bloomed beautifully into chunky, wooly and ta da, perfectly balanced yarns.

And of course, I did some dyeing and spinning this weekend, so the Sweet Shop is updated! There are handpainted sock yarns (including some in that blue/gold colourway) and also some handspun yarns. Take a look »

http://sweetgeorgia.etsy.com

Not quite ready for their closeups

The Manly Sweater (after a year of working on it, off and on) is done! But it’s still drying. I am gifting it to the DH for our anniversary, but again, it’s still drying. It was easy to knit, but I think the armholes are too small…

Look what else is drying… dyed Soy Silk! This stuff is weird. It looks like silk and acts like silk, but is kind of “crunchy” like cotton. I’m looking forward to seeing how it will spin!

And here’s more fibre that’s drying…

That’s Border Leicester roving that I bought in Salt Spring this summer. It’s soft, but not soft like merino! soft. So I’m making…

… a Jayne Cobb hat! If you’ve seen Joss Whedon’s Firefly, you’ll know this is the hat that Jayne receives in the mail, handknit by his mom. I’m going to card (blending the red and yellow to make orange!) and spin up the yarn this weekend and knit it up next weekend when my friends and I get together for a Firefly marathon. All this is prep for the Serenity movie that comes out on September 30. If you want to make one too, this lovely gal has written a pattern for it here…

Middle of the week.

There is work to be done and coffee to be drunk. I received a few packages this week, so you can be sure there will be some dyeing going on soon — but not tomorrow. Tomorrow is my 4th wedding anniversary. Last year, I thought it would be funny to have Kraft dinner and hotdogs for dinner on our wedding anniversary. Turns out, not so funny. So tomorrow night, we are off to Bishop’s for dinner.

In the meantime, Ivy had this question for me from a couple days ago… What is this cable symbol with the red square around it?

I think it’s like the cable that I’ve been knitting in Knitty’s Trellis baby sweater. So in this case, you’d slip two stitches onto a cable needle and hold in back, then knit the next stitch. Then slip the left stitch from the cable needle to the left needle, knit that stitch. Then knit the last stitch off the cable needle. Let me know if anybody translates it differently.