15 Minutes

Being the first Monday after springing the clocks forward, it was rather difficult getting the kids up and going to school today. I often feel as though, the moment I get back home to my quiet office that the best way to start the day would be to have a coffee break, and today more so than usual. Unfortunately, as nice as this coffee break is, it invariably results in procrastination.

Today, instead of starting with a coffee break, I started with a spinning break.

I do some of my best thinking while spinning (or while running, but I can't do that now with my sprained/slightly dislocated ankle; can't wait until I can run again!), and I found that I've been worrying a lot lately about the things I have left slide lately in order to keep up with work. Sewing, housework, crafts-other-than-knitting, knitting for family members (I keep this down to just a few things, but I'm not even getting these done lately), knitting for myself, and definitely blogging, which it's easy to spot has not been happening here lately at all.

I  realized, during my 15 minute spinning break, that there is no reason I can't do several of these things as 15 minute breaks. Sure, I can still take a coffee break too, but if I can alleviate some stress and worry by taking an extra 15 minutes to work on two or more of those things each day, then it's more than worth it. Working for 15 minutes on a blog post each day (whether it gets published same day or not doesn't much matter; it's just putting the time in), then I'll at least have the occasional post, which is much better than the none that has been going on lately.

Featured spinning: Ashford Silk Merino blend, in Salvia.

Getting Around to Things

I've been having a bit of trouble sleeping of late (nothing major, just can't settle, it seems), so I thought, since I was up anyway, perhaps I could make a bit of a push to finish knitting up my Firth Waves Cushion.

I have one repeat to go now, but I'm running low on one colour. There's no problems with the pattern here; it calls for two balls of the yarn for that one, and I only had one in my stash. There's nearly enough, but not quite, so I went to order more, and I'll be waiting now for when it is back in stock. Luckily, there's no rush to finish it up really, so it's just been put aside once again for a little while.

In the meantime, I plied up those singles of my new batt from the Curious Spin Batt Buffet, and I now have something that rather reminds me of marshmallows, both in lovely puffiness and colour.

It's meant to coordinate with the Creamsicle batt that I had previously spun up so that they can play together in an eventual knitting project, and I think it works nicely. I might just go with a third batt to round them out though.

I'm also halfway through spinning up the singles from the BFL that I picked up at Celeigh Wool. The colours remind me of various shades of blue jeans. This is a delightful, relaxed spin with no particular project in mind just yet.

I'd finished spinning my blue silk singles ages ago, but yesterday, I finally decided to get around to winding off some plying balls so I could start plying. Unfortunately, the singles snapped in a couple of places. If it had been wool, I would have spliced it, but as it was, I ended up with four batches of plying balls (two of which were quite, quite small, but the other two of decent size). Also, there's another wee ball of singles that I'm ignoring for now.





I found a silver lining in that though. Since it's my first time working with silk, I wasn't entirely sure just how much twist there should be in the ply. It had been suggested, in some of my reading, that the answer is quite a lot. But, it's hard to remain confident when your plied work twists itself and looks like this after winding it off:

After a bath though, they're well-behaved, so it was nice to be able to test the two smaller lengths before plying the rest.

Today, we're off to pick raspberries, but later, I want to swatch a couple of things. Here's the current plan for the non-work-related one:

About a Year, and About a Week

It's been a long week, but it ended with a lovely package in the mail:

It's sample return time! It was delightful to open the package from Knit Now and find three samples that I had knit up to present my patterns that Knit Now have published in the past year. The Woodland Cardigan represents an important beginning for me, as it was my first third-party publication. It also marks a year since I have started working full-time (or, as full-time as I can during the kids' school hours and the occasional round of household errands and tasks) at knitwear design.

This week has featured an interruption to work; that of having a sick kid at home all week. She's well on the mend now though, and for that I am very thankful. I am also glad that I have been able to easily take that time with her due to my work being fairly flexible, and that if it was going to happen (and this kid is rarely ill), it happened during a slow week. Sure, there was a lot that I would have been working on, but none of it needed to be done this week exactly.

While spending time with my daughter, I did also make a bit of progress on a few non-work projects, such as on her socks that I've been meaning to make for awhile:

and, on a hat for a friend's baby (just need to weave-in those ends!), the pattern being garter and hearts by Amanda Keeys and it is knit in Et après by Plassard, colour 89. If it looks a bit big, it's meant for the 6 month and up size, as it's rather lovely out, so the baby shouldn't need it for awhile yet.

Also, I'm still spinning the blue silk. I'm getting rather close to the end of the singles, but it's still going. 25g has been taking longer than I thought, but it is a rather fine single (maybe not consistently fine, but I'm still happy), so it may be a few more days yet before I can start getting this organized for plying. No idea what I will make with this just yet, but it's certainly no rush to decide. I'm enjoying the spinning process and the feel and shine of that silk!

All Work and No Ply Makes Jess a Dull Girl...

I've been working a fair bit lately, but in-between knitting swatches for submissions and a sample for a new pattern, I've been getting a decent bit of spinning done.





In the last few weeks, I've spun black Shetland wool, and wound it into a plying ball.

I've worked off and on on spinning that glowingly blue silk that I bought on my Vancouver vacation last summer.

But mostly, I've been plying this interminably huge plying ball of silk/wool laceweight.

Last night, I finished plying, and today I skeined the thing and washed it.

I've estimated it's somewhere between 719m and 777m, and it's currently busy drying. I'll have to decide whether or not I do want to dye it as well, but in the meantime...











There's some black Shetland that needs plying now that I've freed up a spindle.

In Which I Mostly Post Many Spinning-Related Photos

In all the excitement of having a new pattern out in Knit Now Magazine, I forgot to tell you about my shopping trip to A Curious Spin.

I picked up a new spindle, as I'd been looking to get a bigger one for plying, in the hopes that the silk/merino blend shown here with the second batch of singles nearly finished

would perhaps fit all together on the one spindle when plied. Now that I've finished spinning the singles, I'm giving it a go on the new one:

I also treated myself to some Gotland

and to a Curious Spinner's Woolly Pack, which is such a great idea. You get to pick two to four different breeds of sheep from a good variety, and end up with 56g total. The whole idea is to sample a few things to see what you like, so that if you really enjoy a particular variety, you can plan to buy more for a project in future, and if you're not so keen on something, you haven't invested much time and money into it. This is a very fun way to explore breeds you've only otherwise read about, and saves you the trouble of deciding on trying only one.

As you can see, I picked four: Wensleydale, Romney, Masham, and Polworth.






I've started with the Wensleydale, and am rather liking it so far. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like plied and washed, and must set aside some swatching time so I can figure out if there's a particular project I'd like to use it for in future. I'm getting a bit tired of darning mittens, so I'm tempted to try something in the way of a sturdy longwool for an outer mitten, and maybe something fluffier for an inner mitten.






















Of course, having freed up a spindle, I started something else right away. I pulled out my Vancouver souvenir of silk top, and started with the blue. I've been dying to try this out, but was waiting to improve my skills a bit first. I'm glad I've spent a bit of time with long-wools, as the Leicester was actually great practice for this stuff.

















The saturated colour is almost startling, and the shine makes this stuff just plain magic.

Finishing off with a quick Byatt shawl update, I ran out of the main colour before I could finish the second repeat of the striped chart. I had a wee bit left, but while it was close to being enough for two more rows, it was nowhere near enough for the four more that I would have needed, so I just stopped that chart a bit early.

I have plenty of the gold colour though, so am currently contemplating extra repeats of the lace chart. Perhaps two more for five in total, as it feels that an odd number would balance best, but I'll complete the fourth one first before deciding. So very close to finishing now! I have a lot of math to work on this week, but hopefully I can squeeze in a bit of time to finish this up!



In Which Cookies are Baked and Knitting is Accomplished

We've been busy baking and visiting, and cleaning, and preparing. We were playing around with a recipe for checkerboard cookies (from a Canadian Living magazine, I think from 2006), and instead of checkerboards, we tried all sorts of fun combinations of the two-toned dough. You could use any pinwheel or other fancy two-toned cookie dough to do the same.

I was particularly proud of the ones I made to look like those round peppermint candies, so I thought I'd include a little how-to.

After mixing your dough (ideally with peppermint extract added in not inconsiderable quantity) and freezing it in blocks, cut into rectangular logs.

Next, cut those logs in half from corner to corner (my cuts were rather sloppy, but the results were still pretty nice, I think, so it needn't be perfect).

Arrange the wedges into a wheel (I had five of each colour in this wheel). If you like, brush a little egg-white onto them first to help them to stick together. I didn't bother with that step myself.

Sorry so blurry; the camera chose to focus on the Elvis shot-glass instead.

Next, gently squeeze and roll the dough to stick the wedges together as neatly as possible.

If desired, chill again for awhile, but I just plunged right in and started slicing little peppermint candies. I have some holes in the centres, but I'm sure that if you can slice neater wedges than I did, and possibly with use of the egg white, the holes could be avoided.

My girls played around with the dough and made intriguing logs for me to slice, sandwiches (resulting in cookies that look like bacon; I'll have to keep these in mind for April Fool's day), and snowmen.

Keeping my promise to show you some knitting projects, I have these little socks that I made up for Christmas ornaments to give to the kids' teachers for gifts.

It's a great use for leftover sock yarn, and the teachers will have a little something to keep after they're finished with the little treats that the socks will decorate. Other than using moss stitch on the white cuff to make it look fluffier, I just made ordinary socks, only much smaller. Easy-peasy.

Also, I finished (some time ago, but can only just post these now) a pair of the Innsbruck Mittens from Vintage Modern Knits: Contemporary Designs Using Classic Techniques, which I made for my wonderful Mother-in-Law for her birthday. I had offered a sneak-peek of these back around Halloween, but here they are now entire:

 As my Mother-in-Law has a wool allergy, these are Estelle 100% silk, finished with cotton embroidery. These were knit and embroidered as directed, so there's not much more to say other than that they're a lovely design.

Lacy Sparkly Manta Ray

Looking, as much as anything, like a lacy, sparkly manta ray, is the finished shawl. I think it's quite lovely, and I hope it manages to raise a good price for the charity auction for the Wellspring centre in Calgary.

Just to recap, I knit the Percy Shawl, by Sanne Kalkman, with Fantastic Knitting Zephyr Laceweight,in lilac. I used two different types of glass beads, one of which was to replace the nupps. I wasn't sure I had quite enough yarn to do the nupps anyhow, and I had seen a few versions of this shawl on Ravelry that had been done with beads instead. The only other change was to repeat Chart A one extra time.

It's a very busy day heading into a very busy weekend, but I wanted to be sure to share the shawl photos beforehand, so here are a few!