Recently in Ashland Bay Colonial (Rainforest) Category

Fiber: Rainforest Colonial, 4 oz
Gifted from: Former knitblogger Leila Crayonbrain
Yardage: 228.5 yards (1 large and 1 small skein)
Weight: Worsted

Look, I made tweed! It's the multi-colored fiber Leila gave me waayyy back in March. I had spun about 130 yards on my spindle, and I finished the rest up on the wheel. I'm still finessing the thickness and the plying, which is why the yarn is quite inconsistent. I couldn't resist spinning this, it was a break from the white Coopworth. I tried separating the colors to make more of a variegated yarn, but they were too intertwined, and the lengths I managed to separate without breaking were thin. Leila said as much, so this ended up as tweed. I made tweed by accident!

Enjoy some linkage:
◊ My new favorite site, Inhabitat posted an article on soy protein fiber. Southwest Trading Company's yarn is referred to. Isn't Inhabitat a beautiful site, in general?
◊ Hip and Zen's recycled products.
◊ Walnut columns with turnings shaped like your profile! Huh?
◊ Scroll to the bottom of this entry and you'll find interesting knitted things from Icelanders Ragnheiður Ösp Sigurðardóttir and Sesselja Guðmundsdottir
◊ Knitwear designer Jo Sharp has a beautiful site.

Hallo! Vielen danke für dieses e-mails. I wish I could read them all and catch up with the blogs but we only have so much time before doing other things... It seems everyone wants a piece of us! Germany has been incredible, and tomorrow (probably by the time you read this) we'll be on our way to Spain. I've finished my first sock, about to start on the second. Fiddling with 5 weisswurst skewers (BF's lovely term) seems a little difficult, but I can see how people can get obsessed with knitting them. That's all for the knitting content; until next week, tchuss!

I took out the bottom whorl spindle last night and did some spinning. I'm glad I picked the bottom whorl as a beginning spindle because it's slower than the top and easier to park-and-draft with. That said, I do like my Kundert because it's faster--way faster--and I can load it up with more yarn than the bottom whorl (attributed to the fact that the Kundert's whorl is wider).

I took a break from knitting this weekend to do some more spinning. Of course, the artsy shot doesn't show my progress, but I did some spinning, honest. I've got about half of the roving Leila gave me all spun up into a worsted yarn, which is thin, strong, and shiny. This is for lace, I'm thinking.

Burnt Orange posted an excellent entry on photography basics such as lighting, composition, and continuity that is worth reading. I've received my share of compliments (thank you) on photography so I'm putting together a post on composition and cropping that I hope will help. If you have specific questions on photography, let me know and I'll try to answer them when I do the post.

Knit One Read Too's discussion on Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell is on. Do drop by, even if you haven't finished the book.

Reading: Some time ago Leisel recommended Dan Simmons' Hyperion series, but such is my luck at the library that the first 2 were checked out (*sigh*), so I borrowed his A Winter Haunting instead. Also, Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years, Indu Sundaresan's The Twentieth Wife, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and Karen Quinn's The Ivy Chronicles. I'm halfway through the last one, which is total fluff reading. I'm feeling a little down and need something mindless right now...