I washed one fleece yesterday and it looks like it washed up nice. I’m waiting for it to dry so my drying racks will be free for the second.

Last night, I spun my sample purple batt into 3 ply. Today, I knit it into a long cuff, just to see how it would look and feel.

The photo is a smidge bleached out, and the towel on the floor in the background is making me crazy, but the color is pretty accurate. Just imagine it a little richer and with more luster. It’s really, really nice. I love how the tweed handles in a 3 ply. Definitely the way to go. It was knit on size 6 needles and I spun it worsted. Not my favorite method of spinning by any means, but I really liked the resulting yarn.

I think I have enough fiber already dyed to make about 2 pounds of these purple batts. Gotta start carding. I’m meeting with a friend on Monday who is going to help me figure out packaging. I need to come up with a weight and price point for packages of batts, and then I’ll be ready to move forward. Not exactly sure HOW I’m going to sell them yet. If I can get Tweedybatts.com up in some simple format, or if I should go with Etsy, or what.

I realized yesterday that it’s been 8 months since I bought my latest Romney fleece. I’ve only washed 3 of them. I have 2 left. Crap! I’m hoping it isn’t too late. I checked them out last night and the gray seemed fine still, but the white one felt a little stiff. I think I’m going to try to wash some today. I shouldn’t. I need to rest and yesterday was NOT restful.

Tuesday, I had a little energy and used it to get some housework done. I really needed to catch up on rest yesterday, but the girls forgot to take something necessary to school and I had to deliver it. Since I was going out of the house anyway, and Clark was dying to get “out” after being cooped up a week, we made a trip to JoAnn’s to buy some beads. We got home, ate, and were about to take naps when the phone rang. Olivia was sick and needed to be picked up. So we loaded up and headed out to the school again. Came back, got settled, and were resting about 45 minutes when I heard Olivia crying from her room that her ears hurt.

I called the doctor right away to see if we could get in so she could get medicine started, because I know from experience that ear infections are utterly miserable and extremely painful and take awhile to get better. So I woke up Clark from his nap and loaded up in the car and rushed to the doctor. We made it just in time. Then to the pharmacy. Then medicating, feeding, taking care of, etc., plus the girls were home from school when we got back and there was homework and such. Clark was grumpy from an interrupted nap, Nate had to work late and didn’t get home ’til almost 11pm. I was half out of my mind with fatigue.

So today, I REALLY need to rest. But that fleece is stressing me out. So I’m going to take it slow and see how I feel.

Last night, after the kids were in bed and I was waiting for Nate to get home, I started on another little neck scarf with my alpaca laceweight and new beads. I couldn’t get a decent picture of it this morning. This was the best of them.

I’m really annoyed that the color change is happening right at the pattern break.

I think I’m feeling a little better despite the cold having moved into my chest. I didn’t feel better at 6:30 this morning, when I was trying to haul out of bed to get the older two to band and orchestra, but now that I’ve been awake a couple hours, I have a bit more energy than I did yesterday, if only a little. And that’s something.

The shawl is bigger, and I’m getting a little faster at the two handed method of fair isle that is used in Philosopher’s Wool patterns.

And indeed, the colors are making me happy and lifting my spirits.

I’ve finally started knitting with my Philosopher’s Wool. I’m making the Kilim Shawl.

It’s knit circular fair isle in a cone, then cut open and fringed. The colors are magnificent.

I’m still quite sick. It seems to be picking up intensity so it looks like I’ll be in bed much of this week as well as last week. But much of last week was just pregnancy fatigue. Now it’s that plus a sinus infection and accompanying yuck.

It looks like I’m coming down with whatever the girls had this week. I hope it flushes through fast so I can enjoy Easter with the family.

We’ve had a couple birthdays recently. Clark turned 3

and Abby turned 11

It was all a very low budget, low energy affair but still nice. They didn’t seem to miss anything and I wasn’t up for more.

I finally got pictures of the finished Rosy Scarf.

It’s very nice. I wore it to the store this morning which is cheating, since it isn’t for me. I still need beads for the alpaca scarf, which might end up being for me, and I need to spin the camel yarn still, at which point we’ll be able to determine if it needs different beads from the ones I have set aside. Spun yarn can look quite different from it’s dyed fiber top.

I’m going to polish off this 20 oz bottle of Gatorade and then I’m going to bed.

It’s been a rough week, sick-wise. I find myself giving up on eating, because I feel better when I don’t, but I’m getting really tired of feeling hungry all the time.

We had a nice weekend, Conference was great. I didn’t knit a whole lot but the rosy scarf is almost done. Maybe I’ll finish it up today. I haven’t found good beads for the alpaca scarf yet.

It’s Spring Break this week, and the girls are sick. Mostly the older two. Veronica had a little cough at the end of last week, but felt fine otherwise. Abby and Liv are full blown sick. So we’re having a low key break. I’m really tired of being surrounded by coughing.

I’m a bit touched by sweet little Veronica. She’s been sleeping in ’til about 10. I know she’s not a morning person, and I know I wake her up much earlier than she’d like for school, but she gets up so willingly and pleasantly. Having her sleep in this late on her own makes me appreciate how well she gets up when I have to get her up for things. What a sweetheart.

That’s about all. I’ve been in bed a lot the past few days. Feeling rotten. When I got home from my guitar lesson yesterday, I actually cried. I hope it gets better.

Oh, and I had a doctor appointment on Friday. They snuck me in for an ultrasound to see how far along I am, and I’m now 13 weeks. Due October 11th. I wanted an October birthday, so I’m happy about that.

Stayed up ’til midnight, all by myself spinning. It was glorious. I spun the alpaca lace.

I started at 2 in the afternoon while my brother was visiting, and finished about midnight, taking a combined hour and a half to two hours off to do stuff. I ended up with only 1.6 ounces of yarn, 220 yards. I’m surprised there was so much waste. I started with 1.9 ounces of fiber. It looks heavier in the pictures than it does in person. It’s quite fine yarn.

It looked pretty dyed. It looked pretty spun into singles, and as I was plying it, I was worried. It wasn’t plying up nice. But I finished, and wound it onto the niddy noddy to skein it, and it was beautiful again. It’s so weird how that works. I hope to find some nice beads for it today, a deep blue or purple I think, so I can knit it during General Conference this weekend after finishing the rosy scarf I’m working on now. General Conference provides 8 hours of knitting time over 2 days, and I’m really looking forward to it (the broadcast and the knitting).

Today is Clark’s birthday. Can you believe he’s 3? It’s amazing to me how time flies. I’m about to go to the store to get donuts.

So, it went pretty well. I test dyed two little skeins of yarn. The first was overrun by blue, the second wasn’t quite as dark as I’d like. I test dyed 2 ounces of tan alplaca top.

And then I realized I hadn’t added vinegar to any of it.

So I added vinegar to my dye and redyed the alpaca top, feeling like an idiot. Then, I held my breath and dyed 2 ounces of baby camel.

Here’s some pictures.

This is the alpaca and two skeins of yarn I test dyed.

I happened to have a sleeve of seed beads on the counter and saw that they might look really pretty with the yarn when spun up.

Here’s my camel, still wet. The red color isn’t that red in person. It’s more of a plum. And the green isn’t that green in person, either. I wanted two blues and two purples and that’s pretty much what I got. Maybe there’s a reason most people handpaint fibers. It’s easier.

While I was digging around in my fibers yesterday, I came across 2 ounces of dyed bombyx that a friend of mine asked me to spin for her. I thought I’d given it back because I was worried about ruining it, but I still had it, and being more confident in my spinning skills now, I’m not worried anymore. I spun a tiny little sample and it’s really pretty.

I’m going to spin the alpaca and the camel, even though they’re the same color. The camel is a gift for someone else.

Three times now, when I’ve been at my worst, microwave popcorn makes me feel better. Yesterday, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it to my guitar lesson. I was actually thinking of quitting, because I was so horribly sick and had been for days. So in desperation, I used our last package of microwave popcorn (which I try to avoid eating because I think it’s toxic) and within about 15 to 20 minutes, the awful taste was gone from my mouth, and my sour stomach had sweetened considerably. I’m wondering if dairy is giving me the trouble? Today, the only thing that sounds good to me is a Kidd Valley cheeseburger. Maybe I’ll try a hamburger.

Anyway, I’m going to see if I get the same benefit from pan popped popcorn, which I don’t have issues with at all. Though it takes more time to make.

I didn’t knit a stitch yesterday, as I was running all over the place. And today, I’m planning to dye 2 ounces of baby camel top for the next little gift scarf. I probably shouldn’t dye 2 full ounces since the two ounces I spun for the current scarf is too much, but wouldn’t it totally suck if I ran out?

Oh, and to answer Jean’s question yesterday, knitting with beads isn’t hard at all. Though it can feel a bit tedious and time consuming. I’ve never tried pre-stringing beads onto the yarn before starting to knit, because 1). I never have the foggiest idea how many beads I’ll need, and 2). that sounds even more unbelievably tedious. So I use a tiny (size 11 I think) crochet hook and put each bead on the actual stitch it sits on right after I knit it. There are tutorials online. That’s how I learned how to do it a year or so ago when I was knitting the girls’ birthday shawls. It’s fun, and glass seed beads look gorgeous and delicate on laceweight.

I’m soaking a little bit of the tan yarn left over from Clark’s sweater to test colors on. I have a couple little balls of his yarn undyed that I used to test colors for his sweater. Since the naturally tan yarn is the same color as the camel top, it should give me a pretty good idea of how it will turn out.

The yarn is soaking in my breakfast blender right now. It was rinsed clean, and convenient. It still looks ridiculous so I took a picture, but Clark’s watching a movie on my computer with Photoshop so I’ll have to add it later.

I’m going to handpaint the yarn and top as opposed to kettle dyeing. I want to do multiple colors, and while I’ve read that you can do that in the kettle, my attempts have had dismal results.