Ishbel is finished and it is Bee-yooo-tee-full!

If I do say so myself! Here is the history of my lovely shawl, the Ishbel. From everything I read, it is the shawl pattern of the year with thousands being knit according to Ravelry!

The BFL fiber started out as roving purchased at Rhinebeck last year from Briar Rose Fibers at the end of my wonderful day there.

I started out spinning on my spindles and then when I purchased my wheel in February, I finished off the rest of the 17 oz of fiber. As you can see from the photo of the drying skeins, there are many many shades of green in the fiber, so I had to be careful which of the spun yarn skeins I put into the project. As it turned out, I ended up using both wheel spun and spindle spun yarn in the shawl, because the colors worked best.

Knitting up the lace had several false starts, but finally I rolled along to the end. While knitting it, you can hardly see the lace pattern and it was hard to believe that it would end up so beautifully!!

Here it is all spread out on the floor, finished, but unblocked:

I don't have blocking wires or blocking boards, so I used the carpet in the spare bedroom with towels and glass headed pins. The stripes on the towels were my guides.

Now the lace was starting to reveal itself and all its beauty, like magic.

Ta Da! The finished shawl. The camera doesn't capture the colors as well as some of the other shots. The photo above is close.

Isn't she pretty! The details: This is the large size of the pattern, knit on size 6 needles. The final dimensions are 63" from tip to tip, and 27" from the top to the bottom point.

I snagged this photo from Ali's facebook page. It is the only shot of ME spinning! Doesn't my hair look great???

I finished the fiber

that I am spinning in this shot.

I now know why it is called Caribbean! Look at the wash water after I soaked in Eucalan to set the twist.

What I ended up with is about 240 yards of fingering weight, navajo plyed.

Now to plan a project with this! The fun part!

The Tour continues, and so do I

Lance cannot hope to win, and neither can I, but I can finish, and so can he! I may not have spun the most, or the prettiest, or the artsy-est or the fastest, but I am approaching the end of the Tour de Fleece with my goal met and all the rest being gravy! This is the very end of the original 2 pounds (32 oz) of Ashland Bay Merino in English Garden. This mini skein is still not washed so it appears a bit twisty. Notice, not a blister to be found. I bet Lance can't say that! I must feel pretty secure about myself to show my feet to the world, but it is summertime and living is easy..........

And here is a basket o' yarn with the rest of the English Garden as well as the laceweight Enchanted Seas from Julie Spins.

With a few days to go in the Tour, I went up to my stash box and pulled out the Kai Mohair in the color Caribbean and began to spin so fine........ Even two ply may be too thin for my liking so I think a Navajo 3-ply is in order. This will stripe the finished yarn, so I will have to choose my pattern carefully.

Saturday was field trip day for Stacy and me. In the morning we drove up to Boulder for a tour of the Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory tour. We were a bit disappointed that the machinery doesn't run on the weekends, but it was interesting anyway. We dropped a little bit in the Gift Store, and I thought the highlight was seeing the original artwork that was commissioned for the box art. It was incredibly whimsical and the boxes don't do the art justice.

After lunch at an Indian Buffet, a gastronomical flavor which I can say I introduced Stacy to, we went to a class taught by the famous Cookie A. All the sock samples from her new book were there and they may have to go into the queue for later. I have made several pairs of her Monkey Socks and this particular class was on chart reading. She went through the various charting methods and for practice we began a sample of a Celtic braid as shown.

Using her method for cabling without a cable needle was worth the price of admission, as Stacy said. I need practice, but I might just pick up the Slippery Socks again, using this method especially since it uses a one stitch cable repeatedly.

My cleaning break is over (any excuse from housework), and I must vaccuum the downstairs. The kids are coming and I am so excited, that it will be worth the effort, even it they don't notice!

Spinning on the front porch

It is so relaxing to know that I don't have to spend the long weekend studying, since I passed the part of the insurance exam yesterday.    I do have the text book for my next test, but took today off completely.    No, not really completely, because I did vacuum and dust in the the main rooms downstairs.    On Monday, Mom is coming over for a barbeque, so I had to put a bit of time in to get the house in order.     Now that Gary is not smoking anymore, I can enjoy being in the house all day, and even the back patio.   I put some potted hibiscus plants out there, but since the dog ATE the flowers, I did not take any photos.   A quick trip to google showed me that the flowers are edible and they are even used in salads in the South Pacific islands.   Hoping to break her of this delicacy, I will photograph the plants later.

This afternoon, I took the spinning wheel out to the front porch where the bouncy lounge chairs are, and worked on the second 4 oz of the dragon fibers yarn.    

Catching up on my podcasts, I spun the afternoon away.   I did wait until 4 o'clock before I poured my first glass of wine.   A perfect afternoon.  Here are the results:

Tonight the wheel goes in the corner and the Ishbel shawl will be my project of choice!

oh boy, oh, boy, oh boy.....More fiber to spin!

When I first started spinning over a year ago, it was the pure fascination of it all. I started slowly with a drop spindle and I thought the process was so leisurely that my stash would grow at the same rate as knitted finished objects (FOs)! How could I ever have been so wrong??? Look at me now, with 5 drop spindles and a wheel, lots of handspun yarn and only two handspun FOs to show for a year of spinning. Over the last several months, I have no knitted FOs to show and lots more fiber on hand to spin, as well as many, many skeins of ready to knit yarn. I started this blog at about the same time, and read back to the beginning for this history of a new addiction! Below is just my most recent wheel spinning. I do have lots of spindle spun yarn in my stash box upstairs. It is a little frightening to see how the stash grows, and grows, and grows.

Here are two new fibers I received in the last couple of weeks. This first from Dragonfibers is a blend of Superwash Merino, Bamboo, and Nylon in the Mountain Majesty colorway.

I divided it into thirds lengthwise and rolled each into its own ball.

I have set it up on the wheel, and it is demanding to be spun super-fine for three ply socks. It has such a lovely shimmer. My goal is for striped socks which will probably end up coordinating but not matching.

The second fiber is another purchase from JulieSpins. This one is Merino 64s in the color called Brilliant Hibiscus.

This roving is not superwash and so soft and fluffy/thick that I need to really try to make a heavier weight yarn for a hat/mitts set. This fiber is going into the stash box for now......

I have been a spinning fool, lately, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. At least I have something to show for all that time spent with my new wheel. Believe it or not, this is all from the same 17 oz ball of roving: Briar Rose BFL that I purchased at Rhinebeck last October.You can see that there is a definite difference in the overall results. These are soaked, thwacked, and hung in the closet to dry.

The two skeins with the pink ties, as seen below a little clearer, are spindle spun and navajo plyed on the spindle and lovely, if I do say so myself. The other three were done on the wheel. The 1st and 4th are three ply and so tightly plyed that you can still see the kinking even after its nice hot bath. I hope it settles down after knitting it up. The second skein is my favorite- two ply, but not as tightly spun. A shawl perhaps. Isn't it interesting how different the colors came out after plying, especially the 4th from the left.

Here is another example of how plying can really affect the final yarn achieved. These all came from the same ball of roving from JulieSpins. The greens really are pronounced in the third skein and this is the one I will start with for socks. It was suggested to me at my spinning group that I should have rewound one of the singles to spread the green out, but did I listen?? What do you think????

I think I need to restrict my spinning to one or two days a week. I am bound and determined to have some knitting to show here on the blog and I need to finish some of the UFO's that are lingering.

Or maybe I should rename this blog: Lizzzspins!

It's Here!!!

Right after I got home from getting my hair done, Mr. UPS arrived in his lovely brown truck with a large box for me! We carried it into the house and I was grinning from ear to ear. My Kromski Minstrel Spinning wheel has arrived.

Once opened, I was amazed it arrived in as good condition as it did. There were Polish newspapers and junk mail flyers loosely crumbled around the wheel in the box.

There are lots of pieces.

Here it is all put together. It has a hemp drive band which I set up with the double drive. I installed the scotch tension, but it is not functioning the way I did.

Doesn't the antique piano stool look like she has a new best friend??

I couldn't wait to start spinning and manage half a spindle of natural colored BFL from the stash. Treadling wasn't too difficult to get going and since I have been spindle spinning for a year now, I seemed to pick it up easily.

It is past midnight now, and I must go to bed, although I bet I could spin all night with ease.

OMG!!! I did it!!!

It was less than a week ago that I posted about wanting a spinning wheel and the wheel that I wanted was a Sonata...... Well, as things turned out....I answered a Ravelry posting for someone who was selling a Walnut Minstrel Wheel which is also from Kromski. This is a photo from the web, but from everything I have seen, it is even more beautiful than this. I will certainly show you when it arrives.

It is not quite as portable as the Sonata because it doesn't fold down into its own carrying case, but it is beautiful and will do all the same things. It is fairly lightweight and should ride in the front seat of the car for spin-ins and it is three legged, which I like for stability. I paid for it on paypal with some Holiday gift money, and I hope I get it in a week or so. I will certain post its arrival.

What did arrive today is some luscious soft alpaca fiber from Iron Needles which I won in her Blogiversary contest. I couldn't capture the creamy tan well with the artificial light, but it is much lovlier than this picture.

She entered mine as well, but her number didn't come up. :-( She has been a faithful reader of my blog since almost the beginning and we even met up once (she lives about 1 1/2 hours north of me.) I encourage everyone to check out her blog because it has been so inspiring to me in this blog journey.

When my wheel arrives, when I get it set up...this will be first fiber I spin with it. It is about 2 7/8 oz of the softest alpaca I have ever felt.