Around and Around With Tour de Fleece...and Other Stuff

Tour de Fleece has begun. Here’s my first finished bobbin:

If you aren’t a spinner and don’t know about the Tour de Fleece, it’s a spinning activity that coincides with the Tour de France every year. We started Saturday. The one I’m participating in is on Ravelry. I’m on Team Knit Picks Lovers 2013 and Team Kromski 2013. My challenge is try try to spin up all of my remaining Full Circle Roving. The one I just finished is "Espresso." I plan to weave a blanket with the finished yarn, a plaid with a 2/2 twill.

I added a needle-felted Apple logo to my iPhone Cozy, for my new iPhone (my first ever), which arrived on Monday.

I used KP’s Wool of the Andes Roving in “Bare.” Just a tad. The full instructions are on my Ravelry project page. I made a stencil for the logo.

The project for my Craftsy Class, “Floor Loom Weaving,” is coming along. I’m finishing up the second pillow in the class project. Now I’m doing the “Extended Point Twill” pattern. This pattern was the “Point Twill”:

I think the neatest thing I’ve learned so far in the class is this nifty way to change yarns. 

• If you're changing because you ran out of yarn in your shuttle and just using the same color, you pull several inches out, use the new yarn to finish the shot and pull several inches of that out, leaving a gap of 1-1 1/2 inches. Then you unply the yarn, overlap one ply (or two, if there are four plies) and let the ends hang out. Then you beat and...an invisible join! Love it! 
• If you're starting or ending a color, you do that at the selvedge, but with just the one strand. You cut it leaving a tail of several inches, pull it back out for a couple of inches and unply it. Then you take one of the plies and stick it the rest of the way through, overlap the selvedge thread and put it back through the same shed, bringing the tail back out where the other tail is.
• If you just have a two-shot accent, you leave a long tail on the first shot, then bring the tail back through on the second shot, pulling it out and leaving a tail in front. Then you finish the shot from the other direction using the shuttle and stopping an inch or so from the other tail, pull it out and then do the join as you would for the same color.

The tails will be cut off to the surface of the cloth after fulling (wet finishing/washing).

I cast on some socks, so I would have something easy to grab when I leave home to run errands:

The pattern is “Waterfall Rib” from Charles Schurch’s Sensational Knitted Socks. The yarn is KP’s old “Essential” brand sock yarn in “Lantana.”

In quilting news, the appliqué project is coming along:

The pattern is Mary Sorensen’s Delectable Pathways, a combination of appliqué and pieced “Delectable Mountain” blocks. (She has a great DVD on needleturn appliqué!)

It has been hot by our standards (~80s), so we’ve been saving our hikes for late afternoon, since DH won’t hike early in the morning. The pups are happy to get out, especially on trails where they can run.

For this week’s baby cuteness, here’s a photo of Soren at a concert. Last year at this time we were awaiting an overdue baby. His first birthday is this Friday!

Writing my blog has become sort of a Ménage à trois. I’m often using my iPhone for quick photos and processing, but the iPad is still my go-to device for photo processing, and the MacBook makes it easy to post and edit.

The Tour de Fleece continues...check in next week!

What's on my needles: Some socks, just to have something small and easy to grab when leaving the house to run errands. Ready to CO for the pants to Daphne’s Bunny Suit.

What's on my loom: Craftsy Class Project, pillow #2, on last “stripe.”

What's on my Featherweight: Piecing the strips to go with the hand appliqué. (Working on second appliqué panel.)

What's on my wheel: Full Circle Roving “Quarry.”

What's on my iPhone: Finished The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larssen. Very good and hard to put down. I got a lot done because I didn’t want to drop the book. Now reading Cotillion by Georgette Heyer from Audible, something entirely different, but also diverting.

What's my app of the week: Camera+ app for iPhone.

What's in my wine glass: Corbett Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon. Big bottle. Good, as always. (We never have bad wine at our house.)

Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the MacBook, using the iPad or iPhone for photo processing. Some photos taken with iPhone. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.