Weekend activities
Apr. 13th, 2014 10:05 pmThis weekend, I:

(Pictured, L-R from top: shetland fiber, shetland yarn, hand cards, slub single, plied flame yarn, flame closeup, lace being blocked, woodsmoke yarn, woodsmoke swatch)
- Finished an ounce of shetland yarn, my first contact with the breed
- Finished 25g of a slub + spiral yarn (called a "flame" yarn) for my spinning study group
- Blocked and finished a lace hipscarf that's been languishing in my knitting bag for 2 years. First time pinning out lace, pretty fun.
- Had tea with some DC friends in town for Carnival
- Swatched & blocked some lace stitches for a shawl I want to make out of 4 oz of fingering/sport yarn I made in a dark purple-gray color called "woodsmoke"
- Did two passes on a woodburned pattern I'm putting on the hand carders I got for a class I'm taking in May
- Used said hand carders on some wool-alpaca roving I bought at Pgh Knit & Crochet Festival that was fussy to draft semi-worsted and semi-longdraw. Rolags, man. So fluffy. Fun to draft, working much better, and the carding makes it easy to pick out the unfortunately ample vegetable matter in the roving. No wonder it was a good price...
- Impulse-bought a pound of hand-dyed fiber split among three different types I've never spun before, including some sock blends I'm excited about
- Turned an old tshirt into a drawstring bag for the part of a raw icelandic fleece that helped cushion my spinning wheel
- Plied some commercial mercerized cotton into an 8-way cable to use for the drawstring
- Filled another steamer tray with potting soil, wet it, and planted seeds for Weld, Bright Lights Cosmos, and Cranberry Cosmos
- Let the baby Hollyhocks and Coreopsis sit on the (shaded) back porch for an hour in the warmth
- Walked P through some tricky jQuery for a two-level menu

(Pictured, L-R from top: shetland fiber, shetland yarn, hand cards, slub single, plied flame yarn, flame closeup, lace being blocked, woodsmoke yarn, woodsmoke swatch)