The Heathen Housewife

Hi, still here, still having a busy-fun summer. I’ve downloaded pictures again, and I have lots to share.

First, though, I wanted to thank everyone who commented on the spinning video post. I’m glad you liked it. I didn’t even think twice about showing Daisy-cat laying there on the bed. She does occasionally play with the roving as I spin, and she does love to lay on squishy yarn and knitted items. But she is also fifteen years old, so she is no longer the frisky kitten she once was.

And Doug, you do keep asking the good questions. It is sort of possible to coast – but the treadles would keep moving as long as the wheel keeps moving. Really, the treadling is not at all difficult, at least not on my wheel. It is made with sealed bearings that are quite smooth, and it has – um – gears? in the back – different-sized tracks for both the circumference the drive band travels around the wheel and also for the distance it travels around the cog that drives the flyers. So you can adjust the ratio of turns of the wheel to turns of the flyers anywhere from 6:1 to 19:1. My wheel is a pretty good size, but the Schacht-Reeves model that I tried out when I was test-driving wheels has a bigger wheel, which does allow for higher ratios. Blah, blah, blah…technical details. But you hit the nail on the head when you said that if I wanted to do less work, I could just buy the yarn pre-made. Or, for that matter, I would just go buy my socks and sweaters at the store. But where’s the fun in that? And the treadling is part of the soothing meditative rhythm that one gets into as they spin.

Moving on, I have lots of cute-kid pictures to share. Jason was over at our house watching Sophie last week, and as he was getting ready to leave, we were sitting in the living room chatting for a few minutes. Sophie spontaneously climbed up in his lap for a hug. I think he was a little freaked out by the affection, but he rolled with it just fine. He was also quite relieved that I didn’t make him change the wet diaper she was wearing before he left.

Also last week, the girls were playing together while I took my shower. When I came out, I found this little scene. Sophie and a bunch of stuffed animals lined up on the bed, playing the students to Julie’s teacher.

Julie was sitting there asking the cutest little questions like “Where do eggs come from?” and “What color are strawberries?” and then either Sophie would answer the questions, or Julie would answer on behalf of one of the stuffed animals.

Later, I found a couple other scenes – the animals were taking their nap…

And this is a fairly typical Lego sculpture. I love how intricate and detailed they can get.

We’ve still been following a no-enforced-nap policy for Sophie, which is working out great on the days when she actually makes it through dinner time without falling asleep. On the other hand, we find ourselves with situations like this many days, leading to continued late nights more often than I would like.

On to the knitting front – last week I finished a series of my Toe-Up Socks class, which was pretty successful. I had several barely-more-than-beginners in the class, and the technique for the toe involves a somewhat steep learning curve. Here are a few of their results…

My own knitting continues as well. I’ve been cranking away on a project I’ll share with you after the State Fair is over – I don’t know why I don’t want to show it off on the blog just yet, but for whatever reason, I seem to need to keep it to myself for now. In the mean time – let’s pause for a little freak-out – State Fair entry time already? That’s my really milestone for the beginning of the end of Summer. So sad!

I will just note again that while Cat Bordhi has some awesome ideas for knitting, the way her most recent book is organized and written makes absolutely no sense to me. I mean, I’m a pretty smart cookie. I used to program computers for a living. But I simply could not puzzle out a good chunk of the directions for one of her socks even after mooching alphabet stitch markers off my awesome knitting neighbor and spending a couple of hours boggling over it as I flipped back and forth through pages all over the book. Argh! I’m really sorry that I can’t recommend this book.

I am also still working on the purple diamonds sweater, but it is still quite slow going. I came really close to signing up for the Ravelympics on the Minnesota team in the WIPs Wrestling event, but I don’t want to pressure myself to finish the damned thing in the next two weeks and I know I don’t have time to participate in the forums and keep pictures posted and stuff. But I think I will try to focus on that sweater once the State Fair project is done. I’ve got to drop my submissions off by next Wednesday, so that will free me up.

On to spinning!

For a brief moment last week, the wheel was empty. It’s a bit surprising that the thing wasn’t smoking, really. I’ve had it awfully busy since it came home with me.

I started with 8 ounces of Mountain Colors Targhee roving in the Lupine colorway. That link is to the Loopy Ewe’s listing for it, but I bought mine locally at Needlework Unlimited. It’s pretty sticky wool, and while I’ve seen reviews online saying that it drafts like a dream, I found it to be pretty tough. I think I prefer the smoothness of merino so far. I ended up doing a two-ply with this stuff, and it came out to an average of worsted weight or so – some a bit thinner, chunks of it pretty chunky.

It’s pretty (pretty uneven), but I have no idea what I might knit with it. I have almost 500 yards of the stuff if I counted correctly. Any ideas?

After I finished that off, I was certainly ready for something a little softer. I had a giant pile (16 ounces) of Ashland Bay merino in the Primrose colorway that I’d picked up at The Fiber Studio. It’s the cotton-candy-soft stuff I was working with in my video, and I am in love with it.

I turned it into about 1450 yards of sport-to-worsted weight two-ply. It is so lovely, I can hardly wait to knit it up. I want to make a lace sweater for myself out of it. I’ve been flipping through stitch dictionaries dreaming about it, and as soon as I finish the diamonds sweater I’ll start swatching for it.

And I was SO going to leave the wheel alone for a while and focus on the sweater. But then this happened. It’s eight ounces of Louet Northern Lights roving in the Grape Jelly colorway. There is no information either on the packaging or their web site as to the breed specifics of this wool, but it feels a lot like the Targhee from Mountain Colors. I bought this locally as well – at Knitter’s Pallette in Lakeville. It was pretty much an impulse buy, but it is pretty and since it came as pencil roving, I’m struggling a little less with getting it to draft than I did with the Mountain Colors stuff.

And back to the kids’ antics…

We’ve been spending quite a bit of quality time at the parks, since the weather has been mostly pleasant lately. It is so fun for me to watch my girls playing *together*. They love to chase each other around.

Julie chased Sophie to the top of this hill, and Sophie was afraid to climb down it by herself – it is a little steep – so Julie went back up and held her hand while they walked down together.

Our block celebrated National Night Out on Tuesday with a street party. I wasn’t there because I was off teaching a class, but Joe took some pictures…

A big city truck stopped by for the kids to climb on and explore.

There were hot dogs and chips, and the kids rode around on their bikes.

McGruff the Crime Dog stopped by on a motorcycle with a side car. Lots of neighbors took turns climbing in. I think Sophie sat in the sidecar, but Julie refused. Typical.

I wish I’d been there, and I will try to remember to schedule myself free for next year.

And today we were back at a different park. The girls shared a horsie ride.

Julie has discovered the joy of twisting the swing chains and spinning round and round…

And also continuing to play Big Sister by giving Sophie lots of pushes on the swing. Sophie ate it up.

Lots more I could share, but it is well past my bed time. Night-night!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 3:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.