May is done and dusted, and now it's on to June...I'm happy to say that despite my busy schedule for May, I managed to get rather a lot done. Unless you count blogging!

My main knitting goal was to finish the Lucca shawl, which I did fairly early on in the month. Plus, I finally finished warping my floor loom, and have been happily weaving away on it. And then there were all the workshops! So much fun, and so much information flying around in my head, and there's more to come with MAWS coming up in June! 

Knitting

• If you're tired of hearing me say I'm going to finish that stash sweater someday, I'm right there with you. I did get some excellent ideas on how to rescue it with as little work as possible, so the chances that I actually get to work on that are getting better and better.
• I'm in love with the overdye job I did on the leftover skein from Lucca....but getting a project started with it has proven challenging. The first few attempts weren't quite right, and then I took it over to my knitting machine to learn how to use the lace carraige, which in turn ended up chewing up a bit of yarn in a bad way. So this is in a holding pattern.
• There's that fancy Shetland scarf that needs work, but it requires so much concentration that I rarely have time to work on it. 

Weaving

• I managed to get my floor loom warped, and I'm actually at the tail end of weaving that warp. I did two yards of blue/gray weft, and am aiming for two yards of a fuschia weft. Then, I'm hoping to tie on a new warp to the old one so that I'm not sitting with an unwarped loom for six months. I've also decided there's no huge rush - if I weave about 6 inches a day, I'm happy.
• I'm taking a weaving workshop at MAWS (Montana Association of Spinners and Weavers), so have to get my table loom warped for that. It's actually quite an easy warp, and it's 90% done. 
• I desperately want to build a warp-weighted loom, but I'm thinking it will have to wait at least another month or so. 

Spinning

• The problem with having more than one spinning wheel is that I have a bunch of projects on the go at once. I'm working on consolidating that. But for now, I have two alpaca spinning projects going, and one pound of wool, and....then there's the plying. 

Sewing

• Sewing is back! I managed to make a Gemma Tank without any major catastrophes. More on it later, maybe. I don't love it, and I don't hate it, and I'm thinking my opinion of it is suffering from my fabric choice. So I'll be making at least one more in a different fabric before I give a final verdict.
• The end goal is to make a top or two out of the yardage I'm weaving on my floor loom. So there may be one or two more wearable muslins in my future...

That's it...I think! What are you up to this month?

xx,

​Pamela

Welcome to June! Veggies are coming out of the garden faster than I can eat them (so much lettuce!), the days are getting crazy long, and the to-do list just keeps growing. 

In case you missed it, this is what quilting in space looks like. 

I'm trying to do a bit more in the sewing department. This technique for making double-fold bias tape looks so much easier than those little tube things - I can never get the fabric poked through.

This was an interesting article...but it didn't show any of the rugs (!?)

Spinners at the end of the world

I don't need another lace shawl...but this just *fell* off the needles. It's the Lucca Shawl, designed by Jared Flood, in Brooklyn Tweed's Vale. The color is "Barberry." I bought 4 skeins, intending to make a lightweight wool tank out of it, but after swatching, I realized I wouldn't have enough yarn.

Then some unexpected travel came up, and I didn't have any travel knitting. A quick browse through Ravelry told me that I could knit the large version of this shawl with the number of skeins I had, so out came the needles. I was able to get the fiddly bit of the cast on done before hitting the road, and this shawl kept me company through the whole week that I was traveling.

I wanted to get it finished before I went to YarnFest in April, but only managed to get the body of the shawl finished before leaving - there was still the border left to do. That bit dragged on for several weeks - at one point it felt like I must be almost finished, but every time I counted I was only 2/3 of the way through. As these things go. 

The interesting thing about this pattern is that there is a small size and a large size - and the only difference is the gauge. The small size is knitted on 3 mm (US size 2.5) needles, and the large is knitted on 4.5 mm (US size 7) needles. Looking at the yarn, I felt like the 4.5 mm needles would be ridiculous, and scaled back to a size 4 mm (US size 6). This ended up using just shy of 3 skeins of yarn, and makes me sneakily suspicious that the "large" size was engineered to sell an additional skein of yarn. Regardless, I enjoyed working with the yarn immensely, as I always do with Brooklyn Tweed. 

I took the extra skein and overdyed it - but that's a different post entirely. 

Ravelry project page here.

xx,

​Pamela

So much bouncing around in my head this week! Here's just a little bit of it:

Do you have royal baby fever? Every time Will and Kate stand on those steps holding a new bundle of joy, I wonder about where the knitwear came from. Here's the answer.

Knitting as sculpture. 

This is an interesting advance in knitting machine technology. And there's a lot at stake in terms of environmental and human impact...lots to ponder on this one.

It all comes down to twist. 

Tailor for the stars - literally. 

I've also read about weavers in Nordic countries using snow to bleach linen. And watching the processes in prepping and weaving the fabric in this video from Ojiya, Japan was interesting, too.

Another month, another opportunity to say, "Last month went by so fast," and to say that everything's still in progress!

I did know April was going to be busy, and somehow I've already overloaded myself for May, too. Good in some ways, and not so good in others. I'll be taking a dye workshop with one of my guild members, and then traipsing over to Boulder for a week of workshops with Elizabeth Johnston and Martha Owen ... leaving not so much time for turning WIPs into FOs. 

Knitting

• Pictured above, my main knitting goal for May is to finish my Lucca shawl. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the border, and every time I count, it seems like I still have the same number of "teeth" in the edging. There's a reason why most traditional lace knitters do the edging first - it takes forever, and it's a pain to turn every row when the knitting is as huge as it is now...
• I'm sort of itching to cast on this hat with some handspun...but so far, I've managed to restrain myself.
• One of my Yarn Fest classes was Shetland lace knitting with Elizabeth Johnston. In it, we started a scarf - so once I finish Lucca, it will be on to that one.
• And, of course, the stashbuster sweater is still on the needles. I'm thinking I'll take that one to Boulder with me. 

Spinning

• There's lots of plying to do! I've managed to ply quite a bit, but there's always more. 
• I'm wanting to weave an al-plaid-ca ruana. Sorry, I just couldn't help the pun. Anyways, it uses all natural alpaca colors, and I've spun up all the alpaca that's in my stash and am just waiting for the supplemental colors to come in the mail. Then it will be spinning (and more plying).

Weaving

• I'm still not finished warping the floor loom and starting to think I bit off more than I could chew. Whoops. Someday I'll get this thing going for real.
• I'm taking a couple of dye workshops and need to wind warps for those. I haven't painted a warp before, so this will be something new. 

What are you working on this month?

xx,

​Pamela