ezra

God is amazing how he inspires me to create, the creator himself. I hadn't really designed anything since the spring and all of the sudden here's one of my new designs. All of the praise goes to Him. I wasn't sure how it would turn out at first, but it came out awesome. Inspired by a vintage 30's sweater where the entire body of the sweater was a diagonal stitch. It took me 5 trys to get the opposite diagonal for the right arm. I made a variation of the herringbone rib stitch found in the vogue knitting stitchionary volume one for the right diagonal stitch that makes up the body of the arm warmer. Worked from arm up to fingers. First worked flat and joined to work in round after buttons. The thumb gusset has yarn overs at the beg. and end of the gusset area that makes eyelets around the thumb. The way the thumb is made leaves no holes which i find annoying in other patterns. Up the side of the left side (or the outside of the left arm) is a triangle pattern made up of diagonals from a series of knit, purl, knit, purl sts that are 2 stitch cables. The tip of the hand has cables with a row of 2 bobbles between each 2 cables. The lack of increases for the arm make the warmer fitted which I really like. I love the color and the yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool Color: 15. brick yellow. Unfortunately the color was recently discontinued. But i love the yarn texture and how it knits so much the dog sweater I'm knitting for my new puppy Lola is the same yarn in Color: 064 fire red.

Spinning

I've thought how cool it would be to own sheep or an alpaca and raise them for their wool and have off and on thought of spinning my own yarn, inspired by the artisan yarns spun by local spinners you can find at local yarn stores. They just have so much more depth to them than more processed yarn & have this magical air around them that seems to whisper to you stories as if they are glass slippers. You know someone picked these colors and worked on their technique of spinning worked with the fiber maybe hand painting it and then after choosing the weight of yarn spun up one unique skein of yarn available to you if you could only afford it. Well I'm not in the boat of people who will spend over $100 for 400 yds of yarn. I love finding yarn for under $10 probably from my background of Michaels, Hob Lob & Wal-Mart. For a very special skein though I've spent up to "cough" $21 "cough".

So a couple of weeks ago after visiting the Austin yarn stores for a week I felt the urge one day that I wanted to spin. I'd eyed the wool but just in passing. I was there for the yarn. It looked interesting some of the fiber braided some of it wrapped into what looked like woolen watermelons some in bags. There were lots of colors, mesh bins and drawers full. (I'm refering to Hill country Weavers) Different types and of course prices. And little ol' me not quite knowing how much an oz of wool roving would be bought 4oz of turmeric, white and brown in basic sliver wool. Ok, so that is a lot of wool. The ladies at the yarn store warned me 2oz is enough to start out with of each color. But that is ok; I plan on spinning it all. I also got a basic small wooden drop spindle and after searching you tube I learned the basics from Megan and started spinning. I spun and spun deciding I liked the top whorl method and rolling it down my right leg (twisting the fibers clockwise) while sitting and while spinning in the car (in the passenger seat) I spun the dowel part with my fingers.

So far all I have to show are my first two days work. I don't seem to be a very fast spinner, but that is ok. I love how the first two came out. After I had spun them I wrapped them around a chair back and tied some extra string around the yarn in 2 places making a hank. Then I boiled the hank. I didn't realize it was going to smell like sheep. After removing it from the pot I extracted the extra water with a towel and shimmied it back around the chair back (this part was hard) and if I couldn't I untied it and wrapped it around anew. A mostly let it air dry using a hair dryer some because I was ancy to hold it and say it was finished. Now I can say I'm a spinner, yay. It is exhilarating learning something new related to something you really love, knitting.

pom poms

A great idea for your yarn remnants. I recently bought the clover pom pom maker set in large. I love clovers assortment of fun time saving gadgets. Like their pom pom makers available in 7 sizes, they are really easy to use. i decided to put them on hair clips. I call them sea urchins hair poofs.

knitted bowl

This is a cupcake base from the pattern in the book "One Skein" (Leigh Radford).
I used Patons shetland chunky yarn.