Return to blogland

I seemed to have disappeared from my cyber world in the last year. Nursing school is finished, I have a full time job as an ER nurse and I love it! Life is full and very busy with three kids and a full time job.
I do manage to find time to play with my wool, and my needlefelting supplies business is starting to take off. It is all word of mouth and mostly local for now as that is all I can handle, but it gives me great reason to dye alot of wool in interesting colors.

My reentry into blogland comes from a need to share my new beautiful tool...




It is a Jensen Tina original in black walnut and finished with three coats of walnut oil. I have wanted this wheel for a long time and ordered it in June. It just arrived last week as Mr. Jensen takes the summers off to fish. My friend Kristin has one I have been coveting and now we can spin on our Tina's together!!

I did finally make it to Rhinebeck this year, now that I have a job and can take a weekend off without feeling guilty leaving the kids behind with my husband. It was such a great time. I took a spinning exotic fibers class and have a lot of new fun fiber to spin.
One last little note (not so little anymore) that has taken up an immense amount of the whole family's time...


This is Maggie and she was born on June 22nd. She is a lab, shepard, rottweiler mix and full of fun and energy. She LOVES the kids and has fit right into our world of chaos. She is recovering from a broken leg right now but still as happy as pie and up to no good!
Hope to have some fiber goodness to post soon.

Wool, wool, wool

After my last post, my friend, Laura, wrote and asked about the three bags of wool I had acquired. I made a contact with a local man who raises Shetland sheep to train his dogs. We talked and he gave me three bags full-one black fleece, one brown fleece and one gray. I skirted the black, which is a beautiful rich color and it is getting cleaned and carded as we speak and the other two are next in line.


Skirting fleece is quite a project. It takes me a long time and I get really particular, probably more than I need to. I am getting the fleeces cleaned and carded at Tunbridge Wool Works, a local solar and wood powered facility.

The next picture is the first fleece I skirted and had processed at the wool works. It is a Jacob fleece and I love how it the batt is still striped and shows the color variation within the fleece. I have not spun Jacob before and it feels like it will be a little coarser than I am used to...we'll see.

I am still dying and very rapidly making my way through the pounds of white roving I have. I am working on getting my etsy account to sell roving and handspun as well as needle felting supplies. This wool was dyed and spun with the final product in mind. I think there is too much blue but I need to knit it up and see how close it comes to my vision.

I don't have much knitting content to show but I was really busy before Christmas. I made felted slippers for my whole family (five pairs!) and made the boys and my husband all matching cabled hats. My daughter got a nice light pink cashmere hat. I also finished last semester finals and worked alot over my school vacation. Each member of the family (not including myself) was ill over the break and one of my kids ended up with pneumonia so I was nurse at work and nurse at home.
We went to visit my parents for the holidays and I went to Knit Happens in Alexandria, Virgina. They have local dyers and I found a new (to me) dyer. This sock is the product, so far, of a local No. Va. dyer. I hope to get the other sock finished before winter is over!

Losing my virginity

Well, i did it. I lost my virginity (and my 4.0 GPA). I am a little disappointed as I have been in school for five years and will be finished in May but...it is not as big of a deal as I thought it would be and I feel surprisingly relaxed about life. Now that I let go of that pressure I can play without my fiber without guilt! I am also looking forward to three weeks off of school in which I will work some and do a lot of knitting and spinning. I went yesterday and picked up "three bags full" of FREE shetland wool that is beautiful! A local man raises the sheep for training his sheepdogs and I happened to find him. This could prove to be a really good relationship! Today is my first day of vacation so here I am, back on the blog. I am off to skirt fleece but will have pictures soon. Happy Winter!

More FO's!!!

On this last day of summer (for the kids!) we have a beautiful sunny day in Vermont- perfect for dying! I am working on my first overdying project. I have nine skeins of gray Manos wool that I want to be green for a sweater or poncho. The gray was a blue tone so I made my green dye mostly yellow with just drops of blue. It looks great in the dye pot but a little too yellow for me drying in the sun. I just have to be patient for it to dry to know the real outcome.

My boys here are modeling the hats I have made recently. The bright green is a simple cable cap knitted with some of my first handspun. The hat on the left is a Koolhaus hat knit with Malabrigo worsted merino that I have dreamed of for close to a year. I was bummed when I saw the pooling. I usually appreciate pooling on my socks to make them fun but the color pattern really takes away from the stitch pattern on this one. I have started a second Koolhaus with another color of the Malabrigo and no pooling so far...
Here is m finished February Sweater!! It was soooo fun to knit and I love the style. I may make a second one out of another yarn. This sweater was knit with Cascade 220 and it will be perfect for fall! Sorry about the sideways pictures- I haven't figured out how to deal with that yet. One of these days i will get a Blogging for dummies book and learn how to use my blog properly!


This last photo has been a long time coming. This is the cutest baby ever in one of the cutest sweaters I have ever knit. My first BSJ- out of my own handspun!!!!


Hope everyone if enjoying their holiday weekend!!!

Picture Heavy Post

I walked into my yarn room this morning and realized that maybe I am having a case of Startitis. I have four pairs of socks on the needles and half of a Koolhaas hat on the table. I also have a partially finished pair of felted clogs and two afghans halfway knitted. Sadly, (or not) I am going to start one more pair of socks that I have been wanting to make.

I have to share about the best gift I have gotten in a long time. My friend, Laura, sent me a graduation present that has made me smile for weeks. There was a great children's book called Woolbur about a sheep that refuses to follow the flock and two skeins of DK weight yarn in the Doctor without Borders colorway. Half of the proceeds from that yarn goes to DWB. I just love that! I had to cast on right away for a sock- my gauge was off and it is big enough for my husband's huge feet and is the beginning of his Christmas gift!
Remember the green single ply in the last post. Kristin and I plied the two singles together and this is our final product.

Now that I have had a taste of dying I have to do it more and more. The following is some superwash merino dyed in really bright colors that ended up being rainbow. It is a little too bright for me but my children all love it!

The next roving I dyed with yellow, purple and olive green. I love the colors and how it spun up. I can't wait to see what it looks like knitted. The transformation that happens from roving to yarn to knitted object is so amazing to watch- every time!


This is the next roving in line for spinning. I started separating it into strips but then sidetracked by all of the knitting projects I needed to try out.

This final project is just a little sample of the spinning I have been doing this summer. We have had more rain than ever in Vermont this summer and although my garden is a jungle my fiber projects are moving right along!

been a long time

True to my past schedule I haven't blogged since the last time I had a break from school. I have been really busy with my fiber projects this summer and I will have alot to show you once I get my camera working.

First up in this post though is my first dyed roving spun up into a single.
I have a new fiber friend and we dyed this roving in a crock pot using three different colors. I had merino roving and she had some wool top that we dyed in the same pot at the same time. It was amazing to see how differently they took the colors. We just got together last night and plied her single with mine and I will have a photo of that soon.

I love that I have a new friend who loves wool as much as I do. I enjoy the blogging community because it makes me aware of other passionate fiber fanatics but I rarely get to meet them in person. Kristin came over the other night and looked at the stash with me and talked fiber and ideas and knitting and we had such a nice time.

I have spent alot of time spinning while I have the summer off of school. I am still studying for the boards which I take in ten days and then I will start a part time job. I got a job at a quaker based assisted living community and i am looking forward to working with people during the end of life process.

Back to knitting content-- (I have been doing some of that too!)

First up a morning surf scarf as seen in the latest Spin Off. This was a fun project and stitch pattern to work with. It is some of my first handspun yarn and I think it turned out well. The roving was from Spunky Eclectic called Delphinium.
This next project is one of the cutest things I have ever knit. It is a Minnowknits pattern made from a now discontinued yarn put out by Cascade. I forget the name of the yarn but it is cotton and 1% nylon which gives it a little strech. I have some cute fimo buttons to sew on and voila- a baby gift!
There is so much more to show and talk about and one of these days when the garden is not such a jungle of weeds I will take more pictures. Happy summer to all in blogland!

another vacation week

There seems to be a pattern that I only blog when I have time off of school. When I am in school I barely have time to knit let alone blog about it! After this week I have ten weeks left and then I will get a certificate as an LPN and sit for the boards! It is pretty exciting after all of the work I have done to know that the end is in sight. I am waiting to hear if I got accepted into the RN program for next year (I really think I will- I hope!) but I am planning on working as a nurse this summer and part time next year too.

OKay- on to the good stuff! I bought this yarn on e-bay a few weeks ago. It is a silk/cashmere blend that I am hoping to make into a montego bay scarf. I made one this last summer with the sea silk and I love it and I know that my sister-in-law will too. She gets a scarf every Christmas and I am really ahead of the game this year!

Speaking of e-bay- does anyone else have this problem of buying things on ebay even though you didn't mean to? I just can not look unless I plan to buy- I'm weak when it comes to deals on ebay. I am currently expecting 3 skeins of Koigu in the mail any day now.

I have been making progress on my knitting projects. It's slow but it is progress. The Morehouse merino sweater for my son is missing sleeves so I hope to knock this out quickly. It looks like it will be for next year or the year after as it almost fits me!

I started another pair of socks too. I am using the Noro sock yarn for the first time. I read alot of other knitters opinions on Ralvery- Did I tell you I got my Ralvery invitation? Pretty exciting! I haven't had much time to organize myself there but I am now a member and come summer I will be more active...anyway... I agree with most folks that the yarn is a little rough. It is also quite thin but the colors knit up well and it is making a nice fabric. I anticipate that it will get softer with washing.
This is the beginning of my Gathered Pullover from IK. I have a few more inches on it now but I am already thinking I may not like the rolled edge. I also had to choose a size that was too big because the next smaller size would be much too tight. I still have to follow that patterns on sweaters and not make too many independent changes- that's for later in life.
This photo is a FO! Socks I made for a friend who has been really helpful this year taking my kids ALOT while I am in school!
On a final note some great friends and a really special family just had a new baby. WELCOME WENDELL!!!!