sweetgeorgia

I heart progress.

Happy Valentine’s Day to those that are celebrating! If you are local and have left festive planning to the last minute, check out Nancyland’s foodie suggestions. I have weaving class tonight, so there will be no googly eyes over dinner. Instead, the DH and I are meeting at Finch’s for lunch. Because nothing says “I love you” like a French baguette and soup.

It’s Day 5 of the Olympics and I’m already one and a half days behind… but so far, thankfully, there has been no tinking. At row 93 of 250, it would seem like I’m quite far along, but every row increases in stitch count thereby making each row take longer and longer to complete. My initial goal was approximatly 2060 stitches per day but I’m averaging about half of that… so it might take me a month to finish?

Neither Michelle or Jen blog, but both are participating in the KO as well. Michelle is knitting her first pair of socks (Jaywalkers) and Jen is knitting Birch in KSH Trance (her first lacework). I will see if I can be stealth and sneak some of their progress shots here.

Stashful in Seattle 2006

This may become an annual February getaway — yarn stashing trips to Seattle. This past weekend, Jen, Michelle and I drove ourselves down to Acorn Street Shop, Weaving Works and Hilltop Yarn in Seattle for a little yarn shopping. Even though I Mapquested all the directions, we still managed to get lost several times… but we were not detered and are planning on another trip…

Our first stop was Acorn Street Shop where Jen pretty much blew her budget. Michelle bought one of their lovely patterns, “Waterfall Lace Scarf”, and spent much of the rest of the day looking for yarns to use for the scarf. Amazingly, I found some Cash Iroha from the exact same dyelot as the yarn I bought in Tokyo — how does that happen?! Anyway, I bought two skeins of it for just in case, since there are rumblings about the patterns specs being short on yarn.

I also bought…

Lunch was just a couple blocks up the hill from Acorn at Nana’s Soup House. Wonderful, delicious soups and bagettes — if you were so inclined, you could get a “Tanker” of their Baked Potato Soup.

Next stop was the beautiful and incredible Weaving Works — I think several times I mumbled that might head might explode… the wall of Koigu, the shelves of dyeable yarns, the bins of rovings… Michelle was going through some drama with several different skeins of alpaca (Honey Lane vs. Frog Tree) — her pain was palpable.

For Jen’s birthday this past fall, I gave her a little Ashford spindle to “get her started” and now she’s thinking about a wheel. It’s a fabulous thing that Weaving Works has lots of wheels to play with. She tried a Lendrum, Ashford Traveller, Ashford Traditional and Schacht Matchless and ended up leaning towards the Lendrum and Traditional…

Here’s what I managed to restrict myself to:

We spent so much time at Weaving Works that we had to cut our time at Hilltop short… besides, we had dinner reservations at Monsoon:

Located in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood, Monsoon is a beautiful mix of Vietnamese and Westcoast cuisine — fresh, fragrant and fantastic. Our order was:

• grilled tiger prawn and green papaya salad and rau ram
• grilled monetary squid stuffed with duck meat and dried shitake
• grilled la lot beef (grilled flank steak wrapped in la lot leaves)
• caramelized idaho catfish claypot with fresh coconut juice, green onions and thai chilies
• fresh dungeness crab
• asian eggplant with green onions in spicy coconut sauce
• coconut creme caramel
• vietnamese banana cake with coconut sauce
• black and white sesame ice cream

How good was Monsoon? Well, three chatty girls were rendered completely silent for 20 minutes as we enjoyed some gorgeous crab and catfish… it was just that good.

We might just have to get ourselves back down to Seattle before next February.

Life before drum carder.

But lest you think it was just the shoes that pushed me over the edge and got me drum carder crazy, here’s what really made me crazy:

I blended some hand dyed Merino with plain white French Angora and a bit of hand dyed Angelina (might be Blue Moon Spinnery?) by hand using some coarse Ashford hand cards. It really wasn’t much fun — do I have too much merino? too much angora? Is it even? This would be so much easier with a drum carder?

The Angora guard hairs really pop out and give it a spiky look. I don’t mind — I think it looks kind of interesting, but it may not be so interesting if you want to knit it and wear it around your sensitive neck.

The skein was washed, whacked (for some fulling) and all chopped up into 5-yard samples. And the samples, well, they are travelling the world now in the KR Handspun Yarn Swap.

Junky Love

How about some Thursday morning yum? Here you go:

This is some of the thrums, scraps, bits & bobs, and leftovers that I’ve collected for nearly a year. Every time I get a bit of junky leftover fibre that I don’t want to try to incorporate into my spinning, I set it aside in a little strawberry container. The container was getting pretty full, so last week when our class drum carder was available, I carded the whole shebang into this little batt. I should do this more often.

Speak Up.

I think it’s my latent early mid-life crisis speaking up.

Monday evening was spent finishing up my weaving homework while watching surfer flick “Step Into Liquid”… twice.

The weaving is a little sampler that is 80 ends at 10 epi — I’ve used a mix of Quebecoise wool, leftover bits from the school cupboard, and some handspun. The sampler includes a couple inches of each pattern: plain weave (tabby, weft-faced, warp-faced), basketweave, 2/2 twill, 3/1 twill, 1/3 twill, broken twill, horizontal stripes, vertical herringbone and more… This is all being done with a Leclerc Dorothy table loom that I’m borrowing from Place Des Arts.

Last night, we finished off the sampler with some plain hemstitching and twisted fringe. I need to give it a good wash and let it full a little. We shall see how lovely and soft the wool will become!

But in the meantime, I can’t escape the idea of learning how to surf. The thought of leaving work, travelling, visiting warm and sunny locales, relaxing on the beach… with your knitting and spinning wheel, of course… What else do you need for a good early mid-life crisis, anyway?