Weather

Alpaca Spin – Half Done

/ LDSVenus / 11 Comments

I am spinning a deep stash cria (baby alpaca) fiber on my Rick Reeves wheel. 1st bobbin is done, this will probably end up plying as a sport weight yarn. It looks thin, but after I wash it, it will plump up and be a bit thicker. Alpaca is a slippery fiber to spin and takes a practiced hand so I wouldn’t suggest alpaca to a beginner spinner, but I really like it, it’s so soft to spin. After I get the 2nd bobbin done and ply the two bobbins together, my plan is to turn it into hat for a friend :). I have started the 2nd bobbin and will work on it tomorrow :).

We are back in the 80’s this week, sigh, 90 on Friday and 89 on Saturday, but next week it will be in the lower to middle 70’s. If only the weather could make up its mind :P. Of course I will probably complain this winter when it’s way below 0 too :P.

Camel/Red Eri Silk Update and New Fiber Purchase

/ LDSVenus / 8 Comments

This is so soft to spin, the silk is a long staple but the camel is very short so I imagine the camel might make a slight halo on the finished yarn. Finished the 1st bobbin and started the 2nd bobbin, but haven’t been able to spin on it very much, will spin on it tomorrow, I’m excited to see how it looks when it’s finished and I’m hoping it will be a sport weight. The colors are never correct on my picture on the reds, this is actually looks like a very light orange on my screen, but it’s a bit brighter than shows on my screen. Not sure if it’s my camera or my computer screen.

Opps I might have bought another fiber to spin, it’s called Smooth Bark (the color looks true) from Camaj Fiber Arts, but to be honest I bought it last month and just didn’t get to put it in on my blog. I’m trying to stick with no more new fiber going forward until I’ve spun down some of my deep stash fiber, :D, but we can see how that is going. This is very soft also, but it should be since it’s 40% superfine merino, 20% alpaca, 20% camel and 20% mulberry silk. This shop frequently has very good sales on their fiber. I was thinking it would be the next spin, but I promised myself that if I spin a new fiber, I would also spin a deep stash fiber. So when I am finished with the camel/red Eri silk, I will go diving in my deep stash because I must love them, I bought them :P. Maybe I can find something sparkly or put sparkles on it with my drum carder :).

Hope you all are well, and surviving the hot summer we are all having, just think, Fall will be here in a month or so :).

Tour de Fleece Update and Weather

/ LDSVenus / 14 Comments

1st picture is my progress on the 50/50 camel/red Eri silk for days 16 – 18. This is spinning faster than I thought, I’m around 1/2 finished on the 1st bobbin. Because the silk is very slippery, even tho the camel being soft and short would normally require a very short draw to spin, the length and slippery nature of the silk allows me to draw it out more than a short draw but not a long draw, so it is going faster than I estimated. I love the softness of the fiber as I spin it. I’m trying to not let it be very thin, tho it would be easy to do that, because this is a gift for my previous sister in law, who I feel pretty close to. She has a medical disorder that makes it harder now with tremors to handle smaller things, so I thought if this yarn is more of a heavy fingering or light sport weight maybe she could still knit something with it, and if not, she can just feel the softness of this fiber, which is amazing. I will definitely have to get more of this fiber when Camaj Fiber Arts gets more in! Post Script, my ophthalmologist loved the skein of yarn and said she had had a very hard last couple of days and that this skein of yarn had just made her day! Giving is a blessing for the receiver and the giver :).

Well today was very nice in the upper middle 80’s and less humidity, however you can see where our weather is headed starting tomorrow though next Tuesday. The blue picture is the normal temps and the red one is with the heat index (the dew point and humidity level will be high.) I will be staying inside most of the time. Sunday I will go to church but it’s an air conditioned building and I have a/c in the car so I should be ok :P. Monday however, I’m not going anywhere. August is normally our hottest month of the year, so I shudder to think what next month will be like. Well actually I can imagine, 2 years ago when my daughter had an outdoor wedding in August, it was 118 with the heat index (that’s abnormally and obnoxiously hot for here), yeah, everyone was melting! Told her if I melted she could pick me up with a stick and a spoon and carry me inside to the reception :P. Everyone stay safe!!

Tour de Fleece 2025 update

/ LDSVenus / 6 Comments

The first 3 pictures are from day 14. The 1st picture is what was left from plying, I’d say I did pretty well not having a lot left over! The next picture is the open skein after washing before twisting it up in to a skein, I measured 252 yards, which should be a DK weight for 97 grams.  This was BFL-Corriedale cross 64%, Alpaca 27% and Sari Silk waste 9%. I have to say that the blue bled in the water when I washed it, so I rinsed it in vinegar (it helps to set the color), but nope it bled in that water too. So I rinsed it a 3rd time using a conditioner for the fiber, and there was still some bleeding in the water. I’ll have to tell her to make sure that she doesn’t hand wash it with anything else until the blue is done bleeding :(. A friend told me blue is hard to set, and so it is! I was very pleased because the skein was very balanced, no twisting to one side when held up in the open skein, just hung there straight up and down :). This skein, except for the blue not staying put in the yarn :P, was a pleasant spin and great looking yarn. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.

The last 2 pictures are the camel/red eri silk, day 15. I weighed it and it was about 120 grams, so I split it into two 51grams balls, I just have one in the picture. The 2nd picture in the start of the spin. It is much thinner than the skein above, which I assumed it would be, both of those fibers spin thin. But this spin is going to take a bit longer because it takes longer to get the same amount of fiber on the bobbin because it’s thinner. I am going to guess that this will end up being a fingering weight. I will use the left over fiber, after dividing it, to card on my drum carder with other fibers for some fun batts. I will have to spin more than 30 min a day on this fiber to get anywhere close to being done by the end of the Tour de Fleece! I’ll see how far I get with 45 min or maybe bump it up to 1 hr.

The weather yesterday was ok in the lower 80’s but today is supposed to be 89, and 92 on Wed and 91 on Thursday, and up to 101 with the heat index and the muggy meter said sweltering. Sigh, and next month is our hottest month of the summer, that’s a bit scary!

Tour de Fleece Update, 2nd Bobbin 2025

/ LDSVenus / 9 Comments

This is days 7, 8, 9 (a rest day) and 10, so only 3 days of spinning. I’m closer to having the 2nd bobbin done and then plying, but not there yet :P. I think maybe 3 more days. As long as it’s done by the end of the week I’m ok because it’s going somewhere next week. Then I will start spinning that beautiful camel and red Eri silk. I generally let the singles on the bobbin rest for 24 hrs before plying when I finish to let them settle. So for that next day after I finish the bobbin I will work on some alpaca I have on my Rick Reeves wheel, I’ll insert a picture when I spin on it. That alpaca, from a cria (baby alpaca), is like butter, it’s so soft and spins much faster than the wool I’m spinning now. Smoother fibers means more glide as you spin so it goes faster.

My new Tour de Fleece tee came in, isn’t that just too cute! She always comes up with some cute stuff! Love that this one was in color, now I can be obnoxious with “I’m a spinner” when I go shopping, lol. If anyone wants one you can get it at Fiber Love Diary‘s web site. I also bought a sticker with that same design to go on a 32 oz glass I bought from her last year, that had last years sticker on it. I think I can get two more stickers on it for the next two Tour de Fleeces, lol. For my fellow spinners, she also has spinning fiber!

Our weather is up and down temp wise and storms coming in tomorrow, typical summer weather. Grateful for air conditioning!

Yarn Acquired!

/ LDSVenus / 10 Comments

Well I might have accidentally ordered a skein of yarn from an Indy (spelling?) dyer on YouTube that I follow, Awenydd Yarn and Fiber, I linked her shop, you can look for her on YouTube under that name. She does a Monday podcast reworking some of her older color ways while you watch her dye, a Wednesday podcast while you watch her dye from a random selection of colors of dyes from a random generator, it’s fun, and on Fridays she talks about her works in progress etc. This was one of her reworks of an older color way, she did last week, to jazz it up a bit. I fell in love with it, I had enough extra money and ordered it. She got it right out to me and she sent me that beautiful crystal in a heart cage progress keeper as a thank you, so pretty. I’m thinking about asking her to dye up a skein of just the blue color as a tonal next month. I thought it would make a nice shawl knitting 6 rows of the blue and 3 or of the American Woman rows throughout the shawl. What do you think? I think the blue would give it some balance and depth as a shawl, beginning and ending with the blue, and the brighter colors would make it pop a bit adding excitement and the blue in the brighter colors would pull the two together :). If I was a sock knitter I would just knit socks for July, but I’m not, so there’s that :P. She has knit samples with the skeins so you can see what the yarn works up as.

Hoping everyone is fine and not suffering with the heat. We are having thunderstorms today and tomorrow, and will be in the mid 90’s on Saturday, Sunday and next Monday, with sweltering humidity, which they said would make it feel like the low 100’s, :(. This is our late July and August weather, way too soon!!! Thank goodness for air conditioning!!!

New Fiber and Alpaca Farm Days

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

Well I might have accidentally bought some more fiber :O. I love yellow and this has sparkles and it was for 8oz at a sale price, so my excitement got the best of me. It’s Merino and Glitter and is called Sunny Day . The yellow is now only available by the lb and will be discontinued when sold out. I’m excited to see how it will spin up. The fiber under the yellow was a free 1 oz sample of Rambouillet from Camaj Fiber Arts, it is as soft as the merino. It will be fun to dye it too :).

It will be a while before I get to spin the yellow merino tho, because I only have two spinning wheels and my Kromski Polonaise has fiber still on it that I need to finish spinning, and I need my 2nd spinning wheel, my Rick Reeves wheel, empty because my son and his spouse are having their annual Alpaca Farms’ Day event on Saturday and I have to start the alpaca to spin on Saturday at the event. The fawn colored alpaca bump is not a new purchase, it’s a deep stash cria (baby alpaca). It is as soft as butter!!! I will try to remember to take pictures on Saturday. Usually the event is Saturday and Sunday but they are only opening their farm on Saturday this year so I expect it will be VERY busy!!!

Sending prayers out for those in Florida for safety with this hurricane :(.

Fall Surprise Knitting Box & Hats

/ LDSVenus / 10 Comments

I got my 3rd and final Fall Surprise Knitting Box from Twice Sheared Sheep. I don’t think anyone who gets this box follows me so I wouldn’t be giving anything away in case some haven’t gotten theirs yet. Lots of goodies! I forgot to put the bear tin back in the box for a picture of the full box, so I added it to the other things I took out to get a better picture of. I love the wolves mug, will serve many hot chocolate drinks! The mini skeins are a dk weight. Not sure what I will make with those, will have to think on it, they are soft :). There is a huge hat pom in there too! Will give the bag to my grand daughter M for her crochet, she is trying to learn. Love the counting stitch marker with the tree of life on it, it matches the progress keeper I made with a charm I received with one of my other fiber purchases. I’ll try to get a picture of that eventually, I keep forgetting (what else is new). The mushroom stitch markers I will use for progresss keepers :). I do love the bear tin for stitch markers and the very cute hedgehog tape measure. The card in there (took a picture of front and back) shows what is in the box and tells a little about them. She will be taking orders for the boxes again in Jan I think.

The first picture is of hats that I knit every year. I use I love this Yarn Print (it comes in various colors) by Hobby Lobby. I like the striping effect it gives on hats. This year they are going to a family of children who lost their mom (3 boys and a girl). I thought they might appreciate new hats for winter. Hope they will like them. For this pattern I use worsted weight yarn, and cast on 89 stitches (for small and medium adults), knitting in the round, doing a 2X2 rib (the extra stitch at the last is knitted with the first stitch to make a good join in the round. I use a 16″ circular needle, my favorite is the Karbonz, it’s carbon with a metal like tip so It’s light weight. I use size 5 needle because I knit a little looser with my knitting style (continental combined) but the pattern calls for a size 6. The 2X2 rib makes it pretty stretchy. You can use less stitches for children, or a lighter weight yarn adjusting your needle size, for a smaller hat, just make sure it’s an odd number of stitches.

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the weather before winter gets here. We are still going between fall and summer weather and I wish the first frost would come early, my allergies are so NOT FUN, even my antihistamine is not doing the trick this year, and I’ve tried several, sigh.

FO (Finished Object for My Non Knitting Friends)

/ LDSVenus / 7 Comments

I finished the In Thirds dishcloth, free pattern on Ravelry. I really like the I love this Cotton by Hobby Lobby. It’s very soft and I like how the colors were laid out. Tho, like most cotton yarns, I imagine with repeated washings the colors will fade a lot over time. It says to use a size 8 needle but I like the fabric to be a little tighter knit for the dishcloths. Normally, because I knit a little loser, I would have just gone down one needle size but since I wanted it a little tighter than normal I went down 3 sizes to a needle size 5 and I like the fabric it makes better. I have enough for another one and maybe a 3rd one if I don’t mind playing a little yarn chicken :). I’m getting ready to cast on the 2nd one.

After the 18th I’ll share about something I don’t normally do but decided to bite the bullet and spend a little more money than I would normally allow my self to do on some knitting things. It’s kinda like people do for the Christmas yarn advent calendars. I’ll go into a little more detail when I talk about it after the 18th :). I got my first box and I’m so excited to share what was sent!

The weatherman says we have a storm, coming in the wee hours of tomorrow morning through tomorrow evening, that could produce “gorilla” hail, yeah the big stuff, but I think that will more than likely be in the state below us, tho I’m sure we will have some wind and rain. Take care everyone!

The Shepards Market and Some Loot!

/ LDSVenus / 3 Comments

The first picture is the “loot” I bought at the fiber show, I can’t believe I only bought one thing out of so many wonderful things there. This is some CVM, part of it was blended with some blue and light teal, the other part is the natural color roving. They came together for about 4 1/4 ozs. My plan is to blend it all together (slowly so I don’t get any neps in it.) CVM is very springy and tho not merino soft it is still next to the skin soft. I’ll post a picture after I blend it on my drum carder, hopefully I will do a good job and it will be beautiful :).

I started another dish cloth using the I Love This Yarn, cotton. First time using this cotton and so for I like it. I am knitting the In Thirds dishcloth it’s a free pattern on Ravelry and one of my favorites. I’m using my favorite needles for this, I’ve had them for years, it’s a nylon needle, size 5, I think the pattern calls for size 6 or 7, but I like the fabric I get using this. I don’t use them as dish clothes, I like to use them to put hot things on so I can handle them (like a bowl of hot soup I want to eat in my recliner while watching a favorite show. 😛

Have sure been enjoying the weather since the end of January, we got up to 80 this past Sunday but are in the 50’s and 40’s this week. We are in an El Niño weather pattern since last year, but starting in the fall the weather man says it turns into a La Niña, so will prepare for a colder snowier winter with coming winter, sigh.