A good week

It feels so good to feel good. I didn't realize how low I had been until this last week when I finally threw off the crud that's been making the rounds of the office and the immunotherapy I've been having for my allergies kicked in last Friday. I had a great weekend last week, felt really great all week this week, and was energetic enough to tackle the mess I have in my kitchen this weekend. I'm hoping this is the start of a long-term trend. I'm tired of being unable to do what I need to do to keep my house a healthy place to live.

Now that the Queen Anne's Lace is complete, I feel great about tackling on more lace but not on such a large scale. One of my spring projects is to construct a pioneer woman's outfit: dress, bonnet, and apron. For the apron, I'm knitting up a lace edging to attach to the bottom. It's from The Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffmann and I'm doing it in bamboo crochet thread on size 1's. I'm liking how it's coming out and how the thread is behaving. Now to do 3 feet of it.

Have a great week

Spring progress

Today's going to be relatively quiet. The house will be open for airing and a few more dust rhinos will be rounded up. My chest crud is cleared up and the sunshine is giving me more oomph. Yesterday I went to the Aurora Colony Handspinners Guild's annual Fiber Faire with the intention of just picking up some fiber to spin up for a friend and going home to finish the QAL. I ended up staying with Susan and Gail at Susan's booth for Abstract Fibers and helping out when Susan or Gail needed to take a break. In the process I helped out various folks with questions, inspired people with the QAL and shared the pattern, guided spinners to Ravelry, and had a wonderful conversation with a lady who has been doing research on rare spinning wheels. I didn't take my camera unfortunately so I don't have pictures, but I did come home with goodies.A Romney fleece A lovely light spindle of madrona with a black walnut shaft Overdyed alpaca silk from Abstract Fiber and merino silk from Dicentra.

The biggest thing that came out of the gathering is that I finished the Queen Anne's Lace from MMario. This morning I got out my blocking boards and pinned the shawl out on the front porch. It's a giant flower of purple beauty. To give some perspective, the layout of the boards is 8 feet by 8 feet.

It's been quiet

The only sound that has been heard from Chez Runamuck has been the soft click of the Addis cranking out the Queen Anne's Lace. It has become an obsession now. I will finish this sucka by the end of the month. The question will be where the hell will I block it? It will be HUGE.

Gotta go. I'm on row 146. Fourteen more to go.

Surprise again!

At last the moment some of you have been waiting for. As you know if you're a regular reader of this compendium of nonsense I participated in Ted Myatt's Fibre to Scarf exchange. Getting my scarf so quickly gave me extra incentive to finish the one I was working on, so by the end of March it was complete.

It started with 8 ozs of Bullen's Wullens in a mulberry heathered with copper. The blend was combed out so it was very easy to spin up. I opted to making it a DK weight so that it would be a quick knit but not so thick that you don't have much yarn to make a scarf. I came up with almost 400 yards of lovely 2-ply that after finishing was wonderfully squishy and promised to be warm.

The next challenge was finding a scarf pattern that would keep my interest. I chose Brooke Nelson's Column of Leaves pattern off of Ravelry for its interest and quickly memorized pattern. The yarn worked very well with the pattern to my pleasure.

And who is the lucky recipient? None other than knitsib Kate Winkler who I've known from the list. She's tickled about the scarf and the goodies I included, and very happy that spring has offered at least an opportunity to wear it before the weather warms up and she has to put it away. It was a pleasure to make it for you, Kate. I hope it gives you lots of warm enjoyment.

Sunny skies on a Sunday

Spring is now getting a good shot in the arm this weekend here in Stumptown. Portlanders who were huddling in their jackets and scarves are walking the streets in shirt sleeves and sunglasses, big smiles on their faces as they try to soak up enough sun to neutralize the winter dullness. I've opened up the house to let the skimmia fragrance waft into the house and the cross breeze push the stale air of winter out. The cats are lounging in the sunshine after a good roll on the sidewalk and the bushtits are flitting about in the trees and bushes. A lovely day for sitting outside and knitting or spinning.

Last week at knit night I brought home Susan's carder and processed some of the washed wools I had. I completed the processing on two bags of wool, a merino I had purchased a couple of years ago and the Columbia moorit I got at the Aurora Fiber Faire last year, and now have some lovely batts to spin from.

It's interesting to see the crimp on both being so fine so I'm looking forward to seeing what I come up with from both wools. The merino was my first attempt at getting a wool in the raw after being sheared, washing it and processing it to batt form. I was afraid I had felted it but found to my delight that it had not.

The Columbia was washed and picked but needed carding. I did some experimental carding at OFFF on Deb Accuardi's carder and liked the result. It's a lovely warm brown that should be enough for a sweater when spun up.