Jingle Boo!

Ok, I said I wasn't going to knit any Christmas presents this year, so I may have just shot myself in the foot by casting on two last-minute gifts. I put down my own Ringwood gloves so I could knit a pair for my mother-in-law. There was some incredible Viola DK in a silvery/grey merino/silk at the Purl, anI just couldn't resist it. And then I found out my aunt is coming for Christmas a I decided to knit her a hat. This may be her last year: she's been battling cervical and bowel cancer for the past year and so far her prognosis is uncertain. So I splurged and got some gorgeous Mirasol in alpaca/silk/merino which is pretty much the softest thing I have ever touched, and I am going to whip out a nice warm hat for her. Bless!

It has been cold and snowy here! Toronto hasn't gotten much, only about 7 or 8cm, but out London way they're buried in about 2m of snow, so I hear! Downtown Toronto looks wonderful and Christmasy and I'm finally getting into the spirit of things. If I didn't have this damn paper to write I would go out shopping today and do a bit of wrapping and baking. Alas, research calls.

This post has been very difficult to type as there's an adorable orange kitty trying to sit on my keyboard. He is all ready for Christmas! <3

Pretty things

Remember I said I've been working on pretty things? Well, I have!

Here's the first Ringwood glove! This pattern was written by the fabulous Rebecca Blair. She's an amazing friend and an even more amazing designer. This is a fun and quick knit and I am doing it in the most ridiculously soft angora blend and oh my god I barf rainbows every time I touch it <3 I also bought sweet little bocote buttons to embellish them!

I am also working on a Central Park Hoodie in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, which I bought off a Rav destash. It's the first time I've ever knit a sweater for myself!









There has also been a lot of fibre excitement, which I alluded to in my last post!
This is the eight million pounds of unsorted Angora clippings and combings which Soho and I bought at the Royal for a song. This may be the greatest bargain I've ever found, ever.

 Here it is, sorted by colour. Ridiculous!

And here's a little bit spun up on one of my spindles (the Bosworth of Major Internet Drama, for those who know me IRL.) It's tough to spin pure angora, and it's a bit clumpy at times. I'm spinning right from the cloud without carding it, but there's enough here for me to try carding it to see if that improves its spinnability.

 I recently also finished spinning about 2-3 oz of the alpaca roving I picked up at the fair. I was going for a two-ply laceweight, although I still don't quite have the control down pat so it's a bit lumpy in sections, but overall I am really pleased with the results. There's still about half a bag left and I plan on getting back to it soon and then maybe knitting the whole thing up into a Swallowtail.

This is some awesome Romney from Fleecemakers which is my new favourite fibre source. A few months ago I bought a half-pound of romney roving from the Purl and spun it all up super fast into an awesome worsted yarn and from that I learned that Romney is basically the best fibre EVER and I scoured the internet for more. The Romney from Fleecemakers is absurdly soft and lofty and it all comes from sheep on their farm. It's a joy to spin, has virtually  no VM in it (unlike the bag I got at the Purl) and I want to buy all of it and spin everything.

 And since I loved it so much, I went back to her store and bought 4oz of Cotswold locks to play with. They are dyed in the most gorgeous greens and browns which I just can't seen to capture on my camera.

These locks are really awesome and shiny and around 6" long. Fab! I recently bought some hand carders and I'm going to flick-card the tips and butts of these and spin them into something wonderfully shiny.

 And now for one last bit of absurdity: about two months ago we visted a sheep farm and hundred mile market out near Arthur, Ontario. I bought 3 3/4 lbs of Colombia X carded wool. This is what that looks like. It is absolutely ridiculous.

Unfortunately, it's also a pain in the ass to spin. It's absolutely full of VM and wasn't cleaned very well before it was processed. This is why I wound up buying hand carders, so I could re-process the wool myself by hand. Very, very frustrating, but somewhat fruitful at least: I can pick out a lot of the VM as I go, and the carders help take out a bit more, and hopefully whatever is left over will fall out as I spin.

There's a lot more fibre goodness going on here, including some awesome buys from other online stores and some other knitting projects! My fingers have been crazy busy, although I should be using my time to research and write a paper D:

It, uh... it's been a while.

I'm not sure if you knew this or not, dear reader, but getting a PhD is HARD. Or perhaps I am making it unnecessarily hard. I'm enrolled in three courses this year, plus two language reading groups (Catalan and Attic Greek), plus I am TAing for my first time and running three tutorials a week plus marking and consultation, and trying to put together a paper to give next term, and also recovering from giving one *this* term, and sometimes feeding myself and washing.

I am looking forward to having two weeks off at Christmas so I can collapse in a pile of yarn and sleep.

I have been busy, though! Thecla and I continue to get along well, though she complains about how dry our apartment has been now that the forced-air heating is on. I feed her a good meal of spinning-wheel oil every day before I sit down to spin, and that seems to settle her a bit. She spins well, although the mother-of-all doesn't adjust well enough to accommodate the smallest whorl on the new flyer, which means that spinning fine laceweight requires substantially more work than it should. I am going to take a drill and sandpaper to her over the holidays to widen the slots in the MOA so she can slide far enough to align the smallest whorl more evenly with the wheel.

She eats fibre, too! So far we have been doing a lot of long-draw, which is my favourite technique at the moment. I picked up some carded romney a few months ago from the Purl and spun it up in no time. Loved the fibre so much (despite the VM and heavy remnants of lanolin) that I bought another half-pound from a different supplier on Etsy. I think Romney may be my favourite fibre of all right now since it is so wonderfully crimpy and sproingy and crisp. My finished yarn has an incredible bloom and a friend has called dibs on a pair of slippers from it. The new Romney I'm spinning up now is even softer and a much lighter colour and I think I might keep this all for myself.

Two weeks ago Sophie and I went to the Royal Winter Fair and wound up buying a massive bag of Angora, which I will write about later, but suffice it to say I am virtually swimming in animal fibre right now.

Knitting is picking up, too. I have a bunch of projects on the go including a SUPER BORING hat for my husband, who insists that everything I knit for him must be in a 2x2 rib. GRAH. So to compensate I am also knitting a Central Park Hoodie and a pair of Ringwood Gloves, all for myself. And socks, too! But there are always socks on the go.

Today is going to be a day for sitting in and knitting. I was planning a trip down to the Purl but we slept in far later than we expected so I think that plan has to go out the window. I just want to curl up on the couch with a pot of coffee and some soft angora yarn and knit away the afternoon. Mostly to avoid marking.

Reader, I married him.

So we did it.

And it was pretty amazing. I laughed and cried my way up the aisle, and when I got up there I could see that Nathan was barely holding it together himself.

The whole day was filled with laughter and joy. Our photographer was incredible, everyone looked beautiful, and we were all just relaxed and happy even when we were delayed by terrible TIFF traffic (though it did result in some amazing celebrity run-ins.)

And now we're married, and we're happy, and I feel an overflowing of love. Despite the fact that I've hardly had time to breathe since the big day: the first month of classes and teaching is killing me. But I'm happy nevertheless, and in a very good place in life.

So this is it!

In just over twenty-four hours I'll be marrying the love of my life. Guests have arrived from out-of-town, we picked up tuxes, we arranged the flowers, and we ran through a smooth and effortless rehearsal last night with all our folk. The forecast tomorrow is 22, partly cloudy, just as I called it a few months ago. So far it has been snag-free, but I'm in such a state of zen about it all that even if some big snafus did happen I think I could just shrug them off. So long as I can make it to the end of that aisle and return with my new husband, I'll be the happiest woman alive.

Nathan left for his parents' place about an hour ago, and we said a teary goodbye. Next time I see him he'll be at the end of a long, long aisle, waiting for me.

So I guess I don't have time to finish knitting my wedding shawl I started way back in the spring. Oops! :D

Wheel update!

Her name is Thecla: partly because of the Acts of Paul and Thecla which is one of my favourite pieces of literature I've ever worked on (and to which I hope to return someday, perhaps to study medieval reception of the legend); and also partly because that's sort of the sound she makes as she's spinning. THEC-luh, THEC-luh, THEC-luh. Love it <3

Fortuna volvat

So I brought home a spinning wheel on Saturday! I had the phenomenal good luck of being contacted by a lovely Ms. Appletree from Ravelry who mentioned she had an Ashford Traditional she was thinking of selling. Through a series of unexpected surprises and good turns of fortune, we met up this past weekend and behold, the wheel is now sitting in my living room while I beam happily at it from my couch.

I am not very good at spinning on a wheel! But thankfully I am also not very bad at it either. The practice on Mme Soho's Lendrum gave me a bit of a head start, and after work on Saturday I spent a few hours getting acquainted with my yet-unnamed wheel. I spun a full 2oz of blue Corriedale and plied it the next morning and it is hilariously bad compared to my spindle-spun yarn, but it is yarn all the same!

Can you see the unplied sections? Ha! 

The wheel is in fantastic shape, though. I took a trip down to Romni today and picked up an Ashford maintenance kit which is full of little bits and bobs to replace and repair anything that breaks, so pretty much if anything goes wrong at any point in the future I'll be set (I like tools and tinkering and whatnot.) I oiled all the oil-hungry parts, and I replaced the drive band which was a bit stretched out. Oh! And they had a newer flyer with different ratios, so I picked that up for super cheap, so now I have a two flyers and a lot of different speeds to spin at! But really this wheel just hums along nicely so I really think I only wanted an excuse to tinker around with moving parts.

Plus, the cats like to hang out with her, which is a bonus. She just fits seamlessly into our place!

So thank you, Appletree, for bringing this lovely wheel into my life! I haven't found a name for her quite yet, although I've almost settled on Jude: the internet tells me it means "thanks."

Spin, spin sugar!

Looks like I might be getting my spinning wheel today! Will update when I know more :D

UPDATE: Brought home a lovely Ashford traditional today! She's all mine! :D :D :D

Hand-picked, fair trade jellybeans.

Not a heck of a lot in knitting news. I've been working slowly on a lace project but haven't made much progress. I'm also still knitting a pair of cabled socks but it requires me to concentrate pretty hard on the cable chart, and I've just been too busy to dedicate the time to thinking so hard about something. I am not very good at cable charts, as it turns out!

BUT! There has been an abundance of creativity nevertheless! Last night my bridesfolk came over and helped me assemble our wedding favours. It was complicated work: a lot of stamping, gluing, grommet-hammering, tying, and jellybean wrangling, but it all paid off. I think they look absolutely spectacular, even if they're just simple little bags of jellybeans. I also can't thank Ms. Soho enough for agreeing to hand-write every single one of those 70 tags.  Her writing was just perfect for what we were trying to do.

Favours ahoy!

That's a big tray of favours! The ribbons are green and brown, and much lighter than the picture shows.

The green script in the background is in German! I have no idea what it says, but it sure was a beautiful stamp.

The back, hand-written by my amazing Maid of Honour.

Time warp.

Where did July go? Like, seriously, I turned my back on it for one minute and then it was gone! This whole summer has gone by so fast, probably helped by the fact that I've been running around like crazy for most of it doing school work and stuff for the wedding.

We're a little over a month away from the wedding (5 weeks today!) and I'm still calm and composed. Though I did go a bit insane in the makeup aisle at Shoppers today, insisting that I needed about two dozen different shades of bronze eyeshadow for my "look." I am going to be so fucking pretty.

Since TdF finished, the spinning action chez KtYT has slowed down considerably. There has, however, been an interesting development as of late: a good friend who is a cabinetmaker and woodworker has been improving his work on the lathe recently, and thinks he'd like to turn his hand at making a drop spindle or two, perhaps even starting up a little business. We met this week and talked spinning and I showed him the more technical aspects of drop spindling and he's started drafting out a few designs. He loves working with exotics and lately he's been making segmented bowls and cups with a high-polish finish, and he thinks he could work elements of that into his spindle design. In the meanwhile, I'll help him with the physics of it all, making sure the balance and weight is consistent and that there's a nice, sustained spin. So hopefully sometime after the wedding myself and my spinning buddies might have a little bit of testing to do, and hopefully help with the launch of a new spindle business.

In non-spinning news, I durrped my way through my first Zimmerman pattern: a February baby sweater. Not *too* many mistakes, considering how cryptic her pattern-writing was. It's a classic piece, though, and every baby should wear one. Hopefully the recipient, a co-worker, won't pop quite yet so I have time to seam the sleeves. Pics to follow, assuming the weather stays as lovely as it has been for the past few days: 24, sunny, with a cool breeze. Pray it stays this way for the entire month of August and right up through September 11th. Then it can get as hot as it bloody well wants and I won't care. Though the poor baby swaddled in wool might.

NOUS SOMMES LES CHAMPIONS

Le Tour de Fleece est finis! Nous avons une gagnante!



From top to bottom: Corgi Hill Farm BFL in "Candy Corn", chain-plied, 18wpi, 294 yards (between both skeins); Pigeonroof Studios Falkland in "Green Ocean", three-plied, 12-13 wpi, 200 yards; Waterloo Wools Merino/Tencel in "Message in a Bottle", 16-17 wpi, 183 yards with a tiny bit left over. That's nearly 700 yards of spindle-spun yarn!

A winner is me!

Oooh, I won a prize in the TdF! 2oz of chocolate alpaca roving from Corgi Hill Farm! I'm really excited since I never win prizes AND I happen to LOVE spinning alpaca! Now I'll wait anxiously on my porch 'til the mailman arrives and hope that it cools down enough for me to be able to get down to some seriously soft spinning. AnneMarie has some seriously awesome and luxurious blends available. Right now I'm spinning a bunch of merino/camel/silk I bought at the beginning of the summer and it is just so dreamy to handle. I know this alpaca will be gorgeous. Thank you so much! <3

Ugh.

It is eighteen thousand degrees outside. Muggy, sunny, no breeze. Not good knitting weather, and definitely not good spinning weather, either :(

Attack of the Seven-Foot Fleece Monster!

As promised, here are photos of my little fibre station.

 The shelves are about a foot-and-a-half deep, and the whole thing is around seven feet high. On the bottom, just below the edge of the photo, are three deep drawers, the first of which is currently storing my needles and miscellaneous supplies. I like the spinning fibre shelf most of all since my spindles are all hiding in there and it is all just a mess of colour and softness. And the top yarn shelf doesn't look like much, but I've got more hanging out in containers at the back.

There, can you see those little spindley heads poking through?

And here's a bonus cat-in-a-knitting-basket. He's never, ever slept in there before! Isn't he just darling?

This photo also reminds me that I very badly need to vacuum. Ahem.

Summer hatin'

Go away, Summer. You are too hot and not nearly stormy enough for my liking. The only nice thing about you is that my apartment is air conditioned and so cold that I wear knitted socks to bed. But you still suck, Summer.

I have been spinning, spinning, spinning for TdF, although not nearly as much as I had hoped since classes have started up again for me (Latin! Vae mihi!) and I am also working on an independent research project as well as trying to, you know, plan a wedding. I've been in major productivity mode since being back in class every day and I am getting shit done. Last weekend Nathan and I reorganized our entire apartment, moving furniture around and throwing crap out and dumping a lot of stuff on the curb for other people to recycle (seriously, it was ALL gone within 12 hours!) It was an awful lot of hard work, but really rewarding, because now our tiny, tiny apartment has very clearly defined areas -- study, living room, dining, kitchen -- and it flows so nicely. We even have a coffee table like REAL GROWN-UPS. And we have room to put the leaf in the dining table and seat six people around it!

As part of our huge cleaning effort I did an overhaul on my knitting and fibre stash and made room on one of our larger storage units for all of it. Now I have a pretty big fibre station which is wonderfully organized and stores all my stuff very nicely and I like to sit on my armchair and admire it all and sometimes even knit some of it. Pics to follow! :D

My chair is also right next to the a/c vent. Oh, glory!

TdF finished projects.

It has been a pretty productive week for spinning! Keeping up with the TdF crowd is tough, but I've managed to finish or nearly finish a couple of projects I've had on the go for a bit.

I'm almost done my very first handspun sock yarn! It's a chain-plied sw BFL from Corgi Hill Farm. I plied and finished the first 2 or so ounces before the Tour began.

I started on the remaining fleece just the other day (Thursday, maybe?) and finished spinning them up while I was at work last night. Tonight, we ply!

I also finished my four ounces of falkland from Pigeonroof Studios. I've never spun falkland before, but I quite liked it: it has a long-ish staple, but it's not quite as coarse as the corriedale I was spinning last year. It's also quite crimpy, too, and is deliciously squishy once it is spun up. Ms. R. suggested I spin it from the fold, which I sort of regret not doing, but even spinning it with a short draw, worsted-style, it wound up fairly sproingy. I did a true three-ply by splitting the length of top into relatively equal thirds and spinning each, and I had very little leftover. I finished it by giving it a hot water bath and letting the water cool, then doing a short cold-water soak, and then thwacking it a bit so it fulled a little, and I'm pleased with the result. If I were to spin this colourway again, though, I think I would two-ply it because some of the nuances of the colour are a bit lost. Here's the original braid of top as it came

and here's the finished skein:

It's still pretty and I am still happy with it, but the green sort of overpowers everything else and I think I would have liked to have seen a bit more colour definition. Up close, though, it is super pretty. Oh well, another excuse to keep buying PRS fibres. Next time I see this colourway posted, I'm going to snatch it all up <3

A Royal interruption of my regularly scheduled knitting.

I took a bit of a break from schoolwork and knitting and TdF spinning so I could go to Queen's Park with Sophie in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the Queen. Well lemme tell you, we were not disappointed: not only did we see her up close, but she came up to us and talked to us <3





*happy sigh*

TdF, ATTACK!

I've started on my Tour de Fleece spinning, although day one was a bit of a washout due to the fact that it was my partner's birthday and we spent the day running around doing birthday-ish things. But! I did sample a bit of the roving I intend to spin, and having finished that I got to work spinning my actual challenge piece.



It's a 50/50 merino/tencel blend from Waterloo Wools in "Message in a Bottle." It's an awful lot more purple IRL and soft as anything. It should end up as a three-ply fingering-weight sock yarn, but it wants to spin very thin so it's a fight to get my singles just right. That's my Kundert walnut spindle which I love, love, love, love.

I have other projects on the go on my Rav page, but mostly the thing I am most excited about is the pair of socks I am knitting from the toe up AND two-at-a-time! It is managing to keep my interest mostly because it's got the most complicated cable chart I've ever knitted from to date, and also it is satisfying to know that once I am done knitting one sock, I am done BOTH socks. Hooray!

I'm resurrecting this poor little thing for the sake of documenting my spinning and knitting. I'm accomplishing a lot these days and damn it, I demand some attention!