PippiKneeSocks.com

This week I’ve been working the coil/knot yarn chapter.
Some of the techniques, I’ve been taking more of a step out approach.
Not for this one…. I just kept going, and going, and going.

Fiona
10 yards
2 ounces
Wool with copious amounts of recycled silk sari and nylon tinkle (with some mohiar for good measure.)

This was my Fiber Friday for today. (I haven’t participated in eons… Oy, the guilt.)
The topic was Enchantment. (This totally reminded me of Fiona in Shrek.)

With any luck, this will be headed off to the land of Oz, into the hands of a master; later next week.
Cross your fingers…
And shuuuuuuuuush. You didn’t see me here on the interwebs.

Occasionally, I do have FO’s… (Yes, for real!)
This is one of those rare events. (Or rarer as of late.)
Some socks, since it is Socktoberfest

They look pretty wonky, lying there on the floor.

They look pretty wonky from this angle, too. Hard to get a good photo of one’s feet with children underfoot.
But, that’s the best I could muster. I have a terrible rash on my feet. (NO! Not from the socks, from the Lupus.) And putting anything on my feet irritates them. Too bad, because my tootsies are cold! (I wonder if sea silk socks would be good?)

Any hoo, the details. You may remember I started knitting them way back here.. (yikes, That was July!)
US size 2 & 3 DPNs
The yarn

Which, you may (or may not) recall me spinning way back here.

• 18 WPI
• hand washed/dyed Vermont rare breed wool
• hand dyed top
• hand dyed nylons
• hand dyed European hemp
• angora (raised by Chris)
• hand dyed silk noils
• recycled silk sari

Sheesh! That is A-lot of hands.. Last I checked, I still only had 2.
Here, is where you can insert a long winded monologue about the pleasure I (we) get from making things with my (our) hands. But today isn’t that day; as i fear it will take me to a place where I am unwilling to go at the moment.
So, use your imagination. Why bother spinning yarn, when you can go to your LYS? Why bother knitting socks, where there is wallfart? Well, you and I know better, now don’t we?

Rock on with your bad selves
♥

Like a little nose powering….
the shop has been updated!
i’ve added:

2 2ply yarns
1 2ply blend
and 1 arty/novel type
2 new colorways (4 hanks) of hand painted superwash sock yarn

you can view everything in the shop using this link or you can see everything that is new

Enjoy!

That seemed to take longer than normal. Too many distractions!

While i was at it, the kids managed to test some nuclear weapons or something. The whole place is Trashed!! :/

♥

To spite the universe and circumstances working against me today, I managed to update the shop. All kinds of new stuffs.

Now, I’ll take a little digression and ramble about said circumstances
Today Izabella didn’t have skool; this means her complaining about it every 5 minutes & both of the young causing chaos, for good measure..
I had pictures to take, sock yarn to wind, things to add to the data base. (which, of course i managed at least one screw up.)
And I was up against this. (Don’t let the sweet eyelashes fool you.)

Every time I break out the camera, one or the other jumps right in front of it.
It has been more chaotic here today, than it has been in a long time. Norma’s Double Motherwort tincture arrived this afternoon, and Not A Second Too Soon. I’m tellin ya, this stuff is worth more than gold. I took some, and immediately felt better. (hummm, that might have something to do with the vodka it is distilled with… ha.) But, now i have a cup of coffee sitting in front of me; even tho my brain is fried from the juggling today; my body is tired and my house is a mess (and, mother comes Monday, for Bell’s birthday. AYE!)
But, there is no rest for the wicked, as I’m about to fire up the dyepots for something I have promised for Scout

If I owe you email, please know I’m not ignoring. I seem to be behind, and I have this syndrome; If i don’t respond Right Away; they slip my mind… :0 (Sad, but true… My brain isn’t so good some days.)

♥

Lawd, it appears I even have less time for the computer now that I only have one kiddlet here with me during the day.
How can this be? Sad but true.
Today marks Bell’s last day of her first full week of pre-skool. She is really loving it. (I, on the other hand am having a Very Hard time adjusting to living by this imposed schedule…)
She insisted on having her picture taken in her new bad ass t-shirt from auntie Jessica

My baby; all growed up & hamming it up! (the picture is small but her shirt reads “Hello Kitty Forever”)

I have gotten a little spinning done too. (Very little, but very inspired)
My favorite yarn this week

Autumn Changes

• hand dyed mohair locks
• hand dyed tinkle
• hand dyed wool
• recycled silk sari
• 5 ply
• 14 yards
• 4 WPI
• 1.8 oz

Even Matt had nice things to say about it. (”That’s hotttt” lol.)

The mohair locks are very inspiring.

Purple lock eater

• hand dyed locks
• hand painted merino wool
• 2ply
• 10 yards
• 6 WPI
• 1.7 oz

Highly addictive, those locks, yes…I have some pink ones on the bobbin now.

In other highly addictive realms, I’ve been dipping into the recycled silk sari, since I was able to replenish the stash this past weekend.

Autumnal Mayhem

• hand dyed wool
• hand dyed tinkle
• recycled silk sari
• 2 ply
• 46 yards
• 7 WPI
• 3.5 oz

I am planning a wee update of Pippi tomorrow. If i can get my sock yarn hanked up, and some special batts made; that is.

I’d love to sit here and blog about how I love the colors this time of year; or how MG Tank and Mike e called the other night, as soon as i got home from my first ever PTA meeting. Saying that they had a stolen Caddy and were on their way up. (Talk about paradigm shift.. There was no way my feeble brain would have withstood going from a PTA meeting to hangin out with those two. NOPE. ~
Hopefully this weekend’s rain check still stands.)
Yes, I would love nothing better to go on and on about it all. But my son has other plans for me… That, much to my dismay, have nothing to do with me sitting at the computer.

♥

Yesterday, I scooted up to VTS&W. It was glorious, NO KIDS with me. I was almost suffering from a bit of shock, since, that is unheard of.
I had the pleasure of spending most of the day with Linda (& Peter, sometimes too). Walking around ogling the colors, admiring all of the beautiful hand work. And chatting. Great chatting! I got to meet a few bloggers in the flesh that I hadn’t before, Jessie, whom is far more beautiful than any of the pictures you have seen her post & her pal, Jessalu… Funny little thing, Jessie walked up to me and said, “I’d notice that feed bag anywhere” (my hemp courier bag)… which I found amusing; it wasn’t the flaming hair, Jessie? lol. (I think that is the advantage of having bright hair, you stand out in a crowd; easy to find or avoid.) I digress; I can’t wait to see what spindle you got!
By the end of the day, my bag was getting heavier and heavier. I’m not normally a shopper; but, I couldn’t help myself yesterday. Seeing all of the brightly colored locks, lovingly perched in baskets and bowls; the sea of color flooded me with desire, I was nearly left with no choice.
I picked up some mohair locks from High View Farm (Waterford, VT)

I’ve already washed a few handfuls and dyed them; I am anxiously anticipating them drying… I nearly was going to spin them damp. (I’ve got me some ideas.)
Some really lovely Alpaca from Snow Shoe Farm (Peacham, VT)

Very clean, and of course, so soft it should be criminal..
No plans on the horison for that delectable bag of fluff; but that is okay. It will make it’s place next to my angora from Woolybuns and bless the rest of my fiber stash with soft goodness.
Speaking of Chris, I had the pleasure of bumping into her a few times. She was teaching a felting workshop, and they stuffed her in an area half the size of my kitchen!! She and her participants were taking it in stride. Laughter and good vibes emanated from that corner.
One of my favorite acquisitions yesterday was this bumper sticker from Over East Farm

It will be making it’s way onto the back of the auto sometime soon, after it rains, as bumperstickers don’t like to cling to dirty cars.
& last but NOT least….ta-dum.

!!
Recycled silk sari from The Wool Peddler
Stephanie & her family are really lovley! (and she has a great muff pattern in the summer issue of knitty) I think from now on, I’ll be getting all of my sari from them, yes.
I already dove into the packages & made some batts

I couldn’t make my way up today to see Adrian (hope you made it!! and not to bingo!:)); as there was/is just too much to do here. I came home yesterday to find both the kids naked and covered from head to toe in marker, they also commingled all of the clean laundry with the dirty stinky clothes… This means, I have much laundry to do, as Bells needs clean clothes to go to skool (!!) tomorrow. AYE. Skool, I get butterflies every time I think about it.
Well, I should get off the computer, and do the things I need to do.
Hope everyone had a great weekend as well!!
♥

i haven’t fallen off the face of the internets or anything; i’ve been busy and sick. mostly sick; and it seems like forever now, it has far surpassed the point of “gettin’ old”. & it has been so long since i have written here, i think i may have forgotten how. which is terrible. i should utilize this space to try to help me make reading about spinning interesting. after i hit “send” on my latest article, i had some pangs of regret. solidified by making matt read one of the eleventy hard copys; and him only getting past the third paragraph on the first page. so, i’ve failed. (seems to be alot of that going on with me in recent weeks. but, you know that can work to my advantage, by making me try harder. sitll and all, not a great place to be; in the right here, right now. I should try starting by using proper capitalization and punctuation. I’m no ee cummings. Ever notice, My favorite punctuation is the ! followed by the ; what gives? Reading my stuff out loud, and doing edits is very painful.)
So what has been going on in my world? (clearly you didn’t click on your bloglines to be witness to my beating myslef up, did you?) Let’s see; in no particular order…
WORD to

Lime & Violet (for those of you unawares of L&V… hottest new fibery goodness pod cast out there! can we say Chock Full of Fresh & Funny!!! And by hottest, i mean they are getting all kinds of attention from the i tunes peeps and bloggers alike; and we all know that the blogosphere is always right on ze money.)
So many of my lj peeps were talking about it, I tried to listen, but being a podcast virgin; I didn’t know one had to wait.for.the.page.to.load. I also i had no idea they had mentioned me in some fashion until my mama Scout shouted out to me. Thanks Scout! I do have to shamefully admit, that i haven’t given it full listen yet,(just bits and bobs) I’ve been so far removed from this box it isn’t even funny. Even if i was sitting right here, the noise level in this house is decibels above my preference; making it hard to pay attention to something; or anything really. (bedtime you cometh not a moment too soon.) But from what I was able to gather from the little bites i was able to hear, it is up beat and funny! And Lime and Voilet are stand up chicks, so I’m sure it is all good stuff! (sooooooooooo, go give a listen and when you are done, click that little donation button; any podcast that is awesome enough to give me a shout out deserves a bit of fundage to keep their servers up.(Podcasts use up a metric butt ton of bandwith, in case you don’t know.)
So, what else…?
ah, the “I wanna be an elf” hat

Made from a ever so slightly variegated (kettle dyed) green bulky think and thin single, on size 10.5’s. With YO’s every few rows, carried along with a semi-coily number.

Semi coils, interesting, but I’m still not too thrilled with them. I’m far too anal it seems.
I’m not happy with the hat in general, I’m going to frog it. But, I continue to knit on it. (WTF?) I think it has something to do with “the drugs” Velma mentioned…. ‘I do it for the drugs.’
So, I’ll keep knitting on it until it is done, then i’ll frog it.

My second sock is progressing ever so slow.

I may have mentioned this before, but I was suffering from SSS even before the first one was done. I was putting off the toe decreases, and kept putting them off, the poor sock wound up being a bit too long with a boxy toe. Will I undo my kitchener, and frog back an inch? No. Boxy toe will stay with us as an ode to imperfection. An ever present reminder that I need not always be perfect.

I’ve only done a wee bit of spinning.

This yarn, will hopefully become this sweater. I can hardly wait to get the book in my hot little hands, so I can see just how much of this i need to spin. (Well, there is a plethora of reasons why i can’t wait to get it; have you seen the table of contents?!?!?! Lynne Vogel!! among many other super talents, including Crystal Canning & if I’m not mistaken, the book is lovingly dedicated to her memory.
Another reminder that our time here is short, we are only passing thru. People will not remember us for what we do, as much as how we do it & how we are.

Well, I’ve tap-tapped here long enough, perhaps if I blogged more than once a week, I wouldn’t be so painfully long winded.
Live gracefully & stay true to yourself.
♥

today feels like monday, it is thursday, but still feels like monday. why is that?
maybe it is the rain, who knows.
i’ve been doing alot of blending, not so much spinning. (i have another huge hank on the bobbin, that i’m procrastinating spinning. spinning that much of one colorway on the same bobbin, calls for lots of breaks in between…) i’ve been using the carder so much that my arm is sore. for the past few nights i didn’t realize why my arm was feeling tweaky when i went to bed. then while carding yesterday, i felt the tweaky pain and realized that my carder is too low. not much i can do about that now, so, after today i’m going to take it a bit easier on the carding.
without further ado,(or complaints) the fruits of my labors……..

nightfall of diamonds
i made some for stella for winning my t-shirt contest, and decided since i was at it; i should make a bunch.
i also did these

crazy diamond
basically the same; but with some churro and oodles of recycled silk sari.
the pictures of each don’t come close to justice; it is super dark here, and i think a the white background really subtracted from their beauty. (but, well that was all i had handy at 6:30 this morning.)

today is going to be a day of sock yarns.
i’m going to wok on a sock yarn blend.
then i’m going to dye a bit of superwash sock yarn… then, back to finishing this enormous bobbin that i have working.

last night was the phil and friends show. it was raining buckets, i had no tickets. so i did what any other old lady would do.
i stayed home, and baked.

umm, mixed berry cobbler/crisp. (vegan) i made an apple one too.
sad, i know. i contemplated going all day. tickets were outrageously priced, at $55; and the chances of a random pink haried old lady getting a cheap ticket are slim to none. and the rain factor played a big role. it would have been hella harder for me to find anyone i would know lurking out in the rain. so, there you go. i feel kind of down about it; since my feet have been itchy lately. but, it isn’t like it once was, and can never be.
we pay the teller off in gold, in hopes he will come back, but he can not be bought or sold.

this concludes this rainy day thursday that feels like monday post.
♥