How The West Was Spun

Book Review: Extra Yarn

Please note: I was contacted by the publisher to review this book and was sent a complementary copy.  This review is my opinion, and is just that - an opinion.  Your mileage may vary.

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett is a charming children's story about a girl named Annabelle who, one cold, snowy, dreary day, finds "a box filled with yarn of every color".  This book tells her story:  How she uses the yarn to knit sweaters and hats and covers the town's residents, as well as buildings, postboxes, vehicles, and the local pets with brightly colored knitwear.

The box, miraculously, is never empty of yarn and Annabelle continues to knit and knit and knit, until one day, an archduke "who was very fond of clothes" (and drawn just as snootily as you can imagine with a plumed hat and striped pantaloons) sails into town and demands to see Annabelle. He offers her countless riches to give up her box of yarn.  Annabelle refuses him.

The archduke, who of course is an Evil archduke (aren't they all?), has the box of yarn stolen from Annabelle's house at night, and he spirits it away, back across the sea.

I won't ruin the ending for you, but to tell you that the archduke finds out that evil is never rewarded.  And Annabelle, who is generous and giving, finds out that those gifts come back to you.

This is is lovely little book about doing good in your corner of the world.  The otherwise simple drawings are given a new liveliness with the addition of the brightly colored yarn coverings.  (The illustrator, Jon Klassen, MUST have cats - the poses and facial expressions on the sweater-wearing cats throughout the book are spot on).  This is a sweet little tale - I can imagine myself as a kid asking to have this one read to me over and over again.  Your little one, and anyone who knits, will likely enjoy this book as well.

All for now......

New Week

And sort of an improved mood around here after a whole week.  Sort of.  At least Zel has started eating again.  Bhen and Fargo seem to have wound up pairing up after we moved some fences around and installed Bhen in what was Sam's half of the barn and the two short boys now share a fenceline.  They have taken several long naps in the sun together butt-to-butt with just the fence panels separating them by a few inches.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who sent emails or notes, or little remembrances and, of course, left comments about Sammy.  We still miss him dreadfully, but I also didn't realize how much holding my breath I had been doing.  I checked on him several, multiple times throughout the day after this last summer's seizure-y episode and I guess I worried about him constantly, even subconsciously, all the time, 24/7.  Not that I don't still check on the remaining 3 boys, but none of them have any particular health problems beyond Bhen's lack of vision with his cataracts, so I worry way less in general now.

Moving along to other things happening here, D finished up my worktable/holiday present and we've gotten it set up in my office.  It's exactly as I pictured it and I've already got projects that I'm swatching for, in various stages of planning, organized in the end bins.

The top is a super sturdy butcher-block work surface with a nice, solid finish so I can't ding it up, even if I tried.  The base is cherry.  Each end has basically built-in bookcase-type shelving, which D built to fit 2 of my collapsable project bins in perfectly.

Here's the left end with all 4 bins in it:

And the shelves are also big enough to accomodate some of my catch-all work baskets which had before been littering the area around the chairs in the other room down here, near the fireplace, where I knit a lot in the winter.

This is a fantastic piece of furniture for me - enough space to lay multiple charts and swatches out on the top.  I can sort my to-do piles from the bins up onto the work surface, and then they can be filed back away to keep them free of dust.  The bins let me keep everything for a project - all the yarn(s), needles, notes, sketches, etc. - in one central location now, which is super helpful.  The work surface is tall enough, too, I can stand at it to work comfortably (kind of nice since I sit most of the day at a keyboard), or use a stool if I need a little break.

Thanks, D!!  I love it!!

All for now.....

Sammy

Somewhere in time's own space
There must be some sweet pastured place
Where creeks sing on and tall trees grow
Some paradise where horses go,
For by the love that guides my pen
I know great horses live again.
Stanley Harrison

A bright light went out of our lives Sunday night.  Sam was a great horse, a stalwart trail partner, and one of my best friends.  He will be missed.

Spinning Friday: Oceanwind Knits Batts

As promised, here are the spun-up batts.

These were a mix of various wools - some natural and some dyed.  I find that blends that have a bunch of different types of wool and staple lengths do best spun as woolen-y as you can, i.e. leaving a lot of air in them and not worrying too much about slubs or trying for a smooth, worsted style yarn.  (If you guessed this goes against my natural inclination for things, you'd be right!).

I had 3.5 oz of the batts, which I spun all onto one large bobbin, then wound off into a center pull ball and plyed back from that to make a 2-ply yarn.

I wound up with 145 yards of a heavy worsted/Aran weight yarn, which I think would be perfect for mittens.  It's not super soft, but not super scratchy - sort of somewhere in the middle and I think would be a nicely wearing yarn with a lot of warmth.

All for now...

WIP Wednesday: January 18, 2012

SPINNING PROJECTS

I finished up the batts I posted a picture of last Wednesday - those will be unveiled on Friday.  I dove back into the batts bin and selected 4 oz of BFL wool with sparkles blended in from Funky Carolina, in the "Pinko" colorway.

These two batts, while sold as a set, aren't actually matchy-matchy.  One has a lot more dark pink in it (the batt on the left) and one has more gray in it (the batt on the right).  Since each of the batts is 2 oz, I'm going to spin them individually and then ply them together, which I think will work nicely to blend the slightly differing colors.

KNITTING PROJECTS

• Still plugging along with the Vitamin D Cardi.  I did finish the fourth of the 5 increase sections to be done.  I will pick away at this more this week but I have another knitting project that I need to concentrate on, assuming the yarn arrives for it this week.
• Froggie:  Another set of foot/leg done and attached.  Might switch it up a bit and tackle the eyeballs this week.  :)

DESIGN PROJECTS

• I focused a lot this week on my Shakespeare socks and actually got these knitted up to the heel turn.  I'm going to forge along on these this week.
• A new Sekret Knitting Project that's on a bit of a deadline (actually due before the Shakespeare project, which is for April 1st).  Whenever my yarn arrives for that, I need to get cracking on it, but I'm going to try to alternate between these two projects so I can get both samples knit up.

All for now...

Good Reads

Long-time blog reader, Dawn (who happens to be responsible for my uber awesome banner for the blog too), pointed me towards the Good Reads site with my last book review post last week.

I was unsure about adding in yet another site to bother with, but I actually am pretty impressed with the organization of the site, and the ability to get some good recommendations.

I think I have found a few of you already, but if you are a Good Reads member and wouldn't mind, will you let me know if I could add you as a friend (or shoot me a note in the comments and I'll be glad to reply with the email I've used to set my account up) if you think we'd like the same sort of books?

Now... I just have to get my dad hooked on this site and I will be set!  He's such a voracious reader, I could only read a tenth of what he reads in a month and still be kept plenty busy.

All for now.....

Spinning Friday: A Two-Fer!

I have two new finished spins to share with y'all this week.

First up is a set of batts.  These were from Desert Garden Farm, and were part of a LOTR offering.  The colorway is "elf".  It's a blend of dark gray longwool (Lincoln??) plus a softer wool like merino, although probably more likely Polwarth (??) dyed light gray, with gold glitz.

I spun these up trying to keep them fairly woolen-y since I didn't want the longwool to get overspun and harsh.  I had 4 oz of batts, and wound up with a nice 2-ply worsted weight yarn with 202 yards in the skein.

Next up was the 50/50 merino/soy roving I showed you in last week's WIP post.  The original roving was from my shop fiber club in 2011, and the colorway was "Fathom".  I did some judicious pre-drafting of this, as the soy wasn't evenly distributed through the roving and I wanted it less clumped.  I then spun it from one end to the other, and came out the far end with 4 oz of singles (for the first of the 12 in 12 challenges) with 428 yards of fingering weight yarn.

My plan is to use this for the pretty ruffled scarf from the Jane Austen Knits 2011 magazine, which was also knit from a handspun singles.

All for now.....

WIP Wednesday: January 11, 2012

SPINNING PROJECTS

This week, I'm back to working on some more batts from the stash, since I finished up the soy/merino braid last week (pics of that on Friday).

This group is 3.5 oz of various blended wools from the Oceanwind Knits fiber club from 2010.  Colorway is Varley, from a painting by F.H. Varley of the seacoast. This is a blend of grays and gray-greens with a little bit of brighter colors thrown in.

KNITTING PROJECTS

•  Still working away on the Vitamin D cardigan.  I am still on the neck/sleeve increases.  I haven't knit a top-down sweater in a while; I sort of forgot how many stitches you wind up working each row!  I am halfway through the fourth of five increase sections.  I'm going to try to get the fourth done and give the fifth a shot, but that'll be a hopeful optimistic goal, I think. 
• Froggie:  I finished up one of 4 legs/feet and stuffed and attached that.  Seriously slow going on this one.  I'm going to try for another leg/foot this week.

DESIGN PROJECTS

 

• I finished up the cabled hat design to go with the mittens, and that went off to the test knitter this weekend. 

• I have frogged/reskeined the yarn for the SIL socks.  I think I have reworked the motifs to make me happier, so that'll go on the needles this week.

All for now....

 

Book Shelf: In the Blood

I just finished reading In The Blood by Steve Robinson.  I had originally grabbed this one as it was rated one of the best books of 2011 (a designation which always makes me slightly skeptical, I'll admit) and it was $2.99.

The book's main character, Jefferson Tayte, is an American geneologist, who is busy compiling a birthday gift of a seemingly innocuous family tree for a client, when he uncovers some missing members of the family tree, Royalist Americans who left the colonies and returned back to England.  His client wants the whole picture, so Tayte travels to the UK to Cornwall to research the family.  He finds a whole lot more than a few missing leaves off the tree, and another mystery unfolds surrounding an antique box found in a stairwell, a dismantled monument to a ship lost at sea, and missing documents from the family's history.

Lots of fast-paced twists and turns in this one; the author kept me guessing throughout the whole book.  I thought it was going to be a sort of quiet, sleepy British mystery, with a sort of bumbling American anti-hero, but Tayte gets his act together and winds up solving the mysteries, and answering some other questions about a missing person while he's at it.  I also enjoyed the story within a story, following the history of the antique box, which unfolds at the same pace as the current-day story, so you don't have the mystery spoiled, although everything becomes clear in the final couple of chapters.

I'd say a bargain for a rollicking fun read at $2.99. 

All for now....

 

Weekend Recap

We had another home-body weekend this week (my favorite kind of weekend)!  We took down the Xmas tree and did clean-up of some holiday things.  Saturday, we got the new boys some exercise in the arena before Sunday's snow.  Sam and Bhen are both in the barn on stall rest for various and sundry issues.  Sammy's got another episode of laminitis we are nursing him thru; he's slowly slowly slowly improving with his little therapy boots on and his bute.  Bhen's been limping around a bit.  He's lost most of his eyesight and I'm pretty sure he got kicked or run into during the high-spirited play he tries to avoid with Zel leaping around like the youngster he is, so he's been moved permanently into his own run and has his half of the barn to hang out with Sam on the other side of the fence panels.  My two retired veterans are good at keeping each other company. 

One of my super-duper test knitters finished up her task with the March Shakespeare in Lace shawl, so I've moved into high gear getting skeins dyed for that kit shipment, and I spent a lot of time with the skeiner and dye pots in my studio on Sunday.

Also, if you are near to or a local of Dallas/Ft. Worth, please put the Fiber Fest, which is the last weekend in March, on your calendars.  I've been juried into that show and I plan on carting a massive amount of yarn and fiber east to Dallas that weekend.  I'd love to meet some of you on-line fiber friends in person if you are in the area!  I also started on dyeing for that this weekend - lots to do, but I've got a few months to get it all accomplished.

Back to work as usual this week.  Maybe with more snow in the forecast for us.....

All for now....