I just haven’t felt very chatty. The house is clean enough to keep me sane (and out of Texas), and I’m spinning up the rest of the green tweed batts today.

I want to finish up Clark’s sweater, but I’m going to have to alter the pattern a bit on the sleeve caps, and sleeve caps are a mystery to me. I don’t get how they work, so I don’t really know how to alter them. It’s going to be an exercise of trial and error, but I haven’t been in the mood.

Here’s a bit of retail therapy I did yesterday.

It’s a centerpiece for the Thanksgiving table and I love it. I’m hosting between 30 and 40 people for dinner and I’m excited. You’ll probably see the turkey again when my table is set and looking better, but I needed a picture today, so you get the turkey.

I’m so excited! Usually, all the garden spiders are dead by Halloween, and while most of them are this year, our window buddy (the one that Clark, of his own accord includes in mealtime prayers) is still here!

I have about two skeins of the mohair left to spin. Then I’ll dye yarn for Nate’s cardigan, finish Clark’s sweater, and start knitting mine.

My mom came into town unexpectedly, so we’ve been playing. I got a couple more skeins of mohair spun, and I’m almost done carding the fleece.

Wanna see something unbelievably beautiful?

And if you think it looks good, you should feel it.

It’s soooo soft! This is the stuff I dyed. I dyed it 4 different colors, in four different batches, and had to dye each batch at least 4 times because I couldn’t get the color saturation the way I wanted it. It still isn’t exactly how I intended it to be, but it’s lovely.

I thought that since the mohair I bought at Black Sheep was just picked open, it would be enough to fluff the locks I dyed before spinning them. But I it looks like I’ll get a nicer yarn if I card them to open them up a little more first.

I hardly mind. It’s heavenly, having my hands in this stuff.

*Thanks for the comments. I’ve removed this part of my post because I’m over my irritation from that particular conversation and am ready to move on.*

It doesn’t matter how early they get up, or how much I keep on top of it and nag the heck out of them, the girls are still scrambling to get out the door in time for school. It’s so irritating. I tried to get them ready a few minutes early so we could get pictures of mitts before they left. I got a few quick, slightly out of focus, mediocre pictures while Nate was waiting for them in the car.

There’s more color in the Liv’s mitts than you can see in the pictures, but they’re still nice and subtle. The pictures of Veronica’s mitts are quite accurate.

I’ve made batts with the rest of the fiber dyed Veronica’s colors, with half the noil that was in her mitts. We’ll spin that up and see how it looks.

I made up the pattern. It’s handspun semi-woolen 3 ply. Size 3 needles. I used a 32 inch circular and knit the body using the magic loop method, and used double points on the thumbs.

Cast on 35 stitches. Work 3×2 ribbing for 40 rounds, set 7 stitches aside on a holder (I used safety pins) for the thumb, co 7 stitches and continue in the round for another 22 rounds. Bind Off. Retrieve 7 stitches for thumb, picking up an additional 9 stitches around the hole (the cast on for the new 7 stitches). Work one round in 3×2 ribbing, with an extra knit stitch in there somewhere. On second round, knit that extra stitch together with another knit stitch, and continue thumb of 15 stitches for 10 total rounds. Bind off. Weave in ends.

For Veronica, I decreased the number of rounds in each part. Something like, 30 round to the thumb, 16 rounds on the hand before binding off, 6 rounds of thumb. ‘Cause she’s a shrimp.

… get up and do something else for awhile. It’s supposed to break the cycle of trying to get to sleep. It usually works for me.

I can’t sleep. I’m really tired. My alarm is set for 6:45 tomorrow morning, and that’s currently 7 hours from now. Not horrible, but I really do need 8 hours to be a fully functional human being.

It’s been a busy week. I think part of the reason I can’t sleep is that I’m excited about and therefore can’t stop thinking about some of the things I’m doing.

I’ve finished Liv’s mitts.

Carded and spun up yarn for Veronica’s mitts. (I over agitated the wool and alpaca whilst dyeing. They’re a little felted. Plus, there’s too much silk in the yarn, the pink of the silk dulled the green tremendously, but I’m still interested to see how it knits up. Nate thinks it’s pretty. I have more of the dyed fiber to card and spin for a hat for myself at some point. I’m hoping there’s enough).

I dyed mohair, with much fuss, for more wolf yarn.

Carded up and spun a test batt for a sweater with one of the gorgeous gray lamb fleeces I have. It’s so silky. I want to knit with it.

Knit half the neck of Clark’s sweater. I’m going to have to rip and reknit it, because the row gauge is off and the neck doesn’t decrease fast enough.

Read the first Chrestomanci book. It was disturbing and Gwendolen should die a hundred deaths. But I’ll still read the next one.

Met my Health Group goal for the week by exercising twice. I can hardly walk, which means that wretched illness of September had to have eaten me alive. I was in great shape in August, and that wasn’t THAT long ago.

All this in addition to helping out at school Monday and Tuesday as usual. (Ooh, ooh! I saw the bat lady Monday morning. How cool is that? She had live bats. I came face to face within inches of them. They’re SO cute). And two evening school events, and the district Cross Country finals.

But I think what I’m the most excited about is that I’ve started recording music again. It’s soooo much fun. And takes soooo much time. And is soooo hard. I spent a couple hours on it today, and don’t have a keepable track yet. But I’m close. I can’t work on it more ’til next week because I’m going to Portland with some friends for an overnighter tomorrow (Friday). But I can’t stop thinking about it. Hearing instrumentation and harmonies in my head.

There are many pictures I should take and post, but I haven’t had the time, and right now, aside from being very tired and hopefully about to go to sleep… there’s no light.

I hate flash pictures (my own, that is) a smidge more than I hate posts without pictures. (Again, I’m speaking of my own. You all can do whatever you want with your blogs. No criticism from me. But as for me and my blog… I like pictures).

Aaand I need to go to bed. I’m driveling. Have a great weekend! I’ll set up a post to show up Saturday for Health Group in case someone wants to check in.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about The Sweater here before. It’s a sweater that my mom some how came in possession of, and passed off to me at least 20 years ago. I loved The Sweater, despite the fact that in addition to one sleeve being significantly longer than the other, the stripes not matching up at the button band (it was a cardigan), and being kind of itchy… it looked horrible on me. I kept trying to wear it. I kept it for many, many years. I’d take it out of the back of the closet every 6 months or so, try it on, look in the mirror, and stick it back in the closet. I now know that the reason it looked so horrible on me is because its main color was entirely wrong for me. It was light, heathery gray. I can’t think of a color that makes me look more frumpy than light, heathery gray. Dark gray is fantastic. Light gray must be avoided, at least by me, at all possible costs.

At some point, I got rid of The Sweater. It was a sad day. There was something so romantic about that sweater. It had a homemade look to it. Not handmade, homemade. But it was charming. Delightful. The kind of thing you’d want to wear around the house on a weekend. You’d want to curl up in a chair and read in it. You’d have your hair up in one of those messy topknots with stragglers falling out here and there. You’d be drinking something warm. You’d feel pretty and cozy and I dare say even sexy despite being, essentially, in the knitting equivalent of sweats.

I want another The Sweater. One that actually looks good on me. When I swatched the wolf spun mohair some months ago, I thought that it would make a fantastic replacement for The Sweater. Not that it would make a sweater at all similar to the original, but I thought it could fill the void well.

The original Sweater was, as I mentioned, light heather gray. It had some stripes of metallic pink ribbon-y something or other in it, as well as a large stripe of dark wine colored yarn in yet another texture. That’s about all I remember.

I’m finished spinning the pound of mohair I bought at Black Sheep.

I have about 600 yards of yarn, and I need 900 +. I have plenty of the coincidentally coordinating roving I used to ply with the mohair to make some sort of yarn that will go with it, but I think it’s too similar in color without being the same texture. I think it’d look off. After talking with Shiori last night and having her examine my swatches, we both concluded that the best thing would be to dye more mohair in harmonious colors and make more wolf yarn.

So, I dug out the lovely first clip kid mohair fleece I bought a year + ago from a delightful lady in Monroe. This fleece is so special, I haven’t dared to use it for anything. I’m nervous. But I’m taking the plunge, and I’m going to dye about 12 ounces of it, to be sure I have enough. 8 ounces are soaking right now in preparation to be dyed.

The Sweater was, as I mentioned, multi textured. That was my initial plan for this new sweater, but I can’t picture it in any way going well. I think all mohair is the way to go, but I’m having trouble picturing how I’ll incorporate the two different colors. And should I spin some of the mohair smooth? And what design?

I really have no idea what to do. I’d hoped that by the time I finished spinning the Black Sheep mohair, that I would have come up with something.

YetAnotherAmy suggested yesterday that I could use less silk in my batts to save $$$. That spurred a discussion/disagreement between Nate and I. We really don’t disagree much, so it was amusing. I had said that although I am an artist, and are therefore not interested in saving $$$, I was interested to see what less silk would do to the batt.

Nate argued that I’m a commercial artist, and therefore should be VERY interested in saving $$$.

I don’t think I’m a commercial artist, and I’m sure that Cassandra Barney, who sells her art for a living, doesn’t scrimp on paint to save a little $$$.

He said he figures she doesn’t scrimp on paint, but if she could buy her favorite boards somewhere cheaper, she would.

I said that was a completely different matter, because in the end, she’s still working with the same product.

He got frustrated and said he wasn’t trying to pick a fight.

I laughed at (I mean with) him.

So anyway, I made up a tan batt with half the silk of the blue batt. And I really like it.

In the skein at least, it’s much tidier. And extremely beautiful. Additionally, I’m quite proud of the spinning. It’s so even and smooth…

(There’s twice as much yarn in the tan skein than there is in the blue one).

I’m interested to see how they compare knit up. I think I have enough of each color, once the second blue batt is spun, to knit a pair of fingerless mitts from each.

Thanks YetAnotherAmy for the suggestion. It was a nudge that I think I needed, saving $$$ or not :-).

Also, to answer Anna’s question yesterday, my elbows are still very slowly getting better. They hurt when I play guitar, so I have to limit my practice sessions to about 30 minutes. They hurt occasionally when I pick up something that’s both small and heavy. And I need to be cognizant of my arm position when I knit. However, I can tell that they’re getting better. Thanks for asking.

Yesterday was full of laundry (shudder. It was taking over the house), the usual, never ending clean up, a long phone conversation with my sister, spinning the tan batt, and at about 10:30 last night, I started another book.

I got to sleep at around 2 am and am over 2/3 through House of Many Ways. I’m not enjoying it as much as the first two, but now that Howl, Calcifer and Sophie have shown up, it’s getting pretty good.

Deep breath.

Close eyes.

Mental calming exercises.

I tried carding the silks into the tan wool and alpaca. Although the colors of silk were really pretty, they weren’t vibrant enough. I carded one batt and spun a little strip of it. I didn’t even bother to ply it, I just let the single twist back onto itself in little, 3-ply pieces.

It (on the left), admittedly has more color and warmth to it than the skein on the right, which is the same wool and alpaca carded with straight, undyed tussuh silk. (Seemed like a good idea. Wrong. The color of the wool and alpaca completely flattened into a drab nothing).

So, I’m re-dying the silk with more color.

I can see in my head what I want. What I’m going for. I just don’t know how to get there, and I don’t want to settle. But I’m starting to think that there’s a reason I haven’t seen anybody producing what I’m trying to produce. Either it simply can’t exist in our physical world outside of my imagination, or it’s REALLY FREAKING HARD and no one else cares as much as I do about getting it.

I dyed Clark’s yarn yesterday. It didn’t come out as blue as the swatch, but I half expected that.

After consulting with Nate, we decided that I’ll knit the sweater as is, and if I don’t like it, I’ll dye the sweater to add more blue. But the color of the yarn is pretty cool. It’s neutral-ish, with hopefully enough blue to pick up Clark’s eyes, which is what I wanted (to bring out the color in his eyes).

That’s where I’m at.