Recently in Rose Merino/Tussah Silk Category

So. My first enabling of 2006 would be to tell you that Habu is having a sale. It would not do for you to miss the Habu sale. You know Habu is eclectic, artsy-sort-of yarn, so you don't want to miss it! (Thanks to Kitty Kitty Priscilla for the tip!)

Fiber: Rose Merino/Tussah, 4 oz
Purchased from: Carolina Homespun booth at Stitches West
Yield: 601 yards
Weight: Lace to fingering

Lurvely homespun Barberpole Rose! I am so pleased with how it turned out. It is a tad darker than the roving, but I think that may be a general rule of all multi-colored roving. It's particularly dark here, but only because the photo was taken on a gloomy day.

The photo above is more representative of its colors. My singles were slightly uneven, ranging from sport to laceweight, and the plies are a little tighter than usual. I attribute that to my learning to spin from the fold. The yarn is shiny, too. I'm thinking shawl or stole design with this.

After washing, I usually lay my handspun on a drying rack, without any tension. IThese 3 skeins, however, had only one or two twists in the skein, which I'm rather proud of. But why 3 skeins, you ask, when you only had one bobbin?

This. Happened.

I decided to do a 2-ply (Navajo plying would have resulted in a thicker yarn and I wanted this thin) so my first step would be to wind it into a center pull cake for plying. I wound the single with my winder, not noticing that some lengths somehow spun out of control until I pulled the yarn cake off the winder. I decided to rewind the yarn, but of course unset singles will wind over each other until they make a snarling mess. I stopped. I cried. I walked away. I got over it a day later and mustered enough courage to cut the offending bits and tied together as many lengths as I could salvage. The 3 skeins were the result. *sigh* While I'm glad it turned out well in the end, I wish I would've been more careful. I would've gotten one big fat skein that I'd be dancing around the apartment with, but I got careless with winding. Lesson learned. On to the next 8 ounces!

Salivating over: Apple's new MacBook Pro. Yeah, I need a new laptop.

Happy New Year! What better way to start the year than making an appearance on JenLa's Second Annual Knit Blog Awards, woohoo! At number 21, "Biggest Evolution in Their Knitting: MJ at Yummy Yarn. You’ve come a long way baybee!!" Thanks, Jen and La!

(Still kinda flu-stricken. When you walk from your car to Trader Joe's, and you're exhausted and coughing from all that exertion, and have to sit on the minestrone display to catch your breath.... you might still be sick.)

Because I knit a lot for other people last year, this year will be about knitting for moi. Other than Boyfriend Socks and maybe the occasional Birthday Something-Something, all my projects will be for me. I could make up some kind of long explanation, but really it boils down to me being selfish and making pretty things for myself out of all the yummy yarn I've been stashing! He he! And I've been stashing, yes I have. So without further ado, here are my resolutions:

Knitting:
1. I will have no more than 3 knitting projects going on at the same time.
2. One of these projects will be my own design.
3. At least one of these projects will incorporate a new technique.
4. I will buy yarn with a project in mind.

Spinning:
1. I will spin at least 8 ounces from my fiber stash before acquiring more fiber.
2. I will spin different varieties of fiber.
3. I will spin different weights, not just laceweight, fingering, and sport.
4. I will spin with a project in mind for the resulting handspun.

I finished spinning Barberpole Rose. I love a fat bobbin of yummy laceweight singles. I dedicate this picture to Cara and Pixie Purls, who *finally* bought their wheels (and Lendrums they are). Whee! Marnie, Julia, are you ready to take the next big step???

Poppy seeds! You want to know what poppy seeds really look like? Surprise, they're not round.

What does 250 pounds of Silly Putty look like? Google staffers know.

If you're a designer and *quite* picky, you'll really appreciate this article about using typefaces in movies. Basically the beef is that some movies use typefaces that weren't invented at the time the movie was supposed to have happened (such as Good Night and Good Luck, based in the early '50s using Helvetica, which was created in 1957). Geeky, huh?

Have a beautiful, healthy day.

Apart from changing my masthead, I have not done anything worth blogging about. My Let It Snow! hat is on its decreases, and I'll bring it to the Sunday meetup.

Speaking of meetup, if anyone from the South Bay wants to carpool with me and Lori on Sunday, let me know in today's comments. We're planning on leaving at around 10.15a from Redondo Beach.

Still spinning the merino and tussah mix; I've got about 2 yards of fiber left. Spinning from the fold is time-consuming in that I'm working with pieces no longer than 6 or 7 inches in length, but it lets me practice with spinning from the fold more.

I've been reading Andrea Tung's blog, in which she chronicles her progress of launching her new alpaca yarn line, Fable Handknit. Andrea sent me some yummy yarn samples about a month ago, and the last time I read her blog she was going to have more colors soon.

I found a couple of Filipino food blogs I'd like to share (because we eat the most interesting things): Beyond Adobo and Stefoodie. There's also Deep End Dining, whose authors are not Filipino, but there are a couple of posts on balut [pronounced bah-loot], which is certainly one of the Philippines' most intriguing dishes. My mom said that that was one of my favorite things to eat when I was little! Gak!

Reading: Still reading. I can finally read *and* knit at the same time! Orson Scott Card's Magic Street, Nancy Geary's Being Mrs. Alcott, Grace Tiffany's The Turquoise Ring, Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind, Robin Cook's Chromosome 6.

I bought 4 ounces of Rose Merino/Tussah from Carolina Homespun at this year's Stitches West. I'd been loathe to spin with it, as it's so lovely to look at, but beneath all the (really nicely, thoroughly carded) loveliness was my problem: how to spin this? With multicolored roving you can spin it two ways: lengthwise in skinny little bits or from the fold. With the first half-ounce I experimented with both techniques, and both produced the barber-pole effect. Lengthwise in skinny little bits was fine, but it got a little tiresome having to separate and keep track of the color sequence of all the bits. So out of pure laziness I decided to stick with spinning from the fold. You can also see it this way: I learned a new technique!

My thicknesses vary because I'm still getting the hang of 1) spinning merino and tussah silk, two new fibers for me; 2) spinning from the fold; and 3) trying to get a consistent number of treadles per specific length of fiber drafted. It's kind of cool, a little frustrating, but I need to get through it. I'm as much a process spinner as I am a knitter, I've found.

Following link upon link upon link, I stumbled onto Knitterguy's site. He's posted a series of entries on spinning fine yarn on a Lendrum, sprinkling them with little tips for spinning. Like using Vaseline instead of 20w oil for lubricating moving parts. Very cool.

Thanks to Kitty Kitty, who sent me a link to this site, which talks about yarn thicknesses and counts. Remember my little cone of 18/2 tweedy alpaca? Well, it really should be 2/18: the 2 refers to the number of plies Mr. Tweedy Alpaca Cone has; the 18 refers to its thickness, which means the yarn has been spun 18 times the standard length of 500 yards. According to the site, "The primary standard to determine yarn thickness for wool and acrylic is worsted at 500 yards/pound." If you multiply my yarn thickness by the standard (18 x 500) it comes out to 9,000. Divide this by the number of plies (2) and my yarn comes out to 4,500 yards/lb. Interesting, no?

More random linkage, this time gift ideas:

Kai dental floss holders that look like piranha. I'd love one of those!

Design company and vendor CSA makes really cool PopInk plates; my favorites are the Happy Kitty Bunny Pony and Cannibal Kingdom sets.

I know, this isn't a gift idea, but maybe you could make it the front of a greeting card for all your math and science friends: π (that's pi) to 1 million places. (As an aside, did anyone ever read Carl Sagan's Contact?)