Fiber Arts and Hiking

 Heading out for a backpacking trip on the rugged Washington State coast I grabbed my lightest spindle to bring along.  My husband and I hike in about 6 miles heading north from Rialto Beach near La Push.  By nightfall we were isolated by the high tide and locked in to our camping spot.  Our tent nestled up against the cliff on one side and was about 10 feet away from the lapping waves on the other side. I had brought some natural tan merino and some natural black-gray alpaca. My idea was to spin some "sand-colored" yarn. I spun in little flecks of black and gray, giving the tan wool an appearance of sand.  Being that I was so tired from hiking over boulders and giant old-growth driftwood I didn't have much energy to spin. But at the same time I loved having a little down-time with my craft. I'm thrilled to combine my two favorite pastimes: fiber arts and hiking!

Camp site at low tide.

 

Spinning. Water rising.

 i

New Project

The chaos of moving into the fix-er upper has really limited me from dying and spinning. This week I had a some time to start a new project. I had so much fun knitting an Icelandic pattern last year I decided to make another sweater. I had left over Alafosslopi yarn, 6 skeins of light gray and a skein or 2 of a couple other colors. Being that I wanted new colors for the new sweater I decided to over-dye some of the yarn.  The light gray and blue colored yarn at the top of the photo is what I started with.  I used some acid dyes I had laying around.  Now I'm excited to get on with the knitting.