So far

So it seems that this post somehow reverted back to a draft with only the pictures, and everything I initially wrote is now gone.  I don't remember what I wrote about but here are the pictures that were included in the original post:

Two days

That's how many days I have before we leave on our vacation!  And also the number of days I have left to get all my $#!T together.

Fortunately, I have accomplished one of my goals already.  I have taken the pile of blocks that were pictured in last week's post, and turned them into a blanket.  I already mentioned that it is for a co-worker who is due in a month, and leaving for maternity leave in three weeks.  A few months ago, one of my work friends suggested to me and two others that we team up and knit a blanket as a present.  She found the pattern (Giggles Mitered Squares blanket) and gave us each a ball of yarn from her stash to start knitting blocks.  The four of us, each with very different levels of knitting experience, knit a whole mess of blocks, until we had enough.  I volunteered myself to put the whole thing together, however this was back when I thought I was going to have a week at home after coming back from Victoria.  So when the trip to Seattle got scheduled, I realized I had to get it done before leaving, since I wouldn't have time to do it after getting back.

Over the last week I powered through and sewed together all of the blocks, and last night I did a simple single crochet row around the edge.  I also realized that instead of weaving in all of the ends left from sewing it all together, I could just crochet them right into the border.  It seemed to work pretty well, although I really hope that it doesn't literally fall apart at the seams. *knock on wood*

I'm pretty happy with the finished blanket.  Not all of the blocks are perfect, and they weren't all quite the same size, but somehow when it's all sewn together you can't even tell.  I think (and also hope) that the new mommy-to-be will love it.

Once that was done, the next most pressing thing for me was to figure out what knitting I'm going to bring with me on the trip!  I have to bring more than one thing, of course, because I know me, and I won't want to be knitting the same thing the whole time.  I'll bring along Vulpix (the shawl for the Enabler) as I'm making good progress on that and want to keep going, and I will also start some early gift knitting.  But that's not enough for a wooloholic like me, obviously.  Most of the other projects I've got going on aren't great for travel, so I need to start something new for myself.  Each project needs its own bag, though, and I couldn't find any empty ones.

The first course of action was to empty out my knitting bag completely.  This is akin to emptying out your purse, but worse.  I guess it depends on the size of your purse, but no matter how big or small, there's going to be a few things in there that you didn't realize were there, and probably a number of things that should just be thrown out or put away.  However, I use my purse every day and I'm usually pretty aware of what's actually in there.  When emptying out my knitting bag I found patterns for things I finished knitting ages ago, a homemade pom-pom maker, stitch markers I thought I'd lost, at least three pads of paper and about four pens, a couple of project bags with things in them that I haven't knit on in awhile, and so on and so forth.  Once I had all of it pulled out of the bag I realized that I had a pile of patterns and other stuff on my side table as well, so I had to clean that up too.  And THEN I noticed my old knitting bag in the corner and I figured I should empty that out as well, and basically I was spiralling down the rabbit hole for awhile.

In the old knitting bag I found a project bag, and the only thing in it was a cowl thing epic failure of an experiment that I had knit well over a year ago and never got around to wearing blocking burning.  I used a couple of balls of Noro Kureyon to knit it, and I have more of each colour in my stash still, so I decided to frog it instead of burning it.  I mean, it's still Noro.

I don't know what I will do with the reclaimed yarn, but I'm fine to keep it in my stash for now.  And I now have another project bag to put a new project in.  Success!

After finishing that, and putting all of the scattered patterns into the right pattern binder, I set about picking the project and the yarn.  I've been wanting to make Viajante ever since the pattern came out, and I ordered yarn for it a few months ago.  As the designer says in the description, "viajante" is Portuguese for "traveller".  If there is anything more perfect to knit while travelling, I don't know what it would be.  It's over 1.5 kilometres of knitting, no purling required at all.  Beautiful, simple, relaxing, meditative, knitting.  I pulled out the yarn (tosh lace, colour way: fjord), and noticed a problem.

Do you see it?  The bottom/left yarn has distinctly more brown/white in it than the top/right yarn.  They are the same dye lot, but with hand-dyed yarns, there can still be a lot of variation between skeins.  The way around it is to alternate skeins through the whole piece, but that would make my simple, relaxing, meditative knitting somewhat less simple, relaxing and meditative.  Not badly so, but I just really wanted to only juggle one ball of yarn at a time.  Every project I'm knitting lately has two or three balls of yarn to manage at one time, and I didn't want to add another one.  I posted my conundrum on Instagram, and someone helpfully suggested that I unwind them and check out what they look like when they're not wound into a skein... so I did.

It's better.  I can still tell a bit of a difference, but it's not so bad.  It's just going to be for me, anyway. If this was going to be a gift I might worry a little more, but when it's just for me it doesn't seem to matter so much.  The things I make for myself can't be TOO nice, otherwise people might start bugging me to make stuff for them, too.  Ick.

Four days

That's how many more work days I have left to get through before I have vacation for two whole glorious weeks.  Considering I haven't had a day off since last November, two weeks of vacation seems incredible and I am very excited.

The Enabler's cousin is getting married next week, and the wedding is in Victoria, so we'll be flying out there for the wedding and to visit family and spend some time exploring Vancouver Island.  I've been there a few times now but the plan is to go to a few places I haven't been to before (and some yarn shops that I HAVE been to before and can attest to their loveliness), so I'm really looking forward to that.

The original plan was that after spending some time on the island we were going to come back home.  I had two weeks booked off (hubby just had one) and the second week I planned to just relax and take care of some things and go for walks and generally enjoy Winnipeg in the summer.  Then a couple of weeks ago, the Enabler found out that he was going on a business trip to Seattle the week after we were going to Victoria.  My initial thought process went like this:  

"Man, that's a lot of back and forth flying for him, that kind of sucks.  Wait, that means that I'm going to have a week off work and also be at home by myself?  That REALLY sucks!  What am I going to do by myself for a whole week with no work to distract me?"

I voiced my concerns, and he just said "Or, we could rebook both our flights home to a week later, and you could come with me to Seattle..."

I swear, he's brilliant.  One of the many reasons why I married him.

So now my vacation is extra exciting, as I've never been to Seattle but have always wanted to go.  Even more so since the Enabler brought me back amazing wool and fibre from a few different stores in and around Seattle from his first business trip there.

It's also a little extra scary (but just a tiny bit), because while he's busy during the days doing business-y things, I'm going to be left to my own devices.  I've never explored a new city by myself before, so I'm not sure what to expect.  I don't think I'll actually get scared, but if I do I'll just have to remind myself that I explored Europe for six weeks when I was 19, with two other 19 year olds, and no cell phones or electronic devices to help navigate.  I should be fine on my own for three measly days.

Before we go, though, I have some things to finish!  I have to want to finish spinning this up:

I have one bobbin done, and I'm halfway through the second.  This is a 150 gram braid of merino that I bought at StevenBe on our trip to Minneapolis last year.  Because it's so huge, I decided to spin it slightly thicker than what I was aiming for when I was doing the Tour de Fleece, for a few reasons.  I didn't want to be spinning forever and ever and ever was one, but also I thought it would look great as a dk-worsted weight yarn.  The other thing is that I've gotten pretty good at spinning evenly when I'm trying to spin as finely as possible, but I want to be able to make evenly spun thicker yarn as well.  It doesn't look that much thicker than what I did during the tour, but a tiny difference in the size of one single makes a bigger difference when it's two singles plied together.  Also it's merino and I think it poofs up a bunch after it's washed.

Unfortunately, I think the fibre got slightly felted during the dyeing process, so it's not as easy to draft as what I've gotten used to.  It still works though, and I'm cheap enough that I'm not willing to let it go to waste, especially when the colours are so delicious!

I didn't try fractal spinning this one at all.  Not after last time.  I'm just spinning it up kind of randomly because I don't want the plies to match up.  I'm hoping that it will end up looking fun and colourful and random, and not like a toucan in a blender.

I have one other thing to finish before leaving.  This is what it looks like now:

Hopefully in less than a week it will look like a finished baby blanket for a co-worker who is due in a month.  I've heard there are cobbler elves who finish all of the shoes in the nighttime, so there must be sewing elves that sew things up for you in your sleep too, right?  I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Priorities

I'm spending part of the weekend at my parents house. The annual Sunflower Festival is on this weekend with lots of fun activities like the Sunflower Queen pageant, free pancake breakfast, petting zoo, stage entertainment, and a firefighter competition.  All of that sounds... well to be honest, it was great when I was younger but I have other things in mind when I come out here to visit these days.

We're planning on going to the parade later, and there's also the quilt show which my mom is a huge part of so we'll go check that out too.  For now though, I'm going to think about the hundreds of people  standing in line for mediocre pancakes and greasy sausages (cue cries of "But they're free!!!"), and have another cup of coffee.

Tour de Fleece 2013 #6

The Tour de Fleece is over and I have accomplished my goals.  Okay technically the last day is tomorrow but I'm busy tomorrow and wanted to make sure I got this done in time!

I plied up my yarn finally a couple of nights ago.  I tried so hard to get it all to fit on one bobbin, but my bobbins are just a bit too small for that, so the last of it had to go on a second bobbin.

It's not really a big deal, it's just a little bit annoying.  As this fibre was not superwash, it is feltable, so when skeining it up using my niddy noddy, I just felt the ends together to make one continuous strand.  No problems.

Here's a close up shot because it's so pretty (this picture is also currently the wallpaper on my phone).

I'm kinda thrilled with the yarn.  I wasn't sure at first how all of the colours would look all mashed together, but I think it totally works.  It really does kinda look like a big pile of colourful leaves, the kind that you just want to dive right into, consequences be damned!  I'm not sure what this will be yet, but for now I'm quite happy to put it in my yarn cabinet with the others so I can look at how pretty it is.

As a side note, all of the pictures in this post were taken and edited with the Galaxy S4, no extra apps required.  That simple fact means that blogging will be much easier as the pictures it takes seem to be just as good as the one my camera takes.  And finding my camera, taking the pictures, plugging in the camera, uploading the pictures, and then editing them is just SO much work.  First world problems, am I right?

Tour de Fleece 2013 #5

Both bobbins of the Autumn Leaves bfl have now been spun.  They have yet to be plied, but they are spun.

The rapid colour changes were so much fun that I spun the entire bobbin over the course of basically two spinning sessions, which was quite a bit faster than the last two yarns that I spun.  I didn't think I was pushing myself, but I finished spinning that one up on Sunday and I haven't spun since because my hand has been hurting a bit.  Hrm.  I will get around to plying soon enough I'm sure, probably tomorrow...

Tonight, I'm busy.

I've had my iPhone 4 for nearly 3 years now.  For the last few months I have been thinking about the date looming in the future when my contract on the iPhone is up and I'd be able to get a new phone.  However usually when I thought about it, it was to think "No, I'm not going to get a new phone.  I really like my phone and it does what I need it to do and it has treated me well.  Why would I upgrade?"  But then, last week, a couple of thoughts popped into my head.  They were, in order, "Haha, if I got a new phone it would totally make the Enabler jealous," and "Oooooh, shiny...."

After some soul searching and comparison shopping and realizing that I was ready to make the break from Apple (at least where phones are concerned), I decided to go check out the phones at Costco yesterday.  I wasn't planning on buying, but after talking to the helpful dude at wireless counter and the realization of the good deal I would get and the excellent plan they were offering and so on and so forth, I took the plunge.

To tell the truth, the box pictured above is actually for my second S4.  Shortly after beginning to set up and play with the first one, I discovered a dead pixel that was nearly in the centre of the screen.  It was so (im)perfectly located, that when I was watching a movie just to test it out, the dead pixel was smack dab in the middle of someone's forehead about 90% of the time.  It's amazing that on something with  2,073,600 pixels, one dead one can drive you absolutely crazy.  So a quick trip back to Costco today and I have my second new phone in as many days!  When I showed the phone to the sales guy, he was more disturbed by the dead pixel than I was.

Tonight I'm going to spend some time setting it up.  It's not as quick to get working smoothly as an iPhone of course, but I think it will be worth it.

Also... shiny!

Tour de Fleece 2013 #4

When dealing with fibre, the best way to measure how much you have is by weight.  Every spinner either learns this very early on or knows it intuitively.  However, I learned something else about spinning this week.  I learned that when you take a braid of fibre (which, once unravelled is just one long strand of fibres), and split it down the middle lengthwise to make two strands, these strands will not necessarily be the same weight, even if you take painstaking care to try to split it exactly in half.  The purpose of splitting it exactly in half is that if you spin one half onto one bobbin, and the other half onto a second bobbin, if you spin evenly and consistently between the two bobbins, the colours should match up when you ply them and you will have a self-striping yarn.

After my last post I still wasn't sure whether I was going to spin my fibre to be self striping as above, or spin it fractally.  So, I decided to split my fibre and spin up one bobbin, during which time I could decide whether I wanted to keep the second half as it was, or split it further to create shorter colour changes for the second ply.

When I had split the fibre and had two long strands I decided to weigh the two halves to make sure they were even.  I switched my kitchen scale to grams (instead of ounces) for as much accuracy as possible. Alas, from 118 grams of fibre, I had made two strands equalling 118 grams, however they were certainly not halves.  One strand was 66 grams, the other was 52.  In fibre land, that's a big difference.  As I had absolutely no idea how to split the strands again to make the two strands equal (it may sound easy to do but it's really not, fibre is a funny thing), I realized that my decision of whether to fractal spin or not had already been made for me.

I took some fibre off of the end of the 66 gram strand and added it to the end of the 52 gram strand, so then I had one with 60 grams and one with 58 grams.  I figured that was close enough, and then spun it up over the next few days.

With that finished as of last night, I set about to splitting up the second half.  

I had intended to split the second half into three strands, however after splitting as carefully as I could into three strands, I had one of 26 grams, one of 20 grams, and one of 14 grams.  Seriously, I don't know how spinners do this accurately!  Am I over-thinking it?

Anyway, I quickly realized that if I split the 26 gram strand into two, I'd have two 13 gram strands which was pretty close to 14, and then the 20 gram strand would just be... well... whatever.

So then I had four strands.  However, you guessed it, I couldn't split the 26 gram strand evenly either.  So the final tally is that I have one of 11 grams, one of 14 grams, one of 15 grams, and one of 20 grams.

My plan now is that I'm just going to spin them in order of smallest to largest, and my eventual finished yarn will have colour changes that get slightly longer throughout.  I know it doesn't have to be perfect, and I'm really not striving for perfection.  But I feel like splitting the stupid fibre really shouldn't be the part of spinning that is most difficult for me.

Oh well, hooray for mediocrity!