I am IN and on hold with Air Canada to get a flight there on points!

(SOAR)

are occasionally awesome.

-33 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

Let’s see, 1998. I was working on my Geology degree at the University of Calgary and spending time hanging around the CSUS office getting up to no darn good. I don’t think I was knitting yet.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?

Just work stuff. Maybe tonight Tavis and I will rearrange our home office. It’s a disaster. An epic disaster.

3. What snacks do I enjoy?

Anything salty or sweet. I don’t enjoy pastries or cookies or, basically, anything breadlike, but I do like candy and extra strong mints.

4. Where are some places I’ve lived?

Calgary, Ann Arbor MI, Livingston (Scotland), Wainwright, Victoria.

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5. What things would I do if I were a billionaire?

• Get my house “off the grid”
• Invest money in sustainable energy (solar, wind, etc)
• Donate more money to my charities of choice: MSF, the Mustard Seed, Brown Bagging for Kids
• Buy a pony

For some reason I’ve spun a lot of worsted in the last year but I haven’t thought to spin any woolen. After reading on ravelry about how quickly people can spin when they spin long draw, I decided to give it a shot. I made some crappy sophomoric rolags from some top (I didn’t have cards yesterday) and spun this out of some Hello Yarn corriedale:

Then I went to Karen’s and borrowed Morgan’s hand cards and spent yesterday afternoon making rolags out of a bunch of stuff.

The rest of the green corriedale:

A whack (10oz) of Lorna’s Laces top, which in my experience is really felted up and hard to spin unless you card it. When I spun my first one of her tops, I really wished I had some cards so I wouldn’t have to do so much prep. This fibre is NOT in my good books.

Before:

After (this is a sampling; I have a whole plastic shopping bag stuffed full of rolags. 10oz is a lot.):

And now I’m having a go at spinning the green rolags up. Let me tell you, people say that prep is important when you’re spinning woolen and they aren’t lying. This is a hell of a lot easier with actual rolags and I can tell which rolags I made first and which I made after I’d gotten a bit better at carding.

Some other things I have been working on:

This is a new sock yarn and colorway that we’re thinking of offering through kfb. The yarn is a merino/tencel blend and it’s really soft and shiny. The stripes are blue/green/purple and although self-striping yarns are really labor-intensive to dye, the effect is worth it! What do you think?

Keep an eye on the etsy shop for updates!

Not here, but out east. It’s a bit hard to see, but the right-hand column is the flight status and every single flight, pretty much, is delayed on arrival into Calgary. I took this photo on Sunday night.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a well-knit fair-isle sweater, must be in want of steeking. And such steeking occurred yesterday!

Last night I blocked it out and today I will sew it together. Unfortunately, I don’t have a camera right now, so you will all just have to wait if you want to see more pictures!

These have been my lunch knitting for a while. My standard toe-up socks, but with a short row heel plus gusset to see if I could work out a way to get short row heels to fit better. They do, but I think I can tweak the gusset a bit more to make it prettier. And, to stave off boredom, a 4×4 cable and eyelet pattern. The cable goes up the back as well.

Araucania Ranco sock yarn, colorway 306. Wool and nylon. One HUGE skein and I have tons left over.

Ravelry

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