I gave him a reprieve and told him he doesn't have to shovel again until tomorrow morning.
Yippee.
We had occasional flurries in the forecast. What we had in actuality was a snow shower with poor visibility on the roads out there. But I viewed it as practice for the twice weekly trips up to Fond du Lac so I took the highway instead of the back road. I was impressed with the other drivers not pushing the limits and keeping their speeds down.
I got Clara Parkes' Book of Yarn at the library today. I'm not very far into it but I love the conversational tone of it. I can learn this way.
On the good news/bad news front, I got my spinning out today and plied my black sheep wool and was surprised how quickly it plied and how easily. It's wrapped in a wet towel right now but I'll see how well it did after I hang it up later.
More good news is I worked with the roving I got from the Sheep & Wool festival and it is working up exactly the same as the black sheep rolags I've made. Which means (and this is a good news/bad news thing) that my 80 lbs of fleece will be okay to card because the problem is in the spinning and not the carding. Now I just have to be consistent and spin, spin, spin until I've got it right. So I'm putting the S&W roving up for now and will be working on preparing the black sheep fleece for spinning. I have enough to make a major project out of so I should get busy with it.
Plus, my kick spindle is small enough I can bring it in the car with me when I travel as designated driver for Zach. I won't be limited to knitting or reading so I probably won't get burned out as quickly as I did last semester.
More good news. The sun is out although low on the horizon and the winterscape is just breathtaking. My little neighborhood is beautiful no matter what season.
And in spite of getting no sleep again last night, I'm feeling pretty positive about my future, whatever it is. So much so that I'm thinking of picking up my TKGA level one again and going for it. I'm really jazzed about the cabling I've been doing. And I think I've finally figured out my ribbing. I just needed to get away from it and just do the knitting.
So here is the cabled cardigan I'm doing now. It's from Family Circle Knitting, Winter '96/'97. In the reverse stockinette section there is supposed to be hearts but I'm not fond of hearts and I didn't bother to find any other design to go in there. I kind of like the plainness of it. The color is very close to what it looks like in real life. At least on my monitor.
What I have to do to get the tight cable is a bit bizarre, but it works for me. I discovered during my TKGA work earlier that to get uniform ribbing, I have to use reverse combination knitting where I purl normally (which I do continental) but instead of "scooping" my knit stitch, I wrap the yarn over the needle and bring it through the loop. (I'll try to get Zach to help me get some video of it tomorrow.)
For the cabling I have to scoop my purls and wrap my knit stitch from the top. I get such uniform stitches that I wonder if I ought to knit that way all the time. It's really not that much harder and only a little slower from my normal way of knitting. I guess this is what it takes for me to get the same tension on both stitches.
I've decided to put the hood on Zach's pink & black sweater but darn that Red Heart yarn. The neckline of the front is so untidy that picking up stitches looks terrible but aside from re-knitting it, there is no way to fix it and he wants to wear it next week. I think since he won't really wear the hood, it will sort of drape down over the neckline and hide the ugliness of the loose stitches there. I can't figure out what I did wrong and the only thing I can think of is that it's just the nature of the yarn.
Now the best news....I have a knitting meetup with Miss Vicki tomorrow evening in Beaver Dam. I can't wait.
Off to take a nap before supper.
TTFN
2 comments:
Wow, that's really pretty, Kathy. good job!
Your knitting looks great! Have fun with Vicki! I'll be thinking of you two.
Post a Comment