Typically American Measurement

There are jokes and memes going around about how Americans will use anything as a unit of measurement to avoid the metric system.  My friend Trish and I joked about it and decided to display her Great Big Squishy Scarfie Thing against their Grand Caravan:

Current length, on Colour #21 of 25, is about 2/3 of a Grand Caravan.  I've knitted on it twice (somehow, not this trip!), once when I was there for "AIDA" and once at Maryland Sheep & Wool.

I did some knitting of my own, a scarf of Bernat Blanket that I left in Dallas to donate to Warm Up, America! at DFW Fiber Fest next month, and three hats; four if you count the one I knit on a friend's machine so I could try it:

The green one with brick stitch at top left will go to the local
guild's Hundred Hats Challenge collection; the other three are
destined for a different charitable project.

This time I was there to see her son in "HAMLET", portraying several characters, primarily Rosencrantz:

This wasn't the only play I saw this weekend, though.  On Friday I went to the Allen Contemporary Theater to see two friends in what turned out to be a spectacular production:

I've recommended it to people, and they report the shows are
selling out before they can get tickets.  Kudos to ACT!

And then this went into a black hole, instead of getting published.  I thought I'd hit the "Publish" button!

Since then, I finished another two hats for the collection, and half a scarf for WUA:

Ooops, the top one is a repeat from the previous photo.
Both hats are AlwaysBeKind yarn.  Scarf is a Caron Chunky Cake.

I've planned some projects (probably too many to get done before DFW Fiber Fest), and finished my Berie Shawl of the "Sunset Skies" yarn:

When I saw how much is left, I decided not to frog back and add another garter row in the center, and there isn't enough remaining for a border, so the shawl is as it is (and fits me well) and the last bit of yarn will go into a hat or something.  Yes, I have the ends to run in, but that's just a few minutes of work.  I love how it feels, very soft and cuddly.

Ninety and Nice!

 

My father's birthday is today.  Originally Mom planned to have a family event and a neighborhood party, then rescheduled the neighborhood party for two weeks from now.  (Next weekend is Labour Day weekend, and she figured people may have other plans.)  This took pressure off the family event, and won't be as wearing on my parents.

I think Dad would rather spend the day with some music and a book, than entertaining a parade of guests.

   

Testing the tea (dye).

Since I am going to Dallas (briefly) I thought I'd try some dyeing and take the samples to leave for next month's class.  I hoped to have a pile of knitted blanks to leave, but have had issues with tensioning the loom.  I've also decided to give people half-skein blanks, about 98-100 yards of yarn, instead of a full one, because it might take too long for people to paint a full-sized one.

Speaking of blanks, one of my sample dyes is a blank and a hank, dyed the same (half in one shade of green and half in another), to show how differently the resulting yarn will work:

However, the main plan was to refresh my ability with tea-dyeing.  In theory it is simple: make a BIG pot of tea, add yarn, and simmer.

I managed to goof it up in the beginning by (1) putting in too many skeins, crowding the slow-cooker I am using, and (2) adding the tea bags and yarn at the same time.

The result was VERY spotty, so I pulled out the yarn, drained much of the water back into the pot, added some fresh tea bags with the spent ones, and allowed it to become tea before returning the yarn.  The end result was still a bit streaky, but not as badly:

The above photo has a hank of the original colour under and to the left of each dyed hank.  The blue and tan came out much closer in colour than I expected.  Even though they are not perfect, it's a learning experiment, and I took notes, and that's also part of what I am teaching the students.

I was able to get a couple more slow cookers, so opened to the waiting list but with an absolute cap of eighteen.  When I last heard, there are seventeen registered for the class.  Wow!!

Back. With yarn and knitting.

Just a quick report - I did knitting, and am into the second skein, second half, of the Berie Shawl:

Not much done on the Albuquerque Shawl, but attention must be paid so it's not good for knitting while sightseeing or reading or during intermissions:

Yarn and fabrics acquired, and some fiber for a swap at the annual meeting for one of my local fiber guilds:

LOTS of photos taken, and I may get around to summarizing the trip.  I had fun, not enough sitting-around time as one sometimes gets on vacations, did some hiking, saw a number of museums plus some places I wanted to see and will visit again, and ate a lot of good food.

One of the boring ones.

Mostly because this is a placeholder - I am traveling, which means I cannot upload photos.  My watercolour seems to have stalled the middle of last week, because I was busy and felt overwhelmed and underinspired.  I do have ideas, but wasn't confident of creating them.  I'll get back to it - I brought the pad and some paints on the trip, but have had zero time to focus on them.

Whiling away the hours between when I arrived for my
originally-schedule departure flight, and the time of my
rescheduled departure, caused by some impressive weather
in other parts of the country, which I was now avoiding.

After some travel-fu (a very early connecting flight rescheduled to a very late one due to weather and other delays, and a very kind person at the check-in counter who moved me to an earlier pair that would avoid the kerfluffle although get me to ABQ a few hours later than planned), and a visit with an elderly relative that involved some very yummy Mexican food and a bit of sightseeing, I joined the tour group I'm with for the Santa Fe opera.  And some other adventures.

And a few of my own.  I'll report more about all of this next week, when I can add photos (such as the one above, added after my return).  I might slip one in here later, as an update; maybe the shawl I started on Saturday while waiting for the flights.

A bit stalled.

I've wanted to work on watercolours this week, but haven't quite had the energy to accomplish my intentions, so I did a lot of exercises instead of representational things.  I took process photos only of the last one, which didn't come out as planned.  I was trying to use the washi tape to mark out lines to do a plaid, but ended up with a checkerboard instead:

I taped a square for the library's mini art event on the paper.

So I filled in the center square very simply, although somebody skilled might put in a landscape or something representational:

This is the total since last week's post:

Trying to make the flag look as if it is waving
in the wind, and failing spectacularly.

TOP:  Transparent paint in overlapping circles.
BOTTOM:  Dripping water (left) or other colours
(right) onto a wet ground.

These are the two pieces I made for the library mini-art collection:

I've finished a couple of hats and most of a C2C scarf, plus plenty of work.  And a good soufflé this week:

And today is National Ice Cream Day, so:

My great-grandmother loved butter pecan ice cream, and we kids thought it was some strange old person's flavour.  (My great-grandmother was from Texas and they had pecan trees on some of the family land, so that might be part of it.)  As an adult, I've decided she wasn't wrong.

It Got Long.

I didn't read the pattern correctly; I should have stopped the diamonds with 9 stitches and I took them down to 5 stitches.  So they are much more defined and the scarf is quite long:

One skein of Lion Brand Homespun.

I kept painting this week, trying gradients one day and using washi and masking tape:

The outer ones are monochrome; the inner
use two or three colours.  I tried to blend them.

Finished, with tape removed.  The masking tape didn't come
up as cleaning as I would like on the right side and damaged
the pink triangle a bit.  Or the paper was still damp.

These are most of the ones for this week.  Some are just techniques or exercises.

I did a book for the day when the Prompt is
"TIRED" since reading in bed is my cause!

The prompt for the lower picture is "turtle" and
I thought of the shell pattern.  They are irregular
because I freehanded the outlines.

The trees are surprisingly good (to my eyes) other
than the trunks being out of proportion.  They
should be quite slim.  I may try doing them again.

On my way home from a fiber group meeting on Saturday, I turned in my second Reading Challenge form; I forgot to take a photo of it.  No prize this time, but I am entered into a drawing.  And I have started completing my third: