Tour de France Finale

Well, it's almost done, anyway! Just a couple more days.

I have been spinning everything as fluffily as possible, so this is all very plush, squishy yarn. No idea what I'm going to do with it, but I am really happy to have finally spun up all the samples I bought some years back. There are still a few days in the Tour, so I will be spinning up the odds and ends I have laying around.

It's been an odd summer here in the East. It hasn't really even been summer -- more like a warm spring. I love it, I have the windows open as much as I use the AC.

I have to confess something. I am getting afraid of these sunflowers.

How much bigger are they going to get?!

And who is this fella?

Everything else is manageable this year, thanks to the not-so-hot weather.

I didn't know spiders were cannibals ...kinda disturbing.

Gotta keep an eye on the gate. Lord knows the dog won't do it. 

Tour de France, Week II

The Tour, Week II. This is the total I've spun since the Tour began.

Zucchini shown for scale. 

Spinning at least one bobbin a day, I have worked through all the "crap" fiber, I think, and now I can turn to the nicer lot ... alpaca, camel, merino.  As I've been going through the house during the last week or so, rooting around for cheap yarn with which to make cat mats ... I've found a lot more unspun fiber. I just kept tucking it here and there, thinking I'd remember. Well -- I don't have that great a memory. So until the Tour is over, I'm going to spin a bobbin a day, at least. Today I spun 4 bobbins. I'm really hoping to get through most of my stash by the end of the Tour, and then I'll try to figure out what to do with it all!

I've been knitting very little. I've decided to rework one large WIP into something different, but the spinning has kept me busy so I haven't gotten to it yet. 

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We have had a very strange summer on the Eastern Seaboard ... it hasn't reached average summertime temperatures yet. We have a few really hot days, then it rained and the weather went back to cooler-than-normal. It's been great for my electric bill, but my garden is not exploding like it normally would be in mid-July. 

Except the sunflowers. They're going nuts. 

Black-Eyed Susan vine. They don't really look like the traditional Black-Eyed Susans, but they're very pretty. 

Elephant Ears, lost in the Hosta flowers. 

Annabelle Lee, Georgie Girl, and Spot (in front of Georgie) enjoying a cool summer evening! 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Tour de Fleece, Week One

This is only my second Tour de Fleece ... it's difficult for me to get into spinning when it's in the mid-90s outside!

My TdF goal is pretty small ... I just want to spin up some slubby, vm-filled roving I bought when I was too new to spinning to understand what to look for. Once/if that gets finished in time, I'll start in on the nice stuff, like alpaca and merino! I have a lot (a LOT) of fiber, plus a lot of already-spun fiber needing a project! It seems like for years I just accumulated the material and didn't actually do anything with it all! I figure I'll make a doggie mat with the substandard yarn I make from the slubby roving.

I'm currently massively destashing all my acrylic/part-acrylic yarn into cat mats. Once that is done, I'm going to work on some sort of massive project to use up a dozen or so skeins of sample yarn in various colors. Then I'll tackle the handspun. I want to get to the point where if I want to knit a project larger than a square, I'll have to actually go out and buy yarn. I don't want to be a hoarder any more.

In other news, my sunflowers are doing great...

A friend of mine and I went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival last weekend. It featured Kenya and China.

While in D.C., we also visited the Botanic Gardens. It was a beautiful day to be out in our nation's capital. 

I'm not fat, I'm big-boned! (No, she's not preggers. Just fat.)

Grandmother's Quilts

I recently visited my Dad in the Great State of Texas, and while I was there, my Aunt Sandy offered me the last couple of my late Grandmother's enormous cache of hand-made quilts. My Grandmother won ribbons at the Calcasieu Parish Fair back in the 80s (she died in 1989), and she made many, many quilts throughout her life. She had a quilt frame suspended over her bed, and when she wanted to quilt, she lowered it on its pulleys and sat by her bed and patiently -- so patiently -- stitched. I remember baskets of cloth remnants by her chair in the den (I don't think she used store-bought quarters).

I tried to quilt, I really did, but I am just a terrible seamstress. I once sewed an article of clothing onto my own pant leg. And my quilt squares were just never even. Anyway, I am now lucky enough to own four "Grandma quilts." A diagonal-patterned red one that I got when I was too young to remember getting it, another with a sort of pinwheel pattern I was given when I was a young adult, and now these two:

I don't know what these patterns are called, sorry ...

Aren't they gorgeous? I am looking for a quilt rack, so I can display them until winter. I can't imagine how many hours it took to make each one of them, then to sit by the bed and carefully stitch it all together.

Creativity runs in the family, though. My first-cousins-once-removed, young adults themselves, have a fabulous Etsy store which I am shamelessly going to promote. It's called The Evergreen Nest and is focused on fairies and that which pleases fairies!

I got these lovely items from Evergreen Nest:

I took the mushroom and the three ladybugs to work, and set them up on my desk with two of the ladybugs crawling around the mushroom cap. I swear they come alive at night ... when I come in most mornings, the biggest ladybug has moved a little! 

So, on to knitting issues ... 

Well, spinning issues. Tour de Fleece is starting the day after tomorrow. I did it once before, a few years back, and haven't since. To be honest, I haven't used my spinning wheel in quite some time! I think it's time to dust Esmerelda off and give her a good oiling, and then spin up some fiber for TdF. I do have a lot to spin. A lot to clean, card, and blend, too. I don't know that I'll want to do that in July, but I think I should have a go at some spinning.

In closing ... a sweet little recipient of one of the many cat mats I've been making lately. This little sweetie is at the Petco in Columbia, MD, snoozing on the top left. They had six kittens in the adoption cages. Very sleepy, smug kittens.












Thanks for stopping by!

The Mad DeStash

Greetings! I know I haven't posted in a couple weeks ... this time of year, the knitting just slides for the gardening and other summer fun stuff.

The garden is doing great!

I'm ready for some tomatoes now, though. Getting a bit tired of the zukes.

I am currently knitting two projects, but the other day I was looking for something and came across a plastic bag full of yarn. I'd relocated a bunch of half-assed finished projects to this bag and dumped it in a closet. I decided that enough was enough. Enough yarn hoarding! Enough undone project hoarding!

I went through the stash and gathered every bit of acrylic, part-acrylic, fun fur, eyelash, everything I bought mostly when I first started knitting because I thought it was cute, and didn't realize it was impractical. For example, knitting with fun fur is so awful, the only thing that kept me from outright pitching it is my frugal Yankee nature. (I blame that nature for my pack-rat tendencies, too). I gathered it all up, along with the Lion Brand Thick-and-Quick half-skeins, and went on a massive cat mat bender. I donate these cat mats to a local no-kill shelter.

I made eight over a few days. I've got two more done, and I think I could make four or five if I go through and really shake the stash. All the little remnants, the old Red Heart and Vanna's Choice, the part skeins...when I first started knitting, I wanted everything. So I bought everything, even if I had no plans for it. I bought armfuls of acrylic, because I was practicing and had big plans. I did the same with unspun fiber, so one day soon there will be a massive spinning-knitting marathon, once I figure out what to do with it.

I will be so glad to get the stash down to just a few choice, higher quality yarns. Then I can work on de-stashing that! A few years back I bought a Knit Picks sampler. Fine yarn, almost like sock yarn, but 100% wool. I've got to come up with something fabulous to do with that. That won't be for cat mats.

Thanks for stopping by!