So much fiber, so little time

658

That's how many shawl stitches there are right now. I'm going to pick up more beads this morning, because each beaded row uses more than 100 of the little devils. Wish me luck - they seem to have a record number of streets torn up this year, and navigating through downtown is not easy!

Yes, autumn is my favorite season

It's a wonderfully cool morning, and I'm taking advantage by baking a load of horse cookies. They're a mixture of corn, oats, wheat bran, applesauce, molasses, chopped dried apples and a bit of flour to bind it all together. Since they need to bake for a long time so that they dry out for storage, I'd rather make them when adding heat to the house is a pleasant thought!

The Capitol Steps were great, and my friends, who had never heard of the Steps, really enjoyed themselves. The theater was nearly full, so maybe they'll play here again sometime.

Off to knit more beaded shawl while the cookies bake! The catastrophe I feared happened Saturday night - I knocked over the container of beads. Fortunately, there weren't many in it, and I think I've got them all vacuumed up. The critters won't eat any stray beads (she says cautiously, not needing any more vet bills than she already has).

Beading along

The shawl is certainly growing. It's about a foot long, and there are now 546 stitches on the needle. I've also used up nearly one package of beads, and since the last beaded row used 88 of the little devils, I suspect I'll need more than the two I bought.

There's also plenty of yarn left - I'm not even through the first small ball of yarn, which I think had about 600 yards in it. The second ball is much larger and has at least 1500 yards. That should give me both a decent length of shawl and options for the bottom edging. Usually, I continue the front band ribbing around the bottom, but I think I'd like to come up with a beaded lace edging that complements the stitch pattern.

Storm Clouds

That's the name of this fiber that arrived today from Bountiful. I've got two slightly different shades; this is the last Lois had of this lighter batch, so it was on sale. I'm going to spin it as a very fine 2-ply and use it for weaving. The darker batch will probably become a somewhat heavier 2-ply, most likely for knitting.

It was a bad night here. Bear went in for x-rays yesterday to see what's hurting in his back (don't know yet - waiting for a radiologist's review), and the stress gave him violent diarrhea last night that was somewhat bloody today. I've picked up gut-quieting drugs and hope that he feels better soon.

Well, it's a pattern to me

This is a slightly prettier version of my working shawl chart. It leaves out large chunks of garment construction, such as: knitting from a provisional cast-on; making the k1,p1 strip for the neckline; picking up the body stitches; setting up the front bands; and knitting the bottom band. If anyone wants to wing it from this, Zephyr is about the right weight, and I'm using glass Rochaille "E" beads 6/0 with either a 1.25 mm crochet hook or a 1.0 mm hook for the handful of beads with a skinnier opening.

At this point, I've used about 40g of beads, which has led me to think there should be the adult equivalent of the hard plastic baby bib with the built-in trough. It would be ever so handy for the occasional dropped bead!

(BTW, meet Geekman, the computer nerd's action figure.)

Growth and development

The beaded shawl is marching along, and I'm liking it more and more. Maybe I'll even write out the pattern for it when I'm finished. My working notes are not terribly useful - just an Adobe Illustrator chart with occasional chicken scratches on it - but I can usually translate that into English once I've finished.

And the Keesmere lap robe is up for auction now. My handmade items never bring in as much as I'd like, but I try not to notice. At least the yarn is mill-spun, which makes it a little less painful than a low price on a handspun item.

Oh well, off to the barn! It got perilously close to freezing this morning, which means horsie could be a tad fractious.

Venerable Beads

Here are the first few repeats of the beaded shawl. It is actually a lace pattern (Spider Lace from Barbara Walker 2), but the shawl is still too short to spread out for a photo.

I've had so much fun working again with the Black Ice yarn that I ordered the last remaining batch of Storm Clouds from Bountiful last night. Lois has also added yarns spun from her fiber blends, for those who like the colors but don't spin.

Bechamel mucho

If you like artichokes, try this artichoke and mushroom lasagna. I made it today with baby portabellas, and my only change would be to use homemade pasta. Tasty!

Magpie time

What do you get when you add these beads to this fiber? Why, a sparkly magpie extravaganza! I spun up three weights of the Black Ice yarn: a sport weight 2-ply; a 2900 ypp 2-ply; and a very fine 2-ply about the grist of 2/24 wool. The last is what I'm using for the current project, a beaded open-front circular shawl.

I'm not one for stringing beads onto my yarn before knitting, so I'm just using a very tiny crochet hook to pull the knitted stitch through the bead. No wear and tear on the yarn, and the bead pops out nicely on the right side. I'll post a picture when I get a repeat or two further along and can spread the knitting out a little.

New picture

I've put a somewhat better picture of the Keesmere blanket/shawl/afghan up. It will be auctioned to raise money for Keeshond rescue shortly.

And now for something completely different - the Capitol Steps are coming to Ithaca in two weeks, and I've got tickets. Woo! I've been listening to them for years but have never seen them in person.

Good questions

New Scientist recently asked readers to send in questions that Stephen Hawking should work on now that he's not quite sure what to do after giving his final word on black holes. My favorite:

"Why, when two socks pass the washday event horizon, do they so often become singularities?"

and my second favorite:

"How much string does one need to tie together quantum mechanics and general relativity?"

Directions

I live in the town of Ithaca, rather than the city of Ithaca, so we don't have sidewalks or traffic lights (except sometimes in busier areas where the town/county road intersects a state road). Because of our substantial annual snowfall, however, we do have fairly wide roadside shoulders, which make dog walking a little bit easier. So tonight, for no other reason than it wasn't too hot, I decided to take the dogs out at peak rush hour. OK, OK, that's not peak by urban standards, but my road and the next perpendicular intersection are both exit routes out of Cornell, and when you combine that with a four-way stop sign, it gets peakier.

Anyway, walking dogs around here makes you a de facto road map, so when a car with Ontario plates slowed with the passenger window rolled down, I was expecting to give directions. Nope - it was a very sweet young guy saying excitedly "Hey, aren't those Keeshonds?" And he pronounced it correctly (kaze-hawnd). I was tickled pink.

(Apparently, this scenario isn't always the case. A friend of mine has encountered flashers in cars several times while walking home. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be a problem for an alpha bitch walking two wolf-like dogs :)

And don't the old-fart dogs look awful perky? Bear (background) is 13 1/2, while the smaller Cookie is 10 1/2.

Inching onwards

I have excavated the big loom and just need to get the dust elephants vacuumed up so that I can start warping a corduroy-in-poppana sample. (A house with Keeshonden never wastes time on dust bunnies; instead fur morphs immediately into larger lifeforms. I'm just glad I've got wood floors and not carpet.)

Over the weekend, I played around with the very soft alpaca-silk-wool handspun. I'd really like to do something with this yarn, but I can't decide what. In the meantime, I have a triangular doll shawl.

And this morning, I saw a job posting that might just fit, and I've applied (gotta love online apps!). A friend also told me about someone looking for a weaver, so I've emailed about that too.