eye candy friday

I may be in a small minority here, but I prefer Standard Time to Daylight Time, at least this week.  I am not a morning person, at all, though I can pretend to be one when I have to.  This, combined with lab schedules, means that early sunset just makes me feel better about working late–there’s no way I’ll leave before sunset, so why not stay the extra hour to finish that experiment–and I actually get some sunlight before I have to leave my house.  So, taking advantage of some of that sunlight: this is my current walk-to-work spinning, an Abbybatt in Hibiscus.  (This is 3 mornings’ spinning, so probably about an hour’s worth.)

And, though it’s not terribly attractive yet, here’s some other knitting I’ve been doing:

This is my Zombies yarn (which may need a different name…), a couple of rounds into the lace pattern of the Bird’s Nest Cowl from Elann.

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In other news, I think I’ve figured out how to convince Mel to sit in my lap: keep the heat low enough that I want to knit with a blanket on my lap.  He’s always been fond of the acrylic blanket that was the second rectangular thing I knit, but he seems okay with fleece throws, too.

 

awww, poor Mel

“If I hold onto the noisemaker, she won’t leave!”

I’ve been working a lot and running around like a crazy lady recently, neglecting my poor, dear cat. I’ve even had the nerve to come home after work and then go out again!

Except for the weather, I had a pretty great weekend–I went to a party on Friday (going-away party, alas, for two awesome people) and a wedding dance (contra, English, and Scottish) on Saturday, which convinced me that I need to actually learn Scottish dancing at some point. My feet are slow learners.

The weather, however, meant that I had to pull the air conditioner out of the hall closet and rearrange the living room so I could set it up. I had been so hoping to not need it until I move next month… (I’m moving a whole five blocks this time. Same zip code, though, unlike after my last (four-block) move.)

Gotta run now, but there should be a Tour de Fleece wrap-up post soon.

 

eye candy friday

I spent a couple of hours last Sunday at Philadelphia’s cherry blossom festival and then wandered around my neighborhood a bit. (Yes, I took pictures of cherry blossoms, but I figured I’d post something else here.) It was a beautiful day, and lots of people were taking advantage of the weather.  I’ve preferred the somewhat cooler weather we’ve had this week, but it’s great to see all the budding, blooming, and leafing-out plants.
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Four years ago yesterday, I brought home a tiny kitten:

He’s grown a lot since then…as has this blog, which I started at about the same time. As far as Mel and blog-friends, at least, these’ve been a pretty great four years.

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Not much fibery stuff going on–my downtime has gotten swallowed up by the first couple of books in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series.  Knitting while reading works okay, but it’s slower.  Good books are such a time suck.  Worthwhile, but still a time suck.  Rather like the recent increase in (unexciting but tasty) cooking.  It’s great to have Real Food for lunch, aside from its being cheaper than buying food from the café downstairs or lunch trucks, but it limits the spinning time.

 

spring!

I saw the first open crocuses of spring this afternoon!

And Mel is enjoying the newly-reopened windows:

After the 70ºF afternoon, that handspun vest I’ve been contemplating seems much less urgent…

 

some spinning

I pulled out this cashmere/tussah again a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been half wondering why it ever got put away–it’s so deliciously soft. I don’t know what I’m going to do with half an ounce of yarn when I’m done, but it’s definitely been worth spinning anyway.

This stuff already has a plan. It’s Good Fortune, the January shipment of Enchanted Knoll Farm’s Happy Hooves club. Lots of shades of green, plus lots of bits of sparkle…..I’m having lots of fun with it. Which is good, considering I’ve got six ounces and I’m spinning laceweight. Okay, the plan’s not highly detailed yet, because I’m waiting to see what yardage I get, but this is going to be a lace shawl.

(Where’s the handspun lace shawl I’ve been working on for months, you ask? The darker stripe is about twice as wide as the last time it showed up here…)

I don’t think Mel was particularly trying to stop me from spinning by sitting in my (Victoria-) spinning chair–he seems to be enjoying the softness of that CVM.

 

Thanksgiving vacation, in pictures

As usual, I went up to New York for Thanksgiving with my parents and New York family. Whenever traffic and weather allow, I like to walk through Madison Square Park on my way from the train station, and I’m really glad I did so on Thursday–the current art installation is a bunch of small tree houses (“tree huts”).  (I also caught a bit of the Macy’s Day Parade outside Penn Station, but I figured Pikachu’s back wasn’t picture-worthy.)

I saw this as I was leaving the park, and thought it was appropriate signage for Thanksgiving:

I didn’t take pictures of the food or the people, but here’s a shot of the centerpiece (a cyclamen from the Greenmarket):

I continued to neglect my camera all day Friday, despite seeing the World Trade Center site for the first time since going to the tkts booth there ages ago, but I shot this from my bed on Friday night.  (Please pardon the angle; I was too tired to get up, and there wasn’t a real tripod handy.)  I know lighting like that has to be incredibly wasteful of energy, but I love the way it looks.

…And then, today, I came home to a snuggly cat.

The plastic bag in front of Mel is holding the yarn for my new lace project:

I’m using my corriedale/silk singles for Mim’s Adamas Shawl.  I’m a little concerned about how well the yarn is going to stand up to blocking, but I’m really enjoying the process.  It’s a really nice pattern, and the yarn is incredibly soft.  (And it’s handspun!  And lace!  What more do I need?)

All in all, a very nice vacation.

 

at last

The immediate deadline, the one that had me cancelling on nearly everything (dancing, housewarming, knitting, cooking, cleaning…) for the last couple of weeks, is past.  Good news: I may actually graduate next summer.  Associated news: I will probably stay really busy for the entire time.  This weekend, though, I took Thursday and Friday evenings for spinning.

Left: the rest of the fustic/madder/cochineal-dyed BFL I bought from Handspun by Stefania for something to spindle-spin at MDSW.  Right: a bit of the wool I bought from her last year, chain-plied so I could clear off the bobbin for this:

~75 yards of worsted weight, super squishy rambouillet.  I’d never spun rambouillet before, and only finally picked this up (out of my closet) for the (Ravelry) Spinner Central July SAL.  I think I like this stuff.  (The red is definitely harsher than the grey, but the plied yarn is still pretty nice.)

I might’ve spun more of the 8oz of that that I had, and I’m sure I’ll do so eventually, but I wanted (again) to clear off that bobbin.  I finally caved and joined Amy Boogie’s fiber club.

Here’s Mel with the June fiber (Flowering Weeds, 70/30 merino/mohair).

And here’s half of the fiber (stripped in half lengthwise), in daylight.

It’s a really enjoyable spin so far.

(No, still no more knitting I can show.  Only half a cuff left on the swap socks, though.  Soon!  (Soon I will be done with the knitting for the swap, the knitting for the swa-a-a-ap, the knitting for the swap…))  Still, I’ve got more fibery stuff up here, after a mere month.  (Hence the title.  It was sooo nice to spend most of an evening spinning.  And to have something to show.)

 

not secret

I’ve still been putting all of my knitting time into my swap socks, but I’ve been spinning a bit in the background, and it’s not secret.

This is a two-ply of leftovers: some natural white cormo from MDSW 2006, and some variegated-blue merino from Boogie, each spun mostly as comfort spinning and then plied together.

It was wonderfully soft and sproingy, if a tad uneven, but I don’t really like strongly and consistently barberpoling yarns.  So I decided to play with overdyeing.

Mel is intrigued:

This picture’s a little washed out, but it’s ~210 yards of the two-ply and ~25 yards of leftover cormo, plied back on itself and thrown into the same dyebath.

For more accurate color:

It’s not at all what I’d expected, since turquoise+yellow usually produces a strong, pure green, but I think I might like it.  Not for me to wear, but I can always overdye it again if it sits around too long unpurposed.

 

random wednesday

• The food blog to which I contribute, Farm to Philly, is organizing a One Local Summer project for this year. It’s primarily aimed at people in the Mid-Atlantic, but it sounds like it’s open to everyone else, too.

• Someone’s set up a Google map of public fruit in Philadelphia. Brilliant.

• I haven’t been doing a lot of spinning lately–my weekend went mostly to housecleaning and rearranging my kitchen so I could fit three people at my dining table–but I did spin this on Sunday:

…out of one of these, which I made on Brook’s carder a couple of weeks ago.

• I’ve also been knitting a bit, when I can fit it in around the cooking. I’ve picked up the Peacock Feather Shawl again:

It’s another row or two along–I’ve finished chart 4–but it doesn’t look appreciably different from this. I love it, but I’m out of practice with laceweight yarn, and the knitting is slow.

• I got a shiny, new camera! It’s not the DSLR I mentioned a few weeks ago, because I am indecisive. (Anyone have recommendations re. the Canon EOS 20D or the Nikon D60 versus the Canon XTi?) However, my five-year-old digital camera has been turning itself off for no reason, including right after I turn it on and before it lets me take even one picture, so I decided to forestall cameralessness. On numerous recommendations, including Claudia’s, I picked up a PowerShot A720IS. I love it! I have a lot more figuring out to do, since it only arrived yesterday afternoon, but it has lots and lots of control options, and it’s the same size as my old camera!

Mel was sad that I stopped waving the cat dancer around and started flashing lights in his eyes. (I was wondering if the face-recognition thing would work with cats. I think it does.

 

cats will sit on anything

Having learned from my experience with Foliage (and really wanting a sweater before it becomes spring), I’ve resumed work on Salt Peanuts.  As of the end of November, the last time I’d knit on SP, I was a few rows past the lace.  I clearly have a lot more knitting to do, but it’s nice to see progress.

I think Mel is mostly interested in the dangling yarn, here, and possibly the dangling camera cover (just before this photo was taken).  I’m impressed that the yarn is apparently so fascinating that he’s willing to sit on the blocking pins I used to keep the needle from curling and bending the sweater-back in half.  They’re the rounded-top double-pin kind, but they’re still metal…

 

C is for…

• Cats.

Thunder was the cat I grew up with. We got her as “my” cat when I was ten, and she stayed “mine” until December of 2004, when she died of a heart problem. (I named her Thunder because she purred extremely loudly.)

Mel you’ve probably seen before, if you’ve been reading long at all. (And there are lots more pictures under ’small and fuzzy’ if you want to look.) He came home with me in the spring of 2005, and grudgingly puts up with the amount of time I spend away from home because I do, eventually, come back. I often return to find him waiting by the door, asking me why I left him alone for so long.

I’m very much a cat person rather than a dog person or a no-pet person. (…As I sit on my couch, with Mel leaning against me.)

• Camera.

Although I have never seriously studied photography and have only spent a little bit of time in darkrooms, I am very fond of photography, especially when I’m using my “real” camera. My parents gave me this Vivitar about ten years ago; they’d bought it (used) about twenty or thirty years before that. I love this camera. Point-and-shoot is all very well for action snapshots, but I’m something of a control freak at times.

Despite my fondness for this old camera, though, I’m feeling like it might be worth shifting over to all-digital. (I am impatient! And film is expensive!) I’ve heard good things about the Nikon D40 and the Canon XTi. Any other recommendations, or suggestions about which of those might be better? Alas, I fear there’s no chance my Vivitar screw-on lenses will work with either…

 

eye candy friday: birthday yarn

Due to some addressing mixups, I only got my hands on one of my birthday presents this afternoon, one from my college roommate. (My birthday was November 3rd. The package apparently arrived on Halloween but was stuck in the mailroom.)

A skein of Noro Aurora (shiny!)

And a skein of wool from the farm where my friend worked for a couple of years after graduation (better than shiny).

Any suggestions for the Aurora? I’m going to keep both of these around for a little while as pets, and they’re both going to be things for myself, but I haven’t decided exactly what to do with them.

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I’ve discovered how to get Mel to curl up in my lap: put the Lion Brand Homespun blanket I knit as my second rectangular project in my lap first. The one problem with this is that it’s awfully hard to make myself make him get up.

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I’m off today to visit family, for simple pleasant, holiday socializing. It’s going to be great to be out of the city, and great to have a chance to cook with my dad, but I’m really looking forward to an end to these months of travel. (Note to self: do not apply for any truly travel-intensive jobs.)

Happy Solstice, everyone.  I hope you’re enjoying the lights everywhere.

 

eye candy friday: wilbur

wilbur, originally uploaded by enting.

Wilbur is one of Anne’s boys. He is both sweet and less bouncy (and thus more photographable) than his brother Orville.