Well

Silly me realized that I’d forgotten to give you the scoop on the OXO cuffs when I showed them finished yesterday. So here it is:

OXO Cuffs

Begun: November 5, 2007
Completed: November 22, 2007

Yarn: Cashmerino 2-ply laceweight yarn, leftovers from Swallowtail Shawl. Dyed in acid dyes. Only took maybe 10 g! This stuff never gets used up. Purchased at Birkeland Bros.
Needles: Clover Takumi 5” bamboo dpns, 2 mm
Pattern: Wedding Cuffs by Nancy Bush, Piecework May/June 2006, p40
For Comments, see yesterday's post.

At our Ravelry meetup yesterday I brought my wheel, Tori, in her backpack and got half a bobbin of the darkest madder spun up into singles. The roving is not too bad and just needed to be stripped down and pre-drafted some to become cooperative. Siobhan came for the first time (she’s not on Ravelry – yet!) and brought her Ashford Knitter’s Loom so we had 3 knitters a spinner and a weaver in total. That covered a fair bit of the fibre spectrum for sure! Got a few looks from folks at The Grind but nobody got up enough gumption to ask questions. We all managed to control ourselves from initiating a yarn crawl afterwards this time. Our collective stashes must not need enhancing right at the moment. It worked out fine for me carrying Tori and my neck isn’t too sore, or at least much worse than it has been lately.

The weather turned out nice today and not even as cold as it has been for the last few days. No frost this time. Which reminds me, if you were wondering what those berries were from my last post, that’s my pyracantha, aka firethorn, looking very festive. If you don’t know it, this is a very nice evergreen shrub with pretty tiny white flowers in spring and bright berries (some varieties have orange or yellow ones instead of red) that the birds like to eat in winter. Technically speaking they aren’t really berries but “pomes”, like teensy little apples. Not especially edible though not toxic. It’s not fussy as to where it grows and it doesn’t have much in the way of diseases or pests to bug it. The only thing to watch out for is the nasty thorns on the stems! For that reason it makes a great trespasser deterrent. And it’s not nearly as bad as hawthorn at puncturing tires or as bad as blackberries at attacking you. T-Man has been on a multi-year program of disposing of the last of our ugly hawthorn hedge with only a few more to go. The blackberries, on the other hand, get pruned and tied back and generally fussed over all on account of their yummy produce. Even though they are considered an unwanted pest that doesn’t stop folks from coming by with buckets to pick our berries on the outside of the fence. There’s still plenty on my side for our use so we don’t mind. Just wish they’d all come back to help when it’s time to prune! As if.

Short post with no photos today. I’m going to spend some quality time with my poor Hepburn Cardi who has been ignored for the past few weeks. I’d like more than the bit of sleeves I have so far. And there’s a bunch of podcasts I haven’t heard yet.