An Aussie wins the Tour de France

So Cadel Evans wins the tour and I limp across the finish line of the tour de fleece with head held over the handlebars of my spinning wheel.  All my singles of the Moorlit Shetland Fleece are done. I am not fully plyed or wacked but I have singles.... and no more brown fluff, to card , pick vm out of and hold in my hot little hands.  I am over the moon about Cadel and I think I am about my effort in the Tour but I am in that exhausted phase where I dont even want to think much about anything. YKWIM.

Doing a run down of this years Tour I would definitely say it has been the year of brown where last year it was the year of purple.  Most of what I spun was Brown in some shape or form.

• 500gms of Mocha Blue Faced Liester  
• 1 kilogram of Moorlit Shetland Fleece
• 120 grams of Shetland braid.

While this year was an all British breeds tour de fleece the only break from brown tones was a contrasting blue tonal from the WonkyKnitter which I managed to spin up into a light fingering.  I was trying for lace weight but it did not happen.  In addition to the spinning, I have also been doing some knitting.  How / When?   No I have not managed to get my hands on the keys of the Tardis but I got a shawl done in that light coloured shetland from the WonkyKnitter.

Day 5 of the Tour de Fleece 2011.

There were some heart stopping moments in the Tour de Fleece shawl project - the great rip back in the shawl from 12 pairs of central leaves to 6. Dont ask for the gory details but lets just say it involved an animal or two in this household and the knitting was just collateral damage. Then there was that race to the finish line between the edging and the amount of yarn left.  It was measured at.....  wait for it...37cm.  That is like winning the time trial by a 100th of second. Currently the shawl is blocking and I am putting my feet up and icing my aching hands. Thoroughly planning to talk myself out of a major challenge next year.

I think I can I think I can

I think I can said the little engine. At this stage of the tour de fleece I am already displaying signs of injury. I have got some sensitivity in the finger tips of my left hand. I think I have been pinching the twist to hard. While I have got one bobbin done I am not pushing for a second bobbin today as I am taking it as a slower day - that makes 3 down about 27 to go. Instead I am doing something about the pig sty which is better known as my coal bunker.

Yarn barf every where

I have let the children in there too often and as a result they have ratted around a little more than I like.  To the point I can not find anything. So today I decided was D-day to go through and get it reorganised in preparation for the new academic year. At some stage I am going to have to repaint it but that is not likely to be this summer. I made some project bags to help sort some of my yarn projects.  I sorted out some fabric to be sent off to the charity shop.  I know me putting fabric out the door is a totally strange concept but I felt that I was never going to use it and therefore it was better off in someone else's fabric stash.  I almost did some yarn but then my yarn hoarding tendencies come over myself and I held onto the yarn.  It is a box where if I dont find a use for it in the next six weeks I will send it out to someone else.

Day 6. Starting at the bottom of the hill climb

Yesterday after finishing the dyed shetland I started on the moorit shetland that I have to process for a cardigan for the dear husband. I managed to get half a bobbin but no photo yesterday. Today on day 6 of the Tour de Fleece I have managed to get a bobbin and half done.  

This amount and yesterdays half bobbin is less than 100gms.  I have a kilo of fleece to spin.  So if we say 3 bobbins for 100 grams that means I have 30 bobbins to fill and ply......  30 bobbins ok who has lost her marbles.  I think that we agree that would be Moi.

Today was the first day of Ry's summer holidays so of course she slept in.  I finally turfed her out between the thunder storms to get photos with a shawl.  We talking the English Summer here it will be wet guaranteed. 

I made the Garden of Alla shawl back in January but only got around to blocking it last night.  This shawl was designed by Suzy Crancer but I used another ravelry user's edging to what is in the pattern directions.  My Masha'allah was using up some Schoppell-Wole Zaberball Starke 6 that I had left over from making some socks.  This shawl is one, yes one skein.  While the pink to green is not really my thing as I think there is too much pink in this shawl I have another graduation present in the cupboard.

This is a big shawl we are talking over 80cm from centre back neck to bottom point.  Daughter is 6'3" and she had plenty to spare when she was doing the eagle spread of the shawl  as from tip to tip we are over 2 metres in length.  

Trip to Cambridge

Earlier this week we drove down to Cambridge with daughter to check out her preferred university course. If she gets in she will need a push bike like the one in the picture with a big enough basket to carry all her library books.  How do you like that courtyard building for the just the English department?  I loved their library and I could see me spending hours working in there but I think she liked the other libraries this campus had just as much as well so is likely to be spoiled for choice.

It is day two of the tour de fleece here and so far I have done another four bobbins of the Mocha Blue Face Leicester. So I currently have plied yarn which has been twacked outside in the sun do some finishing off drying with weights.

The lovely weather yesterday also allowed me to get a shawl that I made in January blocked.  I know, I know but we have a shortage of space and waiting for days and days to dry is just not a feasible option for me. Between the cat, the dog, children and the husband something would happen.  So here we are with my Zertzerta shawl project.

Zertzerta

This shawl is made out of first attempt to spin a lace or lighter weight yarn. It goes from cobweb to light fingering in places but I am getting better at doing finer weight yarns. I just need more practice aka the tour de fleece for a period of consistent practice.  The pattern is Hauni and I can not believe how quick it was to knit the second time around.  The first time took me something like a month to six weeks of grief.  This time I did it in 2 days.  If I had more yarn I would have made a larger shawl and I really like how I got the graduated colour on the bottom leaves. It was really worth doing all the individual pins for the crochet bottom edge.  A pain on the fingers but I like the edge effect.

Daughter again modelled this shawl for me and she is doing the typical behaviour when she likes my project of I WANT.  I want it. Repeat, wash and rinse and you now know what is like to live with a teenager it is a bit like a broken record.

Yes the garden is getting rampant again but I hopefully will have some kids to help wack it back into submission soon. Daughter has 3 more days of school next week and then her brother gets off two weeks later.

Since this is not the only shawl in the cupboard that need blocking I am off to block another one or two. I do have to do a few more shawls in the next couple of weeks for graduation pressies so I am between a rock and hard place with time commitments so I can see some midnight oil being burnt knitting or spinning like the clappers.  Now I just have to make a choice about shawl patterns.  I think repeats of patterns I have done before is the way to go but it is a case of which ones.

Wind in the Willlows

"O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us." The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. "I hear nothing myself," he said, "but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers."  

- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Ch. 7.

My Willow Leaf Stole by Linda Choo has finally been finished and blocked. I originally queued this pattern up in 2009 for the the 2010 shawl challenge and just did not get round to it. It was a case of too many patterns and just not enough time. It is third shawl for 2011 but the first one I have managed to get blocked and daughter to model the photo shoot.

It is longer than her arms. We have to do some gardening before we can have a proper photoshoot as it is dangerous out there. The camera also seems to have developed a blurr but that could be due to the sunlight so we are going to try this again later in the day when the day is not sooooo bright.

κρόκος

Or crocus in english.  This project has finally been finished.  It has more pick ups and put downs than most projects. To think that this project was first started in the planning stage back in 2009. Every spring I want to do a crocus project to celebrate these wonderful little flowers who are the sentinels of spring for me.  Back in the Spring of this year I finally cast on the project and used up two cones and then had to wait for the order of a third cone for it to arrive.  When the cone finally arrived the hook which was in the project had gone for a walk.  So the project was relegated back to the lounge work basket.  If it was there in lounge basket the reasoning was that it would get done as it would annoy me.  Hello that was the idea but the reality is that I did not work on this stole for almost three months.  Thank goodness for the recent FO mania and I have managed to knock this one off too.

Knitting madness

It appears that I am not the only one in several of my Ravelry groups that I regularly hang out in who are doing the 52 in 52 weeks project.  Some of my fellow rum drinkers in the RavTav are doing similar things.... Must be all the virtual rum we drink in this tavern. God help us if we actually met up in person we would need someone with the bail money to get us out of the local clink.

So I now have 2 items from Xmas knitting finished: 

• the Limoncello shawl from before New Years 
• and I have just blocked out my latest shawl, Zertzeta, which was started at midnight on New Years Eve.

I am sort of excited about the little shawlette Zertzeta as it used my first ever attempt at lace weight hand spun. Spinning of this BFL Fibre took about a week and I tried very hard to be consistent. However, I did not manage that very well so the fibre ranges between fingering weight and cobweb. When I attempted to work out my meterage of course the kitchen scales then decided to go kaput so I can only do a visual estimate that I had about 300m from 100 gms of fibre. I have made a little shawlette out of the same pattern that I did last year, the Hurani, but this time it went so much quicker because it appears that I actually enjoyed the pattern since I was hanging on a thread to see if I could make it to the end.  Was it the thrill from wondering if I would have to make it to the end of the chart with my available yarn.  It was a bit touch and go even with the crochet bind off. My new version of the Hurani is not as big as the one I did last year but it looks pretty all stretched out on the blocking boards. Unblocked it was the size of a headscarf and it did not stretch that much more when I blocked it out.

Pictures of the latest shawls will come about as soon as we get enough daylight. It has been very very overcast here this week and we hopefully will see some light soon...... I am starting to count down the days to spring. So have a picture of the last Hurani that I did last year.

Hi Ho this little Xmas elf has to go and do some more Xmas knitting so I am going to start one of A-Z KAL (knit along) socks.  

Blocking like Crazy

After knitting a number of shawls I just had not got round to blocking them.  Why the old factors of time and space along in the case of one shawl total disappointment and a fit of rage.  That shawl was going in the bin I had thrown it across the room as I was  so cross with it.

On Wednesday I blocked them.  On Thursday I roped the daughter in for a fashion show and photos. I actually got the photos uploaded and the project pages on Ravelry were updated.

First Cab of the rank is the RavTav Bitteroot that we knitted as a KAL back in March.

Next on the photo parade is April KAL with Zoec - the Haruni.

The Haruni redeemed itself from the corner of shame when it dried.  It was a miraculous stretching effect that occurred when the pattern opened up and suddenly this shawl was growing and growing to a lovely size.

Haruni

In the last 12 months I believe that I have over come my fear of lace and I would describe myself as a lace knitter now.  I have done a fair bit of lace knitting and seemed to stopped crocheting lace.  But my current lace project is the first one I have been disappointed in..... is it that I have become more technical in my knitting or just that I am not getting the bang for my buck that I have got out of other projects.  While I have knitted for many years I still consider myself to be an average knitter and try to set goals for improving my skills.  I have cast off the Haruni  and I would warn anyone the icord knitted bind off takes hours. Some how all my crochet hooks have done a wonder off some where in this tip of a house.

The Haruni is shawl number 5 so I am halfway down on my New Years challenge for 2010.  I have another couple of shawls to knit.  I think I have about 10 shawl project bags already made up and my ravelry queue has about 250 shawls.

For next year I am trying to sort out which will be my next challenge.  I know it is not already half way through the current year but I think that I am well on track for this years challenge and I dont feel that challenged. When I started the challenge I thought I would be but so far I have not been.

The options for next year is between cables and colour work. I have knitted cables again this year and I just disliked it so much that I have not done another cable project since then.  It is either sort out the cable dislike or the fancy colour work dislike. I have done fair isle and interstarsia before liked the outcomes but not been really enamoured with the technique. I think I have a project for the colour work as I have recently queued a duck patterned pair of socks.

Christmas present wise - well I have six months to go but I have to finish graduation presents off and I only have about month to go for the mass graduation weeks. So I need to get a wriggle on. I also have to sort out my fibre for next month as I have signed up for the Tour de Fleece.

It is now June...

Well yet again I have been surprised by my workload and the continued demand for my services in my paid work.  Add to that the household and other organisations that I am involved in  so life has been a little busy.  But last weekend was a wet long weekend and I actually got quiet a lot accomplished. So much so that the mammoth tinking job was finished and actually finished the shawl.

Yo Mel,  Calling on Mel  Guess what I have some photos .  A couple of months ago the lovely Mel suggested that I provided some photos on my blog.  So a bit of shout for her is necessary.  Lets just say that I tend to be challenged by the organisation required to have nice photos and attach them to projects.  It is actually so bad sometimes items get out the door and I am left waiting for recipients to give me a snap shot. I just have to stop doing last minute rush jobs .....  LOL  that is never going to happen.

This shawl is some Babylonglegs DK in Goblin which I saw at the Ravelry day in Coventry and just had to had cause it was the greens that my Ry would just love. As some lovely commentators mentioned I knit an awful lot of green, yeap I know she has a real green fetish. It has gone past an addiction it is a compulsion which she has great enjoyment in collecting even more green.  I have made this for her birthday, later this month, and being her mother I can guarantee that I most certainly have not let that surprise out the bag cause she would never read a blog in which her mother was talking about anything let alone knittting.  Way uncool.....  Actually at the moment she is pouting cause she thinks that will encourage me to give this shawl to her.  She currently thinks that I am swapping it with someone.

As per normal I had the some difficulties with my swatch it down right lied to me. So I had to fudge some of the charts to meet my metre-age issues.  I can count.  My family knows I can as they hear me every time I cast on when I repeatedly check the number of stitches I have cast on.  Sssh  I am casting on.  God or what ever is their deity help anyone who feels that they will be silly bugger and help my counting with a number interjection.  I have sharp pointy things and I will impale them on these items.  But I somehow keep stuffing up my calculations about appropriate yardage to complete the pattern in gauge.  I can do algebra and calculus but I can not do this calculation.

Sea Robin's Egg Caps

Well I had finally finished that troublesome Travelling Woman no 3 and got it blocked after much determination to get it finished. It has been done and was taken slightly damp to knit night. I just had to show someone it was FINISHED!!!! Husbeast's comments of "That is nice dear", just does not cut it like afirmation by other knitters.

While it was drying I managed to complete the 2nd motorcycle girl Möbius.

Since the TW was finished I wanted a couple of quick knits to help with the Xmas list. So I cast on a Robin Egg Cap for Ry and it was such as quick knit up that I finished after knit night. I cast on the next one and finished it in a night.

I think to help get some of the knitting mojo back for the next week or so I will be doing little projects and leaving the Beast aka Js waistcoat on hold. I also have to get cracking on the birthday present knitting for K, as soon as possible. So I had undertaken action on most of the last weeks objectives.

Action plan for the next week.

• Complete Birthday present for K, ASAP!!!!
• Finish the BSJ which is currently on the needles and make a matching pair of booties.
• Finish the baby kimono jacket for FM
• One more item off the Xmas list!

Travelling Woman Number 3

Well I had got so far but I think the last pattern return of Block A of this shawl pattern has been ripped back about three times so far. I keep running out of yarn. Found a snippet added it on and still did not get far enough to cast off on the border.

I ended up have to dye a matching skein so that I get this shawl finished. So here we go tinking back the rows and lets just say I am tinking tinking and still tinking back. After another week of interruptions that have affected my ability to finish this project I still have not managed to finish it.

Last Sunday afternoon I had a little dyefest and managed a reasonable amount of dyeing. I managed to get some really lovely teals and a batch of autumn leaf colours.

During the week at the most boring inservice between sessions I managed to cast on a Möbius scarf for Motorcycle girl's girl friend. The last Möbius has been repeatedly borrowed by the girlfriend that Motorcycle girl has placed a request so that the GF has her own.

Action plan this week:

• Finish off the Travelling Woman No 3
• Finish off Möbius No 2
• Get another BSJ done for yet another sprog
• Start on Birthday gift for Kayleigh

Travelling Woman or should I say Women!

Well I thought it was time that I got down to work and started to tackle the Christmas Knitting List. I had ordered some yarn from Christine at Knits in the City for the Husbeast's next waist coat. I needed a quick knit and I had some lovely Rowan - RC luxury cotton DK in the stash and though of Ry. Ry's favourite colour is green and I had picked up a couple of balls just case it was a pretty green. Why is it the way that as soon as you like a yarn they discontinue it - Rowan does it all the time!

So I had several shawl patterns thanks to my trolling on Ravelry and was planning to do the next Beginners Lace Knitters KAL next time it started. The KAL voted for September and what do you know it is a Travelling Woman. I had this pattern in my library so I thought it is a good as time as any to start on. I know it was a little early for September but the Beginners Lace Knitters group is pretty flexible about when and how you do things which I like. After casting on last week I go into work and find out that Kate is leaving next week to head off to teaching college. So since it was a quick knit so far I pulled out the stash bag again and found that I had two balls of Artist Palette Butterly. This DK is perfect for a quick knit shawlette for Katie as she goes off to start her new life as trainee teacher.

So at stitch and bitch on Tuesday night I cast on the second Travelling Woman. Perfect time as the initial part of the shawl is straight stockinette. I thought this was a good idea since I would not be able to do a chart and in theory I would be just knitting while chatting. After a couple of attempts and rips I got the shawl cast on. Wednesday night I had completed Chart A repeats and Thursday all done, time to cast off. I think with Ry's I am going to do a couple of extra repeats of Chart A and this will make it slightly longer shawl which is necessary since the girl is so long.

So I think officially I now have the lace bug which is handy as I have been stumbling round trying to find ideas for the Christmas list. Looks like a couple of lace shawls will be flying off the needs at high speed.