A Slow Summer Day

 It’s been one of those days.  I am a lot on the tired side. So spinning did not happen.  A little Tunisian crochet project saw a little action on an oak* shawl, I am working on the center panel right now.  I also found time to work on a pounder scarf in progress, just because I needed some left handed knitting time.  I find alternating between knitting right and left handed takes pressure off my right hand.  

Because I have finished, but sadly not photographed them all yet. I have found space to move some knitting projects from the sewing room to the knitting/ spinning room.  I even found a few UFO’s. Imagine that, me having multiple UFO’s.  I think I will take the basket off the shelf and just stack the projects on the shelf and use the basket elsewhere.  The basket just uses up to much shelf space.

Some time in the far future my plan is to separate the sewing room from all yarn. Wish me luck on that one.

*oak is a one of a kind project that I will be making for myself.  This is usually because the yarn is no longer available or the yarn is too expensive for most knitters.  I like to keep the price of yarn down on most of my patterns.  Fiber arts can tend to get expensive, thus seem too exclusive for many.  Also the more expensive the yarn in a pattern is, the less likely the pattern will sell. 

The Rabbit Hole and more

 My car is now freed from the garage. The garage door was fixed today.  The broken spring was older than the service man who fixed it.  The spring was from the late 1980’s,the original garage door spring from when our house was built.  He had never seen one so old.  The new spring is made of lighter more brittle steel that should last only 10 to 12 years.  How is that good for the environment? We should be making things that last as long as the part it is replacing.  We definitely live in the era of greed by big business.  Make things break sooner and don’t provide replacement parts of the same quality if they break.  

I did a bit of hand carding of an art wool batt that was just so not right for spinning as it was.  The carders worked great.  Now if I can just get a decent rolag off the carders.  I do admit that it has been a few years since I have carded wool by hand.  I am keeping up with spinning one 2 ounce/ 50 grams batt a day.  I can feel the difference already, which means that I am almost hopelessly out of shape.  Maybe by the time I go through all 3 boxes of mini batts, I will be ready for the 4 ounce/ 100 grams a day. If not 2 days is not an unreasonable amount of time to spin a braid.  Even after a major de stash of wool, I still have a closet full of wool. The good news is I kept only what I wanted to spin.  

Then that of course will lead to more weaving and knitting.  It will mostly go to my charity projects.  That is unless I like it a bit too much to let it go.  As I feel better, hopefully more projects will get finished and leave the house.  

They Don’t Make Things Like They Used To

 This was the bane of my existence today.  When the garage door closed this morning, the garage door made a strange thunk. I thought the garage door had came off the rail.  John came home and noticed the broken spring. The space between the spring is not supposed to be there. The spring was the original spring from when the house was built.  Not even 40 years old. The poor thing, the heat must have gotten to it. It could not possibly be metal fatigue. 

I only found this out on the way to the grocery store. Needless to say my car did not make it out of the garage. So until the garage door is fixed, meaning a new spring is installed. My car is stuck in the garage.  Hopefully they can fix it tomorrow.  Until it is fixed I am stuck at home.  

Hopefully this will give me a chance to tweak the numbers on the third piece of the new pattern. Then warp the loom. I have started spinning one, 2 ounce art batt a day to increase my exercise. Eventually I hope to increase my spinning time, on my Louet Victoria.  Which is equivalent to riding a bike or using the sitting elliptical machine. I currently have three boxes of 2 ounce mini art batts. I am spinning them as singles because it is easier to weave with them. Then hopefully I will have more to donate to the children’s clothing bank that I support. I have a feeling that it is going to be a rough year for many families. 

I Found More

 Just as I was seeing the end of the UFO pile. I found more UFO’s on the shelves.  I was just doing a bit of organizing and peaking.  I found several more shawls that were only partially finished.  So my UFO pile just got a little bigger.  I guess I will not be starting any new projects anytime soon.  

If at First You Don’t Succeed.

I just love the color way and feel of this Queensland Collection Perth in Bay of Fires yarn. Please be forewarned that this yarn might not be in your local yarn shop anymore.  The explanation is quite simple really. I tried five different patterns with this yarn. The yarn was not happy with the previous patterns.  It was really saying I know what I want to be. You are not understanding what I want.  So after each failure the whole project bag was put in timeout.  Yes, sometimes yarn does need a time out.  Maybe, I just did not know what to do with the yarn.  

I need to start a different UFO,  I have completed 3 projects in 2 days. I still have to make time to take the pictures. I believe I am up to 5 pictures that need to be taken. It has been crazy busy since we got home from our last family trip. 

Well last night everything changed.  I tried knitting the project that was on the knitting needles.  The yarn said no.  So I frogged the work.  Using U.S. size 10 1/2 knitting needles and not the recommended U.S. size 1 to 3 knitting needles I charged ahead using a slightly different cast on count of My Doodling Shawl pattern, available on Ravelry.  By the third row the yarn was sing, she finally got me.  So I kept knitting until I needed a longer knitting needle.  Believe it or not I did not have a circular knitting needle in 10.5 by 60 inches long.  So out came the LYKKE interchangeable knitting needles to the rescue.  By the way don’t the copper knitting needles look good with the yarn?  

I don’t know how big the shawl will be.  I have 3 skeins of Bay of Fire at 437 yards each. Again I think the shawl will make the decision for me. This should make a great summer weight shawl for those cold places. 

Tuesday

 Meta has changed the rules yet again.  I am only being give the option of one Facebook page. So you will find me on Handmadebysheri on Facebook.  All my posts will go there in the very near future.  

Now that today’s business is taken care of. We go on to the real stuff.   I finally finished a UFO today, with the exception of weaving in the 2 ends. So you will see it tomorrow.

My new gloves shrunk as hoped for with the exception of 2 small areas by my fingers.  Since it supposed to be 110f on Sunday, I will try shrinking them one more time.  The garage should be nice and hot.  Along with the water temperature.

In looking at all my featherweight spindles today I have discovered that they are all between 10 and 29 grams.  I can’t believe that I did not realize that I had a 10 grams drop spindle.  Gee, that is awfully light. 

I Completed My Yearly Knitting Goal

 This has been a very rough year health wise for me.  There are still some days when I don’t have the energy to move let alone knit or even just listen to an audiobook book without falling asleep.  Yet today I managed to log my last 4 knitting projects for the year, charity hats 6-9 which brought me up to 24 completed projects for 2025.  Mostly charity projects.

In January this goal was a stretch for me.  I was dealing with my second bout of Pericarditis in less than a year.  I am on a new medication that seems to be helping.  However, this being said I never heal as fast as I want. The older I get, it also seems to take longer.  This go-go girl is not used to living life in the slow lane at all.  Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy to be alive and to be able to create things for kids whose families normally could not afford the prices for my work.  This beats customers who say that they can get a bespoke hat, scarf or shawl for less money than I pay for my yarn.  Then try to get the item for a loss for me. No way in he double toothpicks. From feed back I get from the Flowing Wells School District staff, all the kids and staff are very happy to get my mostly one of a kind hats and scarfs.  That makes me so happy.  That amount of happiness that I create is better than money.  

So without further ado, here are charity hats #6-9-2025.