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.

Waiting

Is the week over? It's Friday? I never thought this weekend would arrive. Not that I'm going to be doing anything super swell and fun though part of the weekend I will. I was able to borrow a drum carder from one of my spinning buddies so will be working on prepping up the Columbia and the Lincoln fleeces into batts for spinning. I may do some blending experiments too to see what I can come up with. I have some bits and pieces of exotics I'd like to blend in with some wools. But Sunday will be spent on a liquid diet followed by prepping for a colonoscopy to be done on Monday. It's not a routine one either, so I'll be glad to get it over with. Last Sunday was more fun, meeting up with Dan and going to see Slumdog Millionaire. The images of all the colorful fabrics stay in my mind.

The secret project is done and will be heading out tomorrow to its intended recipient. I'll be able to tell more about it as soon as she gets it, so you just have to wait. I know I know, it's hard. In the meantime, I've dug up some yarn Ted gave me a couple of years ago that I had originally started knitting up Rose of England but ripped it all out when I stopped knitting it and found when I came back that I had stopped in the middle of the round and had no idea where I was in the repeats. This time I'm doing a simple triangular shawl with stripes of handdyed Page Mill Farms sock yarn inserted in it. I'd be doing the QAL except at work during breaks and lunch I'm often in conversation with friends, so this shawl, done in garter stitch, is just the right kind of project that keeps me occupied. The light was lousy for pics today; I'll try to get some up later because the two yarns complement each other so well.

Mileage

The lovely scarf QueerJoe knitted for me is getting lots of oohs and ahhs. I can't help but share, it's so nice. Rodger of Abundant Yarn wanted to adopt it for his own, but I gently wrested away from him. He does look lovely in it, but then he has a natural ability to pose artistically.

I made a trip out to Canby to drop off fleeces for cleaning and processing into roving. One thing I like about heading out into the country is going into a Wilco, a farm and ranch supply store, to see what they have. You're not going to find a store with farm supplies in the mall, and since it's to provide things that help keep a farm running you find all sorts of things. I stopped in one, a brand spanking new Wilco in Canby, and browsed for a while. I found welding shields, traffic cones, horse tack, heavy duty clothing, gopher traps, a dozen kinds of brooms, and propane tank parts. I came out with a Brute trash can, a heavy duty feed bucket (larger than the usual buckets you find at the grocery store), long sleeved PVC gloves (excellent for really messy projects like dyeing fiber), packets of seeds, and cat litter. For a fiberholic city girl it's a treasure trove.

The secret project is getting close to completion. I have a couple more repeats of the motif then I can work on the final border. I'm on row 105 on the Queen Sized Queen Anne's Lace which is waiting for me to finish the secret project. In between knitting sessions, a few spinning projects are getting done. Last night was the plying of the last of the Miami Stripes yarn. A few more yards were added to the baby alpaca laceweight singles. Some alpaca samples were done up for StitchJones and I played with a sample of fiber from H.A.Y.

Surprise!

Today I came home to a box on the porch. A little one. One I have been waiting for from a very special person.

Back in January I received an invitation to the second Fiber to Scarf project hosted by Ted Myatt. This year I sent off 8 oz. of StitchJones' Anjelica BFL roving into the ether, albeit reluctantly because the colors were so nummy. I got my fiber and it's spun and currently on the needles, so I didn't expect a response for a few months. Imagine my surprise when I get an email from Queer Joe saying that he's the one who got the roving.

I'm an avid reader of QueerJoe's blog and knew he had participated in last year's F2S. So when he wrote that he was busy spinning and knitting a secret project I suspected he was doing it again. So I emailed him a teaser for one of the conditions for participation is that you don't blog about the project. Secret project indeed. Yes he was working on it and was enjoying it so much that he was nearly finished. Then not long after that he emailed me that he was my fiber recipient and the scarf was done. If you've seen his work, you'd understand my joy. His lace knitting is exquisite and his designwork fabulous.

I give you QueerJoe's Anjelica scarf.

To add to the fun he tucked in a bag (just the right size for a spinning project or socks) filled with tools, the remaining yarn from the scarf, a dpn case, and a jigsaw puzzle magnet with a sheep. More than what I expected, which adds frosting to this wonderful cake.

Thank you Joe for the wonderful scarf and goodies. And thank you again Ted for hosting this fun event. I better get cooking on mine!

Not much to report

It's Sunday morn and the week to report,

Events to peruse and pics to sort

What is newsworthy and what is not

All thrown into one blogmeister's pot.

But the weather is foul and the news is thin.

Few pics were taken to raise a grin.

The cats are all healthy, well-fed and asleep.

I haven't gone out and purchased a sheep.

The house is still standing, the car's in one piece.

A rather dull week by some standards at least.

I didn't spend Pi day working on a shawl.

Friday the 13th didn't affect me at all.

No murder or mayhem in the office park

No break-ins or muggings done in the dark.

No purchases made in a fit of madness.

No events that would cause woe, sorrow, or sadness.

Spring's in the air, the trees are a-bud.

The hard cold ground's slowly turning to mud.

The clock's sprung forward, sleep lost in an hour.

The daffs and andromeda are now in full flower.

Soon to come a surprise anxiously awaited

A box to arrive and to open, breath bated.

But all that will wait on this Sunday morn,

It's just knitting and breakfast and tea good and warm.

Enjoy.

Getting naked

Imagine you're just minding your own business, just bopping around in your pasture with your buddies on a cool spring day.

Then some guys come along and herd you and your buddies into a barn. It's a little snug but it's warm and dry. There are some noises on the other side of the wall and some low chatter, but for the most part you're calm.

Suddenly someone grabs a hold of you and another bops you on your butt and starts shaving you. The noise is terrifying and the cool air hits your body before you know it. You're turned and twisted, the clippers buzzing all over your body and legs.

Next thing you know it's over. The guy who had shaved you lets you go, another guy guides you out to the pasture, and off you run. The cold hits you and you wonder where your friends are. You call and call and they answer, but some weird people show up. You realize then they are your friends, only shaven. Somewhere you hear the voices of women cackling with delight.

It was this Saturday that I and some of the members of the Portland Spinnerati went to Jon and Ronda Schultze's farm where we helped with the skirting of their Icelandic sheep. Eddie, a shearer from New Zealand, came to shear and eight of us took the shorn fleece and removed the vegetable matter, dung tags, second cuts, and mats.

Our reward? A car full of fleeces ready to be taken to the processors.

Desktop

They say a person is known for the things on his/her desk. What do you think?

Friday night while I watched movies I didn't want to work on the usual things, so I decided to make myself a bag for my spinning gear. It's made of Cascade 220 and Noro Kureyon with a Moebius handle I took from Cat Bordhi's first Treasury of Magical Knitting. I got it done in an evening and felted it while doing my laundry. I like the colors but am not too thrilled with its floppiness so I'm going to hunt in the remnants of my fabric stash to see if I can find a couple of fun fabrics for making a lining.