I recently participated in a trade with a local dyer. MamaJude does simply beautiful work with plant dyes and can also dye cotton. I cannot dye cotton, so we worked out a swap where she would acquire a couple skeins of cotton boucle from me, and I would receive some indigo batts from her.

The batts arrived a few days ago, and they are gorgeous! There are six of them total. I haven’t weighed them, but I’m guessing the batch is in the six-to-eight ounces category. Here’s the best picture I could nab of one in the fading afternoon light.

I keep thinking that I should mix these with some of the lovely soysilk I have stashed away and make something large. But they’re so light and fluffy, I’m wondering if I could find a light spring/early autumn top or cardigan pattern. That might do them more justice. Whatever I decide on, it’s going to have to wait awhile. I’ve got two or three other spinning jobs lined up, plus the BFL lace I’m finishing up now.

My aunt’s shawl yarn, however, is now finished. I set the twist earlier this week.

And, speaking of shawls, here’s a picture of my finished “Hatter’s Party Scarf” shawl.
Shortly after I finished it I was able to wear it out and about at a botanical garden on a chilly day. This convinced me that I could, in fact, find excuses to make a larger shawl and wear it often.

I’m really tickled with how it turned out. I have so few projects made where I actually spun the yarn and then made it into something, it’s nice to have another pretty one. The fringe was rather fun to make as well. A very simple matter of dropped stitches! (Dropped on purpose.) My main trouble was making sure I dropped the stitches all the way back to the twisted row. Something about that single-ply merino/mohair made it keep snagging on itself.

And, as a final item, here are some little felt squares that came with my new batts. Aren’t they cute?

Of course, I can’t properly introduce him until he’s cleaned up and actually presentable. At the moment he’s in need of some tender loving care. But, I’ve ordered a new drive band for him, and my dad says he will help me get the rust off the handle, and after that, it’s just a matter of dusting and getting any last little wisps of wool out of the teeth.

In case you’re wondering, I got him for free. (Thank you, Heavenly Father!) It’s been several months in “coming” (I contacted the owner last summer), but the timing was great. Hooray hurrah!

All that to say, look at the lovely new baskets I have to store my dyeing equipment in! Thanks to Mom and Aunt Debbie, I don’t have to dig my stuff out from the top shelf of my closet anymore. Hurrah! Life is suddenly so much easier, and less clutter-filled. I’ve toyed with the idea of changing out the fabric liners seasonally, but that might be a bit over-the-top.

And, thanks to an early Christmas present, I have a large collection of new dye powders on hand. Which, of course, happened to arrive when I had undyed items on hand. The heart beats faster.

One of these days I’ll need to invest in some new stock-sized pots for kettle dyeing. The ones I have are starting to show their age, and the last thing I want is for one to spring a leak while it’s on the stovetop. That would be downright nasty.

And here is a little sneak preview of the project I’m creating from the Phat Fiber September samples. Curious yet?

First up we have not one, but two braids of blue faced leceister/silk roving. Both from OrangeJello. “Bonfire” and “Violet, You’re Turning Violet!”

Then I got three sets of stitch markers from AnneKRiley. These are technically for a promotional thingy I’ll be doing for my Etsy store, but I get to admire them in the meantime.

Then we have the September Phat Fiber sample box. This is the box I got for contributing over fifty samples. (Actually, I got it because the “Phat Fiber” owners were very nice. I’d misinterpreted the instructions, but they let me have the box anyway.) All sorts of little samples (and some not so little ones!) to play with.

It was a challenge to figure out what to do with all of them. At first I thought I’d spin up the fibers, combine them with the yarn samples, and knit a hat out of them. Then I realized I’d have enough for socks. Then I thought about trying a needlepoint-type bag. However, I am now up to my ears in a new idea. Stay tuned for exciting developments. Or a frazzled blogger, which might be even more exciting.

Or, if you want to get really out there, it’s like saying, “You stand up, why would you ever want to sit down again?”

There’s so much to be said for dyeing your own stuff, but every so often you want a break. And, as it happened this time, I found this gorgeous braid for sale. It’s a merino/mohair mix (a blend I’ve never bought before) and the colors jumped right off the screen and grabbed me. (Yes, it was scary, but a good scary.)

Isn’t it pretty? I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. The thought of a hat or smooshy cowl crossed my mind, or perhaps a little shawlette. I could go for socks, as it’s a four ounce braid, but I don’t particularly feel like spinning sock yarn right now. Ha, well, true, I probably won’t get around to spinning this until later this year. Oh, I bought it at FiberFancy, if you’d care to take a peek at some of the other lovely stuff there.

And, along a different train of thought, I paid for not blogging recently. I skeined up this gorgeous single ply laceweight (the one I was spinning on my English wheel) and it turned out to be about thirty-five grams/440 yards. In short, a nice size. It washed up beautifully and bloomed into this amazingly soft fluffy single ply. I was so proud of it. Then I listed it on Etsy and it sold before I could tell you I had even finished it! So, here’s the picture of the now long-gone yarn.

On the home knitting front: Raveling is in the offing. Remember that purple sweater I made? The cowl neck? Well, it was far too big in the body, so about a week or so ago I raveled it clear back to the armpits and commenced re-knitting it in a smaller size. I’m now about six to eight inches from the bottom, and hoping it will somehow finish knitting itself so I can take it along to Colorado in the beginning of August. Things are looking pretty close, but I might just finish in time.

This is called banana silk. It’s derived from the leaves of banana trees, so it’s a plant-based fiber, and you can see how shiny it is in the pictures. I’d heard of yarn that had banana fiber in it, but it had never registered in my noggin that that would mean there was banana spinning fiber floating around somewhere to be pounced on.

I now have a full four ounces of the stuff waiting for me to figure out what to try it in. The individual strands are thick, and the softness is really hard to describe. Almost like a really, really fine elastic. The kind that isn’t wrapped up in thread.

And, if you’re wondering, yes, I bought it on Etsy. And, yes, I am aware that other fiber retail areas exist, but, hey! Why not Etsy? This particular fiber came from ExtremeSpinning – great store, great owner – and she has some really neat stuff in there. In fact, she sent me a fun little sample of some locally carded wool roving. Isn’t it cute?

Sweater! I promised a picture and here it is.

My first knit sweater. Very, very comfy and soft. In fact, so comfy that I’m already plotting to make another sweater. A short sleeve cotton one, actually. I already have the pattern and yarn picked out. I think I’m still on a “start a new project” kick. Thankfully I’ve been able to resist. Even when I couldn’t knit any more on either of my current projects for various reasons.

The Emily Dickinson shawl is coming along nicely, after a small glitch in which I ran out of beads and had to wait a day to get more. The ironic thing is that, now that I’ve got more beads, I’m back into a whole section of the shawl that doesn’t need beads. I believe I’m on row six or seven now, and I’m really happy with the way it’s looking at the moment. I’ve already been toying with the idea of making another version of it without the beads.

And, another batt picture to sign off with, my very favorite of the bunch. The Geiranger Fjord batts…

It’s hard to tell how big something will be when it’s scrunched up on circulars. And, of course, doing a stitch count and the necessary math would have just been overkill.

So, now it’s big enough to go up over my head like most enormous cowls (instead of the neckwarmer I thought it would be) but it’s not wide enough to do more than make a feint at keeping the top of my head warm. Perhaps I can knit the second ball into a similar size, then graft them together down the middle. I’m also hoping that the minor stretch job I gave it while blocking will help it expand.

It’s blocking now. And it’s got quite a nice texture in the stitches. I’m very happy with the way it turned out. Beautiful and warm.

After I bound off the cowl I found myself in an emergency situation. I was only partway into the audio dramatization of Les Miserables (for the first time ever), and I had no knitting projects in progress to work on! I couldn’t spin during it because the wheel would have made too much noise. And, of course, I couldn’t just sit there and listen without something to do with my hands. That wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.

After some desperate stash scrambling I printed out the Baroness Beret pattern (free on Ravelry) and got started with some handspun worsted weight. I’m pretty sure the yarn is indigo dyed.

And, with the aid of the beret in progress, I finished Les Miserables to loud acclaim from myself. I may just need to dig up a copy of the actual book now. Only I can’t knit while listening to that.

But, thanks to various knitting moments, the tam is also done and blocking.

My Knitpicks yarn arrived yesterday. I’ve already done a gauge swatch on the charcoal gray. (Gorgeous stuff. I’ll have to get more of it in the future for some project or other.) And I’m happy with the sweater yarn color. One moment it looks brown and the next it looks purple. Two colors that I like very much indeed. Once I get the gray tam done I can dive in on the cowl-neck sweater!

Well, for my New Year’s Dash I got the sum total of about three quarters of the superwash merino sock yarn spun. Ta-da!

Next year, I start earlier.

I did, however, get the start of the first draft of that spinning article I mentioned. And I also got a pretty good chunk of the black llama deguarded. That wasn’t on my list, I know, but hey, it’s still spinning related.

The nice pile of chosen and selected fibers is still teetering on my desk, so I have decided that this month shall be a spinning month. The idea is to see how much of that pile I can spin before February, while keeping things fun. If spinning becomes a stress factor we have a major problem.

And, on the complete opposite of a problem, look at what came in a surprise package from a very dear friend! (Thank you, Lina!) A skein of KnitPicks Palette yarn in marine heather, and some beautiful scraps of various KnitPicks Shimmer yarns. Yum yum yum. And beads. I love beads.

I have to admit, of the bunch I’m most drawn to the this gorgeous one at the moment. Allow me a very long, contented sigh.

Today was washing day for the various hand knitted items I have accumulated over the last year or so. The two pairs of socks I made, and the two pairs of socks and pink sweater that my sister made for me. The Mini Moochi socks got really hairy after being washed. I must have roughed them up a bit in the water. They’re superwash, so no one panic. I may go through and snip off some of the biggest bumps, just because no one wants hairy socks. Yuck.

A couple days ago I went to JoAnn Etc. and bought knitting needles! So much for trying not to spend anything this month.
But I needed them for a couple of projects. Remember that cowl neck sweater I talked about a while ago? Well, two of these needles will go to that. Now I’m all ready for the yarn to get here! I wound up going with Knitpicks Swish yarn instead of the Webs variety, for various and sundry reason. A good one being that the Swish yarn is superwash.

The yarn will be in the clematis heather colorway… as long as Knitpicks doesn’t pull a surprise switch-a-roo or the mail truck doesn’t get held up by rabid New Year stash builders.

Well, let me see, where to start. Perhaps some of you remember when MamaMentor gave me those beautiful blue stitch markers? I’m happy to announce that they now have cousins. MamaMentor made me some gorgeous amethyst ones as well. Beautiful! (Thank you so much.)

We got the beads at a wonderful yarn and fiber store called Rose Path Weaving. Note the fiber. I happened to find certain fibers I had been planning to get for a sweater project, so I jumped at the chance to save shipping. I got some cream baby alpaca, BFL, and mohair locks to blend. The mohair doesn’t appear to be washed, so I have to decide whether I want to try washing it before I blend it into the others, or just wait and wash the yarn to minimize risks of felting.

Thankfully I was cautious enough to only get fiber at that store. They had some beautiful yarns, but I kept my eyes on the baby alpaca and resisted. I think knowing that I had this crimson sock yarn from the last store helped.

I love this red. And I especially love that sock yarn is something I can buy without worrying about what I’ll make out of it. It’s the ultimate impulse buy!

And then I was given these beautiful fingering weight yarns. (Thank you!)

I tell you, I have no idea what I’m going to do with them yet, but whatever it is, it’s going to be good.

First off, I took along the indigo-dyed merino and a spinning wheel, hoping to get a bunch more spun. Unfortunately, I didn’t spin quite as much as I’d planned, but I was able to teach a friend to use the wheel, and two others to drop spindle. Now the goal is to finish the indigo merino well before Christmas.

I didn’t spin as much as I had planned because I was working away at my latest pair of socks. The first one is done, and the second is well on its way to the end. I’m now in the “knit until sock measures x length from heel” stage. A little on the boring side, but it needs to be done so I can get to some of the stuff I bought.

And, would you believe it? I forgot to see if my pattern could get translated! I brought it all the way out there and promptly forgot it. Oh well. I’ve got other things in line now. Big things.

Like a cowl made out of this. It’s a mohair blend, and the actual yarn is a lot more navy than it looks in the picture. I thought it would make the perfect “dress up” item for my rather plain sand-colored coat. I’m thinking a simple pattern would be best. Maybe a check or herringbone sort of thing. Nothing too lacy. I got two balls of it, so I should have enough. Possibly more than enough. But that’s okay.

Speaking of more than enough, how about three bags full of alpaca and llama fleece? Or are they all alpaca? I’ve lost track. Two gorgeous shiny black, one cinnamon brown.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I’m in fiber heaven, but also project shock. What on earth am I going to do with it all? (Aside from the obvious: Fondle and spin.) Thanks, MamaMentor!

More yarn and fiber to show tomorrow. This was a very fun and productive trip. Not to mention I got to have some of the best African food ever!