This week saw some progress in spinning the Waimea Rooster Merino and black Tencel roving from AlohaBlu.
I’m loving the colors in the singles. Sometimes my bobbin looks gold, then it’s blue, then a purplish pink. Never boring.
I’m getting ready for Tour de Fleece, which starts July 2nd to coincide with the Tour de France. (While they’re spinning bicycle wheels, we’ll be spinning fiber.) The Knitting Community Orphans will have a team on Ravelry. We’re focusing on AlohaBlu fiber in this first participation, and she has designed the special colorways for us: “The Frog Prince” and “Knitting Community Orphans,” both based on the photos from our Ravelry group. You can participate with any fiber, but a bunch of us will be using AlohaBlu fiber. It should be fun.
Common Threads met at my houseon Thursday. Karan brought this lovely shawl for show and tell:
Everyone was knitting. It was a companionable meeting, as they usually are.
I had planned on spinning, since we met at my house and I was expecting a small turnout at first, but at the last minute several other people were able to join us. It would have been a bit crowded with my wheel out in the room, so I worked on the ribbing for my “So-not-my-palette Cardigan.” Since then I have made more progress and am into the colorwork section.
I'm using this pattern by Kathleen Taylor for sizing and shaping directions, but with colorwork patterns chosen from Alice Starmore's book, Charts for Color Knitting.
The next band of pattern will be bright green and a very dark green. I can hardly wait to start on it. After that will come a band of several shades of gold.
Speaking of colors, we thought the puppy we were considering was going to be blue. Last Sunday, we decided we liked one of the boys better than the other and made our pick. We shot the breeder an email to let her know we would take him, if he was still available. She emailed back saying that she had just finished grooming all four pups in the litter. Oops! The guy we picked is going to be silver instead of blue. Did we care? Actually, that’s better. He will still be a color that doesn’t show the dirt from the trail so much, but he will be easier to see in dim light as we get older. Here’s a link to poodle colors. (Scroll down to find silver.) Silver, blue and black all come into the world black. The puppies that won’t remain black have some white hairs among the black hairs between the pads on their feet. As the pup grows up, he will lighten until he reaches his designated color. They call this “clearing.” In miniatures (like ours) it can take a couple of years to “clear.” In standards the change happens even more slowly. The hair on the feet and face are the first to show the lighter color. At four weeks, there should have been some lightening in his face for a blue, but it was quite a bit more than should have been the case, thus the surprise. Here’s our little guy after grooming a week ago.
His blue siblings have much darker faces.
We are officially the owners of half of this pup. I’m not sure whether the half we own is the intake half or the output half, but we don’t have to look after him yet, so it doesn’t really matter. We have named him Dusty. We plan on picking him up July 1st.
The decision-making process has been an adventure. First, we had to decide how soon to add another dog to the family, then pick the right one. We consulted a pet psychic to help answer these questions. She told us Sunny still hangs out with Rocky, so he doesn’t miss her, but he misses her warm body. He was OK with waiting to get another dog until later on…at first. We were looking at a litter of four that had the two “blue” boys and one blue girl. Rocky did not want the white boy in the litter, because he was “bossy.” The breeder confirmed that the white boy was the first born and was the alpha. Rocky liked the girl first, but by the time we found that out, she was taken. We thought he just wanted a girl and had made up our minds to wait for the next litter, but then the pet psychic said Rocky had contacted her and had decided he liked the two boys, too. She asked us if we were drawn to either of the boys more than the other, which we were. Although they looked identical in the photo, we both liked the one on the right better.
While I was waiting to hear from the breeder whether that boy was still available, Rocky started pulling on my pants leg and dancing in a circle. He was clearly excited and trying to tell me something. Then my iPad went “ding,” indicating I had an email. It was from the breeder, telling me the boy we preferred was still available, but he was going to be silver. Rocky seemed to be telling me, “We’re getting a puppy!”
Speaking of Rocky…and colors…he is a lovely basic black. Here’s a photo of him right after his grooming appointment on Monday.
For an older dog (11+ years), he's still pretty dark.
We have been doing some walks and hikes, because the weather has warmed up and is nice. (It’s about time!) It could still snow, but that becomes less likely every day.
What's on my needles: Still hand-quilting the “Delectable Pathways” quilt. Working on the “So-not-my-palette Cardigan.”
What's on my Featherweight: Still waiting for the next project.
What's on my wheel: Still the Waimea Rooster Merino/Tencel from AlohaBlu.
What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Split Second by David Baldacci. It was interesting, typical Baldacci. Now listening to Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara. It’s a long one, but is interesting so far. Reading Remember This by Shae Buggs on the Kindle app on my iPad.
What's in my wine glass: Glenn Ellen 2014 Merlot in the big bottle. It has been one of those weeks.
What's my tip of the week: If you’re knitting a pullover or steeked (cut open after knitting) sweater on circular needles and want to try it on, just put half of the stitches on another circular needle. Then it can be slipped over the intended recipient’s head to check for size. If you change needle size from the ribbing to the body, you can do this without any extra work. Just stop working the first row with the larger size when you reach the halfway point.
Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.
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