The Green Sweater is Done



Now I'm between projects. Can you believe that I currently have nothing at all on knitting needles? The green sweater took just barely half of that yarn, so there is plenty left for accessories. I could make a hat in the same pattern, and socks, mittens, etc. I think Ashley needs to try making some socks to match her sweater. We'll see - she has learned enough that she could do it, but so far just hasn't been dedicated enough to finish a project the size of socks. She knits I-cord and small purses and wallets. I also have six skeins of the same yarn in yellow, so I intend to make something for the kids with that too, but have yet to decide on a design.

The green/blue/black varigated roving that I started spinning a long time ago is all spun into thick, low-twist singles and I decided that it did in fact want to be bead yarn. About half (two skeins) of it is plied. Rather than spinning a fine singles yarn to ply it onto, I plied it onto black sewing thread, and that is working just fine. To make bead yarn you keep the tension in the finer thread, allowing the thick single to wrap around it, making a textured yarn.


The angora goats came back (the people who bought them found out that they were not going to get water for their pasture this year, so decided that they needed to cut back instead of getting something new). I'm happy to have the angoras here, but I really do need to cut back too. I don't even have pasture. So these sweeties are still available, and so are many of the sheep and a few nice dairy goats if anybody is interested.

The lambs are growing

The friday five

1. What was the last TV show you watched?
I watched ER last night. It's a soap opera, and I have to keep finding out what happens next (even though I gave up daytime soaps a long time ago, the prime time ones keep getting me). I guess it can be nice to see other people whose lives are so much worse than mine, even if they aren't real. No, my life really isn't all that bad but I have to remind myself of that sometimes.

2. What was the last thing you complained about?
The kids left their breakfast dishes unwashes all over the kitchen table.

3. Who was the last person you complimented and what did you say?
Well, I think I complimented Ashley and Carol on studying their biology vocabulary words this week. They seem to have them down pretty well. (I at least was thinking that, but can't remember if I said it - I asked them and they think I might have.) Mark's dad used to teach junior high school science, and has started a class for Ashley and Carol and their cousins who also homeschool. The kids are different ages, and Carol, who would be in third grade in school but is doing fourth grade work this year, has to work pretty hard to keep up with the older kids. The material doesn't seem to be scaled down much to accomodate her.

4. What was the last thing you threw away?
I just did a 27-fling boogie in my bedroom and threw away a big bag full of candy wrappers.

5. What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited?
I was just visiting Cat's Fiber Adventures when I remembered that it was Friday and decided to see if I wanted to answer the Friday Five today. I'm amazed how much knit bloggers tend to think alike. She has a to-do list posted too. And I was also bad and bought yarn for two new projects - Cat, I was worse than you. I resisted the sock yarn only to give in to yarn for two sweaters. I guess I regularly spin enough yarn that matches to make socks, but haven't made as many sweaters lately, since I never have that much yarn of one type spun, but since finishing the green sweater (it's blocking now and should be assembled tonight) I want to knit more sweaters, and rather than doing something with my stash of wool that needs to be processed, I just ordered yarn already made. And I even have half of the green yarn left over as well as a bag of yellow yarn that equals the green before I started with it, so my stash just continues to grow. I will be posting about the sweaters I want to knit next soon. They are from Viking Patterns for Knitting - Ragna and Vigdis.

If you can use a chuckle today, take a look at Peep Research. Nice use of the scientific method, although the conclusions drawn are a little strange. Personally, I think Peeps are cute, which is why I don't buy them. I never could get used to the idea of eating something that is cute. I'm not sure about torturing them either, but I chuckled anyway.

Angora Goats



They are all sheared now (although I don't want to humiliate them by showing their pictures after receiving bad haircuts). They are also sold, except for Emily. I will miss them, but at least they are local and I can go and visit. And I do still have Emily.



New Arrival!!!

After the angora goats left for their new home yesterday, I just had Emily left to shear so I went back out to finish that, when the kids noticed that Prism was pushing. Prism wasn't supposed to be bred this year, but we could tell several weeks ago that she was, although we had no idea when she was due. We only have one buck here, and Navigator did get into the doe pen a few times, so we do know who his daddy is. She presented us with a large, adorable, baby bucking. Isn't he cute? I love the color and I'm partial to wattles (the little dangly things he has hanging down from his chin). This would be a nice buck if anybody is interested.



Happy Birthday to Carol

Today is Carol's ninth birthday. We had a friend over and made homemade pizza. Everybody seemed to have a good time, and it was a pretty good party for a school night and everything. It's a little scary when your children's friends are taller than you though. hee hee



The Easter egg tree made it into the picture too.

Happy Easter!

I didn't get to go to church because I have finally come down with that cold that everybody else has had all month that I managed to evade up until now, and I wish that people would stay home and not go out and distribute these things (I realize that you don't always have a choice though), so that is what I did. But I enjoyed a nice morning with good music and an otherwise quiet house. Easter is one of my very favorite holidays. I miss the choir programs that we used to have in church on Easter though, and just don't seem to do anymore. Maybe it's just here. Do you get the feeling that all the commercial stuff has taken over this holiday too? I don't mind the candy and the celebration of spring and new life and regrowth - I just don't want to lose the true spirit of the holiday.

Easter also means we get to play with dye. This is what I did after we dyed Easter eggs.



Pretty nice colors for Easter egg dye, don't you think? That is about 2 ounces of wool there. I didn't have any yellow because that got spilled before we even dyed any eggs with it, and the purple separated (purple easter egg dye always seems to do that - it did on the eggs too - it actually looks better in the picture). The colors didn't exhaust, so I could have actually put more wool in there than I did. I'm not sure what I want to do with all these little color samples - I have a bunch more samples about this size from a dye class too. I have thought about blending the similar colors together to get multi-tonal yarns that could be identified as mostly "red" or whatever color and would have enough for a project.

How I dyed the wool: The easter egg dye was in yogurt cups. I stuffed bits of roving into the cups and left it overnight. Then I added a glog of white vinegar to each cup and microwaved them until they were hot. After they cooled to room temperature I rinsed each sample until no more color was getting into the water (use warm or hot water - never any cooler than the fiber as it is going into cold water that shocks the fiber and causes felting), then set the wool out on a towel to dry.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but I also made an Easter Egg tree out of some of the branches I trimmed from the cherry trees. While the trees outside still just have buds, the trimmed off branches are in a vase and have leaves and blossoms on them. I hung blown eggs in knitted nets (from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac). They are very easy and only take about 5 minutes to knit.

This is what we saw when we hunted Easter eggs yesterday.



You have to look closely to see the hen sitting on a couple dozen eggs. My kids have an Easter egg hunt every day since the chickens don't stay in the chicken coop, and they knew this was here already. Out of 38 plastic eggs with goodies inside they found 36 of them plus two real eggs (fresh ones). I hid the plastic eggs but I can't find the other two either - maybe one of the hens will hatch them.

Green Sweater



As you can see, I decided to knit the sleeves separately and sew them on. This decision was largely due to that I wasn't sure I wanted to try to work the cable pattern upside down - the cables would have been fine, but the bobbles would have been upside down, and that might look funny. The other thing was that I just didn't know how much to knit before starting the shaping. I could have come up with an estimate based on the stitch gauge, but sometimes it's easier and makes more sense to just go ahead and follow the directions instead of looking for a short-cut. I did work the sleeves circularly, although the instructions had them worked flat. The seam I dread sewing the most is the one up the sleeve. I now understand why the sleeves were worked flat in the instructions. It's a pain to try to cable across different needles, and that's what happens with a moving cable pattern like this. I started out on 2 circs, switched to dpns (See the ladders? I haven't ever gotten ladders before - is there anything that can be done about them after the fact? Will blocking help that???), and then I went back to 2 circs once I was far enough along to put all of the front stitches, with the pattern, on one circular needle and the back stitches, which are plain, on the other. The whole project is crying out to be blocked, but I'll wait until I have the second sleeve knitted so that I don't get tempted to skip blocking it, wanting to attach it right away and have a completed project. When I get this close to finishing a sweater I want to see it done and being worn, especially since summer is so close now. I did make a mistake on the sleeve (the ladders from the dpns don't count) and decided to ignore it since I was almost finished with the sleeve before I noticed it, and every project needs a flaw anyway for character, right? Is it obvious??? I'm not going to point it out any further than I already have - maybe I should offer a prize to the first one who finds it.

Ike



Ike is an English Angora rabbit. He is supposed to be white. He has been escaping from his cage and we always find him under the car - that is clear on the other side of the house from where the rabbit cages are. Today he is wearing motor oil on his face. Yuck! What am I going to do with my little trouble maker? He just might be getting a bath with mineral oil and dish soap. He's covered with dry grass and gunk too, so his hair is a mess. English Angoras are really cute with the tufts of hair on their ears, but I find that mine matt more easily than the other breeds and stuff sticks to them more readily. I really prefer the other breeds of angoras. They each have their purposes though. Satins are my favorite for wool quality and beauty, and they don't seem to matt easily, but they also seem to have a more high-strung personality, and are less likely to be pets. Just my opinion. I took my Satin buck, Bluebell, to an all-day demonstration for the public school kids on Tuesday, and had him on my lap spinning directly from the rabbit all morning, and he was an absolute sweetheart. Then he decided he was done, and let me know by peeing in my lap. But up to that point he was amazingly good. Bluebell is my rabbit who is most likely to growl and possibly even bite, but we had none of that on Tuesday. No, I didn't get a picture - there just wasn't time. We had 10 minutes for each group of 15-20 kids and in that time we demonstrated spinning on spinning wheels, gave them a speech about the many uses of sheep, and taught them to spin using a wire hook. Then the next group arrived and we went through the whole thing all over again.

I could write a lot more, but I'll save some for later. I would like to be posting more often. Most of the time now I am busy with the Viking Society class - there is a huge amount of reading to do (they did say it was a full-time class for 10 weeks), and it isn't so easy to keep up. Going back to that to-do list (remember, I didn't specify any deadlines), I have gotten hay (hopefully it is arranged for the year - I just have to go pick it up throughout the summer). I still need to get back into processing all my wool, get the shearing done, and pluck a couple more rabbits. I think I'll start a sourdough culture. I keep not getting bread baked, but if I have sourdough going then I will get it done because I have to keep using that culture to maintain it.

Angora Goats

I really do have too many animals here. My angora goats have been up for sale for a while. They are nice goats, real sweethearts, but I just have too much going on and I don't have pasture so I have to feed hay all year, and angora goats don't compete well at the feeders with my other animals. I'll probably keep one doe so that I still have mohair. Anybody interested in a small registered angora flock? One buck and three unrelated does, 4-5 years old.

It's really been some week. On Wednesday one of the tires on the truck blew out. Took it in to get new tires (they were all pretty bad) and one thing after another is still wrong and the truck is still in the shop and the bill is going to be astronomical. But the good news is that we did our taxes early and got a good refund so we actually have the money. I'm having trouble comprehending that part. I thought I was going to use that money for hay, but it will work out.

Today the friday five is about a subject that I must comment on.

1. How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life?
twenty - I'm an Air Force brat. That's not counting motel rooms that we stayed in for two months while waiting for housing. The house we live in now is where I have been for the longest time in one place - it will be seven years this summer.

2. Which was your favorite and why?
If you are talking about just the house itself, I guess the apartment we lived in when my father was stationed in Spain. It was actually two apartments with the dividing wall between them removed, so there was lots of space (the dollar was strong so Americans could afford a lot of house there). The living/dining area was huge, there were nice wood floors, the bedrooms were small but there were six of them and that was the only time I had my own room. There was also a laundry/wash room with 5 sinks so each kid had their own place for toothbrushes, etc. We didn't have our own yard but there was a big park right across the street. Okay, the reason: plenty of space.

3. Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why?
Moving is stressful. It is a lot of work and also means leaving people behind and closing one chapter of your life and starting a new one, and I don't usually trust the future - it's an unknown.

4. What's more important, location or price?
Since I've never had much money, price, because I just don't have that many options. If I had money, location would be more important.

5. What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)?
Pasture for the animals. And I want more space, and lots of southern exposure windows that I could start seeds and grow houseplants in. I want an open floor plan and a living area that is big enough not to be crowded when people come over, with work space for my fiber stuff and Mark's hobbies too (yes I want that in the same big room that is the main living space - I'm tired of working in my shed, cut off from people). The kitchen would have plenty of work space and plenty of storage space and plenty of light.

Green Sweater Progress



Finally, another picture. This design has been fun to knit. No, the cable pattern isn't all that complicated, but following three charts simultaneously was enough to keep my interest for a while. Then I could see what the pattern was doing and thought I had it memorized, but kept forgetting that the inside of some of the diamonds is garter stitch, not reverse stockinette, and I forgot a bobble once and cabled the wrong way once, but I didn't have to frog anything - I noticed soon enough that all I had to do was take the stitches involved down a few rows to correct the problems. I'll have the front yoke finished tonight - there are just a few rows left but I took the picture with this much done so you can see how the back yoke is already there. The pattern has you knit the sleeves from the bottom up and then attach the sleeves, but I'm wondering if I could pick up stitches for the sleeves and work the charts backwards and avoid having to sew them on. Ideas???

Another To-Do List Item



One rabbit plucked, four to go. Pepper had us worried for a few days. Although her cage is a ways up from the ground, she must have jumped out. She was gone for three days. Then we found her again and have been spoiling her rotten. She is a very small angora rabbit, a Jersey Wooly, and her wool is shorter than the other angora breeds, but still pretty and I like it in blends with other fibers. Since she is so small and cute she is the rabbit the kids like to carry around with them and play with the most.

A Home for the Baby Socks

Sorry Angela, but I'm sure they wouldn't fit Andrei now. If you really would like some for him, let me know and we'll do something about it.