an ent knits

Last night, as I was waiting for the bus to go to fiber night, I realized that the batt I was spinning was a good match for the skirt I was wearing:

Heh. Maybe I’ll eventually wear that skirt with a shawl containing that batt… That’s an Orange Blossom Abbybatt all spun; I’ve moved on to another, in Hibiscus. (The plan: ply Hibiscus with Orange Blossom, Girl Drink Drunk, and the remaining Hibiscus. Have a set of orangey pinkish yarns for a shawl.)

I got some knitting done on the bus, too (and at Rhinebeck, for that matter), so I have a bit of sock toe:

Not much other spinning or knitting, though–my at-home fiber time (as well as about half the housework time) this week has gone into figuring out how to weave patterns with two heddles. Maybe I’ll post pictures over the weekend, when I might get better light.

This has been a near-perfect fall afternoon. I have made soup, drunk tea, watched the sun on the turning leaves outside my kitchen window, eaten an apple with sharp cheddar, and….woven on my new loom.

Yep, new loom. I decided that I’d go ahead and get myself a loom at Rhinebeck, as an early birthday present for myself. I got a Schacht Flip, with a 20″ weaving width; it’s about 24″ wide total. I also bought an extra 10-dent heddle, so I can try some 2-heddle patterning once I get the hang of the basic process (should be soon, unless I decide to try color patterning first).

I warped it last night with a ball of linen/rayon that I had lying around. Using it for both warp and weft was making a more open weave than I wanted, so I dug out some mystery wool (probably but not definitely Cascade 220) once I got past the header.

I’m gradually getting the hang of how to work the loom more efficiently and how to have not-entirely-terrible edges.  This is going to be fun.  (This photo is lit by actual sunlight, in the corner of my living room that’s farthest from the windows.  Sunday afternoons are great.)

These’re a couple more photos from that trip to Valley Forge, partly because I haven’t processed my Rhinebeck photos yet, partly because there wasn’t much bright sunlight so these are prettier.

Happy Friday!

So, as I was getting ready for Rhinebeck last week, I realized that my hats are all still packed somewhere, as are most of my scarves.  I briefly toyed with the idea of knitting a hat in the car on the way up to the campground, going so far as to ball an extra skein of yarn, but then I decided that a third knitting project for the weekend would be overkill.  (Y’know, on top of the three spindles-with-projects.)

Still, when I came home, I wanted a new hat.  And now I have one.  There had to be some kind of silver lining to two sickdays right after vacation.  (I’m feeling better today than yesterday, but fever on top of feeling like crap…I stayed home.  And napped more than I knit.)

It’s another Foliage–decent pattern, top-down, and I wasn’t going to make up a pattern, even a simple one, through this headache. I wanted a top-down hat because I wasn’t sure I’d have enough Rhubarb, and I figured the Roses in the Snow would be better as a stripe along the bottom than a patch at the crown. And, as it turned out, I really like the way the Rhubarb striped.

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Rhinebeck was great.  Way too short to actually spend time with all the people I wanted to see, but I got to at least say hello to many of them, and cabin-camping worked out pretty well despite the loss of electricity from Saturday afternoon on.  I may have said this last year, when it was even more true, but I love my down sleeping bag.  It kept me toasty and warm.

The weather this year was less beautiful than last year, but the forecast snow never materialized, and there was hardly any rain, either.  It was sufficiently damp and muddy that I went with Keens and handknit socks rather than my trusty plastic Birki’s, but it was nice to be wearing handknit socks in such surroundings.

I’m still sorting through my scenery pictures, and I have yet to photograph all of my purchases, but here are two of the more exciting things I bought:

That’s an ounce of icelandic lamb with alpaca and silk, from Frelsi Farm, which was rightly labelled as the nicest of this year.  (At least, nicest of the stuff they had, which was pretty much all nice.)  I bought an ounce, plus a couple of other blends of theirs, and I think they’re going to grow up to be a Flicka hat from the Knitter’s Book of Wool.   The braid of beautiful greens is Finn top from Gnomespun.  I don’t have set plans for it yet, but I’m thinking it might become a sweater yoke.

Foliage pictures and the Really Super Exciting Purchase (early birthday present) sometime later.  Maybe for ECF.

Is it overkill to post two ECF things and more pictures today?  I hope not…

I spent yesterday afternoon walking through Valley Forge National Historical Park with Anju, though we bypassed most of the historical stuff in favor of trees and flowers and fungi and the river.  It was a pretty good walk–about 8.5 miles–and a beautiful day to be outside.  I even brought along my film camera for the expedition, and it was well worth the weight.

Here’s part 2:

I got three of these lovely, lovely Abbybatts this week. The colorway’s called Jungle Love, and they’re merino/silk. Mmmmm.

Part 1:

I’ve posted this before, I think, right after I took it–it’s from two years ago, when I went to the big neuroscience meeting in San Diego (and hung out with my friends who live/d there). It’s among my favorites, and it’s a happy-feeling shot, and I’m in a good mood after my thesis committee meeting.

Part 2 will show up later, maybe in the evening, and it’ll be fibery. But I’ve been busy this week. That whole “committee meeting” thing.

It’s brightly colored, and I got a sunlit picture the other day, so this week’s eye candy is my current travel-spindle project, an Abby batt in Orange Blossom. I love the way it changes color between drafting and yarn.

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The fleece is all sorted, but still in S.’s spare room. And we only had a tall-kitchen trash bag or so of stuff we couldn’t or wouldn’t use.