Fine Times in Philly

I am on a quick turnaround at home between the ACC Annual Meeting and heading to Texas for our quarterly Legal Department All-Hands.  I had fun leading walks in the mornings, and meeting people, and seeing friends, and learning stuff.

Because I am in leadership roles I am invited to the Leadership Development Institute, where we had a team-building exercise to create the tallest possible structure using spaghetti, some masking tape, a piece of string, and a marshmallow.  The structures were measured from the surface to the marshmallow which had to be at the top.

My team had two engineers out of the four of us, and we won:

Design based upon oil derricks and the John Hancock
building in Chicago - and we didn't use the string!

I also, to my surprise, won this:

I did take time on Saturday, after arriving, to visit The Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, which in addition to having some interesting exhibits was participating in the Philadelphia Open Studios Tour (POTS) so I met a number of artists and saw their ongoing works.  I picked up supper at the Reading Terminal Market and ate in my hotel room.

Sweet bologna on rye with mustard, and a pickle.

And I knit a bunch of hats:

Technically the pink one at the top was mostly finished when
I left for the conference, but the other five were knit there.
One of the blue ones was finished after I returned home.

Sitting out the nor'easter.

Bit of weather, but not too bad where I am: lots of rain, gusty wind.  A good day to stay inside with a plethora of fiber group online meetings (Center for Knit and Crochet's monthly member meeting, talking about Knitted Knockers; Franklin Habit; KnitStars; and KnitTalk) and organize the items I need for tomorrow's Triangle Fiber Guild meeting.

I keep plugging away with hats, and remembered before it was completely too late to take a photo of these with a bit of the yarn they share.  One hat has a blue carry-along and the other has a pale yellow one, with the result that they look very different.  I plan to use a bit of tonal deep blue when the multicolour yarn ends.  All of these are (near as I can tell) sock yarn leftovers a friend gives to me.

And here they are, finished:

The ones for our Hundred Hat Challenge (which I am pretty sure will come in well under, but it's good to have a generous goal plus it's alliterative) are finished and tagged.  I set a limit of ten per person as I know how many I can create and wanted it to be fair when we do the drawing for prizes based upon hats a person made and donated.

Yes, it's only seven - I have made many more, of course, but
for another collection.  Although I may add three if the
Guild collection looks very sparse.

I've also begun packing for next weekend's trip to the ACC Annual Meeting, figuring out what to do with my Saturday afternoon and evening, and when to get the token prizes for the program I am running on Wednesday, and routes for the morning walking group.........

And of course, yarn and needles to make more hats.

There went the days.

The Days of Awe finished last week, with Yom Kippur.  I've had two crazy weeks because I went to the NAMWOLF Annual Meeting, then DFW Fiber Fest, got home just in time for Rosh Hashonnah to begin, and then last week did a cybersecurity test development workshop for three days, followed by Yom Kippur on the fourth day, so Friday was my only full day at work.  And unusually for a Friday, it was loaded with meetings, many of which had been pushed out from an earlier day.

So posting was sidelined.

I was able to work on hats, since they are simple and portable and much needed for two charitable donation projects.  Some are using up leftover yarn, and some are using new balls or skeins.  One is a skein I received in a yarn exchange, which turned out to be very tangled:

I should have taken photos of the tangles.  I wanted to wind it on the speed winder, but couldn't until I'd pulled out about a fifth of the skein.  Then it kept jamming, and this was when I realized I couldn't do any more as the yarn wove in and out of the remaining rounds.  So I finished by hand.  Then knit a hat:

I knit it using the yarn doubled, because it was thin, so this is a thick and warm hat.  I might crochet the remainder into a second hat, but there isn't enough for more than a newborn size, so I'll have to use it with something else.  I didn't know the yardage or weight since the skein was untagged, and I think it's sportweight instead of the expected fingering.  Usually I can get a hat and a half or a couple hats out of skein of fingering, depending upon pattern and method.

Speaking of method, I need some crocheted hats for a demo class at the Triangle Fiber Guild meeting next week.  So I worked up a few from a jumbo skein of yarn:

There is yarn left, which might be a knitted hat as I want to do a couple in other weights of yarn to show how the basic pattern adjusts.  That is what I thought I'd do with the leftover autumn coloured yarn.  I'll see what the stash suggests.

It was redone.

That started bit of a hat in the top left of yesterday's photo?  It became clear that the yarn would make only 2/3 of a hat that size, and I didn't have anything close enough to finish it nicely.

But I could start over, integrating a yarn that is different but coordinates enough to look intentional:

Bernat "Forever Fleece" in "Croton Green" and
Big Twist POSH in "Blue Raspberry".

Ten Questions

There is a website that sends out a link to a question each day (except I don't get them - not even in my junk/SPAM folder, so have to remember to look) during the High Holy Days.  Ten questions, for you to think about how the past year affected you, and what is to come next year.  Reflections.

If you want to try it:  https://www.doyou10q.com/question/2025/1

You can opt to share your answers or keep them private.

I had a busy week and next one will be also.  The first three days I am in a CISSP exam writing workshop for ISC2, and then it is Yom Kippur.  Luckily my junior attorney returns on Monday and hopefully it will not take her too long to catch up so I can start giving projects to her.  At some point, my mother and I are going to the early voting; my father votes absentee and we'll deliver his ballot.

I'm back to making hats for the various collections:

It looks like I will get a fourth, if small (child, not teen/adult, sized), hat out of the ball of Bernat Forever Fleece.  Each one is a different pattern, including the Flight Formation Beanie that still has sticks in the top.  The ones unfinished will be worked on during tonight's fiber group meeting.  Four of these were knitted in the last week, the three with sticks in the top (and there is probably enough of the pink/grey boucle for another hat) and the striped one at the bottom.

I want to make other things, especially from yarn I purchased last weekend, but I am dutifully working on hats.

Welcoming 5786

Double conferences last week, a fun one long-planned and a professional one quickly added when they needed somebody on a panel, Los Angeles first and DFW next and I got home in time for the start of Rosh Hashonnah.

May everybody be written for a sweet year, with enough food and shelter and good health.

They disappeared.

I was getting ready to create this post, and was moving photos of the final test dye for my DFW Fiber Fest class, when >poof!< they all disappeared.  I've tried everything for recovery, with no luck.  Same thing happened when I took a class a couple years ago, and I was even sadder because those I cannot reproduce.

So this is the remains of the test dye, and descriptions of what went before:  I wanted to show the difference between dyeing half a skein, and half a knitted blank.  I took two blanks that are failures from a use-in-class viewpoint (because of dropped stitches, due to a tensioning issue, and two skeins in the original hank.  I had one pellet left from a set of easter egg dyes, and didn't remember the colour, but it should go with light blue.

When dissolved in vinegar the dye was deep blue, so I thought it would be blue, but no, it was purple:

As you can see, it dyed them to a light purple that is not as visible when the yarns are wound.  That's what I wanted to show, the difference between dyed-in-skein and dyed-in-knitted-blank for the end results:

Wound balls underneath the same put-ups.  Notice how much
larger the hanked yarn ball is - I had to finish it by hand.

Luckily I have one of each format that I had dyed with neon green, so it's more vivid, to show how they look wound, although I don't have a matching set of hank and knitted.  That's why I made the others, to show the before-and-after in class:

In each of the above, the hank is on the left and the knitted blank is on the right.  You can also see the effect of the yarn being knitted and wound, or in the hank and wound.

I also have the three-colour ball from an earlier test dye batch.  Some of the yarns from that batch became pennants for the bunting at DFW Fiber Fest, and I realized after I mailed them that I forgot to take a photo.  I hope to get a snapshot of them onsite.