A quick hat

I knit this this afternoon:

It's my handspun from The Bellwether's Ring Your Bells fiber club, spun to a thick-and-thin bulky weight yarn (about 16 st/inch in stockinette), and I'm quite happy with it, but now I'm going to use the rest to make other hats.  Except I can't find my copy of "Knit Hats!"  Grr.

Why we've been quiet

Because we've been eating chocolate, of course!

Actually for the most part it's because I've been sick, and Sachy's been sick, and Addie was sick, and now Kayla's sick.  So since Sukkos ended, I've just been playing catch-up.

However, yesterday even though I still felt a little lousy (actually, I felt worse at 3:00 this morning), I felt I needed to switch over from my summer (lace) knitting to my fall (hats, mittens, scarves, socks) knitting and spinning, so I was compelled to take the 2 ounces of roving from the second Ring Your Bells club shipment:

and spin it into an incredibly lofty woolen yarn:

still another bad photo

I did photograph the smaller of the two skeins of bulky wool/silk/angora/everything but the kitchen sink yarn in the sunshine, but in fact I think the earlier photos showed the colors better than the direct sunlight did.  BTW, it's about 7-8 wpi, which is more of a worsted to heavy worsted weight but pretty much matches the grist of the sample skein to which we were matching, so all is well:

And it does hang completely straight!

I spun it, I really did

I spun bulky singles and I have the pics to prove it:

Not only did the batt spin up perfectly, the singles only twist about 3/4 of the way around themselves in the skein, meaning they're unlikely to bias when knit. The yarn isn't kinky or too slubby, though the first few yards are pretty uneven as I was testing how much I needed to pre-draft (answer: don't do it).

I'm so happy! I have 240 yards of bulky handspun singles and I'm ready for the next challenge!

I forgot to mention, this is a batt from The Bellwether and I highly recommend you run over there and get yourself some yummy fiber before I spin it all!

A beautiful day, with attitude

Attitude?  Moi?

Come over here and say that!

Seriously (hah!) we had a beautiful day here--

70*, sunny, etc.  So once the boys had finally cleaned their room and the two little ones had taken their naps, I took the girls and the two little ones on a walk in Rock Creek Park, while Feivel rode his bike through the park up and back over several miles.  We saw almost no animals at all, I don't think we even spotted a squirrel, but Gilad did spot a big caterpillar almost as bright yellow as his chartreuse shirt, so he was happy, and it was lovely out, and we walked a couple of miles.

I finished clue 5 of the Mystery Shawl

and got my batt from the Ring Your Bells fiber club spun up as per the Spin-a-long directions, though it was tough--I'm very biased towards spinning fine, coming out with 2 or 3 ply fingering or sport weight yarns, and this called for a bulky singles!  Mine is definitely not quite even, but it was a very good exercise in controlling my spinning.  I'll have more pics as well as measurements once I get it washed and skeined, hopefully within a day or two.

Spinning dilemma; oh, what a problem to have

I took the plunge and was able to join a fiber club for the first time ever (someday I'll be able to afford a sock club, but that day is far off) and today the first shipment arrived:

It's a beautiful Crosspatch Creations batt, from my favorite fiber enabler, The Bellwether.

Now the dilemma:  the club includes instructions to spin a particular yarn, so that you can then knit it to a pattern in the second month.  This month the "class" is on spinning a soft bulky singles yarn.  I never spin soft bulky singles, I almost always spin plied fingering to dk weight yarns.  It would be a really good experience for me, though, to do some more "intentional" spinning in the form of following the class/instructions and forcing myself to spin this different kind of yarn.  The sample they included is absolutely beautiful and I can agree that this batt will spin into a fantastic bulky singles.  It just won't be what I usually want to do.

So I think I've talked myself into following their spin-a-long, but we'll see in the next few days.  I'm itching to go ahead and get it going on the wheel!