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.

Inglenook Fibers almost finished......

Here is my Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas fiber all spun up. I plyed it with solid colors from my stash. I wish it could have all fit on one of my big Hansen bobbins but it didn't so two skeins it is. You can see where the gold picks up on the upper skein from the first skein on the bottom. I don't know what the yardage is yet, will figure that out after I block it.  I say it's almost finished because it won't be finished until I come up with a project and knit, crochet or weave it. I'm pleased with my decision to spin solid colors to ply it with. Interesting color progression from spinning one packet after another.......don't know if I like it or not, only time will tell...........

Finally heading back to the loom

 Yesterday I spent part of the day winding a 12 yard towel warp. It really pushes my lower back to wind this much on the warping board so I took frequent breaks. It feels good to finally be getting back to the loom. I may also warp the AVL in the next week.

 It's now wound on the back beam awaiting threading of heddles and sleying of the reed - but I'm so busy the rest of the week I'm not sure when that will get done. This warp was originally going to be white, black and blue but then I decided it needed to have a lot of color for foggy winter weaving. It will be a basketweave and twill design.

I went through my stash and found colors, blended other colors, to spin to ply with the Inglenook 12 Days of Christmas fiber. Should be interesting to see how it ends up looking when plied - hopefully it will be a success.

Inglenook Day 12

 I'm behind again - here is what the day 12 fiber looked like......

…...here it is spun

Inglenook Day 11

 I forgot to post this yesterday after I spun it 

Only 1 more day, today, left. My plan after that is to spin solids from my stash to go with all these to ply with. I've already got the majority of them together, just waiting to see today's package to finish them up. In the meantime I'll keep working on the lime/purple roving.

Inglenook Day 10

 Here is day 10 - I'm loving this 'soft' colorway

 Love it spun up too

Sunrise this morning was spectacular although this photo doesn't do it justice

Inglenook Day 9

 Here is day 9 of the Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas spin-a-long

 I really love this color with all the bits of color in it

Here's what else I'm spinning since the 12 days spinning is only a half ounce a day and I'm in the mood to spin. I spun a bunch of this yesterday at my spinning group and will work on it in the evenings. My plan is to ply it on itself but now I wonder if I should ply it with a solid color, like the purple......still have another 4 oz to spin so I have plenty of time to give it thought.



Inglenook Day 8

Inglenook Day 7

Inglenook Day 6

 I'm halfway done spinning......

 ....here's what day 6 looks like spun

Yesterday Bailey was getting tired of me taking pictures of fiber and the wheel and not him, he was happy finally getting all the attention. He's got a new Buster in his mouth.....a stuffed golden retriever that's almost as big as he is.......old Buster is in the mortuary. Bailey doesn't kill his babies but does constantly have them in his mouth so a favorite such as Buster eventually is pretty thread bare.

Inglenook Day 5

 Day 5 spinning done early this morning...…..

….turning towards a golden brown...….so far the colors are not what

 I envisioned from the graphic the fibers are based on...….but they're still lovely.

Inglenook Day 4

Day 4 of the spin-a-long

Here it is spun up on my electric wheel

Spinning has commenced.....

 I started spinning the Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas spin-a-long fiber. Day 1 is very black with bit of color...….

 …..Day 2 has the same bits of color but is a charcoal gray...…

…...Day 3 is moving into the greens...….

Day 4 spinning will have to wait until tomorrow as I can't/shouldn't open up that packet before day 4 is actually here......well, I could as no fiber police are going to come and lock me up but I'll keep with the program and open and spin only one packet a day. 

Inglenook Day 3

Here's Day 3 of the Inglenook Fibers Spin-a-long. I may start spinning today as I've come up with a plan.  I'll take a little bit of each piece of roving and mix it with the next days to make a smoother transition although the transition is looking pretty smooth right now.

Inglenook Day 2

Day 2 of Inglenook Fibers Spin-a-long......still going to wait for a few more days to see what the color progression looks like to decide how I want to spin this.

Inglenook Day 1

This was the inspiration for Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas Spin-a-long for this year.

And here is Day 1 - today, Christmas Day.  I'm not going to start spinning it yet as I want to see a few of the packages and the progression of the colors so I can come up with a spinning plan. This will be great fun.

Holiday Cheer

 I wasn't sure if I'd sign up for the Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas spin-a-long again but I did. My box arrived a bit over a week ago filled with these fun paper packages of fiber numbered with each day. Spinning commences on Christmas Day. The inspiration for this years fiber is the cat graphic so it's looking like some beautiful neutrals. What I can't decide is if I should spin them in order like I have the past 2 years, spin them as mini skeins, or just open one each day and after I see the entire grouping decide if they get spun in order or if I mix them up. I still have plenty of time to decide. It is tough not to sneak a look but I'll wait until Christmas morning along with everyone else.

I know I've posted my inkling tree in the past but thought I'd post it again. It all started with an article in Handwoven many years ago with directions showing a handful of ideas.  Well, I took off and had so much fun over the years with this. They have been gifted to family and a handful of friends over the years. I took a couple breaks, haven't made any since 2015.......but I've got an idea, if I can pull it off there will be 2 new inklings for the 2019 holiday season.  Here's a list of what I've made so far, many years I made 2 of them.

1996 - Santa and Angel

1998 - Native American and Mexican Cha Cha

1999 - Flower Child and Mother Earth

2000 - Flying Nun and Briggatine Monk (nun one of my favs)

2001 - Clown and 2001 A Weaving Odyssey (based on our nw conference of that name)

2002 - Uncle Sam and Knitter

2003 - Geisha and Samurai (2 of my all time favorites)

2004 - Wendy Weaver and  Spinster Sue

2005 - Merlin the Wizard and Eskimo Pie

2006 - Pumpkin Pie Me Oh My and Frosty

2012 - She Sells Sea Shells

2013 - Bee Happy Honey

2014 - Amish Amy the Quilter

2015 - Lahela (Sheep's Friend) Mele Kalikimaka

It's that time of year again.......

Such joy arrived in the mail a week ago - Inglenook Fibers 12 Days of Christmas fiber. This is a limited edition and you have to be quick in the Inglenook group on Ravelry to get in on it. But if you missed out this year there is an etsy shop with lots of other fun fibery blends.

Starting Christmas Day I will spin one packet of fiber based on the Santa's Village graphic. I can't wait to see what each packet will bring........and I will not peek ahead. I will try to post them here as they're spun.

So, the big decision between now and the 25th is how do I spin these. Last year I spun them very thin and then plied with a rayon thread.......but then found that my resulting lace weight yarn was too thin for anything I wanted to knit so I then Navajo plied it. The resulting shawl turned out lovely but this year I need to think it out a bit more before starting. A few options are to spin it all on one bobbin and then ply with something else; split each packet into 2 and spin on 2 bobbins and then ply them together in the end; spin and ply each packet on it's own creating mini-skeins. If I keep spinning all on one bobbin or two bobbins as in the first two options then I end up with one skein going from color to color starting with packet 1 to packet 12. But if I spin mini-skeins when I get to a project I can mix up the color order.

And then there's the decision about which wheel? Majacraft or Hansen e-spinner........or I could go the spindle route although I'm sure to fall behind if I do that.  

Decisions, decisions........