The rest of the yarn dyeing is done and I managed to make some knitting progress too.
Yarn dyeing
Thursday was set up day, and Friday, and Saturday were the Middle Tennesse Fiber Festival, as I told you in my last post. We had another fabulous show! It was great seeing all the attendees enjoying the day and having a blast.
I took Sunday off to re-cooperate, but we were back out at the dye pots on Monday and Tuesday. We got all of the remaining yarn dyed. We had some wet and windy weather on Monday and early on Tuesday. We were able to work because of the covered area we built but we had to forego drying the yarn until late Tuesday and Wednesday. By yesterday afternoon it was all dry and ready to await labeling.
I spent some of yesterday and today working on labels and updating the inventory. I still love my office space!
Knitting
I got some knitting time while in the booth over the weekend. I tried to work a bit in the evenings too, but some nights I was too exhausted. Nevertheless, I finished the first Glittering Snowscape Sock. I am very happy with the fit. I like lacy socks and these are going to be fun to wear!
The Dora Cardigan is getting so close to the finish line that I am expending all my knitting energy on it. I was not totally sure that the color would show the lace but I like it. It’s the Classic Merino Superwash Sport in Damson Plum.
I am also getting to the part of the pattern that I will be revising. It will be easier than I thought to make the changes I want to make. I may also end up re-knitting part of the other two sizes after I make the changes so that I know they work and to update them to match the revisions. I can unravel the top of the yokes and just re-knit that part I think. That is the plan, anyway.
I think I may have this finished by my next post. See you next time!
I have been back home from Raleigh, NC for more than a week. I have tried many times to write a blog post with knitting and dyeing updates. Today is the day it worked out.
The festival was wonderful. We had a great turn out as usual and much fun was had by all. I am already looking forward to next year. I am sure I am not alone in being excited about the date shift which will mean we won’t be sharing the fairgrounds with the dog show. It will be nice to have easier parking access in the future.
Knitting
I was pretty busy the festival weekend and since I have been home, so the knitting has been less than I like. I do have some progress to share.
My first Glittering Snowscape Sock is almost done. I only have the toe to knit. I am glad I decided to make these in just a single color of Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn. I love the look and the textures. The three gradients look nice but it’s more work to change colors and these look fine with less fuss. There will only be two ends to weave in. I love that about socks.
I like the garter stitch heellook at that texturelacy Dora Cardigan body
I am about halfway up the lower body of the Dora Cardigan. I haven’t touched it since I got home though. Once I got close to finishing my sock, I gave it all my attention. I am planning to get back to the sweater as soon as the first sock is of the needles.
Yarn Dyeing
I received most of the yarn order I was waiting for on Thursday. I spent the days leading up to that getting the dyes mixed. On Friday, I got all the yarn prepared for a day’s dyeing. Saturday was Day One dye day. We will have two more dyeing days next week.
There are two reasons that we have to delay the rest of the yarn dyeing until next week.
One reason is that we are still waiting for one of the yarn bases to arrive. It is delivering tomorrow. I will get that yarn prepared for dye Day Two when it arrives. I already have all the dyes and the other three bases prepped for that. I would probably be doing that on Thursday and then the Day Three dyeing on Saturday. The reason I can’t do that is because we have a local festival this coming weekend.
We will be at the Middle Tennessee Fiber Festival in Dickson, TN on March 22-23, 2024. On Thursday afternoon I will be setting up the booth. This is a Friday and Saturday show. The hours are 10-4 on Friday and 9-4 on Saturday. We weren’t given our booth numbers yet, but I think I will be in the same place I was last year. If you are in the area, please come say hello!
As I was having my coffee this morning, some strong storms were rolling through, bringing cooler weather in its wake. It was good to have my knitting to calm my slight anxiety that storms can bring to me now. I used to enjoy stormy weather, as long as it wasn’t too scary. They all make me a bit edgy since the tornado in December.
Knitting
I am just a few rows from finishing my Sorrel. Okay, there is also grafting the underarm stitches and then applying the button loop and button. But that is probably, altogether, about an hour’s worth of effort.
I am going to try to get back to my Spiral Splash Sock, but there is also another booth sample I want to start.
I designed Dora about 7 or 8 years ago. I want to make a large size, which I have not knit before. When I do that, I think I am going to revise the neck shaping a bit. I am planning to use Classic Merino Superwash Sport in Damson Plum to make it. I like the idea of having both a light and dark color example of this in the booth. I have the small size in the same yarn in Lichen. I have the medium-sized sample in the natural color Organic Cotton Sport.
Dora Small Classic Merino Superwash Sport LichenDora Medium Organic Cotton Sport
Festival Season
It is almost time for our first festival of 2024. I will be in Raleigh, NC, March 6-10, for the Carolina FiberFest. We have gotten a lot of the preparations done. I have been packaging new Shawl/Hair Sticks this week. They are on the website, and I added the singles, which is new. We used to only have those at shows. Since we have over a hundred now, I decided to go ahead and list them online as well.
As I am writing this post, the storms have passed. I should probably get my day’s work started. I should have a finished project and a new one cast on soon.
Two more knitting projects are done this week. I cast on for another and I am still working on my sock in progress.
Knitting Projects Done
My large Classic Baby Cardigan is all finished, even down to the buttons. I ended up using almost 460 yards of Classic Merino Superwash Sport for this sample. In the Earl Grey I used about 105g and about 30g in the Garnet. This is the second time that I have knit this size and I am glad to find that my required yardage in the pattern is accurate. I recommend 450-475 yards total, and I stayed within that range.
Classic Baby Cardigan Large sizeClassic Baby Cardigan Trio
The other knitting project that I have completed is the Spiral Effect Cowl. I used about 353 yards of Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn in Heather to make this cowl. The first time that I knit this pattern, I knit it with US 6 needles, but the last two times I went down to a US 4 and I prefer that size. The lace is very open anyway, and I think the texture comes through better with a smaller needle.
Spiral Effect CowlSpiral Effect Cowl on me
Current Projects
I am still working on the Spiral Splash Socks but they are progressing slower than I would like. I think I only pick them up to work on them about 2-3 a week, so that is part of the problem. What also slows me down while knitting them is the stitch pattern. It’s pretty simple but I find changing colors every other round is just not as fast as using only one color. I hope that by the next knitting session on them, I can get to the heel flap. That always feels like a milestone to me when knitting a sock.
Spiral Splash SocksSorrel Small
Here is the other reason that my sock in progress is languishing. I started a re-knit of another booth sample that I designed about 12 years ago. This is the smallest size of Sorrel made in my Classic Merino Bamboo, also in Heather. This skein of yarn was already in my stash. I pulled it from inventory last summer when we dyed it, but I can’t remember why. I judged it slightly irregular, and I think it was that the color was off a bit from the rest, for some unknown reason. It works fine for a booth sample though. :-)
This project is a simple and fast knit. I am also highly motivated to have it ready for my first festival in a couple weeks. That is probably why I am making much more progress on this than on the sock.
We don’t get into holidays too much but I do enjoy making a nice meal. What better reason is there to make my guys their favorite meal, than Valentine’s Day dinner?
Valentine’s Day Dinner
Now, to be fair, I freely admit that fresh pasta is also one of my favorites. So, it isn’t entirely selfless, but it is a labor of love. I enjoy making fresh pasta by hand. I mix it on the table and knead by hand for 10 minutes. Then just let it rest, covered, about 1-2 hours. This allows the gluten to develop and relax before rolling it out.
The rolling and cutting doesn’t really take that much time, maybe 30 minutes for the whole pound. I use a rotary pizza cutter to cut it. I don’t have a pasta drying rack, so I lay it all out on two floured half-sheet pans. I let the cut pasta dry on the sheet pans for another hour. Then it’s ready to be cooked.
Meanwhile, while the pasta dough is resting, I start my marinara sauce. My secret ingredients for my sauce are fresh basil, lots of fresh garlic and olive oil, a bay leaf, and whatever red wine I have on hand. I like to slow simmer this for at least 2-3 hours, and sometimes even longer. We usually don’t add meat to the sauce, but I occasionally make turkey meat balls on the side. We had vegetarian style today.
Then comes the best part, the eating! A little red wine makes it a perfect celebratory meal. It was delicious and we have enough left over marinara for another day.
A Little Dyeing
Before I get to the knitting half of my post, I have a bit of dyeing to show you.
I think I mentioned that I put in a big order with the mill the first week of January. This is so we can restock for the spring fiber festivals. I like to do my dyeing for this in February, since the days are lengthening and there is usually some warmer weather too. I was expecting to have received it by the first week of February, but there was a delay with my order.
I always order more yarn than I need at the time, so I have extra on hand for situations like this. Yesterday I did this small batch to restock the yarns and colors that were lowest, in case I can’t get to the full restock dyeing until mid March. My first festival of the year, Carolina Fiber Festival, is March 8-9. I will have time after the festival to work on the rest since I only have one other festival in March, and it is here in Tennessee.
Knitting for this week
Now let’s talk about the knitting I am working on this week.
As you can see I only have the collar edging to pick up and knit. I should be able to get that done this evening.
I began to run into an issue with yarn as I got to the edging. I was down to 11g of the Garnet, and only 2.3 g of the Earl Grey. I originally planned to make the edgings in only the Earl Grey if I had enough. My plan B was to do a small stripe of the red on the edging if needed. I didn’t even have enough of the grey to do one of the button bands though.
So, I found a swatch I made in this yarn for a sweater I made in 2022. I also found a 10g mini skein from when I was sampling the color mix 4-5 years ago. I like to keep these since they are handy for referencing, or in this case, cannibalizing. :-) I have ripped out the swatch and wound it and the mini skein for using in the collar and button bands. That brought my total of Earl Grey yarn up to 20g which should by plenty, along with the two rows of red in each edging.
Around here we are rarely idle. It’s hard to home educate and run a home based business any other way. It’s all in a week’s work most of the time. We do try to set aside one day a week for rest. This week has been filled with a variety of tasks.
Miscellaneous Stuff
I’ll start off with the news that my new phone and computer arrived. I took the picture with the phone so no shot of that. The new laptop is a nice upgrade, especially the 2.8K screen. I love my new S24 Ultra too. Jerry got my S22 Ultra.
Since the weather finally turned warm and dry, it was time to get the storage shed painted. The tornado damaged the roof and that was fixed right after Christmas. After that the weather prevented us from getting the painting done until this week.
Dyeing and Wood Finishing
While the guys were painting the shed, I was doing some wood product finishing and yarn dyeing.
The Shawl and Hair Sticks that we have been making are ready for the final steps. I applied the finish to them on Thursday. They need a day or two to dry and cure before packaging. I am so pleased with how the new Padauk ones look. I have them listed on the website. I still need to get pictures of the Padauk added this week, but they are available.
The yarn that you see up there is a custom order for a local percussion supply business. They use the yarn as a part of mallets for percussion instruments. I got this dyed on Saturday and wound it into balls for them yesterday.
Labeling and Packaging
In between these tasks, I got the labels ready to package the new Shawl and Hair Sticks. I have gotten some of them packaged but I still have the Purple Heart and Padauk ones to go after I finish writing this post.
Knitting
To round out my post I will update you on what I am knitting at the moment.
The top down raglan sweater is a large size Classic Baby Cardigan for a booth sample. I am using the Earl Grey and Garnet Classic Merino Superwash Sport yarn. I should have enough of the Earl Grey to knit the body and sleeves. I may add some Garnet to the ribbing if needed.
The middle picture is a Spiral Effect Cowl for the booth in my Classic Merino Superwash Sock in Heather. I introduced this one in my last post. My update is that I am currently almost at the halfway point.
The third project is Stephen West’s Spiral Splash Socks from the Year of Socks 2024 collection. I am late casting this on, since it was the January release. I did at least start them on January 27th.
I am excited to make the February ones so I am going to try and speed through at least the first one so I can start the current month pattern soon. I’ll talk about that when I get there.
Happy Birthday to me! We celebrated today with a delicious meal of homemade pasta with chicken fricassee. I made a coconut cake for my birthday cake. It is the first one I have made and it was delicious! I apologize that I neglected to take a picture of the main dish. It was worth every bit of effort. I love fresh pasta! The chicken and pasta recipes are from my Joy of Cooking, which is my staple cookbook.
New Electronics
I recently pre-ordered the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. This was mainly a business purchase but I was excited when it shipped early and was supposed to be delivered today. That seemed like a fun birthday surprise, right? Unfortunately, there was a delay in delivery though. So it hasn’t shown up yet, which is a bit of a disappointment.
On a related note, I also ordered a new laptop this week. This was something I planned to do this year, but was waiting until spring. I have had my current computer since August 2018. It is a Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 6 and has been the best laptop I have ever had. I wanted to get the new model (gen 12) and build it to the specs I want. Those plans had to change when I turned on my computer three days ago to this…
I had no warning that anything was going bad. It was fine until it wasn’t.
Those white vertical areas aren’t supposed to be there. You can also see that the text is virtually illegible. I wasn’t sure whether this was a hardware failure of the display or the integrated graphics processor. We have a external monitor which I set up in my office. I hooked up the computer to it with an HDMI cable to see what would happen.
That worked! I assume that means that the display is the problem. So, while I can still use my computer now when hooked up to the external monitor, I still need to replace it for use on the road.
So, waiting until March wasn’t going to be an option anymore. I went ahead and built a gen 11 model. It was supposed to arrive February 1 at the earliest and probably a few days later than that. I was pleasantly surprised to get the shipping notification this morning and it is currently expecting to be delivered January 29th. So, that’s good news!
Knitting Updates
In other news, I have another finished sample to show you today and a new one on the needles.
Here is my Maize Cowl washed and ready to wear. I have a Ravelry project page for it too. You can get further information there if you like.
I made a trip to Joann and got some buttons for the small size Classic Baby Cardigan that I finished last week. When I was knitting this, I saw that the pattern could use some updating for clarity. So, I did some editing and uploaded the revised edition to my website and my listing on Ravelry.
There is only one project on my needles at the moment. I may cast on something else soon, but this is it for now. It is another booth sample re-knit of the Spiral Effect Cowl. My daughter, Heather, is the designer of this pattern. She wrote it for my Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn about 12 years ago. She was selling it online from Ravelry and I sell it at festivals. I have made it several times and I enjoy wearing mine when I want a little something lacy to wear.
It is a quick and fun lacy project that is perfect for even the knitter who thinks lace is too challenging. It is the same stitch pattern every other round with a simple shift to give the diagonal effect. I made this one a couple years ago.
It is time for the washing of the shop samples. You may recall, in a previous post, that I had already begun this process.
Washing Hand-knits
I like to hand wash my hand knitted garments. I put them in lukewarm water with shampoo. Sometimes I use the kitchen sink, but if there are a lot of them, I use the bathtub. After a good soak of at least 30 minutes, I drain the water and gently squeeze them out a bit. Then I refill with more cool fresh water and swish them to rinse for a few minutes. Then I drain the rinse water and squeeze them out somewhat. Don’t wring them, which can stretch and distort the garments.
At this point, you can roll them in towels until damp dry, or put them in the washing machine and set it on the spin only cycle if you have one. I am fortunate to have that option, so that is usually what I do.
Blocking Hand Knits
These are only a few examples of how I block hand knits. Lace shawls need the most attention when it comes to blocking. All lace garments need blocking on their first wash after knitting, but some won’t need a full pinned out blocking after every wash. Shawls will look their best if you go to the trouble to pin them out after each wash. Fortunately, they don’t need it too often.
I didn’t take pictures of all the samples as I went through the process of washing and blocking. I think I have around 50 samples in the booth, but I didn’t count. It is a lot though. Trust me. I spent about 2 weeks doing all of them. I even ordered more Knit Blockers and Blocking Mats. Sometimes, depending on what I was blocking, I used all I had and could have used more. I highly recommend these tools to make a tedious job a bit easier. (no affiliation, just like them)
Ready for New Tags
After I finished washing and blocking everything I decided they really needed some new sample tags. The old ones were looking ratty. I also wanted to change some of the information to be more relevant to the questions I frequently get in the booth. I spent a few hours one afternoon making all new tags and I like them much better. I hope they will be more helpful for customers too. Many people like to take a picture of the card and I think these will be more readable for that.
Today, I got all the tags put back on to the proper samples. There are also some patterns that I am knitting new samples for. The reason I am doing that is to refresh them with current colors in my inventory. I have yarn picked out for five patterns. So far I have finished one and I am close to completing a second one.
New Knitting Projects
The pink baby sweater is done except for some buttons. This is my Classic Baby Cardigan in my Superwash Sport yarn in the Tea Rose color. I knit the smallest size here from one skein of yarn. I knit the sweater in just one week even though the gauge is 6.5 stitches per inch on US 3 and US 1 needles.
The purple cowl is my Maize Cowl pattern in Classic Merino Superwash DK yarn in my new color from last year, Wisteria. This is one of my favorite cowls to wear. It is also a really fast knit. I can complete one on 3-5 sittings.
I will show you the other things I have in the queue when I get them on the needles, which should be soon.
We don’t get much snow around here, and if you ask me that is a good thing. But, when we do, snow days are for knitting.
Snow and Knitting
I took these pictures this morning and as you can see we have about 5-6 inches. It began snowing yesterday afternoon around sunset and it has snowed all night. As I am writing this post around 11:00 am on Monday, it is just starting to taper off. The temperature outside is around 13 degrees with a “feels like” temperature of 2 degrees.
Now, I know that many of you are getting more snow than this and much colder temperatures, but here in heat pump land this is mighty chilly. We have had to turn on the back up coil heat. We aren’t expected to see any temperatures above freezing for the next week. It is supposed to snow again on Thursday too. My hope is that we are getting our full complement of winter weather this week and then we are done, right?
So, what do I do when it’s blustery outside? Knit of course! I cast on for quite a few new booth samples, which I will tell more about in another post. You may also notice that swatch in the picture? That is for a sweater, for myself. I am planning to make it sometime in the near future from some Araucania Nature Wool that has been in my stash for ages. The pattern is another of Stephen West’s latest releases, Woolly Waffles Cardigan.
Finished Projects
I have finished two things this past week. These are the Billowing Braids Socks, which I knit in one week! I can’t remember ever finishing a pair of socks this quickly before. I like them a lot except for one thing. I can’t believe I didn’t see this until I washed them and was laying them out to dry. Do you see the cables done wrong on one of the feet? Doh! Oh well, I am not fixing it. They still work.
Here’s the post blocking pictures of my Mingling Daisies shawl. I really like it! The pictures don’t do it proper justice due to the weather. I had to take inside pictures for now. I had hope that I would be able to use only two skeins of Classic Merino Bamboo, but that didn’t happen. I ended up using a total of 235 g, which is about 1152 yards.
If you are in the deep freeze this week too, I hope you are able to stay warm and cozy with some knitting too!
We are finally getting back to business as usual here. Most of the property repairs have been completed. The only exception to this is some painting. We need to repaint the work shop and storage shed. They have had the roofing replaced and we are waiting for a few warm, dry days to repaint. In January that can be tricky, so we will see when that happens. It may have to wait until spring.
Preparing for the New Year
During the last week of 2023 and the first week of 2024, I have been busy with tasks to close out the old year and get ready for the new one. I spent three days doing inventory. Everything was pretty accurate, with only a few discrepancies.
The next task was doing the end of the year bookkeeping to get ready for income taxes later this month, and also 4th Quarter income and Sales Tax reports. Those tasks took a couple afternoons. I still need to set up new folders for 2024 bookkeeping soon.
My next priority was to use the information gained from my inventory count to determine how much of what needs to be dyed for the spring festival season which begins in early March. So, I spent part of another day organizing that data, making plans, and ordering base yarn. Dyeing will most likely happen in February. The days are getting longer by then and we usually have a mix of warm and cold weather to work with.
Production in the wood shop is at the moment still focused on Shawl and Hair Sticks, but I don’t have any new pictures to show. I do have some picture of the other job I am working my way through, which is washing the booth samples. I try to do this once a year or maybe every other year.
I am not even halfway through them yet. I have an obscene amount of booth samples. (grin) Oh, and speaking of blocking, which I sort of am above, minus the pins, I am finished with Mingling Daisies! I knew that I-cord bond off was going to take awhile with 601 stitches, and it did! It took several sittings to complete it and I think I clocked about 6-7 hours doing it. I haven’t blocked the shawl yet because of all the samples to get done. I can only get so many blocking at at time due to horizontal surface limitations. Here is a picture I took fresh off of the needles to hold you over.
Knitting
Since we are heading into knitting territory at this point in the post, let me show you what I have on the needles now.
As you probably can tell, I spend most of my knitting time, making booth samples. I enjoy that knitting and I am not complaining about that. Sometimes it is good to do some stuff that is just for fun too. This year I decided to splurge on my knitting time by joining WestKnits Year of Socks 2024. I guess I am on a bit of a Stephen West knitting binge.
So, the sock pictured above is the December 2023 bonus sock called Billowing Braid Socks. I am making them from some personal stash yarn from Webs that I bought in 2010 to make baby stuff for Elijah. I did make an Owl Vest from it, but had 5 skeins left. It is Webs Valley Yarn Superwash Merino DK. I am using US 3 dpns. I started this sock yesterday afternoon and have already completed the first cuff. You gotta love a DK sock for quickness. These will be “around the house” socks for me.
The January pattern in Socks of 2024 released a few days ago. It’s called Spiral Stash Socks. I can see casting on for these soon, since the cabled DK socks are going so fast.
The yarns above are discontinued colors of Classic Merino Superwash Sock. They are skeins from my personal stash. The design calls for one solid and one self-striping or marled yarn. I am using my hand painted variegated skein in place of the self striping, but I am still undecided about which solid I want to use to go with it. I am leaning towards the purple, because why not? What do you think?
