FO Friday

I'm still here! I'm still knitting!

I have a few small FOs to share this week. May has been a busy month and I can't believe it's just about over.

This hat is made from some of the yarn I had left over from my Ampersand Socks. It will be for sale in the Newborn Prop Co-Op BigCartel shop soon!

 

This hat is also for the Newborn Prop Co-Op and is my own design made from my own handspun, hand-dyed yarn.

Finally, here is my Zuzu's Petals, which I made over Memorial Day weekend in a skein of Plymouth Kudo. It still needs to be blocked, but I'm pleased with how quickly it worked up and how pretty it turned out.

FO Friday: Abalone Cowl

One of my favorite groups on Ravelry, the Karma Yarn Swap group, is having a fun KAL this month encouraging people to knit with their handspun yarn. I worked up this cowl in one day from the pattern Askance Cowl by Shelby Dyas. The yarn was a perfect match for the pattern: a mix of 80% merino and 20% tussah silk that I two-plied to a DK weight. Here are my before and after pictures:

Before...

 

...and after!

Saturday Spinning

A week or so ago, I finished spinning and plying the yarn from the fiber I bought at the PA Farm Show back in January. I am tickled pink about the results; it came out soft and fluffy and beautiful! I think it's about a DK weight but I haven't put it on the WPI tool yet to check. The larger skein has 426 yards and the smaller "seconds" skein has 93 yards. I'm calling the colorway "Dr. Seuss" because it reminds me of the colors of Thing 1 and Thing 2.

The colors aren't quite this dark in real life; they're rather tricky to photograph.

Saturday Spinning

I seem to have finally recovered my spinning mojo over the last few days. I put my treadles to the metal today, and finished spinning the singles of some beautiful merino that I got at the PA Farm Show back in January. I'm hoping to ply them up next week after they get a chance to rest.

Handspun and Sheep Kisses

This past weekend was just packed full of fibery goodness! On Saturday, I met up with my college roommate at the 96th Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, PA. I haven't been there since we went in 2005 (when we were still in college!), and I haven't seen her in a year and a half, so it was so much fun to reconnect. Plus, there were all kinds of fiber animals there to pet and take pictures of and even kiss!

Photo by Allison E Frank Photography

I bought some fabulous fiber there from local vendors, including some 100% angora from Twin Ponds Fiber Farm, some hand-dyed merino roving from the Bauer Family Farm, and 4oz of Alpaca/Corriedale roving in "Chocolate Covered Strawberries."

When I got home, I finally finished spinning the fiber that has been on my wheel for MONTHS. It is BFL from Miss Babs that I got at Stitches East back in October 2010. It spun up really nice, but I spun it incredibly fine, so it took a long time to get through the singles. I ended up with 400 yards of 3-ply fingering weight, and I am very proud of it. It is so consistent and even that I think it could totally pass for millspun (not that millspun is better than handspun, of course!).