Okay, I have been bad. I am going to have to crack down on myself about the number of projects. I was hoping to keep the project numbers to five or less this year. It’s not happening. I need to finish what I’ve started and not distract myself with lots of little projects when I get bored with the big projects.

I, Erica, promise not to start another sweater or large project until the Barbara Shawl, Hobo or Crazy Green sweater are finished. I know they feel neglected and probably dislike the smaller quick projects. I pledge to work on one of the above projects on a regular basis and not be side tracked by a project that will give me instant gratification. I will also work on one pair of socks at a time until the long project list is under control.

Wednesday, I spent the evening knitting with Dawn. She’s a friend that I met three years ago at the TKGA convention. We were in the Teacher’s Day together and have kept in touch since. She came bearing the gift of more fiber. :) We talked knitting and teaching most of the evening. She’s knitting a shawlette out of really pretty black and red hand-dyed (??) yarn. Photos to post soon.

Thursday, Bryan and I were both home sick. Me, with a horrible headache that gave me a stomach ache. My head was pounding when I laid down, so I mainly knitted to keep my mind off of my pounding head.

When I was out knitting with Dawn, I was working on “A Good Bias” shrug and was about five rows from finishing it. I mentioned that I wasn’t looking forward to kitchener stitching the shrug together in the same way that I stitch sock toes. I don’t mind doing the sock toes because there are usually about 16 stitches to deal with. On the shrug I knew it would be about 150. Dawn told me about a Lucy Neatby technique of using waste yarn to use as a grafting guide. It worked and the back of the shrug is grafted together. For those of you making “A Good Bias” or even “I Do” from knitty, I took step-by-step photos, which I’ll post later. I need to block out the shrug and then I’ll sew the sleeve seams.
Update: I’ve put together a small tutorial for grafting lace without using Kitchener stitch. You can find it here.

After finishing “A Good Bias,” I decided it was time to work on the Barbara Shawl. I worked six rows in about two and a half hours. It’s not as much of a pain to work on after working on “A Good Bias” because I feel I’m pretty seasoned in the lace department right now.

With a “A Good Bias” finished, I had to start something else, even though I thought I shouldn’t. I need a mindless project that isn’t socks. So when I was feeling better, I wound the yarn for my Clapotis. I’ll post a photo soon so you can see what colorway that I chose. I have about five inches of it worked so far, it’s worked from a corner, so five inches isn’t much.

Will photos all promised photos soon.

I just have to say, Toni at The Fold rocks! She was lovely enough to let me exchange my wheel on a Sunday and she sent me two pounds, yes TWO pounds, of fiber. She sent me an off white bag and a light brown bag of fiber. That with the fiber Dawn gave me, I now have a lot of off white fiber that is begging to be dyed an awesome red or green. Mmm, never thought I would be thinking of dying fiber. When I read about so many people dying fiber, I thought, “I’m not going to mess with that, I’ll just buy the fiber that’s been dyed for me.” But with everyone being so generous, I think dying maybe in my future. If I have to temporarily invade a person’s house who has a microwave, I’ll do it.

It’s amazing what a little lace shrug does for the confidence of a lace knitter. The Barbara shawl that has been haunting the knitting basket for more than two and a half years will probably be finished before the five year mark. You say that’s still two and a half years away, why yes it is my friends, but knitting on “A Good Bias” has given me the confidence, strength and stamina necessary to pick up Barbara again and work on her. Yeah, it takes only 30 minutes to knit one row and another 20 minutes to purl back, but I think it’s time to work on Barbara. And she has “A Good Bias” to thank for this. I may have a cashmere shawl before my third wedding anniversary. “A Good Bias” is a six-row lace repeat while Barbara has a 20-row lace repeat, which is really 10 rows of purling included.

I’m about five lace repeats from finishing the knitting part of “A Good Bias.” Then I have the pleasure of Kitchener stitching about 76 stitches together. That will be a night where I want absolutely NO distractions! I’m going to give it to my sister when my mom is here in a couple of weeks.
Update: I’ve put together a small tutorial for grafting lace without using Kitchener stitch. You can find it here.

And we can’t forget to mention the Georgie-cat today. He was practicing his lumbar support pose in the green chair at lunch today. I have no idea how he was comfortable laying like this but he apparently was.

Well, thank goodness the temporary knitting blog was very temporary.

While I was teaching tonight, my sweet husband came home and attempted to publish my blog again and this time it worked. I think it just needed that special touch to get it to publish.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with my wheel, although, I’ve only been home Monday and Wednesday evenings to play with it. I finished spinning my second bobbin and decided to start plying the yarn on Monday night, so I did a bit of that and then finished plying it last night. I’ll post a photo soon. I ordered a niddy noddy so that I have something to wind my yarn on besides that swift, it arrived today but we didn’t get home early enough to pick it up from the apartment office, so I’ll get it tomorrow. After I wash the yarn, I’ll post a photo of it.

I also ordered the video SPINNING WOOL – BASICS & BEYOND with Patsy Zawistoski from the Yarn Barn in Kansas (the store where I learned to knit). I watched part of it last night before Alias.

In addition to spinning, I have been knitting. I’m about half way through the foot on the second pink Retro Rib sock. I’m hoping to finish the socks soon so that I can actually wear them before it gets too warm out. I think I’m the only one who is happy to see it cool off a bit from the 80F degree weather we had been having. I want to wear my new socks. On “A Good Bias” shrug, I’m two lace repeats from the increase for the back on the second piece, so I’m more than half way through the second piece. I will post photos this weekend.

Well, this was supposed to be a quick post just to declare that my blog is finally working again. Must keep with the new bedtime. :)

I’ve been trying to post for the last several days. There is something wrong with my server connection, so I’m posting at a temporary blog until then.

This post is originally from Monday.

Meet Matilda.

Saturday, I joined the ranks of the wheel spinners. Bryan and I went to The Fold to look at wheels. I thought we would just go to try the wheels out and then when we were ready to buy in June, I thought we�d buy it then. I tried out the Lendrum double-treadle wheel and it was heavenly. A woman that was in the store asked if this was my first time spinning, I told her yes, except for playing with my mom�s antique wheel when I was a kid. She said she was impressed, I must have it in my blood. The treadle and everything felt very natural. I wanted to hold on to the fiber as it was spinning, much like I do when I�m spindle spinning and allowing the twist to move up through the drafted fiber. Toni, The Fold�s owner, told me to just let it go and let the wheel do the work. She was so right, once I relaxed it became even more natural. The yarn I spun in the 1?2 hour I was spinning wasn�t the most beautiful you�ve ever seen, it was very designer like, but I figure I�ll have lots of time to practice. After that 1/2 hour, the owner said, “So you�re ready to take home a wheel.” I looked at Bryan and he agreed that I was. I was so excited I want to just start jumping up and down and dance around the store. I�m sure the owner would have understood my excitement. Bryan said he knew it was something I really wanted, so he thought it was good to get it now so we didn�t have to make another trip out to the store, which is an hour away.

When we first walked into the store, I felt like a kid in a candy store. It was even better than walking into a yarn store. Every color and type of fiber that a newbie spinner could dream of was there from Alpaca to Corriedale to Nylon to Silk to Quivit (sp?). There were also hand-dyed fibers that were absolutely gorgeous. If I had some extra cash to blow (only a few thousand), I would have bought several ounces of each just to try, all except the nylon. The nylon felt very strange to me, almost like someone had unraveled a pair of pantyhose and molded them into a fiber.

We went to lunch after getting the wheel and headed home. I was exhausted from the drive and the excitement and I was getting a headache. After we arrived home, I needed a little nap. I laid down but the excitement of the wheel woke me up after 15 minutes. We put the wheel together and I started to spin. I knew something wasn�t quite right, the horizontal piece that attaches the footman to the treadle was rubbing against the wheel. I called the store owner and asked her if there was anything I could do to fix it, she said the only thing to do is to take it back. So yesterday, I took the wheel I had purchased back and exchanged it for the one that I had been using at the store.

Once I got back from the drive to the store (45 minutes away), I couldn’t wait to get Matilda out of the box and start spinning. I spun part of a bobbin of yarn and then started another bobbin with some different fiber that I had. Here’s the second bobbin (taken this morning),

I used several different fibers that were part of my beginning spindle kit from Inspirations Yarn. While at work today, I could only think of coming home and spinning. When I arrived home, I immediately sat down and finished spinning the bobbin shown above. Okay, so it wasn’t a complete bobbin but I didn’t want to use up all of my fiber, since it’s all of the fiber I have right now, sort of, don’t spin it all at once. I need to save my money before I can get some new fiber to spin with. I also spun more of the fiber that was on my first bobbin so that there was about the same amount on both bobbins. I thought I would ply with the plying flyer and that was a bit more than I could handle. My wheel kept wobbling on the carpet and moving away from me, plus it was very hard to treadle. So I decided about 15 minutes into plying to just ply the way that the woman at the store showed me using the standard flyer, which turned out to be much easier. I have a knot in the middle of my yarn but at least I can do the plying. My yarn looks really nice, if I can brag a bit. I’ll post a photo soon.

It’s my blog’s 3rd birthday! Three years ago today I started this lovely blog and we’ve come a long way from this. When I started blogging, I had no idea that I would go through phases where I didn’t write anything or even knit anything to write about. Now I feel like I have to write something. I’ve been a bit off schedule lately, but I’ve felt very busy the last week or so. I think spring being here and my teaching two nights a week at the continuing ed program, which is 20 minutes from my house makes it more tiring and the fact that I don’t come home for dinner two nights a week because of my classes.

Well, I really must get to bed. Bryan and I have been doing quite well with our 10:30pm bedtime, looks like tonight I’m a bit past my bedtime.

This week has not been the most productive week for me. All I can say is thank goodness it’s almost Friday. The one place that I’ve been the most productive in my life is in the reading department. I was home from work on Monday for girl pains and managed to finish two books that I was reading in one day. It’s amazing what a day on the couch can do for you. I wasn’t in the mood to knit that day so I just read. Monday evening, I felt decent enough to recreate my literature page, so I combined the old “lit” page with the “recent reads” pages to get the new literature page. It’s not finished, but it’s a start.

I did manage to finish the pink Retro Rib sock, at least the knitting part of it, on Saturday night. I kitchener stitched the toe on Sunday. Just when I think I hate kitchener stitch, I always remember that I don’t hate it and actually am glad it exists to finish my socks. I cast on for the second pink Retro Rib sock on Sunday afternoon. I’m just past 1/2 way on the cuff. The second sock isn’t striping at all, instead the colors are pooling in an odd way. They are just pooling in one area, so I have the pink area, the purple area and the blue area. I think they are starting to stripe a bit, but I need to work more of the sock to see if it’s actually going to stripe or just start pooling differently. Oh the joys of hand-dyed yarn for socks. :)

I haven’t gotten far on “A Good Bias” this week. I cast on the second sleeve on Sunday and have only worked two of the lace repeats so far.

My classes this week have really made me work for my money. They haven’t been challenging, everyone just has needed a lot of attention. In the beginning class, they were still struggling with purling, so we reviewed that again and then I showed them how to cast on. They really liked casting on. I had a student that didn’t come the first week, so I had to get her started on knitting and purling. I’ll teach her how to cast on and bind off next week. I hope that by the fourth week (this was week 2) that they are all on the same schedule.

I’m off to bed. We’re trying a new going-to-bed schedule. I’m trying to go to bed earlier after hearing a report this morning on the radio about sleep deprivation.

Well, blogger just ate my latest entry which I thought was really good. So let me see if I can recreate my last entry and hopefully not loose this one, too. This one will probably be a bit shorter than the entry I lost.

Bryan had to work today, I woke up about half an hour after he left and decided that I would be a knitting bum today without feeling guilty about it. I lazed on the couch for a while watching Saturday morning kids’ tv. I was absolutely horrified by the commercials geared towards kids. I couldn’t get over all of the junk food that was being marketed to them. I think more than 95% of the commercials were food related. I just know that Bryan and I will be the parents who are going to be the “mean” parents who will not buy all of that junk for our kids. We’re your typical natural foods market and Trader Joe’s shoppers – we try to buy organic whenever we can. I’m sure, “we’re not so-and-so’s parents” will come out of our mouths more than we care to think about.

George and Chloe were in prime cute kitty mode today. As I was watching tv, George crawled up on me and fell asleep. He was so sweet and even allowed me to knit while he slept.

I wasn’t just laying on the couch the entire morning watching tv. Oh,no, I was plying yarn and measuring the yarn I’ve spun in the last few days. I now have about 85 yards of yarn to make a hat. Yeah! Who knows when I’ll actually start the hat, and I still need to give the yarn a bath, but whenever I’m ready to start the hat I’ll have all of the yarn to start it.

After 1 1/2 hours of kids’ tv, I had to turn it off. Fortunately, I could listen to NPR. It was the pledge drive at the local NPR station so they were playing two hours of “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” a news quiz and two hours of “This American Life,” one of my favorite shows on NPR. Ira Glass was on and was playing clips from episodes of “This American Life.” It was great to knit to. During one of the pledge breaks they were mentioning that not all of the volunteers were busy with phone calls, in fact, two of the volunteers were knitting. They were saying, “Hey maybe you could call up and talk to the knitters.” I really wanted to call and just see what the knitters were working on, but I couldn’t because Bryan and I have already given money for this year to NPR. I thought it was so cool that they would mention the people knitting. :)

During my radio listening, I managed to finish the first half of “A Good Bias” shrug. I knit five lace pattern repeats to finish the first half. I didn’t start the second half, I’ll do that tomorrow while Bryan is at work.

After I finished the shrug piece, I immediately got to work on my Retro Rib sock. I finished the heel gusset and started on the foot of the sock. A few rows into the foot, my little center pull ball was really starting to collapse on itself. So I rewound it on my ball winder so that I could just pull from the outside of the ball. When I saw how small the rewound ball was I started to panic. What if I ran out of yarn before I finished the sock? What would I do if I ran out of yarn? I figured I would just keep knitting and if I had to get some pink yarn to finish the toe I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

I kept knitting and knitting on the foot and, lo and behold, I got to the toe with plenty of yarn left. I know I’ll be able to finish the toe, kitchener stitch the toe together and still have maybe a yard or two left. It’s very interesting that the foot of the sock isn’t striping like the cuff of the sock did. It has pools of purple on the top of the foot and a pool of pink on the bottom.

Usually, I have second sock syndrome when it comes to socks, but with this sock pattern, I think the rib pattern is so fun to knit that I don’t think I’ll be struck by it this time. I could be wrong, but I really want to wear these socks.

I also managed to update my project pages. The Socks page has the thumbnails updated and links to either the project page itself or a large photo of the project. I also started to update the Scarves page with several thumbnails but I don’t have links to those projects. I will get that page updated soon. I need to have my mom send me some photos of scarves that I’ve made for her. The one page that needs a lot of work is the sweaters page and I hope to do that soon.

I should go so that I can actually finish the decreasing on the toe tonight.