Fiber Lust.

No, not for shredded wheat. REAL fiber. Sunday I attended the Flock and Fiber Show, and I had a great time. I was not supposed to buy any fiber except for one particular project (hah) or any books (hah). I (it)did(/it) manage to avoid buying any raw fleece or any animals. I even avoided buying natural colored rovings (that's what forms the largest volume of my stash). I almost avoided buying books--but I saw a copy of The Handweaver's Pattern Book by Marguerite Davison for $10 and I took that as a sign that I ought to buy it. It is all 4-harness patterns. After the Complex Weavers Conference I felt sad at not having a complex loom; this book will help me learn how to get the most out of the one I have. (You can indeed do complex things with a 4-harness loom.)

Fiber-wise, I ended up with a little collection of this and that--largely related to the project I have in mind (and probably enough for about five!) and one bundle of painted roving that I just Had To Have. It's crazy, red and yellow and purple. More on that soon. That one is 50% alpaca, 30% merino, and 20% silk. The other fibers I got were Romney (cute and curley!), Merino, and mohair.

That evening I was tired & had a headache, but I spun up a couple of tidbits of fiber--one from a business card, the other from the outside of its bag of fiber. The main part of it was a blend with merino; the rest was mohair, which is diametrically different in the way it drafts & spins. Here is the result:

Weaving Success!

Last Friday I finally finished the silk warp I set up last year to weave the garters for this outfit. (The one on the left. The one on the right is me!) I wanted a twill pattern because twill has more of a give, so the garters would be more comfortable and work better. I had just decided to weave a plain twill when I came across this article by Carolyn Priest-Dorman. I had to adapt the draft to work on my loom, and it was a lengthy and often irritating process before the whole thing worked. I ran out of the original color, and completed the rest of the warp with a contrasting weft--the pattern shows even better! (And, er, so do the errors.) I definitely need to try out another version of this sometime--once I figure out what I did wrong--and after I try weaving the skinny, skinny linen I recently acquired.

Kitty Habits.

For several days in a row, Princess has roused herself from a comfortable spot to make an obligatory final final visit to the balcony before I leave for work. Not that she wants to go out, you understand. She MUST. Duty calls, and all that. She hurries out the glass door, pauses, and sits down, facing back into the living room. ("There's really nothing I particularly want to do out here at the moment, but I had to come out.") Thus she sits until I finish getting ready for work and let her in.

Knitting.

Today I have been knitting my brows at work (figuratively only, don't worry) but a few weeks ago I managed to finish a knitting project that has languished for (and this is literal) several years:
Part of the reason I stopped working on it was that I realized at some point I was really disappointed that it wasn't a sock. Additionally, I'd messed around with stripes too long at the top, so by the time I got to the little pattern I'd charted, the proportions were really odd. Parts of the final result are quite satisfactory, but overall--no.

I pondered several ways of addressing the issue, including felting the pouch, but I wasn't sure I'd like the results.

Then it occurred to me to just unravel it. Yes, the whole thing. That pleased me somehow--I'll unknit all of it, then start over, and do it "right." So by the time you see this, imagine numerous little balls of mismatched yarn!