Inglenook Fibers 2021 12 Days of Christmas Spin-a-long

I am late to the party on the 12 Days of Christmas Spin-a-long from Inglenook Fibers. There has been and continues to be too much going on in my life to even think about spinning.  I was to start spinning the first packet on Christmas Day, hasn't happened, not sure when I'll get started on this project. 

The label shows the photo that was the inspiration for this years spinning fibers. I have now opened all the packets and took these pictures.  At the end of the 12 packets are two companion braids I bought to either use for plying or as companion spinning. I didn't know what direction I wanted to go so I bought two different colors. Maybe it's a good thing I haven't had time to even think about spinning because I have no clue what direction I want to go in, do I want to spin these continuous like I've done in the past going from one color to another, or do I want to spin them individually either plied on themselves or plied with a companion fiber.   I'm at a loss this year so they will sit in a basket until I'm ready.  I may end up deciding on a project first this time. So for the time being these fibers will be eye candy for when I need an emotional lift. 

 

This and that.......

 I finally got a decent picture of the shawl that I blocked last week, the one that I spun the Inglenook Fibers 12 days of Christmas fibers for. Love how it turned out but in this heat won't be wearing it until fall or winter.

And here are the hexxie pieces hand stitched together so far. They're in sections with the flower and part of the white background. I was laying them out to see how many I'll need for an afghan size. I'm thinking 5 flowers across and 9 flowers down but will decide for sure after I get more stitched. Im undecided if I'll put half flowers on the edges or if it will all be white.....will decide that later too.  No stitching at the moment, finger is still sore but I'll be ready with the stick on thimble once it's recovered.  Don't ask me why pictures with the phone sometimes turn when I upload them to blogger - it's not this orientation on my computer. Technology...……

12 Days of Christmas

This morning I blocked the shawl I spun and knit from the Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas spin-a-long. It's hard to see the colors sitting on the rubber squares plus the shadow of the house at the top of the picture but I'll get a better pictures on my mannequin once it's dried. It will be interesting to see how the asymmetrical shape works on the body.

Eye candy.....

 I decided to start knitting an asymmetrical shawl using the Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas fiber that I spun. You can check out the progress of the spinning starting Christmas day 2018 here on the blog. I'm now into knitting color #3, soon I'll be knitting color #4. The progression will be moving to golds, greens and even black. This ball will just get into the gold, then I have another huge ball that continues with the golds and others.


My roses are covered with hundreds & hundreds of buds, some blooming. Yesterday I cut a vase full to bring inside. I am so excited to have roses - never could have them at past homes as the deer loved to eat them. I snapped a few outside pix this morning......enjoy.

A bit of progress.........

 Remember way back last December 25th when I opened the first package of the 12 Days of Christmas spin-a-long from Inglenook Fibers?  Well, it didn't take me too long to spin it all, but it took a while before I found a pattern I wanted to use for the resulting knit shawl. I finally finished it up a few weeks ago but going outside to block it in this smoky hazardous air quality wasn't happening. Yesterday I decided to just set up a table inside to do the blocking. Here it is finished. The pattern is called Be Simple Variations - it's an asymmetrical shawlette.

 I decided to paint the loom room and sewing/craft room before unpacking boxes. I knew once it was all unpacked they would never be painted, I mean never. I painted a bright white which is great since so much of the walls will be covered up and there's only one window in each room. Unfortunately my loom room is a bit smaller than my last one so two pieces of furniture won't fit in and it's a bit tight but I'll make it work. Here's one view of the room.

Here's a view from the other corner. I still need to buy shelving for the closet to store all the books and magazines and whatever else. Above the closet is a 3 ft deep shelf - I'm going to put things I don't use as often up there like my table loom (workshops only), inkle loom, marudai, drum carder, etc. It will take a ladder to take them down but that's ok, they'll be out of the way when I'm not using them.  There is going to be a tv mounted up high so I can see it from my chair at the table and also from each loom. What you can't see is the view out the window is the side yard with roses all along the fence. 

 Here's the sewing/craft room - I've got two tables in there so I have space to work on 3 machines, my Bernina QE440, my Bernina 1350 Serger and my cheapie Brother embroidery machine.....which does a great job. I have another cheapie Brother but it's in a carrier to take to workshops.

Here's looking in the other direction. I didn't get a picture of the closet but it's the same as the loom room with the storage shelf above. Maybe it will be a good place to store roving.......not sure yet.

I plan on starting to unpack all the boxes into these two rooms this week. I'm anxious to be able to find things and get on with weaving. I've got several special orders to weave. I've got some sewing projects I want to get to with making café curtains for the bathrooms and then a special order of embroidered towels.

We have the worst air quality in the nation - the fires just keep burning and it's not just the fires close to us but it's the entire northwest. It doesn't matter which way the wind shifts, there's always smoke. They are making headway on our Taylor Creek Fire - it's now 38% contained. The Klondike Fire, only 5% contained, is getting close to meeting up with the SE corner of  our Taylor Creek Fire. For safety reasons (for fire crews) both fires will now be under one command. It's going to be a long fire season - what's really scary is that we haven't even entered the worst part of fire season yet. We've always had fires but nothing like they've been the last 10+ years - now it seems to be the norm to live with smoke the majority of the summer.

Hanging in there...........

I finally decided to knit the 'Be Simple Variations' asymmetrical shawlette using the 12 Days of Christmas handspun. It will be interesting to see how it turns out as it goes from color to color. It will also be interesting to see how big it ends up. I knit this shawlette using fingering weight yarn but this is more worsted size knit on bigger needles. I'm hoping it turns out big enough or I'll be ripping it out and trying something else. I am knitting on this when I'm not totally exhausted in the evening.

I'm hanging in there with the house buying project although I'm overwhelmed at times......many times. If all goes well we will be signing papers on the new house this week. I finally finished going through the entire house as I refuse to box up and move things I haven't used since we moved to this house 15 years ago. I've started packing so the house shows better............as in packing the weaving and sewing/crafts rooms as the rest of the house shows just fine. We have some work to do on the deck which Sam has started. Not sure when we'll get this house listed but am hoping it's in the not too distant future as we don't want to have an extra house for very long.

I've heard interesting comments from those around me about our move. Friends are feeling bad for us because we're downsizing - huh??? The new house is only a tiny big smaller so I wouldn't call that downsizing, we are downsizing from acreage to a neighborhood and no one should feel bad for us over that - it's what we want to do, it's a choice, we don't have to move, we can stay right where we are but we are ready to take care of less and have more time for the things that are important to us like weaving, spinning, quilting, sewing, beading, knitting, golfing, fishing, walking on the beach, etc, etc, etc.....   So dear friends, if you read this, please stop making those comments as it's starting to get on my nerves. Other than having to go through all the pains of buying and selling, which seem to be much worse this time than ever before, we're very happy...........we're both thinking about now that we don't ever want to move again but who knows what the future holds......