Tag: yarn

Making a Quilt

Quilt PatternInstead of going to the Knitter’s Frolic in Toronto this year, I went to New Hamburg with one of my knitting buddies to Shall We Knit. I ended up taking home some dark brown Malabrigo Lace (181 Marron Oscuro) that I had wanted to get at the KW Knitter’s Fair last year. It’s beautiful stuff. Lofty and soft; it should make a wonderful shawl for this winter.

Aside from our trip to the yarn store, we also stopped at the Mennonite thrift store just outside the town proper. They have all kinds of wonderful things there. My discovery this time was a package of pre-cut quilting squares in random colours, to make a 60″x80″ quilt. Because there’s a quilting group that meets in the shop, they have lots of odds and ends of fabric around and these packs are a way of making use of the leftovers while still raising money for the community.

I counted how many squares I had of each colour, fired up my handy-dandy PC Stitch, and then semi-randomly charted out where I wanted the squares to go. After that I put them in order by row, paper-clipped a label to each row, and stacked them all in order. I still can’t get my sewing machine tensioned properly, so I’ve started piecing the thing together by hand. Having never done this before I thought it would be difficult, but it turns out all the other needlework I do has prepared me quite well for quilting. The resulting quilt should look very nice on the bed in the spare room.


More Yarn!

Though it took a day later than I thought, I have pictures for you.

This one’s more accurate to the colour, though I used the magic of Photoshop to try and fix the other as well.

These skeins are the same size as the first batch. I have yet to measure and find out the yardage or weight of them though.


I made yarn!

I actually meant to post this before Reading Week, but in the midst of packing and such it just didn’t get done as planned. Anyway, I made yarn. In the last six weeks I’ve been taking a spinning class in order to improve my technique and to expand on what I’ve taught myself. The benefit to doing it is they let you borrow one of their wheels for the duration of the course. I don’t like this particular wheel much, but it has taught me what to look for and what to avoid in the one I get for myself.

So far I’ve made these:

yarn small

The two on the outside are Crown Mountain Farms superwash roving in the Ain’t No Mountain High Enough colourway. It’s been two-plied into sock yarn. I really love this stuff. I finished some more sock yarn in Wild Thing over Reading Week and should have pictures of it later today. I also ordered a couple more colours that should arrive tomorrow.

The middle-right yarn was some roving we were given to mess with in class. I have no idea what it is. Wool, definitely, but beyond that I have no clue. It’s been navajo-plied, my first attempt, and that seemed to go really well. This yarn runs from lace-weight to worsted, since the green was an incredibly thin single, the white was slightly larger, and the blue was even thicker than that.

thin small

The middle-left yarn is a mixture of a whole bunch of fibres. We were learning to use hand carders and could pick from lots of stuff to blend. It has several different kinds of wool, mohair, and corn silk. Maybe some other things but those are what I remember.

The middle one was the first that I spun on the wheel. It’s wool again, but rather coarse. I brought it home with me and the cats confiscated it, so whether or not it gets found will dictate what it can be made into. My cats like eating things that resemble string.


Cat Hair Yarn

You might remember that in my last post I mentioned making my sister some yarn out of the cat hair she’d collected from brushing her cats. I thought we didn’t have any pictures of it, but when Dean started showing me the pictures taken last weekend there were quite a few that he’d taken of it. These are the two that I liked.
Cat Yarn
Cat Yarn Two

Most of this came from the same cat, though with 5 of them and a dog around I’m sure there are bits of all of them in it.

The star of today’s post: ROSS (and Stephanie’s legs)

Ross


What a Week!

It’s been one hell of a week. I’ve been sick, first with an ear infection and then a touch of the flu. I’ve been all queasy and gross feeling all week, and still am a bit. I had toast for dinner today which helps.

My computer died again. I spent a good 6 hours between Monday and yesteday on the phone with Dell. On Monday they decided my hard drive was busted, and sent me a new one yesterday. It was still busted (which I could have told them) so I called them back and spent some time explaining and trying to get them to listen to me. Eventually they caught on that I have a piece of crap with lots of stuff wrong with it so they told me to send it in with most of the peripherals and they are going to check it all. It’s about damn time. I stole Dean’s iBook for the next week while they fix it so I can still do school stuff.

Tudor visited on Tuesday and delivered a copy of his book, which is amazingly wonderful. Go buy it. I was feeling icky and out of it and forgot about the offer of tea. Bribes work best when you deliver on them.

I crammed like mad in order to finish the WTC quilt squares before Wednesday, but they are done and mailed now. I’m so glad that I’m done. I never should have volunteered for the second one. It was really making my carpal tunnel act up. Oh well. Hindsight.

I got some Koigu KPPPM in the mail that I ordered a few weeks ago. It’s beautiful and amazingly soft. I’m going to love the socks I’m making out of it. It bugs me that it’s made in Ontario but you pretty much have to buy it from the US. *grumble* It’s worth it though.

My amusement for the day: Rocky talked about truthiness and the Colbert Report. Philosophy classes kick serious ass.