July Time

Every day I want to do a blog post and every day I seem to be too grumpy.  I'm taking steroids for a skin condition since last fall and now I'm trying to taper down the dose.  The main symptom of me doing this is grumpy.  Epic grumpy.
Anyway, I'm doing Tour de Fleece and trying to finish the sweater and keep myself organized and motivated an it's all hard. Very hard.
Here's a picture of my mind right now.  (Just kidding, it's the mess of a table I have in front of me.)

Hey it's still June

Ah, what shall I report?  I'm still working on the sweater and not been able to get myself to take pictures yet.  I've finished the body and am now working on an arm.  I'm still afraid I'm going to run out of yarn and have to find something solid color to finish with.  Extreme yarn chicken I think.  This last weekend was exhausting.  I took my mother and aunt to a family reunion. 6 hours of driving for 4 hours of talking.  It wasn't too bad. My cousin's wife gave me coffee for the way home.  Monday I went to a doctor appt 2 hours away. Then Tuesday I spent most of the getting helping my mom get her car fixed and yesterday some of the afternoon doing the same. I just want to sleep this weekend.

June happenings

June is going quickly.  It had been pretty warm but today there is rain.  Our rivers are full to overflowing from the record snowpack in the mountains so of course it's raining.
I've done something a little crazy.  I'm knitting my first sweater. I bought a 2 pound lamb's fleece a few years ago. It's Border Leicester cross.  I had washed the wool a couple years ago so it needed carding and spinning.  My hand cards were a gift from the person who first enabled me in starting spinning.  So I've been carding and spinning this wool and suddenly decided to knit a sweater with it.  I'm knitting Flax, by Tin Can Knits. It's a beginner sweater and I hope I'm doing well with it.  Realizing that I'm going to run out of the fleece, I've inserted 3 other 4 oz skeins of wool the I had spun from Spunky Club wool.  But still I may run out.  I'm almost done with the body and then I will do the sleeves. Tonight I hope to try it on and see if I can start the ribbing around the bottom.  But if I don't have enough for the sleeves, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  The fleece is kind of a cream color and it's surprisingly hard to match these things. I'm headed to fiber festival this weekend so maybe I can find something that will work.  Or maybe a solid color for the second half of the sleeves?  Something that kind of goes with the other stripes of multi color?

So let me know if you have an opinion.  The sweater doesn't have to be  perfect.  It's going to be heavy and very warm I know.  The next one will be better.  That's the point, right?

Over the weekend

I did a lot over the weekend.  I finished two skeins of a fleece I had bought a couple years ago.  I have to do all the processing on it.  I had washed it previously but I had been carding it by hand and spinning it.  I still have a lot to process on that as it was 4 pounds.  I also finished a 4 oz skein that I bought from Yarn Love probably 10 years ago.  Nothing like getting caught up. 
At present I'm trying to use up yarn and wool that I have in my stash.  I have quite a bit but it's coming along.  I also finished a hat and one mitt and have one more mitt to do and it will be a set.  Scarf, hat and mitts.  Now that it's getting warmer it will be super useful.
What I need to start again is a sweater that I bought all the supplies for last year.  I had tried to start it awhile back but by the end of the 2nd row I was already off on stitches no matter how careful I thought I was being.  But try try again.  I'll let you know if I make any progress.
I'll post some pictures next time, promise.

Tidying up

Well, a lot has happened since my last post.  So here are updates.
I did finish the KAL. But I broke my leg 2 days after the last post and so I had a bit of time on my hands.  I got shingles 2 weeks later so that slowed me down and is still slowing me down.  The pain can be incredible.  But my leg is healing nicely and I can walk on it again.

The postcards got put on hold as it was hard to think about things but I have a batch of 16 ready to drop in the mailbox now so I'm getting back to it.  I went back to work 3 weeks ago and that's been hard slogging but I'm working on it.

My inkle loom is still warped and I only have done what I did the day I warped it.  But I'm wanting to get back to that once I can bend a little bit better.  The shingles are around my middle so any muscle movement there makes the nerves twang and hurt again.

I hope I am improving as this is making me feel very old.  So wish me luck and we'll see what else I can get done..

My first kal!

I decided to do my first kal (knit a long).  I picked a design by the wonderful designer, Tian, Knit Designs by Tian.  It's the Endless Night Shawl she just released.  The kal starts February 1st so I think I'm ready.  The yarn I picked is some handspun I had.  I'm not sure when I did the spinning but I bought the fiber back in 2010. It was the Spunky Club Kentucky Derby Norwegian wool from March 2010.  Good thing wool doestn't go bad.  Or not easily if it's taken car eof. It kind of looks like one skein is spun a little thinner than the other, or maybe just plied more badly.  👀  Oh well, I need to use up yarn.  Much of what I've spun in the past I've given away.  Since I'm a process spinner/knitter, I'm not that attached to something after I've finished it. So it will be nice to use up some.
I'm excited for this.  Wish me luck.
Here is the yarn...

#postcardsforwomenincongress

I've been following the new congress we have in Washington DC.  Especially that we have more women in congress than ever before.  I've felt that I need to engage more, understand more about how congress works.  I also see interviews some of the women have done and I just want to encourage them somehow.  So I came up with the idea of sending postcards to every woman in congress just so they can feel encouragement to counteract criticism and complaints.  I realize that I'm probably not the only one doing this, but it's a start for me.  I am going to try and do 5-10 postcards a week.  I'll pick out Colorado postcards since that's where I am and I hope that even if they don't see them, their staffers will notice them.  I just finished the first batch to be sent this week.

I'm also trying to improve my picture taking.  I have a lightbox and I will get better light next time and a better camera as well.  So, I'm working on several goals here at the same time.  

I tend to vote democrat but I'm going to send postcards to the republican women as well.  There are only 21 republican women in congress so I think they need my support as well to try and get them support women better.

Warping the inkle loom

Did I tell you about the new loom I got for Christmas?  I think I did. We scored a deal at the local thrift store and got a Nilus Leclerc inkle loom from the early 70s.  It's in perfect shape.  Last night I got out some yarns I'd had for a long time to practice on the new loom. It came with the original instruction book and also an Inkle Weaving book.
First you have to make the heddles.

I used some big size crochet cotten I had in my stash and made 50 heddles.  You only have to do this part once unless you are needing more heddles for a bigger project.  Here's the heddles made on the loom because they need to be all the same size.  Square knots are essential or it will pull out when you put pressure on it.

Then the heddles are attached to a slit peg and you can start warping.  I'm doing the first simple project in the book.  A three color belt.

You just wind the yarn around however many pegs to get the length you want.  You alternate round, one without going through the heddle, next one through the heddle.

Then I was set to weave.  You just open the shed with your hand and use the shuttle to beat.  Here's a good source for terms you don't know (for me that's a lot). Weaving glossary

Thoughts on this weaving.
The black yarn is just slightly thinner than the other colors and so I'm getting a fatter weave down the middle and the edges are too loose.
I'm not very good with making the edges even.  Practice, practice.
The yarn itself is not as strong as I'd like so I'm being very careful with this.
The weaving goes pretty fast and that's fun.
The loom is tall enough that I'm not having to bend too much at the waist to weave.  This is an issue because my muscle core is very weak and I can't tolerate bending too much now.
I like doing this.  I tend to be a process person so I like the handling of the yarn and the process of weaving.  I'm the same with knitting and spinning.  I like the making of the yarn and the knitting process.  Once I'm done, I usually give things away and am not too attached to the finished product.  That must be why I don't have a lot of the things I've made.  Mostly socks I've knit.
Well, that's it for today.  This weekend I will have some time to work on this more.
Happy weekend!

Bullet Journaling

In the spirit of the new I'm going to talk a little about bullet journaling.  I've been sick with an autoimmune disease and it has caused me a considerable amount of brain fog.  Whether it's the disease or the drugs I'm taking I'm not sure but I stumbled across this technique and it actually seems to be working for me.  At first I used it in the middle of the night when I'd wake up and my brain would just start buzzing with all the things I needed to do or wanted to do.  So I'd finally get up and write down everything that was bouncing around and I was actually able to get back to sleep because I knew things were written down and I wouldn't forget them.
There are some great you tube videos from the guy that came up with the basic idea.
Bullet Journal

This first picture is the future log where you write down ideas or tasks that will be in future months.  When you get to that month, you can transfer things to your daily task log.

This next picture is my daily log.  Every morning I transfer items that weren't completed from the day before and any new ones I need to do.  Also, during the day I write down any thoughts or new tasks that come to mind.  At the end of the day you can transfer thoughts to project pages.

To get started I just bought a dotted journal from Walmart for $6. You can buy them on Amazon and from the Bullet journal website.
If you watch the video, he explains exactly how to set it up in very simple fashion.
I really like it because I actually continue to use it every day.  That's amazing for me because I don't follow through on a lot of things like that.    I will say that I do still keep a calendar because I need the days and weeks laid out in a normal fashion but otherwise I'm really using it.

A tip I ran across from another blog is even though you can use this as sort of a journal as well, don't get hung up on making it pretty as sort of a showpiece.  I've seen a lot of journals and planners online that are pretty much works of art.  You can make it pretty or whatever but this is a working record, not just for pretty and not to impress anyone.
I hope you check into it and find it useful.  Use whatever works for you and make it great!
Happy New Year!