While getting ready for this blog post I decided to look up the last time I posted finished objects.
1. It's been a while
2. I was trying to track down the wrong tags. I almost labeled this one WIPs #6 for 2023, or something like that.
Oops.
It's been a bit of a week. It went fast. It dragged. I felt behind on all the things.
And now I feel like I may be coming down with something.
My son has been sick this week, and was complaining of a sore throat earlier this week.
Guess who is feeling a bit of a sore throat? Yup. This girl here.
Fingers crossed the vitamin C I took will knock it out before it gets a hold.
The weather this week has been a bit odd. The other day I broke down and made a fire in the wood stove. My husband said "Really?" when he came home and I told him what I had done. I was cold! It was *not* warming up in the house and I had opened the windows early in the morning, thinking it was going to warm up a lot earlier than it did. My feet were like ice that day.
Anyways, I'm sure the weird temperature fluctuations aren't helping anything.
*clears throat* Okay. On to the finished objects I promised.
Vanilla socks are done! Another project that had been on the needles for what feels like forever.
Project Name: Vanilla socks
Started: Jan. 7, 2023
Finished: June 1, 2023, or thereabouts
Designer/Source: My own pattern
Yarn: Patons Kroy sock yarn
Colorway: Mexicala stripes
Colors: oranges, red, purples and a smatter of blue and white
Required Amount: Two skeins of sock yarn. 100 grams
Needle/Hook Size: U.S. 1 (2.25 mm)
Gauge: beats me
Made For: Myself
Dye Lots: WL238520
I think I'm going to put a bit of a pause on vanilla socks, and get back to basics.
"What?" you are probably asking.
The last pairs of socks I've made have not been my best work. I seem to have lost something.
Soooooo ... I decided to look up sock classes on craftsy. I have a membership there and came across a class by Lucy Neatby. I'm going to do a remedial (to me) class.
I decided to pick up some acryllic worsted weight yarn and I'm going to work through the class and use that yarn to make some bedroom socks.
The other thing I finished is my February Month to Month.
Floss: Using called for Classic Colorworks fancy floss
Colors: Black, pink, red, teal, green
Needle Size: 26
Made For: Myself
I am very happy to finally have it complete. It's going to go into a finished object pile until I decide how I want to FO all of the pieces in the series.
In other crafty news
Last night I started back up on my snowflake cross stitch.
Using patternkeeper to keep track is on this chart is great. I'm bouncing around the grid with the same color and it's so much easier.
I put in just over 100 stitches. Last night I was scrolling through the Facebook and a group or page had something about a stitch-along and the notes said if the stitcher stitched 200 stitches a day, it would be easy to keep up and finish the stitch-along on time.
I thought "What? That's a lot of stitches," and figured the person would probably have to really dedicate their time to the project. Then I saw how quick you can do 100 stitches.
With that in mind, I'm thinking if I put some dedicated time to this project, I can get it down sooner than later.
I'd also like to pick "Edna" back up and work on her, and get it finished.
I felt like I was starting to pick up steam before I decided to put it away. Evenweave kinda kicks my butt.
Recently I switched up the hashtags I am following on Instagram and was reminded that Tour de Fleece is just around the corner. I've been working on the same wool for the last several tours.
My problem with spinning is that I don't have a good dedicated spot for spinning. The chair I usually sit in when I'm in the living room isn't very comfortable for the sitting position I need to be in when I'm using the wheel. What I have been doing is bringing out a kitchen chair, setting it up near Furby, and leave it like that for a while.
This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share, or when I feel the need to catch up.
So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me.
If we were having coffee ... I'd talk about how fast this month has gone. I realized a few weeks ago that I haven't written anything, anywhere, for a while. Oops. Though, to be fair, I haven't spent much time on social media or the internet. Plans. I had so many plans and aspirations. Then time goes by much faster than anticipated and before I know it, a month has gone by.
Things are still a bit busy for me. Not as busy as a few months ago, thankfully. I'm enjoying this little bit of a lull before things pick up again.
If we were having coffee ... I'd give you an update on the chicken flock. We have the roosters separated from the girls. The roosters are finally realizing they are boys and were harassing the girls too much. The hens seem happy they aren't being constantly chased around. The roosters are now busy harassing each other and pulling each others tails. They will be heading off to the freezer sometime next month.
Let me tell you about the roo who has turned into the dominate roo. We call him Mangle because he has something going on with his feet that I didn't spot until after it was too late. Apparently he's grown up on the mean streets of the farm yard and has learned how to take care of himself. The other boys are scared of him. It really is something how he handles himself. I still remember helping him out from a corner he got himself stuck in back when he was a young chick. Now he's ruling the roost. He's pretty tame around people, so that's nice.
If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you about the rabbits. We rehomed Loki and Thor. They were sweet rabbits, Thor in particular, but it was getting to be a bit much. After we had 14 baby buns born in one day I decided we had to do something to prevent the pregnancies. I had Feffer and Thor together, and Shadow and Loki together. Shadow was being mean to Loki. (The big bully) When the opportunity to rehome some of them came up, I grabbed it.
Feffer is now by himself, and Shadow and the baby bun are together. Still don't know if the baby bun is a boy or girl. My son is thinking it's a girl. I've been calling her "LB."
If we were having coffee ... I'd share that Furby is still in the house with us. She's learned a new trick. When she's outside and ready to come back into the house, she finds her way to the deck and calls until someone hears her and goes out to get her. Spoiled much? Those grand ideas of integrating her back into the flock -- I don't think it's going to happen.
Yesterday she was running around with a hen and I thought for sure that was going to be it. Nope. Furby went off on her own and then meandered a bit until she heard my voice, and came running.
This photo is from a while ago. She was really feeling it that morning and was bawking up a storm. So I pulled her over by me while I was working.
If we were having coffee ... I'd blather about the weather and the garden. We are in the midst of a drought and high heat. At the beginning of the garden season I was prepared and expecting cold weather and potential frosts. Instead, we got extreme heat and my cool weather crops didn't fare well. The weather keeps switching from extreme heat to cooler temperatures.
I've been doing a great job keeping up with weeds. I get out there almost every day and I take care of them and enjoy the flowers and the butterflies. What I need to do is get out there and take care of some things like I've been wanting to do since early spring, but have either been to lazy or too busy to go out and mess with.
On July 15 I took some video clips of the garden. I want so very much to have videos of the garden throughout the summer. This go-round I decided to chat about the plants. Before I knew it, a couple weeks went by and the videos were still sitting on my phone. Until the other night. I've got the clips together and then it took me a bit to remember how to compress the video and get it to a decent file size so it wouldn't take all day to load to youtube. It's been a learning curve all over again. Please bear with while I figure this all out again.
If we were having coffee ... Crafting. Crafting! I've been doing some crafting.
Tour de Fleece happened. I did some spinning at the beginning and finished up my first two pounds of grey Corriedale fiber.
I have no idea on yardage. I spun four bobbins worth.
I had a ply party one evening.
Then. Nada. I decided to be dedicated to a cross stitch project and get it wrapped up.
I ordered the "Happily Ever After" Stitch-along kit back in 2016, for Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's 2017 mystery stitch-along. I got overwhelmed by the border and header and put it away almost right away. I pulled it out later and did the first square, got overwhelmed and put it away again until last year. I looked at it and told myself "I'm going to work on it this year." Then didn't touch it until a few months back.
Well ... I'm done! It's so pretty!
I completed it on Saturday, July 24, at 10:35 p.m. Years in the making. I didn't dream that I would take years to finish this sampler.
Then what did I do? I grabbed the cross stitch kit my SIL gave me for my birthday last year. This one is a bit harder for me. The colors are so close that I was struggling a bit. And, you guessed it, I put it down.
I guess I'll be dedicated to this one for a while. I'm breaking it down into sections and focusing on one flower bit at a time. Which is good. Even with the cheaters, the line keepers and whatnot, I'm still goofing up a bit. Fortunately I see the mess-ups right away. And as I was proofing this blog post I realized the project itself is upside down in the photo. See, so easy to get mixed up on this one. I've got a feeling there are going to be a lot of unintentional customizations on this one. I'm worried about running out of floss, since it's a kit and it feels like I don't have a lot of leeway.
Sock knitting happened. When my son was playing chauffeur to my Miss Daisy, he kept commenting that I needed, *needed* to bring knitting with me.
I knit socks. I found the sock yarn at a shop over in Ashland. I looked at the colorway and thought "Oh, those are nice summer-y colors."
Really? Wool socks in summer?
Well, yes. In my area they are sometimes necessary.
Project: Vanilla socks
Started: June 2021 (I think) Finished: July 2021 (I think) Needle size: U.S. 1, 2.5mm Yarn: Patons Kroy Socks yarn (Cherry Pop Stripes)
This is most of the excitement that has been happening on the homestead. There are some days where I still feel like I'm struggling to catch up on the to-do list. What I need to do is take some time off of work and make myself tackle some of those things on my mental to-do list.
Well, let's hope it's not another month before I update again. 😁 (One of the very few times I'll use an emoji on here)
This year Tour de Fleece ran July 6-July 28. I decided I was going to spin up some foxglove carded corriedale dark brown fiber I have had since January 2014. I had started spinning it up last year, I think. Maybe even before then, but then set the spinning wheel to the side and focused on other things. I purchased 24 ounces of fiber, with the intent of spinning enough yarn to make a sweater.
Well ... I'm not even close with yardage for a sweater. That's all right. I learned a LOT during this tour. I watched a lot of spinning classes on Bluprint and read old Ply magazines.
Something clicked during all this reading and spinning I was doing; I understand some spinning techniques and methods *so* much better. The Bluprint classes I watched where taught by Jacey Boggs and Amy King. After viewing the classes I now have the knowledge to tell you how I spun this fiber. It was spun with short draw. I bounced back and forth between short forward and short backward. Short backward seems to be my go-to method. Since it was a carded prep, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a woolen yarn. I did a wraps per inch and it is a chunky weight. The different areas I checked had either 7 or 8 WPI. Final yardage was over 300 yards. Now, here's the kicker. I didn't spin the full 24 ounces. Some of my yarn went to the bunnies when they started having babies. I gave both of them fiber so they could use it for their nests and keep the babies warm. I still don't know if I have a skein of this wool floating around in my stash.
What's not including in this weight is the small amount of yarn that I had left over when I finished two-plying my singles. So I either gave the bunnies a lot more fiber than I realized, or I really do have a loose skein of this fiber somewhere in the yarn stash. I also hand plied for the very first time, so I wouldn't lose that little bit of yarn at the very end. I followed the instructions over on Knitty. It was easier than expected. Naturally I had a bit of a hard time with it I managed to not keep enough yarn out on my pinky. I had to dig it out a little bit and I had some twist up that I had to untangle. I'm glad to have learned about this method and Andean plying. I don't know when I'll try Andean plying. Anywho, after plying and skeining up my corriedale I was geeked to spin more fiber right away. I started spinning some fiber that has been in stash for close to 10 years. I had mentioned this a few blog posts ago. It is some superwash wool top. It has such a wonderful prep. I finished a bobbin last night.
I'm so pleased with it.
I'm really hoping I have enough of this fiber to fill one more bobbin. If so, then my plan is to ply them together and try a pair of toe up socks for myself. I'm debating on dyeing them or not. I'm worried I'll do something to mess the yarn up. I've never dyed hand spun before.
This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share, or when I feel the need to catch up.
So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice. Tonight I'm drinking hot chocolate. Because I can! If we were having coffee ... I'd say "Hey, it's been a while." I didn't write at all this past week. I had no inspiration. I've had lots of little things I want to share, and I didn't feel each topic could fill a whole blog post. My life hasn't been very exciting. If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you about my garden. It's growing like gangbusters this year.
Our tomato plants are the biggest we've ever had. A couple of the plants are almost as tall as my husband. I'm keeping an eye on them, so we don't lose any fruits.
Can you spot the tomatoes? So many this year!
We have been eating broccoli like popcorn. So tasty!
Speaking of fruits, we are going to have grapes this year!
Our raspberry bramble is doing great, too. We've got a few canes that are at least seven feet tall. Not to mention all the fruit that will be ripening very soon.
This photo shows at least one of those tall raspberry canes. I tried putting text in the photo. It didn't show up. If you look to the left of the photo you can see them.
I wish all the summers could be this good when it comes to the garden stuff.
This is the new patch we have started up by the house. The chickens have been sneaking up here and eating the fruits. Killer (the roo) leads a group of hens up here. I think he's telling him "Ladies, follow me. I will take you to the land of milk and honey," and they like the sound of that, so they all make a direct beeline to the bushes.
We've already been enjoying black raspberries fresh off the canes.
If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you about the ladies and our baby roos. Not to mention, our sweet turkey boy. I do think I mentioned previously that we sold off a lot of the older girls. I think our Killer appreciates this. He seems more calm now that he doesn't has so many to keep an eye on. The baby roos, and they aren't *all* roos, are doing great. They are having a wonderful life. There is definitely a lot of testosterone in the yard. I often see birds facing off, then one will break off and run away to see what the others are doing.
Our sweet Turkey Baby, he's not gobbling a lot yet. He thinks he's just a big chicken and he flocks with everyone else. I have *got* to get a video of him running, because it's hysterical to see. He's so gangly.
Can you believe that in April he fit in my hand?
If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you about the baby bunnies. Oh, those sweet little things. Yes, all the animals are sweet and adorable right now! Thor and Loki's babies are starting to venture out of the nest and eat and drink with their parents. They are ready to move into the house and spend some time with us.
They are so curious right now. They aren't very skitty of us people.
Shadow had babies ... a few weeks ago, I think. I've lost track. She makes adorable babies. Shadow and the babies live in a safe space in the chicken coop. It's neat to see chickens and rabbits co-exist. Those little stinkers are starting to leave the nest and run around the coop. Shadow is a good mom. This is one of Shadow's babies.
If we were having coffee ... I'd share that I *finally* completed the Halloween table runner I've been working on.
I used my walking foot to sew on the binding. This is my best binding work, to date. I'm really pleased with it. This was also my first time using thread from Connecting Threads. I don't have experience with many threads. Connecting Threads thread seemed just as good as the thread I was getting up at JoAnns. I have a few quilt kits that I can start working on now. I probably won't start anything new until fall. If we were having coffee ... I'd talk to you about my knitting. I've made a little bit of progress on my vanilla sock. I've worked on it, here and there. Project: Vanilla socks Pattern: My own Started: July 10, 2019, or so. Needle size: U.S. 1, 2.5 mm, circular needles Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Colorway: Surf's up, Mostly blues with a stripe of purple
I have about five inches knit up. Another couple inches, or so, and I will start the heel. I'm going to try a heel method from the Cat Bhordi book I own.
I spent most of my knitting time on the shawl. Project: Easy Half Circle Shawl Pattern from Lionbrand.com Started: July 6, 2019 Needle size: U.S. 8, 5.0 mm Yarn: Lionbrand Shawl in a Ball Colorway: Wind Chimes - 305, various blues I've put my shawl in time out. I didn't have a full skein/cake of this yarn. I thought I'd work on it as far as I could, then cast off. I got to row 20 on the last part and decided to cast off. I played yarn chicken and lost. I ripped the cast off back. I was going to rip back another row, then realized if I rip back another row I won't have any garter stitch and the shawl will roll up. Look at how close I was to the end.
So I sighed heavily and decided I need to get another skein/cake of the yarn. When I get the yarn I will add more length to the shawl than what the pattern calls for. I do have a finished object. I made this little one a while back. BUT, I waited to do the hand embroidery on the face. All done! Just needs a new home. I made this out of dishcloth cotton, which is recommended by the pattern I followed. A year ago, or so, I made a pair of octopi for a friend out of acrylic, thinking of the wash factor. The dishcloth crochets up better. I like the fabric a lot. I don't know how well the color will hold up if it needs lots of washings.
If we were having coffee ... I'd blather that I've been immersing myself into all sorts of things about yarn and fiber dyeing, and fiber preparation for spinning. Spinning for Tour de Fleece has rewakened something in me and I could easily, and happily, spend hours spinning, if I could. I'm still going to do a separate post about the spinning I did for Tour de Fleece. The spinning has slowed significantly because I spun all of the one fiber I had. What fiber I have left is white fluff and that gets boring after a while. My spinning is also becoming more refined. The single I have going on the wheel is the thickness of a heavier thread.
This is the fluff I'm spinning up.
I ordered a turkish spindle last week and it arrived on Saturday. It is a dream to spin with. It is a cherry Reekalf spindle from Snyder Spindles. I asked for recommendations and this company came up a few times. I went on faith, people.
I'm still getting the hang of spindling again. Winding onto this style spindle is new to me. I haven't figured out how to butterfly the yarn onto my hand before putting it on the cob. Or however it's referred.
I've been following hashtags on Instagram and I'm seeing so much colorful fibers. I want to spin colorful fibers too! I dipped my toes into fiber dyeing. I winged it. I haven't dyed anything in years. It's all going to be a learning process. Thankfully, I have some wonderful indie dyer friends who are all encouraging me from the sidelines and giving me tips and offering suggestions.
This is just a couple yards of some superwash wool carded top my husband ordered for me years ago. The preparation is excellent. It fluffed right back up after drying.
It's so fluffy and squishy. I also dyed this up. I was playing with the red, and trying my hand at making orange. It looked so bright and vibrant as I was dyeing it up. I do hope it stays when the fiber is fully dried out.
Can you guess what I was going for? I've been practicing with just a few yards of fiber at a time. Until I get more comfortable with the process. Then I'll start working with braids worth of fiber. In the meantime, I'll keep going along with these smaller pieces. Then, maybe use it all to make one thing.
If we were having coffee ... I'd share that I finished the audio book I was listening to.
It's such a sweet story. If I had known it would tug at the heartstrings so much, I don't know that I would have picked it. The story revolves around "Winnipeg" the bear that Winnie-the-Pooh is based on. I would whole-heartedly recommend the story to anyone who wants to read with their young children. I'm sort of a wimp when it comes to some stories and they just make me feel all the feels, and get a little weepy. I probably won't read or listen to any more stories until school starts again.
I recently learned that a bookish podcast I listen to off and on went through Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Now, I read through that book on my own. Took my time, had what was basically cliff notes to help me through, and I did not like this book. I'm debating on going through the book again this fall. Do I really want to put myself through this? I don't know. I feel if I go through the book again, while listening to a few people who make books their business, I will either change my mind about Jane Austen, or say "It's official, I hate the writing." Decisions, decisions.
With the change of the seasons and my playing with fiber again I've gotten the itch about dyeing fiber again.
In the past the dyeing I've done has not been anything too fancy.
I've been frustrated with my lack of being able to mix the basic colors and get different shades and hues. It seemed to me that no matter what I did, I was ending up with the same shades of colors no matter how I mixed the colors up.
It didn't matter how many youtube videos I watched and playing around with the colors, something wasn't clicking.
Some of my fiber friends suggested I get a color wheel so that I could see how the colors played with
each other. I read my copy of the Twisted Sister's Sock Workbook" yet again and decided to play around with food coloring. Yes, food coloring. Right now I don't have any plastic bottles that I can dedicate to acid dyes and honestly, in the new kitchen, I'm not sure I wanted the acid dye powder flying all over the place.
So ... I grabbed some of my handy-dandy canning jars and mixed up a few colors and measure out a yard or so of Superwash wool top and experimented.
I'm really pleased with what turned out. I kettled dyed and handpainted the yarn. I took my time and let one color exhaust before adding another color.
It's so happy.
I originally mixed up red, yellow and orange colors and towards the end of the process I took the little bottle of green dye and just dropped drops here and there over the fiber. You can see in the above photo where the green broke up a little bit and turned blue.
Like I said, so very happy with how it turned out.
Then I subscribed to the Knitting Blooms Podcast and saw she had shared a tutorial on handpainting roving.
The clouds parted and the angels started singing. Her tutorial was exactly what I need for handpainting fiber to click. Yes, that day I went to my local Wal mart and bought what I needed and that night I used leftover dye and dyed 3 ounces of superwash wool top.
I can't help but smile when I look at this braid. I can't WAIT to spin it up. But first, I need to finish plying my Tour de Fleece 2012 fiber.
