Rachael

Okay, but now it’s two days later, and I’m exHOSSted from being at work my whole life, minus the seven minutes I wasted in sleep at home, and I can’t be expected to recap thoroughly. But I’ll try.

Met Janine at her house in Berkeley. There are not enough superlatives to describe Janine. She’s just one of those people that you love immediately, upon the first meeting, and you want to grab her and hold onto her and make her teach you how to spin. Or that might be just me with that last part. But she’s awesome, truly. Ryan and I are tugging war with her. (Happy birthday, TMK!)

Then we picked up fancy la-di-dah lunch fixings (I had to make it up to them for doing the big bail last week on them) at Andronico’s, and crossed the Richmond Bridge over to Marin.

Sylvia lives in the most amazing spot in Marin, people, and this is her view.

Oh, and this:

Isn’t that amazing? It reminds me at once of the Wellington Bay in New Zealand, and the hills of the Cinque Terre. Lucky lady.

Sylvia IS a spin-goddess. She’s also known as Beadlizard, for her insane beading abilities (those little animals could almost talk, I swear), but we went to see her spin. Nowadays she uses an electric spinning wheel that her ole-buddy-ole-pal Alden Amos made her, and you’ve never seen anything like it. I was using some good old green merino, and getting a nice semi-slubby DK-weight single. She got something that looked like a green hair, using the same stuff. I could hardly spin — I was just staring at her.

Oh! Here’s a shot of Sylvia and Janine in action.

Isn’t Sylvia’s spinning gorgeous? Oh, what? You can’t see it? Hmmmm. Perhaps the emperor had no clothes, you wonder?

No, here’s proof. This is my three-ply next to her three-ply. Keep in mind this is from the same wool. The same dang wool:

That fine thread? Is THREE-PLY! We bow, don’t we?

And she taught me how to Navajo ply! I kinda suck at it, but I’ll practice.

Woot! Spinning! And I did figger out my problem with the Vogue pattern (#9 in new one); I just had to use my brain instead of following the pattern word-for-word. Go figure.

All right. Brain-fried. No more for now….
(spinning) mwah!

Really, no time to post. I swear. I have ten hours off today. With driving and bathing and eating and peeling a banana, that leaves, like, no time at all. Pics will be coming of my fabulous day of spinning (NOT my bathing, but thanks for pointing out my vague phraseology).

Tune in tomorrow? Bad blogger, me. Tired blogger, also. Mwah.

(Hey, do you know that even TMK reminded me via email about yesterday’s spin-up? That was COOL.)

They forgave me, and today I’m meeting with Sylvia and Janine to spin! I remembered! I’m getting in the bath now!

Just thought you should know. Pics later or tomorrow. And by tonight I’ll be able to spin moonlight, right? (I like a steep learning curve.)

Oh, man. THIS what my stitch pattern should look like in the Vogue cardie, and it so doesn’t. That first motif does, the second, not so much. And I was all like, "There MUST be a problem. Sure! I know what I’m doing! Vogue must be wrong!" But Bogie got it, so I’m just screwing it up all on my own. Shoot. Maybe I’ll try it again tonight. Don’t think for a moment that I’m going to fix the sleeve that I’ve messed up, though. Oh, no. I know for a fact that if I get the rest of the motifs right, no one will ever notice. Or care. I like that.

Also: I should go running. And I should do some writing. Instead, I am very, very lazy. I have a 14 hour shift coming up tonight, and an additional 10 tomorrow night on my day off, so I’m throwing a little tantrum, right here on my living room floor. I will be LAZY right now! Yes! (And I had a training all day on Monday, which is prime weekend real estate, so I’ve had a very long week. It was a customer service class. For the third time. Three times they’ve sent me to the same class. I have to get a certain number of hours of training a year for work, but they don’t check to see which classes would be good for a person, they just check to see what’ll fit with scheduling. Same teachers, same words, same stories. Yawnly. I knit a whole sock.)

I should write. Gosh dang, why don’t I want to write lately? It’s irksome. Irk. Irk.
And irk.

To cheer myself up, I present Still Life with Two Cats, A Wheel and a Shitload of Sock Yarn:

See, that worked, huh? Enjoy your weekend, and I’ll enjoy mine when it decides to show up, and love someone up, okay?

Just finished another hat! And this one is for Dulaan, I swear. And damn, is it soft and warm. I would move to Mongolia for this hat. Okay. Maybe not. But I would move to the couch for this hat, that’s for sure.

The orange/tan is plied merino/tencel, the orange is corriedale, and the grey stuff is lovely merino/silk, all from Deep Color.

I’m loving knitting the handspun — I don’t know why it’s so much softer than commercially prepared stuff, but it is. It’s probably because I’m not doing it right or something. But I’m digging it. I want to make socks. Oh, yes.

I’m sleepy, and my sentence structure breaks right down into very simple short sentences when I’m like this. Uh-huh. Yawn.

Hey! In the new Vogue Knitting, I started the 9th pattern, the Flame Stitch Cardigan, but that stitch pattern breaks down for me somewhere in rows 13-24 of the pattern. The first 12 are fine and make a good-lookin’ flame, while the second set make an offset crooked leaf, rather than an offset copy of the first 12 rows. I haven’t had the time or the spare brain cells to figger out the problem, though. Anyone else? It hasn’t hit their errata page yet. I really don’t think it’s me, but it could be. Somebody, start a sleeve or something and let me know…..

Okey doke. It’s your morning, but it’s my goodnight. And please for the love of all that’s holy, don’t honk your horn in someone’s driveway, even if it’s the daytime. You never know who needs her sleep. And when exactly did knocking go out of style? No one knocks in my hood, I tell you that. Anywho. ‘Night.

Well, let’s talk fiber, shall we?

I forgot to mention that on Saturday, my sisters, Lala, and I drove out to Meridian Jacobs in Vacaville for their open house. On the Central Coast, where I’m from, that would mean a winery. Up here, it means sheep. Lovely sheepy-sheep, and little lambs. And a llama!

The llama had the softest nose of anything I’ve ever felt. Really. All day I kept thinking about soft things, and trying to remember if they were as soft as that, and no, they weren’t. Cashmere? No. The inside of a baby’s elbow? No. His muzzle was downy and snuzzly and did-I-mention-soft and amazing. And then I ran like hell because I was scared he was going to spit on me.

And there was wool for sale. You remember how many bags Baa-baa Black Sheep had? Yep. Like that. The stash is already getting embarrassing. While I shopped, Lala made friends.

That middle boy was SO cute and so very into showing Lala how everything worked.

So here’s some stuff I’ve spun:

And here’s some stuff I’ve yet to spin:

That fluffly stuff on the left is wonderful ALPACA that Ann in Minnesota sent me — samples from her very own babies. I’ll let you know if she ever starts selling it, ’cause it’s gorgeous, and I’m a very lucky lady.

And look! Product! I made a hat last night, one that actually looks good on me.

Hats NEVER look good on me, and I do mean never. The next hat I make from my own yarn will go right to Dulaan, but I’ve got my greedy little fingers in this one, and I can’t let it go.

I’m just going to jot down the pattern I used for the hat, since it worked well, and I don’t want to forget it:

At 5st/inch, on size 6 US, cast on 100, join, work k2p2 for six inches, then k7k2tog around, then one row in pattern, then k6k2tog around, then one row in pattern, continue like this until just about done, k2 around, yarn through remaining stitches twice, pull, weave in ends. Bam. Hat is done. Now your head is warm, right?