This weekend the Emperor and I went over to Over There Medium City for a "woolfest." It was held in an historic building in a tiny town near a medium city about two and a half hours' drive from our home, and we had a great time not only at the festival, but in making the trip itself. I made a new fiber friend, bought one silk hankie to try to knit with, and just generally enjoyed the atmosphere of lots of happy knitters and spinners. I took my wheel with me and even got some real spinning done! I'm almost finished with the Fields of Rye roving; when that's done, I plan to use it to crochet the Cheche a la Sauce shawl, just for fun. While getting my wheel out and getting ready for the trip, I came across some of my recent handspun yarn and took a good look. I'm a pretty good spinner, and should do more of it.
On our way home from our Christmas trip, we stopped at the Brown Sheep Wool Mill in Mitchell, Nebraska. We had a room for the night in nearby Scottsbluff anyway, so right after an early breakfast we scooted over to the mill. I'm a bit of a sly one, so we perused the mill store, which is stocked with mill ends, seconds, and one-off handpainted yarns. I picked out one pound of Lamb's Pride Bulky in a gorgeous gold color, and then casually asked if there was a window I could peek through to see the mill workings. Lucky us, the nice lady behind the counter took us both on a mini-tour of the mill! All of that lovely yarn is made by less than twenty people, and the rest of the thirty-two employees do the packing, mailing, and bookkeeping. Everybody there is proud of the work they do, and it shows in the nice quality of the yarns they send out. They're also selling roving now, so spinners can enjoy a really fine prepared wool right along with their knitting cousins.
My wicked case of startitis has slowed down, and I'm now just looking for some real knitting mojo to stay on track with my existing projects -- I could use that bout of finishitis that I had last year, that's for sure! I've been working on the Pretty Cashmere Thing, but progress is slow and I find myself putting it down and not picking up other projects instead. In the evenings I haven't felt like knitting because our house is kind of cold and I want to just keep my hands under wraps. I don't like to knit or do ther crafts while wearing fingerless gloves because the needles get caught in the palms. That reminds me -- I need a new pair of fingerless gloves to wear at work.
The Emperor and I finally got out to see The Hobbit last week! Since I didn't expect it to be a xerox of the book, I really enjoyed it. One of the fun bits is that the characters seemed to be wearing a lot of knits! If you take a look at this link to to a site with still photos from the movie, you can see a couple of dwarfs wearing fingerless gloves, and look at Ori's sweater! Scroll down the page a bit, and there's a picture of Ori wearing quite a lovely cowl, which he sometimes wears over his head. I read an article on how Stansborough Farms provided the wool and yarn for the movie -- they're the same farm that made the Lorien cloaks for the Lord of the Rings movies. I'm still kicking myself for not ordering a nice ball of silvery roving from them back when they still were a small operation and still offering those kinds of goodies. Well, it will be interesting to see if anybody offers a knitting pattern of Ori's cowl anytime soon.
Yesterday afternoon I sewed up and installed the lining for the Granny Square Bag, and then put my handy-dandy purse insert in it. As a purse, it's all right, but right now I don't want to put it in the regular rotation for everyday use. I'll use it for a few days and then figure out a different longterm daily bag by purse-stash diving or by sewing one out of my fabric stash. Granny Square Bag might be a nice knitting bag, however, so I'll keep it handy just in case I find some regular knitting peeps in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment