The Reel Thing

 

In 2020 I was tempted to buy several of  the new Knit Picks limited edition sock reels. 

I thought it was great fun to knit right from the reel but the resulting socks were terrible looking and blocking didn't help at all. You can't achieve any sort of even tension with kinky yarn. 

I had the bug to cast on some travel socks since my travel bag was empty and I thought I might as well give this yarn another try.

This time I unraveled it first.

Will you look at this? It was awesome looking but who could knit with this?

Even after a good soak it was still kinky. I tried hanging it with a weight but it didn't make a bit of difference.

I went online and looked up what the folks do who recycle the yarn from old sweaters. They soak it and then wrap it tightly around a big soda bottle. I didn't have one so I used a plastic deli container that I weighted with a bag of lentils so it would hold its shape. 

After a few days, as it dried, I moved it to two containers for more air flow. 

By yesterday afternoon I had two reasonably well behaved balls of yarn cast on for my travel bag. It was a lot of work for what's going to be an ugly pair of socks. The Rugby Stripe colorway is very pretty in the reel but is pretty awful once it's knit up. There's a lot of gray and very little stripe but at least it's something to keep my hands busy on long car rides. 

 

Chicken on Sunday

 

Poor Spiral Chicken has spent the summer being ignored. 

My plan to work around the perimeter to make sure I didn't run out of the gray color didn't go so well. Moving the fabric every few inches along the frame is tedious so I did everything I could to ignore her existence.

Since she's sitting in plain sight, guilt started to weigh in. My solution to getting her back into production was to buy more of this. Luckily, the Etsy vendor had more to sell so I bought three more bundles. One for each corner. 

It's a much more pleasant experience to work in big chunks so that's what I'm going to do. This may not be her summer to be finished but it just might be her year. 

So Close

 

I haven't given up on that mess on the loom yet. If I get up out of this chair and walk over there I'll be finished with all the re-threading. If all goes well there should be some weaving going on next week. Fingers crossed. 

Friday Fluff: Catching Up

 

There hasn't been any tours to watch this week but before the Women's Tour was over on Sunday I finished spinning the rest of the fiber I had leftover from the drop spindles. 

Then I had to join and transfer what I had on another bobbin and off the drop spindles themselves. Now I've got a lot of singles to ply during the Vuelta de Espana that starts next Saturday.

I ran out of yarn for the Wonky Thermal Mitts and had to ply the singles I had on the Ashford Traditional. I'm hoping the colors will work because these singles came from a different little carded nest of Merino than the other ball I was using.

The Unicorn Barf Pi Shawl is in its never ending orange era it seems. I could use a color change right about now. It's getting a bit monotonous. 

Car Knitting

We were on the road again bright and early to do some Grand sitting yesterday. MIL is off on a week long quilting retreat so we filled in for a day. The new Hummingbird cast ons got a good start.

On the two hour trip up there I got the toes finished on the second pair of "snow socks" for the big Grand. I couldn't believe how much bigger his feet have gotten since I measured them. These will never fit him by the time the snows come so I'll be casting on some bigger ones in the near future.  He said he wants red socks this time. 

Baby Grand is in his Elmo Era. They've got Elmos all over the place. This one does the chicken dance.

Baby Grand also got a coloring session. The last time I tried this he colored all over the rug. This time he put all his efforts into coloring...Elmo. 

This time next week Big Grand will be in school for the first time. He starts Pre-K on Wednesday. We spent the day reading all the words on the bottom of his huge collection of Match Box cars and looking the models up online. We found a 20 year old Lamborgini that sold for $625,000. Then we had to decide where on his map/rug the cars would find themselves. Where do you put a $625,000 automobile? He put it in the parking lot of the coffee shop. Where else?

 

Wednesday WIPs:

 

I had convinced myself that the body of Chestnut was finished. I had even packed it up and got ready to work on the sleeves but then I measured it against Bon Amie and I see I still have a ways to go. One more pattern repeat should do it. I hope. 

The cowl's August doodle is already finished I didn't plan on repeating myself when I picked the patterns but I did with the pine cone. Oh, well. Maybe I'll repeat it again on the end so it will look like I planned it. 

I started a new row and a new color on the Hue Shift. There was a lot of ripping again this week. I'm not sure how I'm always getting the count wrong but I am. Now I am counting every darn row which honestly takes a lot of the fun out of it. 

The sock basket I keep by the TV was empty after I finished the Uneek socks and that can't happen so I wound up this Stroll Handpaint in hopes of casting some new socks on. I bought this Hummingbird colorway hoping it would work for the Stroll Pi Shawl but it didn't. Like many of us, I'm pretty meh about life right now thanks to this never ending horrible heat wave so something that didn't involve matching was just what I needed. This miserable last gasp of summer needs to be as uncomplicated as possible.

TNT: A Good Match

 

Kitty is sitting on its green cushion but I haven't finished its tail yet. I'm close.

I finished the third block of the needlepoint project and started the fourth. 

I was worried about running out of certain colors and was very happy when this order turned out to work perfectly with the old vintage yarn in the kit. 

Dear Jane didn't see any action this week because of all the quilting drama going on in the sewing room with the Zig Zag quilt but I did finish another block on the Patchwork quilt and will start this one this week. Five more to go. As long as I don't run out of Datelines, I don't care how long it takes to finish. On most days, it's the best part of my day.