High Fiber--New Projects, Old Projects, and Red!

I've started on DGD1's quilt for her college apartment:

We picked out these batiks from Connecting Threads: (from left) Sunflower-Evening Sun, Aurora-Afterglow, Nebula-Ultraviolet, Aurora-Daybreak, Aurora-Flamenco, Dreamscape-Subterranean, Dreamscape-Fall Foliage, Dreamscape-Enchanted Forest, Jungle-Parade, Dreamscape-Sonora, Aurora-Grotto and Nebula-Harvest Moon. Flamenco will be the inside border and Harvest Moon the outside border. Ultraviolet and Enchanted Forest are just fat quarters, so there will just be touches in the quilt, but the others will appear more or less in equal quantities of lights and darks. I also have some batik scraps in appropriate colors I can throw in to give some variety.

 

I also received an order from Knit Picks.

 

 

The big skeins of yarn are Wool of the Andes Bulky in Chocolate, Red, Hazelnut and Suede (to mix with leftovers, for a purse) and the little skein is Dishie, to make a dishcloth for my kitchen, which is pretty neutral, but the accessories are red. I had made dishcloths out of a pale beige, but they always look dirty, even if they aren't. Red it will be. When I have nothing else to do, LOL!

The needles are a set of 6" Harmony dpns and two 24" NP circs, both for socks and in size 1.5 (2.5 mm), which is my favorite size for fingering-weight sock yarn. I never have enough.

The pretty little clasps are for Daphne's Bees' Knees cardigan, which is progressing well. I'm almost done with the sleeves, which are knit two at a time in the round, with steeks between. This is so they can be cut apart and the underarm seams sewn so that there isn't a jog at the beginning of the round. In the middle of the photo below, you can see the steek sts, with a marker on each side (one got twisted above the circ), easily, I hope, identified by the fact that the pattern goes sort of willy-nilly, with increases on each side. One pattern repeat of the Little Bees and it will be ready to put together.

There will be lots of yarn left over. Can anyone say, "More Socks?"

Speaking of Socks, I have been watching my favorite baseball team reach the top of the American League. Go Red Sox!

 

If it continues to look like they may make it to the World Series this year, I may have to use those dpns to CO a pair of socks in...you guessed it...red! (I watched Ted Williams play at Fenway Park in Boston when I was just in pigtails and have been a fan ever since. Of course, the fact that socks are involved doesn't hurt!)

 

With the hot weather, I have been using my slow cooker a lot. I fixed this the other night. One of our favorites, "Spicy White Bean and Sweet Potato Stew with Collards," from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson, although I used Chard instead, which didn't need precooking. Yum!

Another hot-weather activity is taking the pups swimming:

I have to be honest and admit that hot for my part of Park City (above 7200') is in the 80s. Still the house can get quite warm during the day because of the sun. However, we could get our first snow in the next few weeks, and forget Trick-or-Treating come the end of October!

 

Will Peggy get DGD1's quilt top finished this week? How about the Bees' Knees? Tune in next week and find out.

 

What's on my needles: Still the Bees' Knees and the new Lullaby socks.

What's on my Featherweight: DGD1's college quilt.

What's on my wheel: The PA merino. (Bobbin #3.)

What's on my iPad: The Knit Picks Podcast, The audiobook <u>Deliver Us From Evil</u> by David Baldacci, from the library.

What's on my nightstand: Cat Bordhi's book <u>New Pathways for Sock Knitters</u>.

What's my app of the week: Battery Doctor Pro, which is supposed to improve the life of your iPad battery. I heard about it in the "I Love My iPad" group on Ravelry, and it was on sale! I'm using it now, so this blog post is coming from my MacBook.

What's in my wine glass: Charles Shaw (AKA "Two-Buck-Chuck" in CA or "Three-Buck-Chuck" in other states) Pino Grigio, lightly chilled. Nice for hot weather.

 

<i>Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the MacBook. No other computer was used in any stage, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.</i></p>

Really, Really High Fiber and the Last of the Summer Wildflowers

We're talking nosebleed section here: 11,943'. Here's the view:

No, this isn't a view from an airplane; it's the view from the summit, where we ate our lunch and staved off hail.

The hike up Bald Mountain wasn't as difficult as I expected. (This is not the Bald Mountain of composer Mussorgsky fame as performed in "Fantasia." This one is a mountain in the Uintas, in Utah.) One of our friends who went on the hike suggested that our pups should stay in the trailer, because they might have to be "carried" over the rocks. I said if they needed to be carried, I certainly would have to be. Rocky and Sunny are little mountain goats! (They showed him!)

It was nice to get back to the campfire, though, where I finished my Limeade Socks and modeled them for fellow campers:

After plying my Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Merlot Heather spinning fiber singles, I started with this lovely blue merino:

I bought the spinning fiber at Twisted in Portland. It's PA merino from the Falklands, dyed by the Oregon dyer, Pico Accuardi. I am going to three-ply it, so I had divided it into three equal (I hope) parts.

The plied Merlot Heather turned out nicely after washing and skeining:

And a closeup:

It's about fingering weight, a two-ply, from probably the most consistent singles I've spun so far.

I started some blue socks using Knit Picks Stroll hand painted in "Lullaby." It's a tonal yarn with shades of bright blue to almost purple. As you can see, it often gives you stripes. With my usual vivid imagination, I've decided to call them the Lullaby Socks.

The pattern is K2, P2 rib every other rnd, alternating with a rnd of straight K. The sock yarn and the Merlot Heather spinning fiber are available from Knit Picks here.

We did a lot of hiking during our camping trip. Four full-day hikes, in fact, including the one to the top of Bald Mountain. There are some lovely ponds and lakes in the Uintas, providing the pups with some swimming, something they really enjoy. 

The wildflowers were lovely. (I'm afraid the beautiful colors of the flowers are all the inspiration I can provide for quilters this week, but DGD1’s quilting fabrics should be at the PO awaiting pick up.)

They are late this year, probably because of the cool summer and the excess rain we've had. Flowers are lovely, but the wet conditions also brought Mosquitos, deer flies and horse flies! Which was why I was spinning in an outfit sprayed with DEET and fastened at the ankles and wrists. This is very unusual here.

The pups found that they could stay clear of the bugs by keeping on the move:

In several of the high-elevation ponds we found a lot of not-quite-mature amphibians:

They don't look like frogs to me. Salamanders?

This doe made an appearance at our campsite every evening:

Other interesting sightings during our camping trip included a train of pack goats. We have seen horses, mules and llamas used as pack animals, but this is the first time we had seen goats used this way.

I had been working on an article about Camp Hobe for the Therapy Animals of Utah (a Delta Society affiliate) newsletter and wishing I had interviewed someone from the administration of Camp Hobe, which is a summer camp for children impacted by cancer. It was just about too late, since the deadline was Monday. Some young ladies pulled into the campsite next to us at Washington Lake, and came to borrow some utensils for their friend's bachelorette party. (They remembered the wine and the cups, but forgot to bring plates and cutlery!) It turned out that one of them was on the committee for Camp Hobe. I was able to get a good interview with her. What a wonderful coincidence!

It was a very eventful week, but I missed my Internet friends!

(OK, this isn't really wildlife, but maybe just as entertaining: our DGD2, Daphne, who just turned 15 months, photo provided just because I know my KP friend Judith needs a Daphne fix.)

What's on my needles: Still the Bees' Knees (making progress) and the new Lullaby socks.
What's on my wheel: The PA merino. (Yes, I took Stanzi, my Kromski Sonata spinning wheel camping.)
What's on my iPad: Getting caught up with Yarnspinner's Tales podcast, The audiobook Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci, from the library.
What's on my nightstand: Cat Bordhi's book New Pathways for Sock Knitters.
What's my app of the week: SCRABBLE Free. (It kept some friends busy around the campfire, so I could knit!)
What's in my wine glass: Fish Eye Pinot Noir 2010, appropriate, since we saw a few fish eyes while camping.


Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the iPad. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, not even my MacBook, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.

High Fiber—A Week at Home

On Thursday, I received a couple of packages in the mail. One was nylon roving from Paradise Fibers: 

I'm going to card this with my Shetland wool (and later the Romney and some KP Wool of the Andes spinning fiber) to use for socks this winter.

The other was a lovely shawl from a dear friend who lives far away. I knew she was sending me something, but had no idea it would be such a big gift!

The Limeade socks are progressing nicely. I'm almost done with the second sock and will soon be wearing them.

There has also been some progress on Bees' Knees cardigan, which I want to finish by October, (when we plan to make a trip to Wisconsin) so I can deliver it in person. It may be a little big for a while, but better too big than too small. I'm working the two sleeves together with steek sts between them. That way I can knit in the round but still have the stripes meet at the seam instead of having a jog at the beginning of the round. This is a new technique for me.

Vintage Stitchers was fun, as usual, and my Florida friend, Ellen, is back in town, so we went together. We met at Barbara's, who showed us her latest quilt top:

I have a quilt in the planning stages. DGD1 is moving into an apartment with some roommates for her first year at college. Of course, she requested a quilt from Grandma! She picked out these yummy batiks from Connecting Threads:

They are on their way to me and should be here when we get back from camping. I will be making the Pandora's Box quilt from Jelly Roll Quilts. This book has many easy quilts and some more difficult ones. I've never found a book with so many I think I would like to make, and so far, this will be the fourth pattern from the book. I'm going to have to make 72 blocks, though, and put on a 3" border (from Flamenco) and a 5" border (from Harvest Moon) to get the full-size quilt she wants.

I want to mention a worthwhile cause I learned about at Sock Summit. Ms. Gusset, an Australian fiber dealer, is trying to get Cormo fleece to produce yarn and combed top locally (i.e. in Australia). Cormo sheep were developed in Tasmania and produce wool that is both soft and strong. She needs to buy 1000 kilos of the stuff for it to be worth processing it in Australia. She is asking for pledges either to buy yarn or spinning fiber from her, or to receive the new eZine "Entangled" in exchange for a pledge. If you want to check it out, go to wool.pozible.com. The pledges won't be processed unless she gets enough for the entire amount.

What's on my needles: Still the Limeade socks, Bees' Knees Cardigan sleeves and DBIL's prayer cardi.
What's on my wheel: The WotA Merlot Heather, but the second bobbin is almost full. I may be able to ply during the camping trip.
What's in my hoop: Working on the whole cloth quilt again.
What's on my spindles: I'm taking my KP Turkish drop spindle for hiking in the mountains, so I can spin while hiking.
What's on my iPad: From Audible, Summerhills by D. E. Stevenson. On the Nook app, Scandal on Rincon Hill: a Sarah Woolson Mystery by Shirley Tallman.
What's my app of the week: Voice Recorder HD. (I have my Silver Sneakers exercise class recorded on it, so I can do it when I'm out of town.)
What's in my wine glass: Salmon Creek Merlot 2009.

Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the iPad. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, not even my MacBook, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.