Monday, July 11, 2005

Progress!

Hubby, the kids and I went camping for the 4th of July weekend. We rented a motorhome and embarked on an 11-hour journey to Utah from Southern California. Surprisingly, the kids were very well-behaved. And 11 hours translates to LOTS of knitting time.
Knitting: Between the drive up, the drive back, and down time at the campsite, I knit 2 hats, finished a sweater for my 2 year old, and finished knitting a lovely scarf. Ah, the scarf. The scarf is made from a blend of white corriedale and chestnut alpaca which I blended on my hand cards in a roughly 70/30 ratio. I spun the lightly carded fiber and Navaho plied it into a lovely soft heathery yarn. I used a pattern called "Seafoam" from the Vogue Book of Knitting which worked well with the randomness of the yarn's color. This fiber was actually given to me along with a bunch of other fiber by a member of the Spin-List named Joy. When I first started spinning and posted to the list to ask for help, she answered my question, and then asked for my address so she could send me a bit of fiber to get started. Not long after, I received a box full of lovely dyed wool roving, the corriedale and alpaca, and llama fiber. Once I put the fringe on this scarf, I'm going to pack this pretty thing up and ship it off to surprise her. I hope she likes it. I'll try to post a picture once I get the hang of this blogging thing.
Spinning: I had brought my Lendrum on the trip, but didn't take it out since it was so dirty and windy where we were staying. Besides, I was having to tend to the boys every 15 minutes, and it was much easier to put down knitting rather than to interrupt spinning. But I had carded up 4 nice big batts of black Shetland wool, so I have those ready for me when I get a little time to work on them. I'm planning on carding up some nice moorit Shetland to spin on my Symphony. I just got a new drive band to replace the one which had frayed, and I believe I'll put it on in the double drive mode. I've been using the wheel with Scotch tension, and I find that I don't much enjoy the constant adjusting of the brake band I must perform as the bobbin fills. We'll see how it goes.