Category Archives: cats

Take Care of That Arm!

cats, knitting, spinning

Well, I overdid the holiday knitting and my tendinitis has flared up again. (Go here for a great tutorial on taking care of your arm.) So no knitting for now, which is nearly unsupportable. I cannot sit and watch tv and not do something. And I have a slew of new pattern ideas, but I can’t knit up samples or swatches.

End of whining. Ironically, since my New Year’s not-resolution was to knit up more handspun, I’ve found that spinning does not flare up the tendinitis. So I’ve been spinning up the rest of my fiber stash. Here’s the result:

Painted Tiger Club – can’t find label – what fiber? 2 ply – will become some sort of small shawly thing
100% wool from Mountain Fiber Folk
Wool/mohair from Mountain Fiber Folk plied with the first yarn- very dye-heavy – had to have a lot of baths before the dye ran out
Wool/alpaca/silk from MFF plied with the first yarn – not quite as vibrant yellow in real life

These three will become a manly scarf – I’m thinking a knit2, purl2 rib with the first brown-y yarn as the main color and then the red and yellow (and green – still on the wheel) as big stripes – sort of Hudson’s Bay Blanket look.  Someday I will knit again and make this mighty scarf!

And now, for a gratuitous cat picture:

Jack in a box. Really.

Not A New Year’s Resolution!

cats, knitting, spinning

I like the idea of New Year’s and fresh starts and throwing off the bad habits of the old year. But I also think we set ourselves up to fail if we start making resolutions. So instead of a resolution, I’m making a, shall we say, re-energization. And it’s going to start with the 12 billion skeins of handspun that I’ve spun and done nothing with.

I don’t know many other spinners, so I don’t know if we all do the same thing, but when I get a bump of fiber, I have a vague notion of what I want to do with it (weight, fractal, n-ply, etc) and spin it accordingly. Then I wash it and thwack it and skein it up and put it in my yarn cabinet, and that’s the end of it. The whole act of spinning it feels like a finished project to me.

I’ve knit exactly 3 things with my handspun. This cat (the one in front – ha!), for a friend who was going through chemotherapy:

I’m adorable!

These mitts, for a spinners’ swap on Ravelry (last year):

I look better on hands than on a windowsill.

And this scarf, for a spinners’ swap on Ravelry (this year):

I need to be blocked!

I counted, and I have 36 skeins of handspun sitting in my yarn cabinet! Shameful! So as part of my re-energization, I wound all of those skeins into center-pull balls, so they’ll be ready for me to knit up. Here’s the chaos of yesterday:

All wound up with someplace to go! Look how pretty!

It shouldn’t be that hard to find a nice pattern for these. I’m thinking maybe (MAYBE) I’ll try to use one handspun each month. Is that too resolution-y? We’ll see.