Author: denisemor

Sorry to have missed y’all last week. I was away on Whidbey Island, enjoying some downtime with knitting friends. It was lovely, and I made significant progress on my Half an Alcott vest. Just yesterday, it popped off the needles.

I am so excited about how the colors work together. Kind of amazed, actually. Peach, violet, blue, teal, yellow, dark green. I think it harmonizes because there is so much white and taupe grounding it.

I couldn’t wait to open it up, so this morning I reinforced the steeks with crochet, and got out the snippers.

So now I need to figure out a plan for the back. Lots of options running through my head. Somehow solid taupe or solid white doesn’t feel quite right. Will let me unconscious work on it for a bit.

Some other colorful summery happy things-

Cherries!

Scarlet Runner beans

Long-awaited sweet peas

and Dyer’s Chamomile harvested for later use-

Also finished spinning up the Priscilla (previously of Marietta Shetlands, now at Schoonover Farm) wool that I picked up at the Wonderful Woollies sale in May

I think it’s about 400 yards. Perfect weight for the Fair Isle yarn stash. Whether they will remain white, or be candidates for dyeing is TBD. The Alcott vest has really got me all hopped up on colorwork!

Started a new project this week. Had been kind of driving myself crazy trying to figure out color combinations, but in the end, I decided to just use naturals for the lightest and darkest shades and mix and match medium tones in the charts. Hopefully the overall effect will be playful and eclectic. 🙂

Anyway, I’m working this one the same way I did the Fair Isle Experiment last year- only stranding and steeking the front. Will work the back separately in probably a solid color then assemble and do the edgings. But this time, since I know I’ll be cutting it open, I’ve added six steek stitches, so I have a little selvage to work with.

Feels good to have gotten a start on this. I find stranded colorwork so satisfying.

And while it’s been rainy and cool outside, in the hoophouse my sunflowers are going nuts-

About 8 feet tall now, they are finally developing flower buds Hopefully they bloom before they try to bust through the roof!

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a good week, folks.

Finally off the needles this week is Daphne’s Bea cardigan vest-

Finally got the length just right, and found the perfect button in my stash.

Not doing any finishing on the armholes, as the slipped stitches form a nice edge on their own. Not a flashy knit, but I suspect it will get a lot of wear. Nice and light (12 oz), soft and fuzzy, in all the rich shades of the crazy girl herself

After all that garter stitch in a single yarn, I’m getting exited about switching things up a bit and doing stranded colorwork- revisiting the Alcott vest.

I went through my yarn stash and pulled all the yarns in the right weight range (~90-100 yds/oz)

and am working on a plan for the color combinations. I think I might actually only do the colorwork on the front of the vest- kind of a “Half Alcott”, if you will 😉

So we’re looking at side and neck steeks, then probably a solid color back. Should be fun!

Oh- and I forgot last week to introduce my two new chicken friends (adopted to keep Speck company since the untimely demise of our Wyandotte hen (d#$% ravens!)

They are mature Brabanter/Delaware girls. No names yet, but they seem to be settling in well, and are laying pretty regularly, which is an added bonus.

Apparently they were escape artists at their last home. They seem to be happy in the pasture and shed with Speck, though they are a little freaked out by the sheep, and try to steer clear of them.

Alrighty- that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a good week folks.

The needles, that is.

Been a while since I’ve posted a Daphne Bea project update.

In that time, I’ve alternately thought I was almost done, then ripped back the whole collar to add a couple inches to the body, then re-knit the collar, adding some additional short rows and increases so that the collar folds back and lays flat more readily.

And now (as of this afternoon), it is back off the needles-

I’ve not yet tried it on again, because it is way too hot right now (weather station is saying 89F).

So I am hiding in the house, drinking iced tea and waiting for the sun to start to go down.

I realized earlier today that I’d forgotten to post a followup on my recent lanolin collecting efforts.

Back in early May, I had maybe 2/3 cup of lanolin mixture that I’d skimmed from cooled fleece washwater, but I was hoping to get it a little more reduced. I played around with heating it, thinking maybe that some water would separate, and then when that failed, I decided to freeze it. Because, why not?

So nothing happened in the freezing itself, but once it was a solid block, I turned it out onto paper towels, and found that as it thawed, it let go of quite a bit of water into the towels, and I could easily scrape the remaining pasty substance off with a spatula. I think it lost about 1/3 of it’s volume.

Since then, I’ve used it to condition my potting bench

and also some garden tool handles. So I’m pretty chuffed about how that worked out.

Alrighty. Think that’s all I’ve got for now.

Stay cool, and have a good week folks-