Memorial Day Weekend DH and I spontaneously decided to hop on a ferry and head out to Friday Harbor on San Juan Islands.  For those not local, it’s the biggest of the San Juan Islands and is about a hour drive, then another hour on a ferry from where we live.

We saw this little cutie:

Some of his friends:

There are more pictures that you can find on here, didn’t have much time, so I just dumped them all there.

The following week I went up to Whistler on a business trip, it was more of a retreat than a business trip, there were some meetings, but I went on my first Helicopter ride, then the next afternoon, I went zip trekking.  I have pics from the Helicopter ride, but I really need to go through those before uploading them.

Last week, my spinning group had a class with Judith Mackenzie Mccuin.  OMG that woman is wonderful, she had lots of knowledge to impart and does it in a great way.  If you are a spinner and can only take one class ever, it must be with Judith as the teacher.  No pics from the spinning class, but wow, my brain was exploding after 2 days with her, and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

Last, but only chronologically, I picked up a Baby Wolf Weaving Loom yesterday.

There has been some knitting, but not as much as I would have liked, lots of spinning.  OTN right now is a pair of socks, that isn’t mine to reveal, but as soon as the Nancy publishes it I’ll let you know, it’s a really fun knit.

Ok, back to work with me, I have a lot to catch up on not having been in the office for a full week in 3 weeks, amazing how much work piles up.

See the crosswalk?  Well that’s at the back of the queue to load the ferry boat.  See the cop?  he’s standing in the middle of the street directing traffic.  See the spectators…they’re all wondering why is this guy parked in the middle of the street.  yes you read that right.  This individual saw fit to park in the middle of the street.  When he returned he was lucky to find his truck still there, the tow truck had been called but hadn’t showed up yet.  The cop was nice and didn’t ticket the man.  But when asked by the cop why he parked in the middle of the street, his response, “Because all the lines were full and there was space”  The cop just shook his head and said under his breath, but loud enough for all to hear “and we haven’t even hit the busy season yet”

Also off the blocking board:

Pattern:  Gust by Anne of Knitspot

Needles:  Addi Lace #6’s

Yarn:  (drumroll please) 100% Mohair and it’s my handspun :).

This was a quick and easy lace to learn, remembering to pay attention to it thought proved to be difficult, I tinked as much as I knit because I kept socializing while trying to knit this one, oh well it’s done, and yes I may even do it again.  This one is destined to land at Mom’s since it was gifted to her on Mother’s Day complete with needles, then taken back so that it could be finished.

Once it’s dry I’ll take better pics, between the blocking board and the color varigation, it didn’t turn out so well in the pics.

Stats:

Pattern: Wings of Fantasy by Hazel Carter

Yarn: Claudia’s Handpainted Yarn - Silk Lace

Colorway: Midnight

Needles: Addi Lace #5’s, (I wondered where those disappeared to)

What can I say, I loved knitting this, I had no problems with the pattern, it was an easy read for me.  I love the yarn and I love the FO, an all around pleasure for me to knit.

Well later that weekend I thought about it some more, which led to me sending an email to Thomas Golding asking about if he could do it and the cost.  I found the cost to be reasonable, considering this was a custom design request.  Well one thing led to another and look what showed up in the mail today:

Whorls 2 3/4″ Cherry Handcarved 5-point star

Style: Aromatherapy

Shaft: Walnut 5/16″ x 8 3/4″

Weight 1.46 oz.

It is absolutely beautiful in it’s simplicity.  The balance is incredible as is the craftmanship.  The spin time….wow, with a flick it’s off and running and i can draft until I am reaching up as far as I can and it hits the ground, which stops the spin of course, but I’m sure if I were taller it would spin longer as it would take longer for it to find the ground :).

Yes there has been some knitting and even some finishing, but the 2 fo’s I have are waiting for a dunk and block.  So pics later, well ok as soon as I get over my awe of this spindle, or at least put it down long enough to block the scarf and shawl i’ve finished.

I’m back to spinning.

This last Saturday, I took a little trip up to North Bend (about 50 miles from where I live, on the way to Snoqualmie Pass) to take an advanced drop spindling class with Amelia AKA The Bellwether. 

Forgive the pic, it was after the class was over and we were just kind of milling around, and I thought I need to take at least 1 picture.  I would have taken some earlier but I forgot I had the camera until this point.

Look at all those spindles, yes, during class we were allowed to try any spindle we wanted and use the spindles to learn on :).  3 of those spindles made it home with me, pics to follow at a later date…maybe.

So I what did I learn:

1. I learned how to use a Turkish Spindle.  I am even more comfortable using a bottom whorl spindle, which was one of my goals for the class.
2. I learned how to Navajo ply on the drop spindle, it’s tricky, but no where near as complicated as I thought it would be :).
3. I learned how to Ply-On-the-Fly, this is a neat bar trick, where you spin your single then navajo ply it before you wind on to the spindle, so when you are done, what comes off your spindle is a finished 3 ply yarn.  I may write it up here once I’m more comfortable with it.

All in all I had a great time, and it was definitely worth the trip out to North Bend to take this class, and I look forward to taking more classes with Amelia, but she’s just a tad farther away, in Sequim WA :).  That’s a ferry trip and a floating bridge away, so it’s not exactly easy for me to get out to her LYS to take a class, but I’m thinking I may have to find a way, she is a joy to learn from. And now my addiction to spindling has brought my drop spindle collection up to 26 drop spindles, Amelia says I’m getting to the point where I’m a collector, but I still have a ways to go to catch up to her.

And yet the evidence

See the white streaks, that’s snow, and it’s showing harder now then when I took those pics mere minutes ago!

Snow in April in Seattle and just last Saturday we had a 70+ degree day.  What’s next.

Apparently, my new Rose has been off having some fun when I wasn’t looking, she had a baby!!!  now if only I could figure out who the father is?

Let me introduce Pocket, he’s a Pocket Wheel, and since i’m not very creative and the name fit him, he is hence forth dubbed Pocket.  Yes technically he would be my 6th wheel, but I sold my first wheel, that’s the Louet I sold before we moved back to Washington.  So that would make him my 5th wheel, except….I sold the Lendrum.  Let me say that one again, just a bit more slowly…

I  S O L D  T H E  L E N D R U M!

Sachi, is in the process of buying my Lendrum, well i guess it will be hers soon,  We’re doing a lay-a-way, which will give me a chance to find all those bobbins and drive bands and other pieces. Since I got the Rose, my poor Lendrum, or is that now Sachi’s Lendrum, in any case has been sitting in a corner sulking, he hasn’t had any fiber on him since well since I got the Rose, and Sachi’s been looking for a good 2nd wheel so her Kromski could get a break and not break on her, so the Lendrum is off to a good home.

I’m off to spin, more later when I get back from the Whidbey island spin in.

 So I’m in the garage this morning, the garage door stopped, so it’s open right, ok, back up camera says there’s no one behind me.  Mind you my SUV is quite large, and there is a support beam in the middle of my garage, so it’s a tight fit, so I mostly use my side view mirrors to get out of the garage without hitting the garage or the support beam.  Wel ok, so the garage door opener stopped, so the doors open right?  Of course it must be open, it’s always opened all the way up before, why should I think anything different now.  So I start to back out of the garage, and guess what, the door was open, just not quite all the way.  This SUV being quite a bit taller than my last car, I hear a thunk, fully thinking i’ve hit somethe side of the vehicle, I get out to see what I’ve hit.  Silly me, i look up and there the garage door and my rear window have now met each other. 

In my last car it wouldn’t have mattered if it was fully opened or not, so I have no idea if it’s been not opening all the way or not up until now.  Guess who’s going to be checking the garage door from now on. 

 No damage to either car or garage, not a scratch or dent anywhere, it was just the window that met the garage door, and it’s fine.  So I get to work and tell DH what happened….his response… “Again?” Now I know we’ve been together now for just over 9 years, but apparently he’s picked up on this car curse thing.  The thing is once I’ve backed into something it never happens again, so maybe I’m covered this time….knock on wood.

 Just so you know, I’ve only done any major damage once, the first time I backed up into a garage door and I’ve only hurt property, never any living beings.

Here’s a close up

and another

The fiber is from a Totally Tubular Kit that I bought from The Bellwether, the color: well The Colors Purple of course.  This was a totally fun spin and I whipped through 4 oz in just a few days, in between work, knitting and playing with the new car.  I’m spinning up some merino 64’s and I think I’ll do some 2 color knitting with this, the merino is Pewter.

Last weekend my spinning group had it’s 2nd dying session, I didn’t go to the first because the response was overwhelming so a 2nd dye in was created, then it got delayed due to snow, then Madrona, but finally we met to do some dying.

I dyed a Superwash BFL and here are the results.  Unfortunately the weather and day light hours just haven’t been playing well with me, so the colors are fairly close, but not quite true.

Strangely enough I’m been stepping outsize my normal color pallet lately, this one is a bit on the yellow side for what I’d normally go for.

This one, affectionately named Clown Barf by a fellow spinner, is my favorite.  Towards the end of the day, I had one more hang of roving left to dye, and there were lots of left over dyes on the table that were already mixed by everyone.  So I grabbed a cup and a ginormous syringe and started squirting dye zig zag across my roving.  repeated this process through a total of 6 cups of dye.  the first few layers looked a lot like a clown’s wig, hence the name clown barf.  I really love the way it turned out.

Purple Madness, I know the colors don’t quite look purple here but it’s definitely purple.  this one is my 2nd favorite, and like the Clown Barf I can hardly wait to spin it up.

and some purple greens and blues

Sorry for not braiding this one up nice a neatly, but it wasn’t quite dry yet when I took this picture, it’s blacks and magenta and it’s beautiful, but it’s probally less than an ounce of roving, I haven’t weight any of this yet.  It was just a bit of roving that was free floating in my bag of roving.

I started out with 1 lb (16 oz) and just guessed at lengths, I think the first 4 are about 3 - 3.5 oz, again i haven’t weight any of it.

All in all it was a great day and definitely worth the trip out there (100 miles round trip).  Will I do some more dying?  Damn straight, I even have dye powders to dye with.  This is a far cry from dying with Koolaid, i love the depth of the colors so much, I had the whole lot spread across my desk at work for a day. I can’t wait to start spinning some of these, but they’ve got to wait their turn in line, yes, even with 4 wheels, I can’t seem to find a free wheel.  Of course I’ve got a few drop spindles that are bare, but for the larger hanks, that’s a lot of drop spindling, I think i’ll wait for a free wheel.  No I’m not going to buy another one….I think, for a while.