WIPs Wrestling and Fiber Christmas

My goodness, I'm incredibly behind on this poor blog!

The month of July was WIPs (works in progress) wrestling on Ravelry, and I have one measly project to show:

I've gotten my bag felted, but I'm still working on the (incredibly monotonous) I-cord for the handles. (I-Cord stands for "Idiot cord" if you were wondering.)


I don't love it as much as I did before felting. The colors got kind of muddy, unfortunately. I'll definitely do more stranded projects in the future, however!

My sparkly socks are about 75% complete, about halfway down my foot between the heel and toes.

I've also been working on getting a spinning project finished. I bought the roving last year at Fiber Christmas and spun up a bit, but I've finally gotten back to it.


The smaller ball of singles is what I got done at Fiber Christmas this year, which wasn't much. :-) I've wound it back onto the bobbin and now there's almost as much on the bobbin as is in the bigger ball, but I'm going to go as far as I can before tackling the next bit. I'm going to make a two-ply yarn that will hopefully make a Bono Kimono (Ravelry link), although I won't be following the totally-less-than-adequate "pattern" I bought at Loops. (There's no gauge listed, among other pattern sins.) The garter stitch, while being phenomenally boring to knit, should show off the yarn quite nicely.

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Fiber Christmas was AWESOME this year.

I taught four classes and everyone seemed to really get a lot out of them. Or at least they told me they did! ;-)

Here's a view from the back, where I had my booth (I had my quilts out with information about my machine quilting):

It's three pictures mashed together, but you can get the idea. There are six vendors (or seven? I can't remember) along that far-right wall.

I came home with quite a haul:


I'm not going to talk about everything, and a couple of things aren't in the picture, but I'll put detail shots up in a bit.

I got some more wonderful lavender sachets from Gina at Across Generations. I also got the rug hooking wool (back, center) from her. She's so nice and her stuff is top notch!

The bright orange roving called out to me from across the room. I don't know why, but I just had to have it.

I think it's the addition of brown and red. Gorgeous stuff! Now I just need to decide what kind of yarn I want it to be.

This gorgeous alpaca/silk yarn is what I got as a door prize. I was so thrilled!


Next up is some 70% alpaca/30% bamboo roving that I got from Ozark Carding Mill.

My original plan was to spin up one ply of that and one ply, tail-spun, of these mohair locks:

But then I noticed something not quite right and it doesn't wash out:

I thought at first that maybe it was just vegetable matter, and I microwaved it just to be safe, then washed it, and it's not coming out. It looks a lot like the leavings of lice to me. Anyone know what it is, and should I just throw out the locks?

It would really bite if I need to do that, but I did buy these locks from the same vendor:

They don't seem to have the same thing, thank goodness, although I haven't really examined it like I have the grey stuff.

Next up is my sheep ornament, which was my entry into the Christmas Ornament contest. There were some really, really neat ornaments!


I bought some sock yarn, although I'm noticing a definite autumn/brown/red theme in my purchases. I need to get off of my red kick!


The colors are slightly more vibrant in real life.

One of my students gave me two skeins of this WONDERFUL handspun yarn:


I was blown away! I think it'll become a neck scarf, or possibly a Quant.

At the very last minute I picked up four ounces of Kate's Wensleydale cross roving:

No idea what that's going to become, but I couldn't help picking up some of it.

I also picked up some cones of silk yarn, in fingering- and lace-weight, as well as two hanks of DK-ish-weight silk from Henry's Attic.


I also got a cone of black wool lace-weight yarn:


There's quite a bit on there and I'm looking forward to making a couple of lace shawls from it.

That's enough from me for now! Three posts in one day must be a record. :-)

I hope you're all having a great weekend!