Helloooooooo, Productivity!

Dudes, check this out:




That's lots of handspun yarn and lots of progress on my mom's t-shirt...and my puppy getting into trouble while I'm photo-ing. Silly Tilly.

Stats (in order of photos):

• Here we have around 204 yds of Cheviot wool singles. It's all sproingy and bouncy. It's pretty thick and thin, but mostly falls in the fingering range with a standard deviation of 3. lol.
  
  I don't know what I'll knit with it, maybe an organically lacey scarf(lette)?? A beret?? Maybe not enough here for a beret, bummerz...

• This is approx. 106 yards of navajo plied Icelandic, which I have spun up on my new wheel. I have two mini skeins spun in the same manner that are 50 yards each. Those were spun on a drop spindle. I confess that I prefer the wheel. Eeep! I will call this yarn a sport or DK...Gawd, I need to stop being lazy and start measuring WPI. :p

• My dear mother's sweater back. Waist decreases and increases complete, armhole decreases also complete. Now I just knit for 7 inches and then start shoulder shaping!
  

Who's awesome now? Who's made even more awesome by the use of bullet points?

...

...

Come on, people. It's ME! I'M awesome now...

Sheesh.

Fine, whatever. In other news, we (the husband and I) are currently redesigning this blog. I'm just sick of using the standard blogger templates and want something new and fun, nothing to fancy, mind you. So far, it is looking good. It will remain at http://www.sugarsticks.org because we paid for that, dammit. :) So, keep a lookout for the new...look.

Kromski MInstrel

I humbly introduce:


Isn't he dashing? I'm quite smitten with him, anyway. This is a Kromski Minstrel in the walnut finish!

Let me start off by saying that I was a little bit worried about learning to spin on a wheel after having used spindles for so long. Now, I see how silly I was. Immediately, I was spinning yarn just as thin and even as I had on a spindle...and perhaps even more so. My spinning productivity has increased dramatically.



I love the sound of the wheel as it turns, the leather bearings, the finely turned wood. I love everything about it, but perhaps what thrills me most of all is the relief on my shoulders compared to spindling. Because with spindle spinning I find myself spending prolonged periods of time with one arm high in the air, I tend to develop a great amount of tension in my neck and shoulders. Pair that with a general disregard for proper posture (I'm working on it, though) and you are setting yourself up for pain and headaches. With the wheel, on the other hand, both of my arms sit casually in front of me and much of the pressure is relieved. Needless to say, I am quite the happy camper.


So, at this point and time I am going to say that I love my Kromski Minstrel and I have no complaints at this time. I've only been spinning on it for a few days and I can't help having one of those so-far-so-good kind of feelings.

I think it needs a name. I'm considering Rasputin. :)

A couple of things...

...Monday was St. Distaff's Day and I spent a large chunk of my time spinning up some merino in "celebration." I have finished the singles, which I allowed to rest a bit on the niddy noddy and I have begun plying them. It is slow going and I don't have any pictures for you yet, but I can show you a picture of my first mistake:


I don't know why I decided I should take it all off the niddy noddy before winding into a ball...stupid me. ((oh, and I know plying such fine singles from one center pull ball is not a good idea, but it's the only way I know how to do it at this point and I have my techniques to keep it all from tangling too much...))

I have not been knitting much, mainly spinning. I'm loving this spinning business lately...and I've been toying with a few other hobbies too...which are related to my love of books, writing, and list making.

I can't wait to ply all these singles and move on to spinning up my Cormo roving!! It's so soft and smells so very sheepy. It even still has little bits of vegetable matter in it...and you know what?...I'm not removing it. It stays. In all its sheepy wonder. Can you tell I'm stoked? lol I will be spinning a bulkier yarn with it because my spindle is just too heavy for the the finer yarns (as I learned with my spinning WIP). Besides, the Cormo is so soft that I am sort of getting gah-gah over the idea of making something really squishy out of it. I want to eventually spin up enough for a sweater, but I will need to make a few trips to the fiber place to get more. It's undyed, so no problem with that dye-lot nonsense. I may decide to dye it myself after it's all spun up, but possibly not.

All this fiber talk leads me to spindle dreaming...and, brace yourself, wheel dreaming too. I want some of these, and one of these, and this one too. And someday, I really really want to get this little eye-sore.

My Butterfly Mobius looks like this:


My Purple Lace Blouse looks like it did last time I showed it to you. lol

Ok, enough. You're all bored. I made Onigiri:


I'm so in love with them...tasty tasty...