new yarn! yay

ok...so i've been a little derelict. but i have lovely new yarn to show! yay! two lovely matching handspun honeys!

and some handdyed sock yarn!

hedgehog love!

I found this little guy on my back porch and brought him home! hehe

He seemed a little afraid, balled all up, but here he is starting to come out of his ball.

new spindles to work on

i've been working on new spindles. the unicorn one is finally done... i'm pretty happy with how it turned out...then i dyed some roving...i'm calling this iris...i love the combo of colors. and now, i am working on a hedgehog spindle. so far i just have the beginnings of a drawing...

the night before i went trotting off to denver i dyed two skeins of yarn...i took one along to give to stephanie pearl-mcphee and have one still around. it turned out very springy--i love the color combo...the yellow is more greeny-yellow than just yellow altho there are bits of truly yellow tho and bits of blue all in a field of blue...very much like a spring meadow.

...and back

so...it was a long drive. I started out on Thursday at 8am. It was cold, it was snowing, and the roads were slippery! I drove as far as Hot Springs...and it got worse. It was sleeting, and cold, and very slippery. I wondered about what on earth had possessed me. How important and fun could the Yarn Harlot be? I kept going...

It was nasty until i was almost through Wyoming. But, I got to Colorado, and it was 54 degrees, and sunny.

I had maps from Google maps...(in case you don't know...don't get those). I got to Denver at about 3:30 pm and decided to find the bookstore. I had a map..it should be easy, right? WRONG. It took me almost an hour of wandering blankly around downtown Denver before i happened to find the bookstore. completely by accident. In case you haven't been there be aware of a couple of things:

1)You can't drive on 16th in downtown Denver.
2)If you are going somewhere on 16th, find your way there, park (anywhere) and take the FREE shuttle.
3)Downtown Denver has LOTS of one way streets.

When i finally found the Tattered Cover I called my husband. He wanted to know if i had checked in. I told him i'd find my the hotel later. I was going to the bookstore. He said he was sure if i got there by 5 pm that would be plenty early. I decided to go to the bookstore anyway! When i arrived I found that there were already about 50 people ahead of me in line. so if you get the chance to go see Stephanie talk a couple of important notes.

1)Go early, knitters are committed (Perhaps i should say "should BE committed" but i won't)
2)take knitting, you'll have lots of time to wait.
3)Be prepared to laugh...a LOT.
4)Don't forget you're camera..i did :-(

The talk was amazing... not to be missed. She signed my book and i wandered away to find the hotel.

at 8:30 pm.

Please remember that google maps should not be trusted. I drove around for over an hour and finally called the place. the map was totally wrong. Finally i did find it.

At 10:30 PM. ACK. I went and had a drink and went to bed. Unfortunately at 2:30AM i was rather rudely awakened by a fire alarm. I jumped out of bed, grabbed clothes, threw them on, grabbed my purse and my autographed copy of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off. Have to keep my priorities straight. Even yarn is replaceable after all...And run down 8 flights of stairs. ACK.

I walk out into the lobby. the lady behind the desk says: "What? Why are you here? there's no fire, it's a false alarm."

No way, she's on the phone telling people not to leave their rooms, and asking other people if there is smoke on their floor. What a dip. So i sit in the lobby and wait for the fire dept. to arrive. Lucky me, i have a book to read :-) Eventually we get the all clear. I go back up on the elevator and fall into bed.

The next thing i remember is someone knocking at the door. I am not awake, i am not functional, it is 8 AM. WOW. then she tries to come in. ACK.

I manage to fall out of bed, walk to the door, only to find that someone woke me up so i'd know my morning paper was here. ACK. I got dressed and went to find coffee. NO one should have to face the world without coffee.

Unfortunately it was sleeting... and freezing...and my car had to be scraped completely. But i arrived home eventually...

what have we learned:

1) Never, never trust google maps!
2) Never drive in Downtown Denver!
3) It was all worth it and i'd do it again...twice!

to denver...

i know it's nutty...i feel nutty. but i'm doing it. yesterday i actually checked the yarn harlot's tour and realized....Oh. MY. GOD. she's going to be in Denver TODAY! That, in South Dakota terms in pretty darned close. Only, like, 6 hours or so. So I'm going! I can't believe it. I made reservation, my husband made me maps, i can do this!
Anyway...I feel nutty. It's 5 am and i'm up writing...way too nuts!

fun and funky new sock yarn

so...i've been playing with new dyeing methods. this particular one takes too long to do often but creates the most lovely results...a gradiated yarn. it will gradiate from top to toe through the colors. i actually went to all the work to create to matching/not quite matching skeins!

march roving on the month

so...i finished carding up this lovely fiber, but now i have to send it out for march roving of the month...pooey!

so...i also dyed some lovely first shearing of llama and now i'm carding it! I will say this...it looks much nicer carded up than pre-carded. PRECARDED-- CARDED--

newly dyed stuff to card...

This is what i need to get carded up today. It's going to be gradiated batts.
from black to blue to purple to red! I think it will be really lovely!

Early planting all done!

I really love how this yarn *early planting* turned out. I was planning on calling it EARTH but decided that yarn needed to be more dark brown so i'm headed back for my dyeing jars to try again. I am loving how muted and beautiful this turned out tho.

more carding!

I spent my morning carding up this lovely fiber. It's mine...all MINE. I'm spinning it myself. Nothing for sale here...nothing to see...move along! HEHE!

I think it will be called *EARTH* in a series of yarn that i intend to represent the 4 ancient elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Sky!

more of yesterday's mega carding session!

so...i've spent hours over the past few days dyeing and carding up new fiber.

Oh, and one new spindle...

a day of carding

well...i spent most of today carding fiber and am nowhere near done!

finally done!

thank goodness. I finally forced me to simply finish the yarn. It is really lovely. It stripes through pale yellow into mustard yellow, gold and then salmon. It is 500 + yards of yarn and i LOVE it. not sure what to do with it. sell it? make something? anyway....all done. new stuff coming.

what's on my wheel?

well...i've been working way too long on the yarn that is currently on my wheel. I decided to make some yarn that changes color from one end to the other. i jar dyed some lovely fiber and am spinning it...the yarn will start at one end a pale yellow and change through a darker gold, to eventually be a pinky-salmon color. So i divided the roving in half...one half for each ply and have been spinning very fine singles for days. I'm almost done, but having a short attention span...i'm getting tired of it. I need to just sit down and finish spinning the second ply. so i can ply it.

I've also started knitting a shawl...at least that's what i think it'll be. i dyed some frogged yarn several lovely colors and am doing a stripey shawl type item. No pattern...of course, just guessing...

What is on your needles or wheel?

i've been derelict

and i know it. I haven't blogged in, well, awhile. I have interestingly enough been featured in this blog: http://cheldodge.net/blog/ which is so amazing and fun i can't believe it! YAY!

I have done a little of this and a little of that since my last entry, but i guess not enough of anything to feel really inspired. I do have some lovely wool/silk drying. I keep thinking i should build a fiber dryer. Like a big plywood box with a room dehumidifier in it, and a lid. that way the dehumidifier would pull the wet out right quick. Because, well, i'm truly impatient and don't wait well. I hate waiting for wool to dry, yarn to dry, anything. i want to get right to it. card it, spin it, whatever! anyway, i think it's close to dry so i'll post pictures later today...in the mean time visit chel's blog cuz it's awesome!

stick woven bracelet

this is the bracelet my daughter wove using drinking straws as sticks and handdyed wool yarn!

A fibery treat

tuck started barking...i saw the lovel UPS truck and then....a box of fibery goodness!

Beautiful fiber... in hazelnut and midnight black...plus a cone of grey sock yarn! yay!

on my wheel today

dragon spindle in progress

working on a dragon spindle