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April has been a busy month for the blog. This is mainly due to my small skeins and small knitting projects. There has been a lack of thoughtful written content, just "here's a skein I spun" or "here's another baby hat..." It use to be that I'd have a huge project with a whole fleece or something and you wouldn't hear from me for weeks. Well, here I go again...

These two skeins were made from some roving that I dyed a while back. One hank of roving was dyed blue, red and GREEN---which was a horrible mistake. Red and Green, really? That would ply up into a huge mess. So I pulled out all of the green and spun the red and blues together. Then I took the leftover green and added it to some teal scrap roving. In the end I had two skeins that I liked.

Talk to you in May.

A Small Pink Skein

This BFL top was dyed with jacquard acid dyes. After applying red, orange, and purple, I thought it looked horrible and squeezed out the dye within a few minutes. I was thinking that I'd redye or over-dye it at first, but after seeing the shade that it turned out, I went ahead and processed it with heat.
I spun it into a 2-ply yarn. Now I'm working on (another!) baby hat. Good thing I know a lot of babies, because I can't stop knitting baby hats.

Was it Shetland?

I'm notorious for not labeling any of my fiber materials. I know I dyed this, but I have no idea what it is. It might have been Shetland roving. Either way, I spun it up and plied it into a 2-ply yarn. The white spots don't look right. Now that I've done some dying of roving, I realize that you either have to leave a lot of the natural color (white) or dye over all of it. If you leave just a little bit, then you get the random white spot that looks out of place.

More Yarn from the Weekend

This week is passing quickly. Here's another skein from last weekend. This is Merino top that I spaced dyed with lots of bright yellow, some teal green and some lime green.

Weekend Spinning

Last weekend I got some spinning done. Mostly I was spinning roving that I had dyed a while back. Sunday was sunny and gorgeous so I took this photo outside in the bright light.

A Few More Baby Caps

I made a few more baby hats. They are fun to make because they take less than 2 hours and they use up my hand spun scraps. This idea was inspired by Cosymakes. Her designs have that look of the exposed stitches (purl rows) like in the baby sweaters that she makes. After I made my Baby Caps, I saw the Tahoe Hat in Spin-off. I'm not too fond of the way that they photographed the Tahoe Hats in the magazine. You can't really tell what they look like. At first I thought they were Berets. I'm mentioning this because it's another example of using up hand spun for little projects like my baby caps.

More Baby Caps

Here's the recipe: Cast on a number of stitches divisible by 11 (Some hats I cast on 55, others 66). Connect and (Row 1)knit in the round. I use dpns. Row 2:purl, Row 3:knit, Row 4:purl, Row 5:knit, Row 6 change color if desired and purl. Then knit in the round until you want to make a purl stripe. If you are using a second color, work that in the purl round so that it creates that contrasting stitch look. When I felt like adding a purl row, I did. At the top, when you are ready to reduce: Row 1: k9, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 2: k8, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 3: k7, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 4: k6, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 5: k5, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 6: k4, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 7: k3, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 8: k2, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row 9: k1, k2tog, repeat to the end
Row10: k2tog to the end. Leave a 10" tail and break the yarn. With a needle on the yarn, slip it through the remaining stitches and pull in through the inside of the hat and weave in the end. Weave in any other ends.

Baby Cap in Greens

I've gone on a baby cap kick. I'm not sure which little heads they will end up on, but they are fun to make with hand spun scraps. There is no pattern--I just make it up as I go.

Baby Cap

Here's a baby cap made from hand spun left overs. The model is Santa Clause. The hat is to be given to the baby of the people who have gave me the hand carved Santa. That's just a coincidence. Santa actually lives year round at my house. I like the piece so much I just leave it out in celebration of all the folks who leave their Christmas decorations out too.

How I See It

One of the midwives I work with went to the beach and brought back this piece of driftwood as a gift. I love it!

Thanks Marge!

Color Experiment Gone Bad

hmmm..."Olive" Shetland, peach Tarhgee, and natural Alpaca. After one batt I could see it was a mistake. I only carded one batt and then I put a stop to the insanity! But just out of curiosity, I went ahead and spun up one skein...
Yuck.

One Skein of Blue Merino

This Merino top was spaced dyed with blue acid dye.
The singles took many hours over the last few weeks to spin.
I spent a little over an hour plying this morning.
This photo was taken outside on the picnic table.
Compared to the fat skein I made yesterday, the blue one took at least four times as long to make.

Couldn't Wait

I just had to spin the batts that I carded yesterday. I couldn't wait. The three batts made one large skein. My new big bobbin can hold more that 3 batts at one time! I've never actually filled it yet. This was my attempt to make a thicker yarn.

Carding Scraps

My drum carded made an appearance today. One of my projects was to blend some Orange-Red Shetland and Salmon colored Angora with some Purple Shetland and lots of Lavender colored Mohair---Voila! Red! There were three batts. After pulling off strips from the batts, I rolled the fiber into little balls so it would hold up in storage.

One for now, one for later

The new baby will have a tiny green sweater waiting for her when she is born. When she gets a little bigger she will get to wear the orange Baby Boy 5-hour Sweater. The green one really did take about 5 hours. Both are made from top that I spaced-dyed and spun into a 2 ply on my Ashford Joy. The funny thing about this pattern is that there are no buttons. I'm not sure if I'll leave it like this or add some kind of tie closure.

Hand Spun Baby Sweaters

Making a baby sweater was super fast and fun. As soon as I cast off the orange colored one I started a green one. The ends are not woven in yet, but here's a photo of the first one for my friend's soon-to-be-adopted baby. I never measure my hand spun--I just guess how much I'll need for a project. My guess was really off on the first sweater. It took half of what I thought. Both of these yarns were made from spaced dyed roving that I dyed in February.

What the Easter Bunny is Bringing

Some friends of mine are probably adopting a baby soon. (I say probably because you never know for sure how it will all play out.) It's going to be a little girl, they say. With adoption there can be less time to get ready. They only found out about this baby a few weeks ago and now the birth mom is due in a month. I decided to make the baby a sweater. I'm using a pattern called the Baby Boy 5-hour Sweater that I found for free on Ravelry. It's taken about 6 hours so far and I'm almost done. Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day knitting and watching lame TV shows.



My husband is hilarious! He hid chocolate eggs amongst my clutter this morning.

Credit Where Credit is Due

I jumped on the band wagon and made some pedicure socks. It's kind of funny because I never actually go out and get a pedicure, I just wish that I did. These have been on my to-do list since I saw them in Knitty 2006 as Pedicure Socks by Ruthie Nussbaum. In my attempt to link to the pattern, I searched on Ravelry only to find that there are several versions on Pedicure Socks. Hmmm...really? It seems like Ruthie Nussbaum made these up. Even Patron's has a version, but I couldn't find the copyright date as proof that the Knitty pattern came first. Instead of the Knitty pattern, I used a sock making guide that I've had around. However, Ruthie Nussbaum gets credit because her pattern was my inspiration.
I actually used an old Family Circle article that I've had for years. I have no idea when it was published. This article is what I used when I first was learning to make socks. It's been years since I've made socks, and I wanted to review turning the heal, so that is one reason why I made the Pedicure Socks.
The yarn used was from the Hand Dyed, Hand Carded, Hand Spun Tarhgee that I spun in January.