Resorting to Spinning

I headed off to the resort for the weekend with Andrew and left my husband home to do some painting and general fixing around the house. That really sounds worse than it was since the resort is my parent's home and most of the painting and fixing was in Andrew's room, which is really hard to accomplish anything in when we have to work around naptime and bedtime. Andrew's room is now yellow on three walls and the ceiling and red on one wall. We still need to get him a twin bed to replace the toddler bed, and I found some great fire engine fabric to make a duvet with but I want my serger to get back from its cleaning before I do too much sewing.

I wasn't sure if I would bring my spinning wheel, but there was so much room left in the car that the decision was pretty easy to make. I finished spinning the Misty Meadows roving that I picked up at the Shepherds Harvest. When I asked Andrew what he wanted out of the roving he immediately said socks. Although the second skein is much more consistent than the first, I am very happy with how the spinning and knitting is turning out.

The yarn is a bit more green and yellow than the picture. Andrew seems to think that the socks are pretty cool too. This weekend if he ran into something and hurt his feet at all he had to have his woolly sock on to make it feel better. Hopefully I can get the second one done tonight. I should have enough left over that I can make the baby matching socks too.

I also worked on the baptismal gown I am making for the baby. It started out with me following a pattern, but I am redesigning it from the waist up since I didn't really like the top, but liked the skirt.

I still need to finish the front and make the back and sleeves. I do have until October at least.

Yarnworks is on our way up north (and with a three year old and me being pregnant we stopped a lot to use the bathrooms) so I had to see if they had anything interesting. I knew that they carried some fiber, but didn't really remember what since I wasn't doing much spinning then. I was planning to try to find some dyed wool that I liked, but it seemed like there was some VM in the wool and it just wasn't appealing to me. So, I bought some yarn for wool soakers instead.

Malabrigo worsted in Curacao and Naturally Nazareth in Spring. I haven't used the Naturally Nazareth before so I mainly wanted to try it and see how it knits up. The Malabrigo will just be a nice soft newborn/small soaker.

I also started spinning up some grey shetland while I was there. It is really fluffy and loose, so I started seeing how fine I could actually spin it. I seem to be getting a lace or fingering weight. It should be interesting to see how it turns out. Right now most of my spinning is just experimenting.

Baa, Baa, White Sheep

We went to Shepherd's Choice last Saturday for their sheep shearing. The weather wasn't wonderful, but we had fun anyway. I picked up a bar of soap, a shampoo bar, a bag of navy corridale locks and some beeswax. Now I just need to decide what to do with the wool. I don't have any cards or combs so I am teasing the locks open with a pet comb. It isn't going fast, but the stuff I have done seems like it will be easily spun.

They had a drawing to pick kids to feed the lambs and Andrew won a chance. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera at home, so no fun pictures. I think this event had more of an impact on him then Shepherd's Harvest because he has been singing "Baa, Baa, white sheep, everywhere wool" for the last week. Or, maybe back to back sheepy weekends were just a little too much for him.

We ran into Jess and her family. It was kind of funny because I had been in U of MN marching band with her husband about nine years back so I had the feeling that he looked familiar and since I was wearing my marching band windbreaker he figured it out right away. After talking to them for a few minutes it dawned on me that the Jess was the author of a blog I had just started reading. It seemed kind of funny then since I suddenly knew a little about someone I had just met. Just one more reason to blog.

Intro

I have been reading other people's blogs for a few months and have started to feel guilty about how much I have learned about knitting and especially spinning from them with and then keeping it all for myself. I also need a spot to keep track of my projects and maybe share them with people who are like minded.
I am a SAHM with a three year old son and another boy on the way late in Sept. I have been knitting for about three years and bought a spinning wheel this winter. I also sew and garden.
This blog will probably be a little about knitting, spinning, sewing, my garden, kids, pets (3 cats, 2 birds, one big dog), and life in general.