Following up.

I don't know where my yarn winder is; I have one, but don't use it because I like hand-winding.  However, I thought the gradient blank from last week would show better when wound in a cake.  So I used some Michaels vouchers and a coupon to buy a new one, and after a few minutes of work, wound from the blank into a cake:

Also shown, the notebook I am using to record the processes.
I think of it as my lab notebook for dyeing.

I haven't started anything with it yet; I am debating between a dragon egg bag and a Bohus-inspired hat.  In the meantime, I took some leftovers with me on a quick overnight conference trip, and made mitts:

I finished a mindless scarf (no photo) and started another, and I've packed some balls of yarn and needles for this week's trip.  Three days, three hats?

I had to frog and restart my next shawl, of the handspun I bought in Paris and an unrelated pattern (it was created for a commercial yarn) from the same shop.  I put it down just after starting a pattern section, and couldn't get started again, and it was easier to frog back into the first section and restart.

I made the stitch marker from a couple bits I picked up near the Louvre in the early morning where hawkers would set up later in the day.  These must have fallen off some of the tchotchkes they sold.

I've been back to the fused glass studio, making jewelry and picking up the items I did a couple weeks ago.  The jewelry uses a small kiln you can set in a microwave oven, which is much too tempting.

  

Above are the before and after of my original pieces.  The long one, which will be a pendant, started from a leftover piece in the bin to which I added more bits.  The other two are a pair of earrings.  One of the instructors noted that my compulsion to design pieces that are mirrored, so they will look the same on each ear, is a sign that I am a jewelry designer.

Here are the other pieces I made, two pendants or pins, and another pair of earrings:

    

I'm a bit sad that the coloured stringers disappeared in the pendant, so it doesn't match the earrings as well as intended.  But they all look rather pretty.

This week I was back to more traditional fused glass:

In two weeks I'll pick up those pieces, and maybe make some more jewelry.  And possibly add some to the piece at the top, depending upon how it ends up looking.  I am in the "open studio" phase where I pay for time and we weigh my pieces and I pay for glass.  Upside is that if there is a cool piece I didn't use, I can add it to the weighing and take it home for later use.  😊

Fiberuary - Week 3

 

Day 15 - Cozy Corner

This is Judy's sunroom.  I thought it makes a perfect location for "cozy", with the addition of crocheted (not by me) afghans and a mug of tea, and my knitting.

 

Day 16 - Reading/Watching

I knit while watching the opening of the Maria C. Vallejo Lace Collection, and during class (but no photos), and then knitted and read on my flight home.

Day 17 - Monochromatic

I almost forgot to take a photo, then thought I might have to re-use something and I want these to be unique as much as possible.  As I was trying to find something else I noticed the piece of felted wool I'd purchased at last year's Carolina Fiber Fest, to use for shoe insoles and padding.

Day 18 - Twos Day

Photo shows the in-progress scarf to match a hat I knit last year.  I had two skeins of yarn in different colourways and decided to work them into a set.  First the wedge hat, and the rest for a scarf.  I tried to do a scarf in wedges also, but it was more of a challenge than I felt like managing.  So I changed to this pattern, in which I started with one colour, added the second, and when the first colourway ran out, finished with the second.  Bottom photo shows the finished set, which I didn't complete on Tuesday.

Day 19 - Wear It Wednesday

It was a cold and snowy day, so wearing a thick handknit sweater was perfect.  I've seen baby and toddler sweaters with the leaf pattern at the yoke and wanted one in a grownup size.  When I found one, I was very happy that some well-aged yarn in my stash would work nicely.  Lower photo is a better one of the sweater; in the selfie I am at the storm door but the glare prevents you from seeing the snow.

Day 20 - Fiber Friends

I have many photos of people I met through fiberarts, and groups and events I have attended.  Many are just of two of us; this is of the DFW Fiber Fest board and guest teachers from 2011.

Day 21 - Now & Then

The Sock Yarn mittens that were in one of my first blog posts also appear in the "Favourite Things" photo for Day 13.  One has a moth hole I need to repair.

Fiberuary - Week 2

I am traveling at the end of this week, so had to plan ahead a bit to meet the challenges while on the road.  At the beginning, I am home.

Day 8 - Flat Lay Fun

These are ten triangle pennants I knit for the Triangle Fiber Guild's display at Carolina Fiber Fest next month.  I created some in crochet; the original pattern is knit only.  Most of these are scraps of yarn and here they are pinned out to get the proper triangular form.  They should dry by Monday's meeting.

Day 9 - Sunday funday

Of course I was knitting as I did many things.  I watched the film for my cinema class and attended class.  I took a walk in the sunshine, and planned to sit and knit by a nearby pond, but I liked the view of their manmade waterfall.  I also knit during Franklin Habit's weekly Patreon chat, and during the SuperBowl but I forgot to take a picture of my knitting there.  It was the sweater again which is easier to do when paying attention to something else, than the mittens are.

Day 10 - Mood Board

I don't generally do mood boards; I don't understand how to put them together.  So I just collected a bunch of pictures I have of things that I enjoy, from other people's art to inspiring sayings to woodworking tools.

Day 11 - Texture

Close-up of a blanket my maternal grandmother knitted, a long time ago, and she gave to me.

Day 12 - Unfinished Business

This is my Thisaway Shawl from the DFW Fiber Fest 2024 Make-Alongs.  Obviously I didn't finish it in time, and I thought about finishing it today but for two things.  One, I want to finish the hat for my bestie whom I am visiting this weekend.  Two, I cannot find the pattern!  Yes, I can print it out again, but I was tracking where I was, and although I can figure it out again, I also had notes of where to add the yellow, which is helping to stretch the multicolour.  I will look for it when I return.

Day 13 - Favourite

I love to knit mittens for myself.  Also for other people, but these are the pairs I have that I have knitted over time, and I knitted at least one other pair that is somewhere I couldn't find it quickly this morning.  The mismatched multicoloured ones are the most recent, from handspun yarn by a vendor I like; they came from a single ball, and I had enough for a hat with some other of her yarn to complete it.  I am sad that the brown-striped ones were moth-munched some time ago, because I love how fraternal and almost mirroring they are.  I knit them of one ball of sock yarn.  I've had the orange-and-gold ones for a long time and no longer remember the yarn I used; the orange-multi ones are Morehouse Farm yarn that I bought at New York Sheep & Wool many years ago.

Day 14 - Love

This is a photo of the hat and mittens I have been knitting for my bestie of alpaca yarn from a farm where she used to work.  Currently the hat is still in-progress; I will have it finished before I leave on Sunday.  These are a secret from her until given.  😍

DFW Fiber Fest 2024 - Charitable Giving

Every year, DFW Fiber Fest allows various charities to set up shop, so to speak.  For several years the locally-headquartered Warm Up America! has been co-hosted in the vendor hall information booth, and this year they were given their own space.  As previously reported, I took quite a few items to donate.  I debated whether to switch to a large duffle bag but decided that might entice me to bring back more yarn than I need,* so I decided to pack into the suitcase (unfortunately, not an expanding type) and a couple of totes, one of which looks enough like an oversized purse that I could carry it on the plane as my personal item.**

I also took these two sleepy kittens which a friend is collecting for her local library's Welcome Baby project.  I made them out of scraps of dishcloth cotton plus a bit of acrylic for the light purple face:

The pattern says to use DK weight yarn and mine
are of worsted, since that is what I have handy.

I made sure to get a photo of the luggage before unpacking:

Saturday night I spent a couple hours post-supper relaxing to videos and running in ends and making sure everything has tags.  I tried to photograph them by groups, but a couple items hid under other things so are in a different group.

These are blanket pieces.  WUA takes 7"x9" pieces and has
volunteers sew them into blankets.  I was trying stitches.

Eighteen hats - the nineteenth was hiding under scarves.

Four shawls, assorted sizes and shapes.

Eleven of the scarves.

Three hat-and-scarf sets.  The middle one is of a handdyed
acrylic I purchased at DFW Fiber Fest two years ago.

One more hat, a pair of mittens (also handdyed yarn), and a
striped pair I decided I don't like enough to keep.

These scarves were still in a drawer when I took the other photo.

My total is 2 blanket pieces, 19 hats, 3 hat-and-scarf sets, one hat-and-mittens set, one large pair of mittens, 13 scarves, and four shawls.  Most have a label from the yarn; a few have printed washing instructions.  I had an old worn-out duffle I'd left with friends that one brought to me, and I packed everything into it.  I was surprised that they all fit!  I printed a donation form and marked everything included.  So when I walked up with the donation, the volunteers offered to unpack and I said they didn't have to do it, I was happy to donate the duffle as it couldn't be used as luggage reliably.  One started to ask me to fill out a form and I pulled out the one I had, which was in an outside pocket.  They got very excited as I had written the number of each item on the form - the volunteers told me many people just do a checkmark at the type of donation.  Hey, it's not my first donation!

_____________________________________________________________________

* Not that I truly need yarn, you understand, but there are show colourways to collect.  And so on.

** Handily, it plus my computer bag fit under the seat in front of me, always my preference since I don't like struggling to reach into an overhead bin if I can avoid it.

Knot quite there.

A report before I head out for some travel, including a cybersecurity conference.

First, I (nearly) finished some things - ends need to be woven in, and that might wait until I return:

  

Those are the very fraternal mittens made from a hank of handspun wool from The Knitting Buddha.  It was going to be a hat, then I changed my mind.  When I decided to make mittens instead I divided the skein in two with a knot at the halfway point - you can see that the second mitten finished just before the knot.  That is the restarted mitten, when that end was thinner enough that the mitten was coming out very differently from the first one.  The cut-off started bit is on top of the mittens, and below is the remainder of the ball of yarn, with the knot marked by a yellow pentagon in this second photo:

I also finished (but it also needs to be blocked) the "Age of Brass and Steam" shawl in Forbidden Fiber's Pride DK, colourway 'Merchant Dynasty' is no longer in production:

  

I changed the pattern by adding rows of eyelet between the stockinette bands, it should have been only one but most have two.  And I was tempted to frog back and make all of them two, but decided that was more reknitting than I wanted because it was almost done when I changed.  I'd been adding a row each time, but didn't have enough for four at the end, so frogged back to the third eyelet band and made it just two.

As for other projects:  The blue baby blanket is ready for it's I-cord bind-off, but I didn't like how the first two starts looked so I am going to wait until I return to try again.  I am down to the "don't think I'll need it" project from the six I quick-started on Fat Tuesday (technically, the red/white/blue C2C scarf isn't finished, but it's bulky enough to wait for my return), and am taking it plus the Caledonian Cardigan on this trip.  Plus a book.

Carolina Fiber Fest 2024

I am not getting to much of the event this year, because I want to get back to Dallas for a show (or two) and several of the days are work days, which I cannot take off right now.  I debated about classes, and whether to go to the Friday event, and whether to try entering items in their competition.

In the end, I decided "no" to the Friday event, partly because it is just a hangout and I may be more comfortable after I know more people in the local fiber groups, and partly because of the difficulty I had on Thursday evening when I drove to enter the one item I decided to try.  There's a lot of road construction in that area, and my car navigation didn't acknowledge the Expo Building, then my phone navigation didn't handle the construction detours.  I got there with about twenty minutes to deadline (then had to find parking, and hope I didn't get towed for slipping into a "permit only" slot which appeared reserved for the next day), but managed to get the submission done.

This is what I entered:

Pattern is called "Granny's Not Square Cowl".

It's Category YC32, the Crocheted 2024 Craft-Along Pattern.  I did a slight variation by adding a row of single crochet at each edge.  Yarn is Louisa Harding "Amitola Grande", a silk-wool blend, in 'Tangerine Dream', an oddball purchased from a store in the DFW area.

Another lady was also entering her item (a lovely felted abstract picture that appears to be in natural colours of various wools, brown and black and cream) just then, so I felt better not being the only person to skid at the end of Thursday.  Items could also be entered on Friday morning, but I had to work.  If you are coming to the opening of the event, it's handy to deliver your item then.  While classes begin on Wednesday and run through Sunday, the vendor hall and other events are on Friday and Saturday only.

I thought about entering more items (you can only enter ones made between March 2023 and March 2024) but I cannot be there on Saturday afternoon for pickup.  They offer an option to mail it to you, but I didn't want to risk the box not being correctly calculated.  One cowl in an envelope with several stamps shouldn't be an issue.

Given my schedule I wasn't sure which workshop(s) to take.  I am very interested in the one to do a felted sheep or peacock table mat, but in the end decided on a beginning drop spindle class.  I keep trying to learn and hope that someday I'll get it to work.  Maybe this time?

I chose the early Saturday session, which ends just as the vendor hall opens.  I hope I can get in there and while I don't want to buy much, I expect I'll find a few interesting items.  I also want to browse the Used Equipment Sale and maybe find somebody who can help me get my wheel back in service.  I've had an offer to help balance it, but the pedal needs work also.

After Report

More report later, when I have time to take photos of the things I purchased: buttons, a magnet, lots of yarn.  And I think I've figured out drop spindle!

Plus I got to see my cowl on display:

Finishing Things

In addition to the cowl, I finished one of the scarves I had in my quickly-begun pile.  As I semi-suspected, one cake was not enough, so I included most of the second one.  This means there will not be another green scarf, although I might have enough (in the two bits in the middle of the photo) to make a hat to accompany it.

I worked on the scarf through the North Texas Irish Festival and it drew a lot of attention.

I also finished the Ghost Ranch Cowl:

I'd done the hat first, and am thinking about frogging it and reknitting in the stitch pattern so they match more closely.  It will wait until after Easter as that's not a started thing.

Speaking of started things, I decided that the second mitten of a pair doesn't count as a new start, but the progress is not encouraging:

The yarn isn't even thickness, so the new mitten is smaller than the other despite the same number of rows.  I may remove this bit and start further down where the yarn is thicker again.  Or I may reknit the hand with extra rows.  I am leaning towards the former so I can get to some bright colours more quickly.  Definitely fraternal mittens, whatever happens!