On being a Master Spinner

As you may know, I'm a juried member of the Saskatchewan Craft Council.  Part of the joy of being a  member is writing self promotional blog posts for them ;) 

Please follow the link below to see my thoughts on Being a Master Spinner.

On Being a Master Spinner

Happily Spinning,

        ~Kara~

Official

That's it.  It's official.  I am a Master Spinner.  I can now proudly wear that hat.  It's kind of amazing actually.

Receiving my certificate from Zach Webster.

Jan, Vanessa and I proudly showing off our fancy new certificates!
(You'll see that Jan's is way fancier, but that's because she's a keener-thats a good thing!- and had her book in before the official Olds College graduation cut off.  Mine and Vanessa's books were in by the Master Spinner program cut off that doesn't line up with the Colleges. We get the fancy diplomas during the next round of graduations) 

Legit! Too legit to quit!

Because the Olds College campus is gorgeous, and these poppies were so lovely that day in the sun.

 The beauty of being official is I now get to teach the course, and I was introduced to that step this year, by co-assisting Mary Lessman.  Mary is a wonderful woman, a font of spinning knowledge, and she has the biggest heart.  I felt blessed to be under her wing.

Level 4 class!  it was a delight assisting Mary Lessman in teaching this class. 

An evening of relaxing after a full day of assisting in Level 4

 As I may or may not have mentioned over the years of heading to Olds, I always stop in at The Fat Ewe Farm.  Eileen Wosnak has many beautiful sheep, a llama, duck and chicken and geese, and bunnies!  I picked up a gorgeous black Romney fleece and brought a friend a bunny!

I promised myself no more fleeces... but this one called to me... I actually dreamt about it... I had to go back.

Not my bunny. But he sure is cute! 

If you haven't started to follow me on Facebook, I encourage you to go over there and do that.  I've been posting live videos, and intend on continuing that practice.  The next one is going to be quite a bit longer than the first ones, as it will go over how to spin if you're broke.  No need for fancy wheels, just a stick and some wool!

Happily Spinning,
~Kara

It is done.

The past 7 years of my life are now neatly packed up into three binders and I couldn't be more relieved... Well, if I'm honest, I could be.  They could be marked, and I could have my transcript saying just how amazing the work was, and I could look at them in the Olds College library, and be proud.  But for now I'm relieved that my Master Spinner In Depth Study is complete and handed in for marking.  It's so incredibly freeing to have it DONE.

And since I've gotten it done, I get to play!! I had planned a dye week, and promptly ran out of room to dry all he fibre, so it turned into a dye day.  It's all very wet yet, but these are the colours I created, while in the pots.   

Fibre Week is coming up in just over 2 weeks and I'm incredibly excited to be taking a class with the incredibly talented Laurie Steffler.  This class is a 3 day class titled Breezy Silk Chiffon tunic/dress/vest.  I'll be learning to nuno felt, folks!  That's super exciting for me. I haven't managed to be successful at nuno felting, but I'm looking forward to trying it out!  I believe there is still some room in some of the workshops, but alas, not in this specific one...

I'm also really looking forward to being an assistant in the level four Master Spinner class!  I'm looking at this position as a good experience so I can better understand what it takes to teach the course, not just take it!  I'll cross my fingers and hope to be on the roster in the future as an instructor.

Well, I'd better get back to tackling the creation of more yarn, and cleaning the house!

~Kara

A week into Tour de Fleece

I can't believe we are on day 7 of Tour de Fleece already. I feel like I should be farther along then this:

Mind you I spent 10 hours doing this:

And maybe I should be farther along then I am because I took a day to wash fleeces. And I promptly got distracted with the idea of dyeing fibre while I was out there.* But I did take my support spindle out, and got some cotton spun for the Level 4 homework I've got to do as well. So I was still spinning, and it was homework.  Just not the homework I should be working on.

And yes.  I'm timing how long it takes me to do the sock yarn, because my goal for TdF is to get my socks for my Level 3 Master Spinner final project done. Completely done. Spun, dyed and knitted. And it needs to take at least 50 hours. Believe it or not, I've been doing the spinning for 5 hours already, and I'm not even 1/6th of the way through the fibre I need to spin.  It'll be a good solid 6 hours total once I'm done that 1/6th of the fibre.  And if that's the case, I'll need to spin for another 30 hours, and I'd like to be done all that and the dyeing by this coming up friday... 5 days to spin 30 hours. Plus 1 day for plying, which will hopefully only take 4 hours, and 1 day to dye. That's a LOT of spinning in 5 days... 6 hours a day, to be precise...  It kind of makes me nauseated thinking about it. And this is where I think maybe I should change the socks I'm spinning for. Maybe just go for a top down, straight forward plain jane sock, instead of the Little Cable knee highs I'd originally planned to make. 36 hours+10 Hours= 46 hours, and that's so close to 50, that I'm thinking, maybe, I'll be doing just that, minor change in plans. But that's alright. That's how these things go, and it's really good to know that that is how long it takes to make something. Or, I just go with it and get the socks I want, no matter the hours involved... So indecisive!  Oh well. I'm sure I'll make a decision soon, sometime while spinning for 6 hours a day...

~Kara

*I'll get you the drool worthy pictures of the dyed stuff soon. Just a matter of taking the time to take those pictures, which you know I'm in short supply of...

Fibre Week -Day 2

It's the first day for classes!  I'm really excited to get started.  I did hit the market yesterday, and got myself an epically amazing Russian spindle from Ancient Fibre Arts.  I was spindle whispered by Caroline herself. This is the beauty, and it spins so true.



She's coco bolo and walnut. The bowl I bought to spin her in is african black wood, it's heavy and perfect for sitting cross legged on the floor, which is how I generally spin on a supported spindle.

I'm in the classroom right now, and there's more visiting then typing, so I'm going to leave it at this! Time for the fun to start!

~Kara

Fibre Week 2014 - Day 1

I arrived at Olds College last night.  It was a very long drive, with the first half of the time raining cats and dogs.   I had a stop in at The Fat Ewe Bed and Breakfast farm, and picked up a few raw fleeces.  Eileen and I had a coffee and a cookie (or two ;) ) and a good visit.  This is one of my favourite stops on my way to Olds every year. This year was a bit sad, because of the rain, as she generally gives me a tour of the farm, giving me a chance to see all the animals. I enjoyed it none the less.  Once I got closer to Edmonton the clouds broke up and I could see the sky.  It really is blue!! (side note, It's been raining back home for the better portion of the past two weeks, and it's been a while since I've seen the sun.)

Once I got here, I found my way to my town house.  I really enjoy staying in these housing units.  They are a shared home so I'll have roomies, but they've not arrived yet. It was very quiet, but oh so nice to just unwind.

This morning I got a sleep in, and it was a rather lazy morning as well.  I didn't leave the condo until 10!  There's not much going on today, other then the Merchant Mall, so I'm finding this extremely slow pace odd but wonderful.  I'm definitely not used to silence and down time.  Once I did get rolling however, I went for an invigorating walk.  The sky is still blue!  Because the college has a horticulture program the grounds are absolutely gorgeous. Flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing and it couldn't be a more gorgeous day.

The Merchant Mall opens up in about 10 minutes, so I'm going to wrap this up, and spend some money! This year is full of new fibres like bison, camel, cashmere, and linen, and I know I'll be needing those. I definitely don't have those to hand!

Hope your day is as wonderful as mine is shaping up!

~Kara

Cleaning the kitty

For level 4 of the Master Spinners program, we need to come prepared with a presentation.  I LOVE my drum carder, and I've learned a lot about blending fibres since opening my Etsy shop.  Drum carders are briefly covered in level 2, so I can do my presentation on them! Hurray!  This should be a piece of cake.
I went to get everything ready for this presentation, you know, clean my space to take pictures, get out the fibre and scale, find the camera, all that good stuff.  And of course, clean the carder.... Wow. was it ever a mess! One of the kids (the Zoo, to be exact) grabbed a handful of pulled sari silk and put it onto the carder, straight up.  The kids each had a turn with the carder, and of course, they aren't careful about where the fibre goes, so it got wrapped around the posts. It took me 2 hours to take it apart and put it back together! those pins were in there so tight, it was really difficult to get them out! But I did, with a little muscle from the husband, and she's shiny and clean now! It's wonderful.
One of those many things I felt I needed to take on is now over until the fall, leaving me with free time tonight!! It's an amazing feeling to not have anywhere to be on a Monday night.  I'm going to head on into my fluff room, with my newly cleaned carder, and work on my presentation as soon as I hit post!  Definitly looking forward to being ready for Fibre Week 2014! Less then 2 weeks now!!

~Kara

She who takes on to much.

Does anyone else do this?  Take on a responsibility, thinking it won't take up much of your time, but then, even that extra 2-3 hours a week seems to be a whole lot more then you expected? Even the things that should only take up an extra 30 minutes to an hour every week, it's like it takes up so much more of your time leaving you with no time for the things you really don't have a choice but to do.

These seemingly little -but obviously not- tasks/jobs have lead me where I am currently: feeling overstretched, over stressed and just a bit more then frazzled.  My children have even been showing signs of feeling that Momma's just.to.busy.  I was supposed to be at a knitting retreat this weekend.  I canceled last minute to spend some quality time with my middle boy, who get's the least of my time. I've gone and taken the dreaded extension to get my level 3 homework done. I don't have a choice. My blogging has been seriously lacking.  I like to do it, I enjoy sharing with everyone.  I feel it's one of the necessary things that is being neglected.  Same goes for my Etsy shop.  I've not had much time to keep it stocked up and advertised.  But, what's there is there. And hopefully someone stumbles on something and buys it.  And The Journey, let's not forget that.  Module 4 has come and gone, and is not complete.  I know it's not a hard and fast dead line, but again, I'm behind.  I know that while my summer schedule is pretty jam packed, I'll have more time once Fibre week is over.  The end of June brings to an end (albeit a temporary one) to two of the responsibilities that are eating up most of my time right now.

I try not to be bitter about these tasks, I did this to myself, and the people I'm doing these things for matter. They don't deserve a bitter me. So I drop my cranky overstretch self at the door, complete my weekly responsibilities with love and joy, and I notice that baggage is just a bit smaller for it when I leave. Maybe it's that I know that it won't continue on for much longer, or maybe it's the joy the little faces bring me when they get excited about something we are doing.

It's the last day of May. 21 days until I leave for Fibre Week and Level 4. The plan is to have the body of my workbook done and have only my final project to do in July.  It will all work out. And one day, I'll learn to be a bit better organized, and all the responsibilities won't seem so daunting.

~Kara

The least cool 5 point exercise

I have no idea why this exercise is only worth 5 points. If it were up to me, I'd make it worth 10, if just for the fact that it's entirely to time consuming.  40 yards of cable plied yarn takes an entire day to spin. Yes. An entire day, as in i woke up, fed the kids, got them off to school and sat at my wheel.  Then I got hungry so I stopped for lunch. Then I went back to my wheel. Then I got the kids from school and, you guessed it, back to my wheel. Everyone needed to be fed, so I did that, and I went back to my wheel one more time. So, aside from the required eating breaks I was at the spinning wheel from 9am until 9:30 pm.  It was intense. But it's done.  And I learned that unless I have a very special project in mind, I'll never spin a cable plied yarn again.  That was ridiculous.

One more exercise bites the dust. Only 20 more to go.  And the final project. May the spinning Gods smile upon me, and grant me balance, and speedy, successful spinning.

~Kara

Reasses

It's a few days into March and as I'd only set out a plan for February, I sat down to see where I'm at in terms if homework. I'm no where near done... February was full of hiccups and fails, an as such I was only able to cross off 7 items on my list. 7 out of 16. That's just not good. So now I've made myself an entirely new, more intense list. 20 items, that do not include the workbook portion. It's all spinning and swatching. 

I'm going to have to neglect things like laundry and cooking if I want this done. Time to buckle down and do it, I suppose. 

~Kara

Keeping on track.

Well, more or less.  I've had a look at the schedule I've made up for myself, and I'm behind, but definitely not for lack of trying. 

These are my first four attempts at recreating a commercial yarn. Yep. 4. Four tries. Four fails. The fifth attempt, after consulting the experts, was perfect.

Well, it's not perfectly perfect, but it's what's going in the book. It's homework worthy. Thank goodness! 

I've given myself 3 days off over the weekend, that I will probably just use to catch up. Still on track.

~Kara 

and so it begins

The final homework push.  I wrote it out. I have a plan.  It starts off today, with two skeins.  Module C1.  A wool silk blend, and a wool wool blend.  Should be easy enough.   After that, there's just one skien a day, or computer work and calculations.

It's not inclusive of every module.  So I'll be pushing into March. Which I'd hoped not to have to do.  But it's okay.  You can't rush this stuff.   I've got to get it done in a timely manner though.  I don't want to drag it out any longer.


I can keep this pace. The laundry and the kitchen may suffer from it, but I can keep this pace.  I know I can.

~Kara

I did math.

And no, it wasn't the required calculations for my homework...  There are 143 days until Fibre Week, 2014.  I do have to say I've got pretty much none of the homework done for Level 3 of the Master Spinners Program.  In each level there is at least 150 hours of homework time.  While I know I've got one of the big, time consuming things done, the dye module, I've still got the be all and end all part of this level, and that's the spin to a certain TPI skeins.  Those are not very likely to turn out exactly at all the first time. I'll be really really lucky, if even 1/4 of them do.

So, let's say that I've still got a good 120 hours of work to do.  If I do 1 hour of work a day, every day from February first to June twentieth, I'll be golden.  The chances of that happening every day? Not likely.  I know it gives a 30 day buffer zone, but for some reason, I think I'll more likely have 150 hours of work.  Knowing my own pace, and desire for extreme quality in this endeavour, there will be more time required.

At least now I know. I've got to buckle down, and repeat my mantra from last year, and the year before. "I will not do this again next level".  I will not do this again next level.  I will spend all of the Tour de Fleece spinning my homework.  I'll get it done a lot sooner. Because this is crazy making.


~Kara

Stop. It's homework time.

Level3 Master Spinner here we go.  I decided a while ago that the only way I could see myself getting my homework done this year was to wake up at 530 every weekday morning, make a pot of coffee and spin. With all the things on my plate, this is the only way. This started, officially, today. However I didn't get actual tangible skeins of cotton spun this morning. I did manage to spin a bit of every kind of cotton I have in the house, however.

With this little exploratory diversion I did learn something, so it was worth it.  (In order of appearance on the bobbin) Sea Island cotton is forgiving because of its length, but a tad slippery. I don't mind it, but it's not my favourite. Green Cotton sucks... Okay, it doesn't suck, but it is by far the hardest on the bobbin to spin. I found myself having to treadle like a maniac to get enough twist in it to draft without drifting. Peruvian Cotton is no better.  I think this is because they both have a crazy short staple length.  They are spinnable, but very tricky to spin.  Acala Cotton doesn't mind being spun thickly (for cotton that is). It has a grip to itself that none of the other cottons have. It's a good beginners cotton, that's for sure. And lastly Pima. Pima is a beautiful mix of just enough grab to itself and just enough staple length to make drafting smooth and quick. 

Cotton spinning is different then wool spinning, but not difficult. It just takes practice. And the right kind of cotton. 

~Kara

Master Spinner Level 2 Final Project

So, I left you all hanging.  It's like a really juicy season finale and you had to wait far to long to find out  just what happened!  Suspense!  Mystery! Did she or didn't she? dun dun dunnnnnnnn.....

I frogged it.  I frogged that damn scarf. It was surprisingly satisfying. In a way.  And then that tiny little ball of yarn sat for a while, lonely and beckoning.  I started carding rolags from some lovely merino fleece from Natchwoolie to distract me from my lingering frustration.  And I spun up 2 of the 3 bobbins of the merino, but something stopped me from spinning the 3rd.... It was likely the date, the fact that Fibre Week was only 3 weeks away and my husband was about to go on a week long fishing trip.  Or the thought:  "You know, you went through all that effort on that shetland silk blend.  And you are pretty proud of it.  Just use it. Make that little scarf.  DO IT".
So I did. I used a crochet cast on as the provisional cast on. I knit twisted stitches, I yarned over, I purled and knit two together. I bound off to "top' part, picked up the provisional cast on with ease and bound that baby off.  I cut through my knitting at the appropriate place ( talk about scary! cutting my haandspun in the middle of a project!!) I blocked that scarf, and when it was dry I held it up and smilled.  The yarn I lovingly spun from junk wool and silk, knit and frogged, and knit again, held up sooooo well to that abused. So well. I was happy to turn it in as my final project.

And because this post is nothing without a picture....  TaDa! pretty scarf!

It's been through the scrutiny of my wonderful teacher, and got a pretty good mark.  But the mark isn't the big thing with this one, in the end.  I'm proud of this dinky little scarf.  It's soft, it drapes nicely, it's light and airy. And I'll actually wear it. 

~Kara

Woollen

I was having troubles with my woollen spinning, specifically from rolags. So, to twitter I go, lamenting the fact that it made no sense that I couldn't spin woollen from rolags, but I could from carded slivers. In swoops Michelle Boyd, aka @spindleprincess, to the rescue. She suggested my rolags were to tight, and that I ought to shake them, to fluff them up. It worked! Look at these amazing results! The first pic is before the amazing Michelle saved me, the second is after .
Thank you Michelle!! I will never forget now that woollen spinning requires a soft touch, beginning to end.

~Kara

Color Blending Fun!

One of the Level 2 Master Spinners assignments is to blend all the colours on the colour wheel from the three primary colors.  These are my results:

Just the yarns.  Reds all the way through to the purples.

Part way to being finished.  Note that crochet hook.  It's 1.5mm.  So this stuff is t h i n.



And the final piece.  I think I'll be leaving the yarn ends out.  I kind of like the way you can see them, as the whole point of this class is the yarn, not so much the crocheting or knitting of it.


And yes, the lighting is terrible.  And no, none of these pictures give the true colours.  Hopefully there will be sun tomorrow, and I'll be able to get much better pictures of these gorgeous yarns.

~Kara

Fibre Week 2012 - Part 2

Alrighty, lets start up part 2!  This one is ALL about the Master Spinners, Level 2 course!

Monday June 25, 2012
I woke up nervous as all heck. I'd not even handed in my workbook for level 1, and was having serious doubts in my ability and knowledge.  Will I even pass Level 1?  What if I get terrible marks? What if I go into this level that involves math, and tpi, and angles, and more scary stuff, and I just can't do it?  So, I took an early AM class, Yoga for spinners.  The class ran for 45 minutes, and it seemed to go by really quickly.   It did quite a bit to calm my nerves, though.   That is until I walk in and sit at the wheel and we start covering basics of twist and how to tell what just is wrong with that unbalanced skein.  I get it now, but at first it confused the heck out of me.  If your skein twists in a "Z" direction, it needs more "Z", and less "S".  So if the singles are spun "Z", then you need more "Z" in the singles, or less "S" in the ply.  But if your yarn kinks back "S" way, then you've plied to lightly, or over twisted your singles.  This threw me for a loop at the time.  And I went for lunch feeling very lost.  We also covered the color blending theory as well that day.  It's not as simple as 50/50 red/blue for purple.  It makes good sense though.  And fun to boot.  Our teacher, Gayle Valance, wasn't feeling all that well, as she was recovering from Bronchitis, so the class was relatively low key, which worked out okay to calm me after lunch, just do the practice skeins, and relax.
Monday night was also the Fashion Show and Silent Auction.  There was even some live music as entertainment before the show!  Otto Pahl, the coordinator for Fibre Week, even dawned a cowboy hat and played guitar for some of the sets!  It was great!  I modeled not only my own garments, but some others as well.  There were plenty of great things in the Silent Auction, and I scored two piles of books,  and a puzzle.  Unfortunately someone made off with the knitted frogs I wanted so much.  Oh well, just the way it goes!


Tuesday June 26, 2012
I had a hard time getting out of bed, and out the door in time to get to the AM Yoga for Spinners session, which was to bad.  I really enjoyed it the first time around.   We got to class and Gayle told us she'd been to the hospital the night before.  It turns out she had pneumonia! My goodness.  She kept teaching anyway,  which is both brave and crazy.  On Monday we were asked to wash and finish our skeins that we spun on Monday, and hand them in so we could go over them.  This is when I regained all my confidence and then some.  Gayle went over every single skein, remarking on each of their strong parts and their weak parts, where they could improve, and how to go about doing that.  When she got to my skein, she lifted it up looked and said "This is excellent"  I promptly got an elbow in the ribs on each side from my class mates.  I tried my best, and it was deemed excellent by a pro!  Very worth the elbows!  There was more work on determining ratios and the math of how to spin to get a certain twist per inch, the 2/3's rule of ply, and other very technical things that sometimes go against my grain to just spin and come what may.  This is why I'm taking the course though.  More control.  I want to be able to recreate and control my spinning.  But I'll still goof off at the wheel now and again.
I took the Spinning as Meditation class after the long day of math and technical spinning.  It was so relaxing, and quite interesting.  And she had Chocolate.  It was good chocolate.  It took me 3.5 minutes to eat a single square.  I sure wish I could find 20 minutes in my daily life to do this every day.  Maybe once the kids are smidge older.

Wednesday June 27, 2012
Oh Wednesday,  what an adventure.  Wednesday was the day we started to delve into other fibres.  Llama, mohair, and alpaca specifically.  Now, if you know me, or have read my blog, or follow me on twitter, or stalk me on Rav or Craftster, you'll know I've discovered an allergy to alpaca.  I thought I'd be perfectly fine to be in the room with an alpaca fleece, so long as I didn't touch it.  And oh boy. Was I wrong.   Not even 5 minutes after Gayle dumped that alpaca fleece onto the floor did my throat start to tickle.  Then my chest started to tighten.  Then I had to excuse myself from the room.  Luckily it was nearly lunch, and I could be out of the room for a good while and not miss anything.  My wonderful class mates cleaned up the room, stuck a fan on, and tried their best to remove any visible traces of alpaca from the room.  Thinking this would be okay, I returned to class after lunch.  And then my throat and chest began to tighten in ernest.  I took a chlorotripilon, and had to leave the room.  My wonderful classmates joined me in the hallway to discuss Mohair.  By the end of that discussion, I was in a drug induced blur, and ended up taking a 20 minute cat nap.  i woke up and pulled all my gear into the hallway and spun mohair alone.  Which was a heck of a lot better then spinning mohair in an environment that cause my throat and chest to tighten.  After class I promptly went to the pharmacy and bought some non drowsy antihistamines. And then I went and had a nap.
That evening was the Potluck supper, where everyone who is still at Fibre week brings a dish, and enjoys the company of others who share at least one thing in common.  I woke up from my nap and headed right over, still in a daze from the chlorotripilon.  I knew we had the test on Thursday, but I said to heck with studying, I was going to hang out with my Fibre Week friends.  And I did just that. It was a good night.

Thursday June 28 and Friday June 29, 2012
I woke up in an antihistamine induced fog, but proceeded to take the non drowsy type anyway.  And given that I spent all of Thursday and Friday that way because of the drug cycle the Pharmacist gave me (non drowsy in the AM and Drowsy in the PM for 4 days) both days kind of blurred together.  So I'll go over what I can remember of those days!  We covered braiding and needlework, and spinning to suit those.  We also covered drop spindles, and wheel mechanics.  Now I understand my Aura better, at any rate.  Oh! and the test.  It wasn't as bad as I'd expected it to be, and only got 2 of the answers relating to the Alpaca wrong.  Not so bad, for not studying.  I do know that by Thursday Gayle was feeling better, if exhausted yet.  But class became more lively, and she admitted that she packed the first days in fear of not being able to last the week.   I don't blame her, really.  She had pneumonia! I'm amazed she made it to class at all!  Because there was not much to do by the end of the day, Gayle looked over our last set of skeins in a one on one way.  This gave me even more confidence, because there wasn't much at all wrong with my work.  It was over all even, and all spun with enough twist to be resilient. We got out by 2:00pm on Friday, as we covered all the course material.  Most of us went over to the library and had a look at the Level 6 in depth studies.  There was an amazing variance in amount of written, and amount of yarn work, (some had more of the first, and less of the second and vice versa) but it did give me a good idea of the amount of work I should be putting in.

It was a really awesome time, and I'm eager to get to the homework done.  Only now I've gone and sprained my wrist.  So all I can do is the reading and research.  And I just want to blend and spin!  Maybe its for the better, as you all know, and I know to well, the written work is the part i would put off until the end, and that's not a good idea at all.  No repeats of level 1 workbook anxiety and stress!

Fibre Week 2013 is June 21- June 28.  My calendar is marked!  And I'm ready to go! well, except for the homework of course!

~Kara

p.s.  Sorry no pics, but I'll share once I get spinning again.

today's contemplations

So I'm sitting here, with a sick kiddo sent home from school.  Seems he's caught the sinus infection I picked up sometime over Easter.  Of course the others are home too, but none the less, having that extra sick kid puts a different feel to the day.   It kind of slows things down.  And oddly enough with things feeling slowed, it gives me a chance to think.  Mostly I'm thinking about my final project.
I picked up the shawl again last night and knit for a couple hours, only putting about 10 more holes in the darn thing.   That pretty much set my decision to change directions, yet again.   So now I'm going to spin up the BFL in basically the same weight as the grey long wool, and knit up some of these Legwarmies.  The fibre's almost all prepped (just a bit more flick carding), now just to get my wheel set up and ready to go!  Shouldn't be long now.

So while I sit and think about my final project, I'm going to share with you a scarf I knit.

This is the Helix scarf from the pattern published in Spin Off, spring 2011.  I knit it with a merino possum blend yarn from New Zealand.  It was a fairly mindless knit, but took forever!  I suppose that is what happens when your needles are a size 2....   I'm going to send it to my Grandma.  Hopefully she doesn't read my blog regularly.  That would ruin the surprise of a scarf in the mail!

I'm also going to share these two gorgeous and unique drop spindles that were made for me by Blacksmith over on Craftster.org.  He came along onto the fibre boards and wowed us all with his wood turning skills, and I just had to have one, so I sent him a message and we set up a trade.  Well he sent me two!   I sent him a skein of yarn and some fibre on return.  The solid one is just so interesting to look at, and spins a nice heavy yarn.  The open one spins forever! It also give a heavier yarn, but not quite as heavy as the solid.  I love them and can't wait to sit and spin on the deck with them this spring once it finally warms up.


Okay, off to finish that prep... or just veg and cuddle with my sickie.

~Kara

Final project of doooooom

Doom I say.  DOOOOM!

Sigh....

So here's the story (and pretty pictures too)  Some of it, you've heard.  Some of it's new, but I'm starting from the beginning anyway.  I'll make the stuff you've heard quick.

The final project for the Master Spinner Level one course is to be a finished object, taken from "sheep to shawl" if you will.  It doesn't need to be a shawl, of course, it can be what ever you want it to be.  This project, every step included, should take about 25 hours.  Originally I wanted it to be a pair of Chimera mittens, easy enough to spin and knit in 25 hours.  However.  The yarn I spun for them was horrendous, coarse and not really all to nice for a pair of mittens.


You can't really tell here, it looks nice enough, but the texture, the hand, the feel of it, is just off.


Okay. Fine.  Re-group.  Stumble upon the Belinda Shawl on Ravelry.  Gorgeous, fun, and perfect.  So I start spinning my best style of yarn, which is a fine yarn, about lace to fingering, with maybe a few sections just a bit heavier, because I'm not a master yet.  I plan to spin and nature dye the second yarn as i finish up knitting with the first yarn.


beautiful. Has really nice drape.  I'm super proud of all 616 yards.


Then I start on the knitting, choosing to make it 3/4 width, as a) I'm scared I'd run out of yarn (which in all likelyhood wouldn't happen) and b) I'm a small person, so my shawl can be a bit smaller right?  Fine.  I think okay, this will probably take me 10 hours to knit, which is a bit much considering the whole 25 hours of work start to finish.  But whatever, a little extra time wont hurt, if anything, it'll look like I'm an over achiever.
So I take the yarn, and my needles with me on the crazy long road trip to my families place over the Easter weekend.  7+ hours in the truck. Both ways.  So I knit.  And knit and knit.... And I knit once we get there, on and off, when I can find some time.  All the while thinking, geeeze.... I think I over estimated my knitting ability.  But I knit on.


In the hotel, where my fabulous Husband and sister organized a side trip for my birthday. Yay spa and knitting!

   On the way home, I knit for 6 pretty much consecutive hours.  Well, except that nearly 1 hour it took me to frog back 2.5 rows stitch by stitch.


Bad picture, I know.  But you can see the mistake. 

 This.Shawl.Is.Not.Even.Half.Done.  It's maybe 30% done one half .  My best guesstimate is I've put over 15 hours into this thing already.


I'm very happy with the progress I'm making, but the time consumption!  


 And now I wonder, do I start over again?  Make a pair of baby legs for my little girl? Maybe a really simple pair of fingerless mitts, with no pattern to them, just simple around and around and around?  Do I go back to the idea of knitting a cowl, also with no pattern, just around and around and around?

I don't know.  Because truth be told, by the time I get to the end of this shawl, I'll likely have put about 48 hours of knitting alone into the damn thing... Then the spinning and dyeing,  probably another good 15 hours. Which, you don't even have to be good at math, that's a heck of a lot more then 25.

I'll finish this shawl.  I'm committed now.  But do I keep at it for my final project, or make it a leisurely knit and finish it after I'm finished my workbook?

Dangit.

~Kara