What I'm doing with that new spinning wheel

To start with, I'm once again spinning in the Tour de Fleece. This year so far I've missed two days on account of social obligations and my kid leaving home to seek his fortune, but as of right now I've got two bobbins full of this, ready to ply tonight if I get off my rear and clear one of the other bobbins of leftover stuff so I have somewhere to ply to:


I'm really pleased with how it's going.

Even on the days I haven't spun I've made an effort to go look at the daily threads with everyone else's progress pictures. My reactions generally run the gamut between "that is so cool and I will never get there at this rate" to "did you mean to do that to a couple of ounces of innocent fiber?" At least I feel like I'm doing okay with what I'm doing, but at some point I'm going to need a wheel class because I know I'm not using everything on this to its full potential.

I'm also finding a lot of new (to me) online fiber shops. I either need to join a couple of fiber clubs and order about another pound of new fiber, or I need someone to hide my credit card before I join a couple of fiber clubs and order about another pound of new fiber.

More tomorrow!

I bought a spinning wheel.

I have obviously lost my mind. But isn't she pretty?



She's an Ashford Tradittional spinning wheel. And I love her very dearly. Unfortunately, I'm still persuading her to feel the same way about me, as evidenced by this mess:



That is some perfectly good alpaca fiber that I have turned into slightly overspun (except for the places that it's underspun) yarn barf. I've seen worse beginner efforts, but I'm terrified to put expensive fiber on this yet. I'll be playing around with the cheap stuff that I bought with my first drop spindle and immediately got bored with until I'm sure that what I'm making is yarn and not just yarn barf. And we are not going to talk about the big pile of yarn barf that resulted from my first effort at getting a bobbin started by myself. (It's gone. I made it go away. We will never speak of it again.)

But really, isn't she pretty? :)

What I did on my spinning vacation

I took a bit of a break from knitting this summer to participate in the Tour de Fleece. The idea, if you haven't heard of it, is to spin every day of the Tour de France. (And by this I mean spinning fiber with a drop spindle or a wheel, not the kind of spinning you do on a stationary bike. Although the bike would be better exercise, I guess.)

The Tour starts on July 4th. So, with a house full of people drinking beer and eating barbecue, I got going on two different fibers, an all-bamboo roving and a Butterfly Girl batt with an indescribable number of fibers and sparklies in. I initially found both of these fibers to be extremely difficult to work with. (This might have partially been the beer, to be honest, but my prior spinning has been mainly things like Blue Faced Leicester, which is incredibly easy to work with.)

But all I got the first day, whether because of beer or good company, was this:

This was a rather disappointing start. But I went on spinning every day, alternating between the two fibers as I reached my maximum level of irritation with them.
















At some point, the bamboo suddenly made sense to me, so I finished it:



That's four ounces of Navajo-plied bamboo, a new fiber to me, plied by a technique that I learned while plying it. I'm pretty pleased.

This left me with the sparkly stuff, which I finished the next week:



It's not the most even yarn I've ever spun, but considering that it dearly wanted to be Art Yarn while I had other ideas (I hate art yarn), I think I did pretty well. It's a two-ply, but I'm not going to hold it against it.

But this left me with nearly a week of Tour and I'd finished both of my goals. I picked up the Romney I'd bought at DFW Fiber Fest this spring and finished it. After the slippery stuff and the sparkly stuff, working with a fiber that practically spins itself was a real relief. Unfortunately, the three-ply I got out of it is just not the most appealing yarn. It's scratchy and it's kind of hairy, and not in a nice way. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. But here it is in the basket with the rest of my TdF spinning.



What I have now: three new yarns, a messed up plying spindle (the hairy brown yarn ate it), and no desire to pick up a spindle for at least a week.

So that was the longest and hottest part of my summer. I'm now back to knitting.

Also, can I make a teeny tiny little gripe here? I am so tired of logging on to Ravelry and seeing nothing but news about the Sock Summit. I would love to have gone, but the money and the time just weren't there, and the classes filled up so quickly that I might not have made it in if I had decided that I had the time and the money. I admit that it's mainly envy typing here, but I'll be glad when the damned thing is over and I can begin saving my pennies for next year instead of feeling all bummed because I can't make it this year. At this point, all the attention to it is just rubbing it in for those of us who can't go. /whine

ETA: Although there probably won't be one next year. ::sigh:: Really, I guess I'm just depressed because it seems like all the cools kids can talk about is a party that I can't be at.

Finished First Shawl

Yeah, long time no post. I think I'm trying to keep up with too many things. But I had to post here that I finally blocked the Luna Moth shawl.

It's pretty on the blocking board, although you will note that there is a really nasty unraveling thing going on about a third of the way up from the bottom point.



It looks really pretty on, though. There really is some kind of magic to blocking lace. This thing went from looking like a giant green vaguely hairy-looking scrotum to a real shawl. I've actually worn it a couple of times with a nice shawl pin, and I keep looking at it and going, "I made this?" I now understand why the Yarn Harlot talks about finishing a project and wanting to run out into the street with it and inflict the wonder of it on passers-by. This thing is amazing to me.

Busy, and Socks

I've been busy with all sorts of things the last couple of months trying to get stuff started with the practice, and I guess it's mostly working. I'm working with a client on all the details that crop up before a divorce can be finalized, I have a probate hearing in a week and a half, I'm working on wills for a couple of people, and in theory I have a trial in July on a civil matter. It's not like I have nothing to do. I probably have about the right amount going on considering my experience level. I'm just not making any real money yet, and sometimes that's keeping me up at night.

Meanwhile, because the grass is always greener, I wish I had more criminal defense work even though the last two criminal defense clients stiffed me. (See previous comment about lack of money keeping me up at night.)

I registered with the state bar's referral service, and so far I have had one referral from them, an individual who did not tell me the whole truth about why his probation was being revoked. He then proceeded to stand me up for three appointments in a row, and then ceased to call back after I explained to him that I was not going to be able to give him a payment plan and he'd have to come up with the fee up front. (Once again, see previous comment about money and previous defense clients.)

So I shouldn't complain. Instead I make socks. A week or so ago I finished a pair of self-striping blue socks out of one of last year's Aktion limited edition colors.

The yarn was a gift from either Minirth or Goldenbaer at the group Yule party last winter, as one of them had bought it and then decided they didn't like it much. I think everyone has figured out that I'm a sucker for self-striping yarn, so I ended up with it. I used the Yarn Harlot's basic sock recipe. The length is good but for some reason these have really baggy ankles.

I'm also half finished with Pomotamus. I guess what I have here is one and a half Pomatami. These are a blast to knit, but really? They're all ribbing. I love how they look and how they feel, but after a few rows the construction gets a little tedious. Still, they're so pretty I bought pretty little stitch markers especially for them.

Because they're really stretchy, what with being all ribbing, the first one fits great and the second one probably will too. If the thought of doing another pair of these didn't make me feel a little faint (the ribbing! no more! have mercy!) I'd probably make these my default socks made for other people because they're impressive, pretty, and likely to always fit without being baggy. Cookie A. is a genius, but I think she may be the slightly mad kind of genius.

Tonight I'm going to go knit at Minirth's. Really, I'm going to take my knitting and valiantly try to keep it out of the paws of the new litter of kittens over there. I might knit. I might also do some spinning, and if I think of it I'll take some pictures of that too.

Cough, cough. Hack!! Cough. Cough, cough.

We spent most of the week after Christmas in New Orleans. I had a great time, but now I can't find one of the cables for uploading pictures from my camera, so pictures from the trip (and any stash acquisitioning of late) are going to have to wait.

I went back into the office on the third, and I felt fine, which was nice because I'd been sick with respiratory crud and sore throat crud and coughing crud until right before the holiday. Unfortunately, I must have picked up a variant of the crud that I haven't had yet in NOLA from one of the visiting football fans (I'm blaming the Hawaiians) because along about 6-ish my throat started to burn. I spent the next day at home, working only insomuch as I was answering the phone and made a few calls to cancel appointments for that day. I'd meant to take Friday off, but I had to work because I stayed home on Thursday.

My quest this weekend has been to feel well enough that going to court in Denton on Monday won't kill me. This would be particularly nice considering that I have another client with an appearance in Denton on Wednesday. I also have clients coming in on Thursday. I need to be well, but it's hard to get well when I'm having trouble sleeping due to a racking, tearing cough that is trying to live in my chest. At this point, my best hope is that it's not pneumonia. I do not have time for this crud.

But knitting doesn't count as work, so I've sat with my feet up and done a lot of knitting while watching all the Lord of the Rings movies again. I've gotten Arwen to the point where I'm supposed to graft the cables at the end of the sleeves and then cast off the rest of the sleeves. I know I'm sick and that I haven't slept well in days, but, uhhh, wtf is with this sleeve construction?? I can't seem to find all the stitches to pick up so I can come up with this mythical "invisible" graft, and I'm wondering if I give a damn about that at this point. I'm also sort of flummoxed at the idea that I graft the cuffs but then just cast off the rest of the sleeve and sew that up later. It makes no sense to me to do this. I've ended up putting the sleeve on holders (cables on one, the rest of the sleeve on another) (thank you, knitpicks!) and I'm going to go on with the hood. I'm hoping it will make more sense when I can go for more than two minutes without a pause to try and hack up a lung.

I'm scared that I'm going to be sorry about all the time I've put into this thing. I've had an assload of trouble understanding the construction, and from what I'm seeing on Ravelry there are a lot of people who have had trouble with the sleeves. Almost no one seems to have done the whole sweater exactly as designed, which should have been a big red flag to me. Everyone seems to have modified the sleeves in some way, so I can't be the only person having the omgwtf problem here.

I hope I can figure out how to finish the sleeves in a way that looks okay, and that the right side works out better (without being a different size somehow than the left side). I'm really freaking out over here.

How to Not Knit a Sweater

I was really moving along on Arwen. I mean, things were looking great, considering that I'm the world's slowest knitter and all. I had even gotten over the worry I had when I reached the part for making the sleeve and for the life of me couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with this "short row sleeve shaping business." (Keep in mind that I've knit a lot of socks, and so when I see the words "short row," I assume a heel or a toe are going to appear. I thought maybe I was adding an elbow or something.)

I just followed the pattern on faith, and when the light came on, well, it really came on, and I was working the sleeve and I got to the sleeve cuff with all the cables and I had that going on a different row from the body cables because that's just how it worked out. And that was okay, it was working. I had two counters going. Then, in the next piece of pattern, it said to keep working the sleeve/body bit for a given number of rows, adding yet a third counter to the project, and I only own three and one of them is tucked into a sock pattern right now. I tried to keep count on a piece of paper, and I crashed and burned at something. One of the cables went wrong, and the body of the sleeve count appeared to be off, and then I tried to rip back to the part before the sleeve. Every single time I tried to put the stitches back on the needles, I only had 23 stitches in the cable instead of 24. I totally lost my shit at this point and ended up ripping the whole damned thing out.

I've started over, and I'm about halfway back to the part where I'll add the sleeve. I should have yet another counter ready for this so that when I hit the part that tanked me before, I'll be ready. I'm also going to run a lifeline at the row right below where the sleeve is cast on, so if this happens again I have a place to start and my cable stitches can't suddenly go all reclusive and mysterious on me.

Still, I have to ask myself: What the hell is wrong with me that I couldn't just pick a normally constructed sweater with sleeves that I'd be sewing on later for the first sweater I actually want to make? I'm sure this thing is an engineering marvel and all, but really, the words "needlessly complex" fell out of my mouth, along with a few other choice words that can get you a ticket for disorderly conduct if you say them in public in front of a cop. It was not pretty.