Rustic Roving

I finished plying the grass/hay filled brown roving I was inching my way through spinning.  I've never treadled once, stopped, plucked out hay, treadled twice, stopped, plucked out grass, over and over and over and did I say pull out grass?  Yup, I did that forever, but I'm amazingly happy with the end result.  A bulky, soft and lofty, wonderful deep dark chocoloate (not milk chocolate) brown yarn.  I still have a good ounce - ounce and a half left to spin up but I got two good sized skeins of this wonderful rustic yarn.  I still get such a surpise over what my end result yarn will look like, I thought this was going to be much thinner yarn, but instead it turned out to a nice heavy weight yarn.

The girls and I have about 2 weeks left before mom returns from her month vacation in Alabama.  While the weather hasn't been as warm as she hoped, she seems to be having a great time.  She has seen my niece and her family two times already and will go see them one more time before heading home.  The girls and I are playing some fun marathon Monopoly games each week.  We leave the game set up on the dining room table, eat our simple meals while we play.  Fun to see my 13 and 7 year old having fun, together, at the same time.  Wait, I must get picutres of it next time!  Just as proof we can all have a good time not only doing the same thing, but, gasp, actually doing it at the SAME TIME!  Will wonders never cease....

Tonight I will spin a bit, I need to continue with this deep blue, Neptune, I call it.  A nice change from the brown roving and the white of the prayer shawl.  Maybe I better start praying for me, so I will actually FINISH the prayer shawl....I'm close, I'm on the last border section...just taking a lot longer than I expected.  Why, when I'm not knitting on it much, I think it is taking too long, is just another knitting conundrum in my oh so logical world...

Roving Blizzard

February is fast slipping through my fingers.  My mom is gone for the month in not so warm Alabama and it is just the girls and me.  I relish this time, it rarely happens and for a month?  Heaven!  So I took last Friday off, the girls had school which gave me a ME day.  I got my hair cut at a "spa" salon.  I'm the type to go to Great Clips a couple times a year!  So going to the spa for a cut was sheer decadence.  I loved the parafin hand treatment and just felt very pampered.  Once home, again, just in case you missed it, ALONE...no children around!  I sat on the couch, with a happy dog in my lap and knit away.  I did work on laundry all day, Emily has more clothes than a local dress shop!  The handme downs have taken over and much culling is needed.  Which I planned doing Friday.  But instead, I just knit.  And I'm good with that.  smile...

I did get new roving in.  This is Aspen Gold from Spinderella.  Very pretty, reminds me of carmel apples. 

I also got  Oran Ja Glad.  I love the name, the color is a bit washed out so it is prettier in person.  Hate taking pictures in the winter!

And finally this is Peace o Fleece, again it looks washed out, but it is so very pretty.  I got 8 ounces of each, that my friends is a LOT of spinning.  And don't forget I have 2 pounds of mill ends in Pepi Lu Pue and a bronzey colorway as well.  Oh and a couple blue rovings.  oh my, I better get spinning....but I'm also knitting up a storm.  I'm nearly done with the prayer shawl for Liz.  I'm on the final border.  And since knitting white in the winter is a bit taxing I pulled out some lavendar Dream in Starry and started the Saroyan scarf, it is turning out quite nice I think.

Parking in the winter

This morning at work great laughter erupted when someone looked out the window at this.

Click on the picture if need be...but look closely at the 3 middle rows of cars....that is a big clue...should only be two rows!  Poor people in the middle.  Now I totally understand the difficulty in parking in lots here in the winter, no lines to guide you, it is guess your best.  But really?  They couldn't figure it out?  sigh...after a company wide announcement went out, the four people went out and moved their cars.  (and if it had been me, I would have borrowed someone else's jacket before running out there to move my car in an effort to hide my true identity!)

Yesterday I left work early and somehow my car drove to not one by two yarn shops.  I did take pictures of one of the items that leapt into my hands.    It is a really pretty blue/black with hits of a brown rusty color in it.  This should help me spin faster as I'm currently working on some dark grayish brown roving.  It has more veggie matter in it than I like as it really slows me down to keep plucking it out as I spin.  I tried looking ahead and getting it out first, but you can't see most of it until you are actually spinning...so I treadle, stop, pluck out, treadle, stop and repeat..

If you look closely here, you can see a big hunk of straw waiting for me to pick out.  But with the encouragement of the blue Neptune roving, I may spin faster....and then there is also the knowledge that I just may have ordered more roving from a new Etsy store...but that is a post for another day.  Must spin faster!

And finally, here is the first couple of skeins I made from my Pepi Lu Pue roving.  I must KNIT faster!

356 pairs of socks

What a busy last week...my mom left for a month on the Alabama coast, she will escape the February winter and enjoy the view of the ocean from her condo window and walks on the beach.  I on the other hand will be enjoying views like this and shoveling the driveway!

I took this picture of the morning skies as I walked into work today at 9:30.  The school bus was late by 15 minutes this morning, my commute wasn't horrible even though we got over 3 inches of snow over night instead of the 1 inch or less that was forecasted.  Such is life in the north.  We deal with it while shoveling, trudging through slop filled parking lots, and yet looking happily at the sparkling snow that has covered up the dirty gray piles of the past.  So in that respect I enjoy the new snow.

Knitting is moving along, I'm about 3/4 done with Liz's prayer shawl.  The one big problem with lace knitting is there really isn't anything to show, it looks the same as before, just more of it.  A rumpled swath of fabric falling off my needles.  I won't predict when I will finish it as I'm so far behind where I thought I would be.  I'll just keep knitting it and eventually it will be done.

I've spun up some Pepi Lu Pue.  It is good, I think slightly under plied, but still nice.  Pictures of black and white yarn in a dark gray world do not make for good pictures.  I also started spinning some of the local charcoal colored wool I found at a local farm just north of here.  It is a bit wiry and has more veggie matter in it that I'd like, but it still is looking decent.  And there is nothing wrong with slowing down as I spin to pull out the bits of grass here and there. 

I did make one decisison though, I need more socks.  (ok, so maybe reading about the one guy who has 356 socks, yup, a new pair for each day of the year and he washes them all in one shot made me feel like I needed MORE socks!)  I realized that out of the last 5 pair I've knit, only one has been for me.  And going through my sock drawer I just threw out 3 of my worn out hand knit pairs.  So new socks are needed.  And SOON.  I can't imagine having a different pair every day though, not even if I knit 3 times as fast as I do.  Plus given the added benefit of being my take a long project, it wasn't hard last night to look through my stash and pull out some Sockkata and cast on some basic vanilla socks.  The cuff is done and I'm just starting on the plain leg section.  Perfect knitting at lunch or waiting somewhere...while at home, the shawl or spinning will call me.  Life is good....