High Fiber--Sewing Surprise and Knitting with My Handspun

This week I finally put the sleeves and body of my La Boheme Cardigan together and started on the yoke pattern:

Here's a detail of the design, which I adapted from my friend Marianne's pattern. (You may remember Marianne from the photo I posted of the pullover that she converted to a cardigan by making a steek. She has since made another cardigan out of a Dale of Norway pullover.

I called this project "La Boheme" because I took it when we went to see that opera and knitted on the body throughout the performance. On circular needles, it was just straight knit, which is easy to do in the dark. The yarn is Corriedale. The dark brown is a natural color, and The blue was part of what I dyed back in March, 2009, using Koolaid.

I did the spinning during the Tour de Fleece 2010, and here's what I got:

Not shown in this photo is the dark chocolate I was using for the body and sleeves, and the white Corriedale left undyed, which will also be part of the pattern. This is really the first time I have completely improvised a sweater pattern from scratch. Providing some help are Knitting in the Old Way by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Deborah Robson and Elizabeth Zimmermann's The Opinionated Knitter.

In other knitting news, I thought you would get a kick out of seeing DH wearing his new Pacapoo hat:

Here's how I did it. It's the Irish Hiking Hat, but in bulky, which required some adjustment to the number of sts, and faster decreasing on the top.

Life in Park City has turned to skiing. Since I'm not a skier (scared of speed, scared of heights, so what's the point?), ski season means DH will be gone a good part of the day during nice weather, which means more time to knit and quilt for me! I get to participate in the parties, though. Here's a scene from yesterday's après-ski at Marianne and Frank's:

In the background, you can see my DBIL (left) talking with DH (right). They are brothers.

In quilting news I had a big sewing surprise. As you may know, my DSIL passed away in early October. (She was the DW of my DBIL in the photo above.) Before she died, she gave him instructions for disbursal of her possessions, including a number of hand-made sweaters, her stash of yarn, fabrics and knitting and quilting supplies. Among the items was her sewing machine, a Elna Supermatic from the 1960s, complete with cabinet. I will post a photo when I have it happily ensconced in my fiber studio. It will be a tight fit because the top of the cabinet opens out to both sides, but I think it will work. My little Featherweight really needs some professional assistance, which it hasn't had in 10 years, so this will allow me to get that done while I continue to work on the Double Wedding Ring quilt, which has been languishing due to thumb pain, thumb surgeries and then other quilting. Needless to say, this new addition to the fiber studio has precipitated a lot of upheaval, while we move stuff around in the house! It's a good process, though, and allows us to dispense with some stuff we were just too lazy to go through. The two boxes of yarn and fiber still haven't been put away, and you don't want to see my fiber studio right now! It looks like a fiber bomb went off in there! Yikes! Some of the stash found its way home with DDIL2B, DD and DGD1, as it should. DD also ended up with the cardi DSIL made with City Tweed HW in Romance, which she was working on during a camping trip in August 2009. She also took one of the extra balls of the yarn to make a scarf to go with it. There's still a lot of new stuff in my fiber studio, though. I'll post about my progress in straightening out this mess!

On my iPod: What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz. Plus all the usual podcasts.

My iPad app of the week: The free flashlight you get just by turning it on. (We had another power outage!)

On my wheel: Gaywool Merino/Silk (85/15) in Wallaby. Photos later.

Quilting: Back to the DWR, when I get settled!

Current reading: Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmermann.

Coming Soon to My Mailbox: A big KP order, including yarn for sweaters for Daphne and Rocky Dog!

In my bank account: Not much! Our snow blower died, and we had to buy a new one. Good thing for gift certificates!