More info on the wool

It turns out that the woman who owns the 3 sheep has two breeds, Lincoln and something starting with a B that my mom couldn't remember. This is what a Lincoln sheep looks like:



So in a few weeks there will be lots of wool for me! Yay!

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Also, last week one of my yarns got featured in an Etsy treasury. Unfortunately the treasuries only last for 2 days, so I don't have the link any more. Or rather, I could give you a link, and you'd get an error message. But still, it was pretty cool. It got me a lot of item views. Alas, no purchases.

Gloves and wool!

I finished the gloves. And they fit! Yay, gloves!



I'm not sure if i can make gloves for people whose hands I do not have frequent access to. I made these by having Riv first trace her hand and measure the wrist circumference, and then at various points I had her try them on. So the whole idea of following a pattern and having gloves fit seems foreign to me. Maybe it works for other people, but I have not tried it yet, and am kind of afraid to.

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In completely unrelated news, my mom called me tonight; it turns out one of her coworkers has a farm with 3 sheep, and has wool lying around that is currently being unused. So I can have it for free! I'll have to card it myself, but I have a drum carder, which I haven't use much yet, but I want to try it out. Hopefully the wool will be of good quality, and then I could sell batts or yarn in my Etsy store. Or I could at least spin it for myself and have a sweater or something. (I didn't bother asking what kind of sheep, since my guess is my mom wouldn't have known the answer. I guess I can ask her to ask the coworker.)

Yarn Desk

I have a lot of yarn and fiber. The majority of it is in a bunch of huge bins up in my closet. However, I also have a desk downstairs. This is what it currently looks like:






Most of the stuff there is spun and/or dyed by me. I also have some leftover dyes from last session which sit in tupperware containers on top.

I hadn't intended it to become a yarn desk, but as I worked on projects I started leaving stuff there, and it's also right near where I dye things, so gradually stuff accumulated until the point where I decided that it was, in fact, a yarn desk. I'm not sure where I'm going to do work once classes start, but it isn't going to be here.

In which the Knitter of Shiny Things loses the Great Shawl Race

Some time in November, Riv wanted to make a lace shawl, and had me print out some patterns for her, since she lacks a printer. She decided to make the Northern Lights shawl. The pattern was actually pretty easy, and so I decided that I, too, would make this shawl.

So I cast on, already a couple of weeks behind Riv. Much unlike me, Riv likes to work on one knitting project at a time. I, on the other hand, was working on a bunch of spinning commissions (see previous post), a hat that was a Channukah present for a friend, a sock, a cowl, and gloves for Riv (which I'm almost finished with).

I'm about halfway through chart 2. Here's a kinda blurry photo of it, taken recently:



Riv just finished the shawl today, minus blocking, since our blocking wires have not arrived in the mail yet. So I have lost the race. I knew it was a losing battle, what with the head start on her part and the zillion other projects on my part, but still, I wish I could have done a little better. After all, she has a job and I'm still unemployed and haven't started library school yet. Shouldn't I be spending all my free time knitting?

Nope. I do actually have a life outside of knitting, and outside of the shawl. Now that she's finished hers, there's less of a rush on mine. I'm hoping to finish the gloves tomorrow.

And I dyed a bunch of things on Friday, and will photograph them at some point in the near future.