April showers have not abated, but May flowers are in full swing-
Azaleas
Rhodies-
Lilacs-
and last but not least, Tuin!
Yep, ’tis done!
(Unless I decide to do a little more colorwork on the cuffs, or near the bottom edge- maybe on one hip?)
Still undecided.
But it’s knitted, and it fits! (I just don’t feel like modeling right now).
Love how the colorwork on the yoke worked out.
And it’s kind of turned me into a bit of a food color dyeing junkie of late.
I just can’t stop!
Help!
Whew! It’s been a long time, and a lot of duplicate stitching, but I’ve just finished the yoke colorwork done on Tuin-
And so it’s back on the needles to finish body and sleeves.
Somehow over the last 4 or 5 weeks since I took it off the needles I managed to misplace my size 5 24 inch circulars, so that’s a bit of a setback, but I think the rest of the sweater will come together pretty quickly once the y either reappear or are replaced.
Still trying to decide about sleeve length and if I’ll do any additional color work around the cuffs and/or hem.
It was a beautiful sunny weekend here, and I was glad to be able to get some fleece washing done. Going to do a little carding and spinning demo this week for some young 4Hers, so wanted to have some fresh fleece from the guys for show and tell.
And I’m really excited that I’ve made plans to go down to Blacksheep Gathering in Eugene this June.
A friend and I are going to drive down together. Already signed up for three workshops- Locker Hooking, Steeking, and Shearing on your Own.
Woo Hoo!
is a “Motorized by The Man” carder.
It’s been in the works for a while (birthday was back in Jan), and we were really close to a solution a couple of weeks ago.
The first try was with a belt sander, coupled to the drum axle with a chuck from a drill.
Only problem- it rotated counterclockwise.
Plan B involved the sacrifice of an old White sewing machine that we found on craigslist.
Here it is after already having donated all the necessary internals-
And here is my old carder hooked up to it’s new power source-
which is controlled by the footpedal from the sewing machine-
I’ve been playing with it a bit today, and it is really cool. The foot pedal leaves my hands free for picking and feeding in the fiber, and when the motor is not running I can manually turn the drum backwards to remove the batt without having to undo anything.
And I can always remove the pulley and put the handle back on if I need/want to go back to arm power.
Will try to shoot a little video sometime this week of the newly energized machine in action!
And in case you’re wondering what ever happened to my Tuin sweater- it is finally starting to look like something!
Don’t know that I would ever sign on for this much duplicate stitch ever again (millions of ends), but I think it’s turning out pretty neat. 🙂
I got off to a bit of a slow start this week with the colorwork for my Tuin, but now that I’m getting a feel for the duplicate stitch and keeping track of the chart, it’s going more smoothly-
Look! Flowers! I see now that doing it this way is going to take a long time, but I do like having control over the color placement.
In other news, with The Man’s help, I made a minor tweak to my already amazingly cheap and highly useful PVC and conduit Niddy Noddy-
With the addition of a few holes and some old metal knitting needles, it is doubling as a portable lazy Kate!
And I can even store the needles in the center section of conduit.
Neat, eh? (Skye doesn’t see what all the excitement is about) 🙂
Sheeps are starting to ask about getting haircut appointments, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Maybe next weekend I’ll be able to get a start on shearing!