spinning – Knit-Spin-Quilt

Kings County Fiber Festival

Join Spin City and Knit Spin Quilt at the Kings County Fiber Festival on October 8!

Do you like knitting, spinning, fiber arts, or Brooklyn history? Well, if you’re in the NYC area and you’re free next Saturday, October 8, you should check out the Kings County Fiber Festival.

kcfflogo

The Kings County Fiber Festival is held at the Old Stone House in Park Slope Brooklyn, and has a huge number of really excellent vendors this year!

In addition, my sheep to shawl team will be practicing for Rhinebeck, and I’ll be selling their shawls (and maybe some stitch markers, earrings or dice bags) to help them break even on the year’s work, prep, and materials.

Interested in meeting other spinners? Check out the Spin City Meetup on October 8!

Hope to see you there! It’s going to be a wonderful time.

Pre-MASW update

I’m going to the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool festival this weekend and decided to turn it into a long weekend out of town visiting friends.

And what do you do when you visit friends who knit? You bring them yarn they commissioned. (I sometimes spin for friends if they buy the fiber.)

First some Gotland handspun for a sweater:

Then some Abstract Fibers Targhee in the colorway Bandon. My cat had claimed it, but fortunately the friend to whom it is going also has cats.

I also brought them houseguest presents, as one does.

An Avengers knitting bag with a yellow lining for Iron Man:

Ladybird stitch markers:

[AVENGERS BAG]

Spinning up a storm

I’ve been doing a lot of spinning recently. I’ve joined the Spin City sheep to shawl team, and I’ve been spinning a lot of Romney for warp for them:

I’ve also been spinning Gotland fiber for a friend’s sweater:

And I’ve spun up two skeins of Polwarth 3-ply yarn from Spunky Eclectic hand-dyed top:

I’ve also just opened an Etsy shop where I’m selling stitch markers, project bags, and handspun yarn, at KnitSpinQuilt. Readers get 10% off with the code “KnitSpinQuiltReader”

Spinning more, quilting less.

Most of what I’ve been working on recently has been spinning, or English Paper Piecing or knitting. I blame the fact that my sewing table is COVERED IN STUFF.

In any case, here are the two projects that I’ve been working on recently of which I have pictures. First is my cat supervising my spinning during the Ravellenic Games:
SpinCat

Next is some singles I’ll chain-ply into a 3-ply yarn for a sweater:
forestryLessIsMore1
I just moved up to a sublet in Inwood (upper, upper, upper Manhattan) for the remainder of the semester, because the hour and a half commute was getting to me. So now I’ve been drop-spindling a lot, too, because those take up less space than a wheel. (That said, my travel wheel — the little one in the previous picture — is here with me.)

This is a Blue Faced Leicester/Silk blend, dyed by Spunky Eclectic.

Apologies for picture quality: I forgot to pack my camera, so these are all from my iPod, whose camera is indifferent at best.

WiP Wednesday as the semester first kicks in

The fall semester has been kicking up into gear, so I’ve had less time to work on projects recently. It’s also influenced what I’ve been working on to a certain extent. That said, I’ve still gotten some things done!

Finished:
I made three notebook covers for classes, following Rachel’s tutorial on Stitched in Color. I’m going to make one more in yellow and red, to match the Plantagenet colors, for my class on the Angevin Empire. And this time, I’ll (hopefully!) remember to add a pocket before I sew it all together!

HST BoM QAL: some progress! I made the second July block & and my first of two August blocks.

-finish second August block (cut and partially pieced)
-fix botched May block already!
-start thinking about how to arrange the blocks & what to back the quilt with.

Knitting lots of progress!
-monkey socks in Persia (Malabrigo sock):

The more time I spend on the subway going to and from work/class, the more knitting I get done — I may have to take up hand-stitching things, if the majority of my crafting time continues to be on the subway.

Perk Me Up Bag: some progress.
I finished one side of the bag, which is a patchwork of the various fabrics, and I quilted it, because it’s a lot sturdier that way: I didn’t want to risk knitting needles poking their way through the bag and stabbing someone.
-iron interfacing to back of bag exterior and/or quilt it, too.
-attach pocket to back of bag exterior
-cut strap extender, strap and closure strap, attaching appropriate hardware
-sew lining together with internal zippered pocket in place
-attach lining to exterior pieces
-finish strap and etc.

Simple Math: trimmed a few more blocks!
-finish trimming blocks to 6″ square
-find sashing fabric
-baste, quilt & bind

Baby K’s Quilt: no progress since last week. This one is what’s laid out on my WiP cart right now, but I keep putting things on top of it — I should just get it done! There’s a bit left to work on.

-sew together two more postage stamp panels
-construct pinwheels
-lay out & attach borders
-construct backing
-baste, quilt & bind

Kitchen Window: no progress since last week.
-sort out cut fabrics into groups for individual blocks
-cut black fabric for frames
-cut green fabric for background parts
-start constructing blocks
-fiddle with layout
-make back
-baste, quilt & bind

Spinning: no progress since last week.
-Merino/yak continues to entice me, but I’m not watching much TV, so not much spinning is getting done. Perhaps I’ll watch a move with friends/family one night this week, to give myself some time off before things get crazy. That might be fun.

More spinning

I picked up a good bit of fiber at the Mass Sheep & Wool fair two weekends ago. The majority came from the Spunky Eclectic booth, where I sort of fell down on my credit card, and got four braids of beautifully dyed top. They had a merino/superwash merino/silk blend that was just beautiful to the touch, and a merino/yak that caught my eye. I picked up two of each, in reds and in greens.

But wait — that’s only three! Well, yes. I got impatient and spun up one braid before I even got home:

It was 4 oz. of the merino/superwash merino/silk and it practically spun itself: it was absolutely gorgeous, and such a joy to work with. I just spun on my “default” setting for yarn, which was easy and fun, and got a yarn that’s somewhere between a worsted and a DK.

I didn’t just fall over in the one booth, though. I also picked up some sock batts (10% nylon, hooray — otherwise I go through socks like they’re made of tissue paper) and some beautiful autumn-colored silk at A Touch of Twist. I have no idea what I’m going to do with the silk, but it just called my name so nicely, and it will be a lot of fun to spin up.

I’m already looking forward to Rhinebeck, in October. Hopefully by then I’ll have spun most of this, so I can justify picking up a little more.

MA Sheep & Wool

Last weekend I visited a friend in Holyoke, MA, and on Sunday we went to the Massachusetts Sheep & Woolcraft Fair. There, we saw a whole lot of sheep (as expected).

Some were very curious:

Some had horns, though I didn’t get pictures of the ones that had four horns:

And some were clearly destined to be sheared for spinning wool, and had silly jackets:

As for me, I liked the bunnies:

We trawled the vendors barns as well, and I picked up a bit of spinning fiber, but I don’t have any pictures of it just yet. Back to quilting on Friday. (Schedule change: updates twice a week, on M/W/F.)