Gone Fishing

OK. Not really. But we do have fish!

My Spectrum Study Group worked on these fish at our meeting yesterday. Mine’s the green one on the right (metallic fabric paint and beads and sequins). The fish bodies originally come from Japan, made by women displaced by the tsunami. (Yes, many still aren’t settled!) The decorated fish are being collected by our friends at the Silk Weaving Studio and will eventually be auctioned off to provide funds to help these people. I was trying to find the correct informational website but it’s not turning up for me. Sorry about that.

Meanwhile, I have a huge pile of half-carded wool on my work table. Thom was helping wind the drum carder for me. Since the proposed sweater is for him, his assistance is very welcome. It’s like having a motor on the carder! I’m not sure this will be enough for his sweater yet though so probably more teasing and carding will be needed. There’s lots of this RomneyX fleece left anyhow. However this will fill my basket enough so I can get to the spinning before I forget how. I’ll figure out how much more is needed when this is all spun up. Slow clothes indeed! He’ll likely be wearing this sweater next winter instead of this one. Oh well. At this point we can’t even decide on which pattern to knit!

I also overdyed the black sock yarn skeins again. Third time was the charm! After the last effort they still had too many areas that were close to white instead of darker gray and since they were in skeins by this point anyway it was just as easy to give them another soak in a 1% black Telana dye. I have no idea what the total dye percentage is! So much for accurate dyeing, huh? Anyway now they are the slightly uneven black that I wanted in the first place. Lesson learned. Don’t try to dye those little poofy Elann yarn balls without skeining them up first! Got it. I may not get much chance to dye them anymore anyway since Elann’s new sales fulfillment plan, Amazon.ca, isn’t turning up any more of the F05 sock yarn at the moment. Figures that I just discover a yarn I want when it becomes unavailable. Pfth. Yeah, there’s some on Amazon in the US but I’m not going there when our Cdn dollar is so low against the US one.

Now I can’t start the Little Black Cardi that I want to knit with this yarn until I get at least one of my current knitting projects off the needles. I’m nearly at the heel flaps with the Emerald Socks for Thom. Good thing they’re too big for me or I’d commandeer them for myself! I love the greens and purple. And there’s still the Silken Haruni Shawlette that seems like it’s been going on forever and a day. I started this one waaayyyyy back in September when we were still in the desert. Then I frogged it when we got home and started again. I’ve only got about 14 rows to go before the bind-off but they are very long rows. Takes me about 45 minutes to knit one pattern row. Purl rows are slightly faster. The most I end up doing in one sitting is about 4 rows before my attention wanders.

Since my work table is inundated with wool fluff I haven’t been tempted to sew anything right now. Even though I have a huge pile of patterns and fabric! I don’t know if I’m really avoiding sewing or just currently more in the mood for playing with wool instead. It’s not like I don’t need more clothes! I certainly have been discovering where the gaps in my wardrobe lie this winter. As usual, I probably won’t get around to filling those gaps until spring and then I’ll have different needs. Why am I always a least one or two seasons behind? Yeah, I do have an excuse this time, don’t I?

The Hand continues to heal though slowly. At least it feels slowly to me! I can do a lot of things again anyway which makes me very happy and grateful. I just have to be patient and wait for further improvement. I need to tackle the ironing mountain, for one thing, and that still hurts somewhat.