Misbehaving...camera (tilt head 90 degrees)

Hey all - long time no write! Summer sucked me in and spit me back out again - I can't believe September is already here - packing lunches and homework again. Neither of these two activities rates high on my list of favourties due to the amount of knitting time lost during a year!

The boy has entered Grade 4, and the girl Grade 6 (eek! that is kind of officially pre-teen country isn't it?). Two days in and neither is particularly impressed with the experience.

What I'm knitting

On the knitting front there has been progress. The Swallowtail Shawl in my handspun is done and I couldn't be more pleased. The colour changes are gorgeous and the repeats were long enough that I got several rows out of each colour even towards the long end of the knitting.






Pattern: Evelyn Clark's Swallowtail Shawl from Interweave Knits, Fall 2006
Yarn: Handspun from 100g of Blue Faced Leicester from Fleece Artist
Needles: KP Options in 3.5 mm

I am still plugging away on the Print O the Wave from Eunny Jang in Handmaiden Sea Silk...no sideways pics of this though. I am more than halfway through the repeats on the main body and will have to contemplate the border - somehow I am NOT keen on picking up 8 gazillion stitches around the edge.

Lastly - I am making some progress on my Susie Hoodie from More Big Girl Knits...granted that it doesn't look like much but the Berroco Ultra Alpaca is terrific to knit...

Colour is darker and more heathery than it looks here...love love love...cross fingers it will fit.

In my mailbox

I participated in the Hush Hush Handspun Hootenany this summer and received this awesome package from my downstream pal...whose email I am looking for right now - I will credit with an actual name and link but my brain has big holes in it!

Anyway - here is the package of goodness:

That's a huge 8oz bit of spinning fiber from Crown Mountain Farms - the blue yarn on the left is my pal's own handspun - pretty pretty blues and greens and very very soft. The sock yarn on the right is her own handdyed (damn I wish I had a link for you to her etsy shop...next time!). There were also two bars of soap (lavender and almond - yum!!!), some lindt chocolates (not shown...um possibly devoured at this point) and a cute little notepad that says "Homespun" on the top.

My own upstream pal was in England, moving to Australia next week so my fingers are crossed she'll get her parcel in time!

Spinning...span...spun!

More Fleece Artist - this is wool-silk in lovely browns, copper and burgundy/pink. I am spinnign thin again and now that I figured out what was going wrong the last time I tried to ply with thread, I'm going to try again.

Dye party

I spent Sunday dyeing my little heart out. A pound and a half of silk and a pound of merino-tencel blend. I am hoping to update the shop in the next few days and then I will be going on hiatus for about three months as I start French language training half days in the hopes of meeting the language requirements for my new position before Christmas. I suspect that blog updates will also be scarce and while I'll be reading other blogs I probably won't be commenting much (not a big change from the summer!) I am hoping to show you the Rambouillet that Chris and I are processing and to confess I had little stumble and am the proud owner of two unbelieveably gorgeous BFL fleeces that need to get cleaned and put away while the weather is still nice.

Here's a little taste of what I dyed up...




These are 3 of the merino-tencel rovings...shininess due to the flash on the first two.

Take care!