Some purple in my life

Wow, I can't believe it has already been 12 days since I last posted. I just get so frustrated doing this with dial-up at 26.4. It takes forever to get pictures uploaded and it has happened several times that once I click on "done" the pictures disappear into never-never land, or somewhere.

But, here I am anyway. I have a couple of purple things for Project Spectrum July (link in side bar).

My first purple item is an FO - I finished my purple malabrigo hat.

I don't have anyone to take a picture of me modeling it, and I can't seem to manage to get a self-portrait, so for now, here is a boring picture of it. I should have had someone in my knitting group take a picture of me in it, they all said it "looked like me." hmmm, I wonder what that means...After all the trouble I had getting the hang of the bobbles, you can't even see them running up alongside of the cables.

Then I realized I have a couple of purple/violet items I look at several times a day in my bedroom. I guess that's the whole point of this project, to make us notice the beauty around us. I KNEW these things were there of course, but never really thought about their colors. I have this quilted appliqued wall hanging on the wall next to my dresser in my bedroom.

This is my purple hat box (yes I have hats in it!!)

As all around the rest of Minnesota, up here on the range it has been very hot. Sunday it was just so miserable I decided to stay in the house with my air conditioner on, and watch movies and spin all afternoon. I got quite a bit of spinning done. Using my little wheel that goes roving with me, I filled a second bobbin of this gray jacob and plyed it into two skeins. Wow, I just realized how sloppily these skeins are wound!!! ooops...I was impatient to get the picture. (what, me impatient?) I've been working on spining this gray roving while at Ironworld, so I've been getting quite a bit of it spun up. Maybe by the end of summer I'll have enough for a sweater. So far I have about 700 yards spun up. Then I switched to my Lendrum, and decided to ply two bobbins of spun singles I have had sitting on the bobbins literally for months. I know it is not a good idea to leave the singles sit on the bobbins. A lot of it seems to have lost some of its twist and is now somewhat under-spun. Teal is my favorite color and this teal roving is very soft. I received it as a gift so I'm not sure what kind of wool it is, I would guess it might be cormo. This skein is 340 yards, and I already have another one of 370 yards (that didn't sit around on the bobbins for months and looks better.) I'll have to knit it up tightly I guess. or I probably could felt it.

My next knitting project will be to finally start a pair of Fiber Trends clogs for myself. I seem to be the only person who doesn't have a pair. I thought they would be kind of a pain to knit, but everyone assures me they aren't. For the soles I am using a solid-color Lamb's Pride, haven't decided yet which color but I have a couple of colors to chose from in my stash. For the tops I got this great yarn at Knitting Knight. I've seen it felted and it felts beautifully. Can't wait to get these done, but that won't happen if I don't get them started!!! I was going to start them tonight but instead sat and read a book. I was in the mood for an English cozy mystery but didn't have one around, instead I read Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons. I need to learn to read and knit at the same time.

Pixie of Pixie Purls is a new spinner and wanted somewhere to talk about spinning, so she started a new forum for spinning at http://talk.pixiepurls.com/index.php. Let's go talk about spinning. I guess I should see if I can get any advice for plying yarn that has been left on the bobbins for months and lost its twist. Pixie's podcast is a lot of fun to listen to, she's very natural while recording, and very enthusiastic.

Well, that's about it for this time. Just wanted to get these finished things up here and show you what I've been working on. Keep spinning!!!

Malabrigo love

I couldn't wait. I wanted to show you the Malabrigo yarn I bought. It is wonderfully soft yarn. The tag says "kettle dyed pure merino wool" and it has 216 yards per 3.5 ounce skein. It comes in the most gorgeous colors. My pictures don't accurately show how beautiful the colors are, so check this out. http://www.malabrigoyarn.com/catalogo.htm

I bought mine from my LYS, Knitting Knight. (link on side bar)

I bought two skeins of purple (only one is in the picture because I am knitting with the other one) to knit a hat and a pair of mittens, and two skeins of what they call "saphire magenta" (their spelling, not mine) to knit another hat and pair of mittens. Amber knit a hat out of that and the yarn is gorgeous knit up. The colors look wonderful together.

Tonight is Friday and it was the first night of the new season of Monk. True confession: I love that show. I don't have television and that is the only show I miss. Here's another true confession: last season I downloaded each episode from itunes. Thanks to David, (suzanneatparadise44.blogspot.com) who sent it, and my son Ben, who put it in, my computer has a new DVD player, and I can put the episodes right onto a DVD. It was great fun but I can't download it anymore because now I only have dial-up. Deb was going to record it for me, I hope she didn't forget. (Deb?)

OK, that's it for the second time today.

It's a bag

Here it is, finally finished, my Euroflax linen "Carry-It-Home bag." The pattern says to knit the mesh until you have 4 yards left and then do a three-needle bindoff. I did that, but I think it's too big. It's a market bag but if you put anything in it, it stretches and gets even bigger. Maybe once I use it I'll feel differently.

Once I finished the bag, I started my purple July Project Spectrum project, an Aran hat using the purple Malabrigo I got at the Knitting Knight sale. (will post a picture next time) As you would imagine, as an Aran pattern it has bobbles and cables. WELL, guess what I did? I was on the row with the fifth set of bobbles and second twist of the cable, and I realized that two of the bobbles were on the INSIDE of the hat. Yeah, THAT would be real real comfortable, bobbles inside the hat. I can't believe I did that. Instead of a knitting blog I should call this a knitting mistake blog. I seem to be so dense with my knitting lately. I was keeping track of each row with a pen and paper and obviously forgot to write down a row. And why is it I didn't notice they were on the wrong side? And what else could I do but rip-it rip-it, so I did. Started it over during my lunch hour today.

My little wheel and I have been out roving the range. I have been spinning at Ironworld, which is a museum "dedicated to collecting, preserving and interpreting the history of Minnesota's Iron Ranges." Here is one of my displays that I set up when I'm there. Ironworld has several wonderfully preserved historic buildings which all have interpreters working in them. I am doing my spinning in the (modern, new) museum building, but we all wear historic costumes. There is also a weaver there using one of the two beautiful looms in the room. One is a 100-year-old Finnish loom, and the other a 100-year-old Norwegian loom. Can you guess which is which?

(The Norwegian one is the one with the straight lines.) It's different spinning in a museum because I am part of the exhibits. And people take my picture as part of the exhibits and that takes a little getting used to. There were some visitors from Korea and the wife stood with me while I was spinning and her husband took our picture. Ok, I wonder what they are going to be saying in Korea when they see pictures of me spinning? (probably, OMG, she's tall....)

One of the historic sections is called the "Glen Location." It is a section where miners and their families lived from 1903 into the 1930's. They still have one original house left, and a boarding house where miners stayed. This stove is in the little house, isn't it gorgeous? I want it. When they would quit mining a certain mine and move on to another location they would offer the houses for sale to the miners for $1, but the catch was they had to move them, which cost $100. They would move their houses from location to location. Can you imagine? Hitting the road and taking your house with you. That amazes me. They actually moved the entire city of Hibbing to make a mine bigger. The whole city, 200 buildings. Can you imagine? I wish they had pictures of it. I keep finding different dates as to when this took place, but it seems to be around 1917. (http://www.hibbing.org/historical_info.html) (Hey, while reading this I discovered that Gary Puckett is from Hibbing.)(You know, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.) (Wow, Bob Dylan AND Gary Puckett) (Ok, I admit it, I used to love Gary Puckett and the Union Gap)(there you have it, you got the truth out of me now)

I've been to the area of what's left of the old town before they moved it, and it's kind of eerie. There are cement sidewalks with walkways up to steps, and then no house there. There is a big set of steps up a hill that went up to the library, and then no building there. The gas lights and sidewalks are still standing after all this time, and lots of steps and some cement blocks that had served as foundations. It's freaky. Like an empty Hollywood set or a ghost town or something. Every year Hibbing has an art festival called "Mines and Pines" and they have it in that part of town that used to be the old town because of course it's a big empty area. (it's next weekend, I'll be there spinning...)

This is a picture of the old mine and the lake made when they mined out the ground (I think that's how it goes, I am not "from the range" and this is all new to me). This is on the Ironworld grounds and I took the picture from the trolley. Anyway, if you happen to be a mother, I want to ask you, can you imagine letting your kids just run around and play in these woods all day and swim in this lake? I can't imagine doing that, but they did. Now that I think about it, I suppose it was probably safer than letting them ride their bikes three blocks to the store.

In closing, here is my sweet girl, Narda. She used to be the head mouser on a New Jersey farm, and now she is the quintessential contented house cat in Minnesota. She is slowly losing her Jersey accent. Just this morning I swear I heard "you betcha" once or twice.

You can see a bigger view of any pictures by clicking on them. Please leave a comment!!! Keep on spinning!!!

By jove, I think she's got it!!!

I didn't give up, and I just sat down and kept knitting. Once I got a couple of rows out from those size 4 needles it was easier. That was awfully tight knitting from size 4 needles onto size 13 needles. Now I am flying along with the mesh. Of course I have to be really careful not to drop a stitch.

Ok, just wanted to post a little update. I am starting to love my little linen bag again. Here is a picture taken at Ironworld from the trolley. More on that later.

The one where the linen bag and I butt heads

Hello hello. The week has gone by fast for the slug who is your blogger. My hours at work were all messed up this week because one of my co-workers is on vacation, so I worked two 10-hour days Thursday and Friday. I did finish my socks on Monday. TA-DA.... I present to you my new crazy mixed-up socks. Everyone says they are autumn colors. The yarn is 100% merino and very soft.
At knitting group on Tuesday I started my new project, which is a mesh market bag. I belong to the Range Fiberart Guild ( http://www.cpinternet.com/~lynx/ ) and in October we are hosting the Minnesota Weaver's Guild annual Federation meeting. The theme is "Ode to Linen." Several guild members decided to band together and everyone knit a linen bag and they would display them at the Federation meeting. They chose this particular pattern, the Carry-It-Home Bag, which is available from Patternworks.I never could make the get-togethers for that because they met when I was working, so at first I didn't participate. But after getting together with everyone at Land of the Loon I decided to jump on the bandwagon and knit one too. Since then, I have developed a sense that I am just not a linen-bag-knitter. I have had so much trouble with this bag. Started out great. I cast on the right number of stitches, knit the requisite number of rows to get to the point where you fold over and bind off 25 stitches to the cast-on stitches to make a handle on each side. I did that, but not very successfully. When I was knitting the next row I realized that I had gotten off-kilter on one handle and it was all crooked, AND of course I no longer had the right number of stitches since I used more than necessary for the bind-off dealie thingie. SO, I ripped it all out and started over. This time I got the handles bound off correctly, still had the right number of stitches. Knit down to the point where you fold the knitting over and knit the bind-off stitch in with the live stitch to make a folded over double top with the two handles before you start the mesh. Now in theory, this is not difficult. But leave it to me to MAKE it difficult. Instead of knitting the stitches together, I did the same thing I did for the handles. Knit the live stitch together with the cast-on stitch and then bound them off. I can't believe I am admitting this for all the world to see, but I did it ALL THE WAY AROUND the 151 stitches. Got done, had one stitch. I totally couldn't believe I had been so stupid. SO, I un-bound all the stitches one at a time, didn't rip it out again because at that point, I was determined this bag is NOT getting the best of ME. I unbound all the stitches. Since linen doesn't have much of a memory (kind of like me) the stitches were a bit stretched out, but since I was going to be folding it over and knitting them together with the cast-on stitches I figured it would be okay. So I continued on, folded it over and knit the live stitch together with the cast-on-stitch and still had 151 stitches...woo hoo, she did it!!!! At that point I was really happy and loved my little linen bag despite the fact that all the stitches weren't perfect.

Then I started the mesh. You do that top part on size 4 needles and the mesh in size 13. The pattern tells you to do the first row of mesh LOOSELY with the size 4 needles and then switch to size 13 needles. I did that. But this mesh thing is just not fun. It seems like it should go really quickly but it is slow and I am not enjoying doing it. I must be going something wrong, but it looks correct. It took me forever to do 2 rows. Maybe I'll dash over to Knitting Knight today and see what Amber thinks and see if I AM doing something wrong. It wouldn't surprise me in the least. Nevertheless, here is the bag so far. I quite like the color of the linen yarn and was formerly enthralled with the idea of knitting my own linen bag. Now I'm not so sure....



Oh, and by the way, Amber started her bag at knitting group on Tuesday and she finished hers on Wednesday. So obviously one CAN successfully knit this bag. Just not ME.

Well, that is it for today. I am going to get ready and go to Ironworld (http://www.ironworld.com/ ) to check it out. Tomorrow I am going to be doing a spinning demonstration there, but I've never even been there and I don't know what to expect. So I thought I'd go today and see what it's like. I have done spinning demonstrations at Arts & Crafts shows, and sheep & wood festivals, and fairs, but never at a museum. I am a little nervous about the whole thing, but I am also excited about it. I love to spin and doing demonstrations is always so much fun. It's amazing the things people say and the questions they ask. Some people are utterly shocked that there is anyone who still spins - which is one reason I think it's important to do these spinning demonstrations. I feel it's vital that we preserve these traditional crafts and not let the skills die out. Spinning is such a relaxing and meditative activity. When I first learned to spin I thought it was magic. And I still feel that way.

So, keep spinning!!! Here are my "perfection marigolds" before the sun was up this morning.