Rainy, gloomy days

    This past weekend has been a dark, wet mess. One of my children, who is in love with the swing set at school has been absolutely devastated by this weather - it's too wet to play outside on the slippery, metal play equipment, which has meant recess in the gym?!?! There are no swings there! And since the gym "only has everything boring" that has meant that they've come home with a lot more energy than usual, keeping me busy in the evenings. Saturday and Sunday's rain ruined our weekend routine of going to the park as well, which means a lot more running and stomping and "but that's not faaaaiiiir" this weekend as well. But this Tuesday morning has dawned clear (but cold!) which means, thankfully, this bout of cabin fever is over, and I can find sometime to sit down and talk about the crafts I've been doing in between "yes, I understand that running indoors is fun, but maybe the downstairs neighbors don't agree?" and "what if we use timers to decide whose turn to choose videos is next?"

Quilting

    I have an arrow pointing to the damage I saw immediately when I laid out the blanket, but somehow I didn't see the damage in the bottom left quadrant and right quadrant (which I can see very clearly in this photo!) until after I started sewing, so that was a bit of a surprise for me.

    I did this one on Friday morning, and I had been meaning to do at least one other on the same day, but I was running late that day (the gloomy weather had me dragging ass too, not just the littles!) so I ended up only working on this one.

    Saturday, I worked on this block. It presented an interesting challenge.

    It seems my Nonne had made a cutting error while piecing this block, and the circle was a bit short, and would not be able to overlay the square properly in order to be tacked down. So, in this area, she had it attaching to the square instead. I love that even from beyond the grave, I'm able to learn from her by studying her work. Were I in this situation, I would have thought I'd have to recut the piece, and if I didn't have extra fabric, this would have caused me some small crisis, but the solution is simple and elegant and once I got it finished, you can only see the difference close up; I certainly never noticed it in the last 15 years until I embarked on this repair session. 

    This repair was slightly complicated by the fact that some of the threads of the fabric have worn away. I had to refold the fabric and attach it further in, which made the repair pucker a bit, which I didn't like, but there weren't really any viable alternatives. A patch would disrupt the patterning, as would darning, and leaving it unrepaired would weaken the areas around it, so to me, having a bit of puckering is worthwhile for the results.

    Up close, it's way more noticable than I would like, but it's not very often that my work is inspected this closely.

    From a normal viewing distance, you can see that it really isn't visible at all. Monday the lighting was bad, so I didn't take photos of the block I worked on, and so far on Tuesday I haven't gotten any quilting done because I had a morning appointment to get to. Maybe I'll do some this afternoon, if the light is good.

Spinning

    The name of the spinning game the last few days has been plying, which means I have a decent amount to show, because plying goes fast.

    I started out with this ball, about 44 grams of natural alpaca fiber, and at first, I couldn't find the whorl I had wanted to use, so I figured because plying goes so quick, may as well just do the beginning in-hand. But that was getting annoying and hurting my wrist, so I dug out another whorl and added it on for the beginning few grams.

    This is not too long before I took the whorl off I finished this plying Saturday night, and skeined it up Sunday morning:

    It came out to about 125 yards, 2 plied on itself, so that's a light fingering to lace weight. Since I have a few other skeins of this fiber in progress, I'm half planning a sweater, maybe a round colorwork yoke, out of it. The natural grey alpaca definitely won't be enough on it's own (probably 300-400 yards maximum; a sweater in my size needs about 1000 yards) but it would look nice highlighted on the yoke. I just need to figure out what the background yarn will be and what pattern I'd like on the yoke. More things to mull over in the next few weeks.

    This is the most recent photo of this skein I have so far, but I finished plying it last night. Will get it off the spindle and onto the niddy probably sometime this afternoon, where I can get a yardage estimate. Then I'll wash it with a few other winter items I'm washing before putting away (it hasn't been cold enough for mittens, for example, so I'm planning to wash them and put them in plastic before the moths finish waking up for the year. It's probably also about 50 g and about 100 yards. I know density-wise, that would make it seem like the yarn must be much thicker, but there just isn't a ton of air in the yarn, and quite a lot more twist than commercially available yarns, so that impacts the yardage per gram.

Knitting

    In the quieter hours, when the rabble rousers could be convinced to settle down with a movie, I got a pretty decent amount of the next blanket strips done.

    This photo was taken Saturday afternoon, and was at the point that I realized this strip was more than 12 inches long. It's about halfway through that ball of yellow yarn, as well. From this point, I only have 2 more yarns set aside for the blanket, so if I finish this before I finish my next yarn (which is seeming likely) I'm going to have to find something else to be my take-along project. Looks like I'm going to need to spend some time looking through my queue for smaller projects...

    This photo was taken yesterday afternoon, and it's already another foot longer. At last measure, it was 32 inches, which is very close to about halfway. For some reason, the first half always feels like a slog, but once I get over that halfway point, it seems like it's finished as soon as I blink, I'm not sure why. I wonder how long it'll get before I put it away for a few weeks?

Dyeing

    The second top is finished and I'm in love!

    I love that unexpected pop of blue on the bottom, but I'm certain it will be greatly diluted in the actual yarn. Despite following the same dye formula, temperature, time in the oven, etc. the second one came out darker than the first, as you can see in this side-by-side comparison:

    Best I can figure is that our stove is quite old, and sometimes malfunctions (doesn't get hot enough on some burners to boil water, even though it's at the highest setting, etc.) and so perhaps on the first run, the oven wasn't as hot as the second (or perhaps hotter? I'm genuinely unsure which condition would lead to lead dye striking. I think the former, though) but either way, they're clearly coordinated, and so I think one ply from each skein will come from the other as a way to blend them even further. They'll still be a bit different, but close enough, I think. And if not, if the yarn from the fiber on the right is still too much paler than the other, I can always put the finished yarn in a pot with a very very little bit of dye to help tint it closer.

    Last night, before bed, I portioned out a third of the fiber (about 36 grams) and dizzed it to help open up any compaction and help break up any pooled bits to the best of my ability. It has a beautiful warm brown look to it in the sun, with pops of ocean blue here and there. However, indoor lighting makes it look more like a purple, sort of like paler grape kool aid. It's not what I was going for, but it's such a fun color anyway that I can't be mad. I'm really enjoying spinning it up and I can't wait to see how it looks finished.