Two and Two.

I finished the garter stitch scarf that I showed last week, and made another scarf plus two hats:

Hats are leftover bits of yarn.  Garter stitch scarf is Caron
Chunky Cakes, discontinued colour "Trifle".  C2C scarf is Caron 
Cakes "Lovely Layers" in "Sugared Cherry", also discontinued.

I'm making progress on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club assignment for this month (when I picked up the copy I'd ordered at the bookshop, the clerk was very enthusiastic about it), and should be done in time for Wednesday's meeting.  That will make my 21st book for the year, not counting the one I re-read on New Year's Day.

The library is starting another walking/exercise challenge, which of course I plan to enter.  Why not get double use out of my daily (except for Saturdays, when I do an early yoga class) walks?

Otherwise, it was a fairly standard week.  I should work on the last few items for my DFW Fiber Fest class and start gathering the items needed for the classes I am taking.  Now that I am presenting at a conference during the first part of that week, I have to be organized a little earlier than otherwise.

Today I started a shawl of Knitting Buddha's handspun, stashed from a prior DFW Fiber Fest:

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.