Spinning - and some Mittens!

My sister Naomi has really come a long way in her spinning. She is mostly, if not all, self taught and I think the yarn she has made so far is amazing! She started a year or so back with some Alpaca she got at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. It was a very short staple, and that is what she learned to spin on. Not the easiest. Now, she is flying through ounces of roving at a crazy pace! In just the last months she has spun and plied both Merino roving as well as three hand dyed colors of Merino/Tencel. The Merino is beautiful. A pale light blue, it is super soft and springy.

The Merino/Tencel was handdyed by us at the dying weekend we had at Sarah's back in August.
The first is a beautiful steely purple color.

The second is a beautiful silver - it looks like spun metal!

The third is a great tone of blue. It is still on the wheel, so pics of that one to come later. Now, since she did the spinning, I get to do the knitting! Any ideas for these lovlies? They are all from 4 oz of fiber and spun to about a sport/heavy fingering weight yarn. I think one may become a Lace Ribbon Scarf for my mom. Naomi is also looking for sources for more fiber! Preferably Merino, BFL or blends. Anyone with great sources, let me know!

As for knitting, I had to keep up with her spinning! I finished a pair of Peekaboo Mitts (Rav link) for Naomi. She has long coveted the pair I made a while back, so I gathered together some scraps and made her a pair.

Not even thinking, I matched her Sherbrooke Cowl perfectly! The stripes are kind of hard to see, but there are light blue, pale pink and white in the middle as well as the green. They were a super quick and fun knit.

More snow on tap for us today mixed with some freezing rain and rain. Pretty much everything Mother Nature could throw at us! I hope everyone has a safe, happy and festive holiday, whichever one you celebrate!!!!!!!

It's coming.......

Not like the ice storm we had last week was enough, we are about to get slammed with a huge snowstorm!

See that "Higher Amounts" area - well, we are right in the thick of it. In a way, I'm actually looking forward to it. I came into work super early at 5am so I could leave around noon before it really hit. With nothing planned for tomorrow, I plan on letting it snow to Mother Nature's hearts content and dealing with the cleanup on Saturday. It is supposed to be light and fluffy - perfect for the snowblower and even more perfect for maybe doing some snowshoeing with the dogs!

I have plenty of knitting to work on. My sister will be the recipient of a pair of Peekaboo Mitts (Rav link). She really liked the pair I made a while back. I also have the test pair of mittens to work on, along with coming up with a knitted gift for mom for the holidays. My sister and I have a pile of holiday cookies to make along with some more marshmallows. The bunch I brought into my office disappeared the first day! All in all, I think it will be kind of a fun weekend! Ace is supposed to have herding, but we will see if she can clear her pen for the sheep.

Everyone enjoy whatever weather they are having!

More Little Things

So goes the month for small projects. I'm really enjoying casting one one day, casting off the next! Makes for lots of FO's! Some projects go so fast I don't even have time to blog about them!!! Like these mitts.

They are the Peekaboo Mittens from MagKnits. I do love my fingerless mitts, but sometimes even the tips of my fingers get cold. These are a perfect solution. Flip top mittens, to me, take too much time and fiddling to get the top on and off. With these, you just slip your fingers out, then slip them back in, easy peasy.

They will be perfect for dog shows as I can take my fingers in and out as needed to open crates, give treats or whatever. Then, I just tuck them back in and they say toasty warm.

I used some stash Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. A charcoal type color for the bulk, then scraps of other colors for the stripes. It is one of those skeins I have gotten sick of looking at every time I open the stash bin. For some reason, I inherited bunches of small balls (most full skeins, some partial) of Debbie Bliss stuff (mostly merino aran and cashmerino) and really need to find a use for them. Every time I go to look in my stash, there they are, staring back at me. I know they will probably pill like crazy, and they are not machine washable, but I knit them up in about a day, so no big loss if they don't survive long.

For the next stashbusting little project this month, Thorpe is also a really quick knit that is super cute. Once again, I used stash yarn (Lang Polar, discontinued) that has been sitting way too long. I have been wanting an earflap hat, and this fits the bill!

We had really gray skies this morning, but if you look really close you can almost see buds on the trees!

I love the earflaps. The only thing I think I'd do different next time is maybe put the flaps a bit further forward (bind off less stitches for the front). I'd love to make the stranded version - anything I can incorporate colorwork into! It won't be the warmest hat - I couldn't knit the yarn as tight as I would have liked, but I love how cute it is! More of these are in my knitting future for sure!

Now, with NOTHING on the needles (I'm feeling slightly panicked) I'm off to browse my Ravelry queue to see what else I can cast on for next!