Leftover Lace & Wrist Report

Hi! How’s your September been? Is it fall where you are?

I am a huge cliché – I love fall. It’s my favourite. Despite what my mom thinks (hi mom!) I actually really like winter, too, although Victoria doesn’t get much in the way of snow or anything. I miss snowy winters! I’ve had a busy month – unfortunately, it’s been full of life stuff and not very much knitting stuff, though.

Lace progress! SUUUUPER slow progress, that is. In fact most of the progress on my current lace project, Cold Mountain by Kieran Foley in Juniper Moon Findley (50% silk, 50% merino, ooooooh), is from a couple of weeks ago, when I was still doing okay knitting one or two rows a day.

I’m into the third and “middle” section of lace motifs. Not quite halfway done the shawl, but almost! I just love how the patterns transition.

This last one is the most accurate, colour-wise! It’s a goldy green rather than a greeny gold.

Lately though, I haven’t been knitting at all. Sadface. I finally saw a doctor about my dumb recurring wrist pain (which was determined to be chronic tendinitis (from overuse), a word which I have been misspelling basically forever apparently), and hopefully I’ll have some new pain demolishing tools at my disposal soon!

What are you knitting this fall?

Seaglass Spinning

So, I have had a crazy busy couple of weeks since the fair! Changing schedules, lots of other personal stuff keeping me busy, sheesh! I’m excited that’s ALMOST fall, because I like fall just about as much as I like fall fairs (so um, a lot). All that personal busyness, combined with continuing to be very careful and mindful and minimal around crafting, to keep my wrists healthy, means not a ton of progress on all of my projects.

BUT! I have been doing a little bit of spinning. For some reason, the last few years, late summer and early fall seem to be the time of year that I remember how fun spinning is. Several years ago, I took a spindle spinning class at one of my local yarn stores, and then was gifted some extremely beautiful handmade spindles by my cabinetmaker brother-in-law. And THEN figured out that spinning fiber tends to be a bit cheaper than yarn even… so now I have LOTS of fiber, and LOTS of spindles, and occasionally I actually combine those with my HANDS and get to making yarn :)

So, here’s the fiber I pulled out of my stash (which is, thanks to a recent closet downsize, sadly in bags in a pile… sigh.): It’s 4 oz of 22 micron merino pencil roving from a (now out of business) local dyer, Everything Old. (The dyer now has a fabulous knit/spin/sew podcast – check it out: The Knitting Pretty Podcast!!) The colourway is what pulled me WAY in when I bought this at Fibrations 2012; it’s called “seaglass”.

Holy gorgeous, right?

Even smushed up in its bag it looks pretty great :)

It has been a delight to spin, so far!

And how pretty is this spindle?

I’m planning to ply this, although I haven’t yet decided whether it will be 2-ply or 3-ply. Feeling pretty excited about how fine I’m able to spin it, though! And dreaming about what I’ll eventually knit with the yarn. I’m a VERY slow spinner (spindle + still park & draft + only spin once in a while), so it will be a long time until this is a knitting project, but it’s so so fun and at the end YOU GET YARN! If you’ve never tried spinning – do it :)

Saanich Fall Fair 2014!

Finally, the fall fair! We went last weekend, and I haven’t had time to share the news until now (because we also moved last weekend… busy times!) This post has kind of a ton of photos, so I hope you’re into that.

First, I won’t lie, I went to check out the Needlework Room, since that’s where my entries were! (In case you missed it, the post about what I entered is here.) Out of four entries, two won blue ribbons! SO EXCITED! Both the cabled mittens and the Shepherd Hoodie won in their categories :) The other two things just got to be part of the fair, which is also pretty excellent as far as I’m concerned. The Shepherd Hoodie also won the Victoria Knitters’ Guild award for best Fancy Knitted Sweater! So cool. I love fairs. (And if I’m honest I really like winning stuff too.)

Other awesome stuff we saw in the Needlework room: an incredibly cool knitted salmon, a crazy intricate knitted gingerbread house…

The whole room was full of amazing things, which of course I failed to photograph. Oops! I did snap lots of other cool fair stuff though. Vegetable dude!