I like this picture- it's of a bobbin of singles I spun longdraw, more or less hopefully maybe evenly from some superwash BFL I got at the Gathering from the Woolen Rabbit. I finished it this morning, took a walk, had some lunch, saw a freaky picture on PostSecret which now has me a bit queasy, and soon I'll sit down and try very, very hard not to overply it, since I plan on Navajo plying this bitch into hopefully enough yardage for a pair of socks. I was going to 3ply it from three separate bobbins that I very carefully weighed out on my meth-lab digital scale, but I saw a really pretty pair of socks that had been knit from navajo plied yarn and made it all pretty and stripey and decided I needed to do that, so that's what I'm doing.

Oh yeah, the picture:



I never like the photos I take. I need to take a class or something. But this one I like.

Speaking of bad photos, here are the pictures of the mittens I made from the Spunky Eclectic shetland I navajo plied (and hopelessly OVERplied at the Gathering), which I knit with a couple ounces of MVFF Cormo (we think) I spun up last Sunday. They have made warm, lovely mittens that have made me very, very happy.





The end.

PICTURES OF STUFF! (seriously, get ready)

It's Sunday afternoon. I have an entire house to clean.

Okay, let's start!

I've been busy this past month...



But later for that. First things first, here we have pictures from a few weeks ago, when Ken, my mom and I went to go see MY president, Barack Obama, in Londonderry, NH.











I have too many words. Suffice it to say I am proud, proud, proud of my country, and for the first time since I remember I believe in my newly elected leader. A lot. And DAMN is he one fine elected leader!

This is a fiber and crafty-like blog, though, so let's move on.

But YES WE CAN! Okay, for real this time, moving on. :D


Socks for Betsey's birthday!



I knit these from Araucania Ranco Solid, the pattern is Twinkle, Twinkle pattern from Laurie Lee.


Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm had it's annual Fall Shearing! This is the shearing which will lead to my first spinner's share of cormo and mohair!

Here are a bunch of goats waiting to be separated from their fleeces.



A sheep!



A goat!



Susan with a newly shorn kid. Little guy's like "Aww, come ON, man! I'm COLD now! Lemme go, I'm hungry!"




Here are a few shots from when Ken and I went apple picking at Smolak Farms in Andover. North Andover? Um, yes. North Andover. I think.





A view across the parking lot, across the pond to their tree farm and, more impressively, the 80 solar panels they have. Ken was super excited to see those. He dreams of running our entire lives off of solar panels, and that's one of the many reasons why I love him. :)





Me, literally stuffing my face. :)



We went a bit late in the season, so we walked around for 20 minutes before we finally found a place where there were actual apples on the trees. In the span of that 20 minutes, we saw one.



Discouraging at the time, but makes for a pretty nice picture.


Here's a skein of, um, something? I got the fiber at Webs, it was unmarked and had been dyed by someone there. That's really all of the information I have, but I spun 3 thicker-than-I-thought singles and plied them together to create this, with which I am delighted.




Ooh! Ooh! Okay, now we get to the really good stuff! Rhinebeck and The Gathering!

Rhinebeck is like, the mothership calling us all home. And you know it.

I went with my knitterly friends Ariel and Sarah. We missed Jess very much, who couldn't make it last minute because of a family emergency, but she will without a doubt be there next year, and she will love it.

Sarah, Ariel and I friggety freezing at the Rav party



Here are Logan and Harry, sons to Patrick, beloved of ShepherdSusie of MVFF. The game was, take off your glasses and shake your head as hard as you possibly can while someone takes a picture of you mid mouth-waddle

Logan


Harry


We had fun. Then later Susan told me that someone asked the boys who they'd been talking to and they said "Some ladies" which somehow made me feel elderly, lol.

And now for the things I spent way too much of my hard earned money on.

SOCKSTHATROCK DAMMIT!!! IT WAS THERE! THIS WHOLE EFFING AREA OF STR! We stood in a 45 minute line and loved every damn second of it. We emerged, battle scarred and exhausted, but with a pretty tidy little haul.










Now, I need to say here that this place was so riotous that I really have no idea what I bought or where, so please forgive the utter absence of details here.









I also got some very autumnal sock yarn, with which I made some Halloween socks. I was wearing them when I was finally taking all these pictures and completely forgot to photograph them. Doh.

In addition to the above, I scored 3 bottles of wine and some yummy cheese, and some maple cotton candy. DUDE. YUM.


The Gathering, is a weekend spinning workshop event hosted by the Northeast Handspinner's Association, of which I am a member. It happens every other year in one of the New England states or New York, depending on whose turn it is. This year it happened to be held in a hotel about 12 minutes from my house. I took two classes, Spinning Sock Yarn with the amazing Abby Franquemont, and Wheel Plying Techniques with the equally wonderful Jenny Bakriges.

My class with Abby was a full day thing on Saturday, and the Plying class was just for 3 hours this morning, so I have much more to show from Abby's class. But boy, did I learn a lot!

Here's some of what I produced, given the LA LA AWESOME fiber Abby provided for us for FREE, as it was donated to her by Louet and Spunky Eclectic. Both of whom, by the way, make some pretty effing amazing fiber.



At the top here, I honestly can't remember what this was. The pink is Louet 80% Merino, 20% silk. I actually have some of this in a gorgeous olive and I can't wait to use it now. It's a DREAM to spin. I spun both using a short forward draw and plied them pretty tightly. The blue and purple are a 2ply yarn and the pink is 3 ply.

The white was Louet's Organic Merino Top. This picture won't do it justice, but I mean this- this is the most wonderful fiber I've ever been in contact with. Apparently, Louet has decided to discontinue it. If it sounds interesting to you (and I promise, it's more than interesting), please talk to your local fiber shop and ask them to request that Louet continue making it. Here I used a long draw, which was the first time I had done that, so it was pretty thick and thin, but oh man it was like... what was it like? Okay, it was like you know how when you're making rice krispies treats and you get to that point where the butter and marshmallows are all melted together, and the color and texture combine to provide just this ridiculously creamy, satisfying experience? That's what long draw with Louet Organic Merino Top is like. So I spun up a couple singles and plied them together and I'm just wishing I had several pounds of it for a big, thick, soft, chunky, butter-and-marshmallow sweater.

We got 2 oz of Shetland from Spunky Eclectic, mine was in the Rocky Mountain High colorway. I spun those singles long draw and then Navajo plied them together, and was literally newly delighted with every inch that came together. It was a very exciting 15 minutes! There really isn't a lot of this, but I want to try to do SOMETHING with it. Maybe I'll have enough for mitts?




Speaking of Spunky Eclectic, I had bought a couple of Corriedale batts from her in a gorgeous Aquamarine colorway, and brought two very full bobbins of singles to the Gathering with me. Last night at the spin in, while we listened to some AMAZING live traditional Irish folk music played by three immensely talented teenagers, I plied it up into this.




This morning I learned some really excellent tips for plying, and was able to ply together some older singles I had, which I thought I'd never be able to find anything good for. I plied them together as practice, but fell in love with the yarn they produced. The color doesn't QUITE show up here, but I have to find something to do with this.




And hey! I went shopping, too!

From A Touch of Twist:

Four ounces of the most brilliantly dyed silk I've ever seen, plus some hankies with which to... do... something?





Two ounces each of the following colors of 100% tencel (colors REALLY did not make it here to this screen)





A bobbin, and some very pretty merino top which, once again, really looks nothing like its picture :)




From Foxfire Fiber and Designs I got some intensely soft Cormo & Silk Roving, 2 oz in Olive and 4 oz in just plain old white, which, I promise, will not always be plain old white:






And finally (FINALLY!) from the Woolen Rabbit, 100% Superwash BFL, 4oz in each colorway





DAFT CRAFTER OUT!

That special synergy that happens when Jennifers come together.

I have this friend, Jenn. I met her in high school. We were in chorus together, I was an alto, she was a soprano. Despite that, I thought I'd like her. I remember watching how she would joke around in class and thinking "I'll bet if we were friends we'd laugh a lot." I was totally right, that's EXACTLY what our friendship has been like. We did have our arguments, of course. Jenn is a firm supporter of the "Double N" movement, wherein a Jennifer, when shortening her name, should use two n's at the end. I take my stance on the extreme opposite end. I think that extra n is just redundant. Horribly redundant. But, through all the strife that differing basic belief structures like these might have caused, we always managed to laugh a lot.

As it happens when two friends graduate high school and one goes on to wander the country aimlessly searching for some vague wisp of purpose in life (um, ahem, me) and one goes on to get her Ph.D in Economics with an almost impossible immediacy (that's MY friend, Jenn!) we have lost touch for years at a time. But when we get together, either for a random night of karaoke in Ohio (circumstances, my friends, circumstances- and yes we did sing 867-530niyeeyiyeeyine) or her beautiful wedding, we go right back to the status quo, which usually includes bizarre looks from people standing around us.

Recently I started signing onto a chat through my email client, The Almighty And Omniscient Google, where Jenn also has an account.  I don't quite have conversations with anyone like the conversations I have with Jenn.  This one started off in reference to my little status message thing, which was "Purple Lightning" (in response to a friend's "Yellow Thunder" - he's always changing his status to make comments on mine, so I was doing it back to him, though I had no idea what his, or mine for that matter, meant)

jenn: does that precede purple rain?

me: aaaaahahahahahahahaaaa.  no.
but thanks for putting that song in my head.

jenn: i do what i can. it's not much

me: it's enough, though... it's really more than enough.

jenn: well, at least i am adequate

me: don't sell yourself short, jenn. not in this economy.

jenn: but i am short! i can't even see over my cubicle wall without standing on my tiptoes

me: that's what heels are for! that's the economy "boost" we need!

jenn: ahh... of course!

me: 700 billion dollar heels!

jenn: call congress!
heels for everyone!
and they can be from payless!

me: YESS

jenn: we can save the country billions!
well, i want the jimmy choo's
and you should get them too for thinking of it
but no name-brands for everyone else, because they were no help

me: they really weren't!

jenn: god we're brilliant... i'm not sure what the world would do without us

me: i love how our conversations go

jenn: it's that special synergy that happens when jennifers come together

me: that it is, my friend. that it is.

Please understand, I don't actually expect that this conversation will be very funny to anyone else, but it had me in stitches. Specifically the part where she insists that no one else gets name brand shoes because they were no help.

And now... some pictures of yarn, a new bathroom floor and a new baby!

Upstairs by WollSchnegge wrap that I'm knitting with some new Malabrigo lace I bought. I LOVE LOVE LOVE knitting this.



Three skeins of Socks that Rock that I bought IN THE STORE (!!!) at Tricoter in Seattle. That one in the middle is called SeaMar, it's a custom color dyed just for Seattle.



For those of you who have seen our bathroom, you'll know it as that pink-tiled monstrosity. It was PAVED in pink tiles, walls and ceiling, and had these teeny tiny white and black tiles on the floor. All that has changed. Here's our current floor (with bonus paint swatch of a possible wall color!)



And finally, last but not least, a fuzzy picture of Ken's new nephew, born on Monday night! YAY FOR KEVIN MICHAEL! He's so cool...



PATOOTIE!

Here's the boyfriend with his new nephew. Note the adorable little smile on Ken's face.



And a very tired me with the kid. Love that kid.



This weekend we go apple picking, and possibly paint our bathroom. Oh, and I have to buy a car. That too. In this easy, smooth, warm and fuzzy economical climate. That'll be a breeze, I'm sure.