Some Projects

When I go on a trip, I always take some kind of hand project. Usually knitting or crocheting. In the last decade it has usually been knitting. When Rebekah and I drove off to NY, I had a suitcase for clothing and a very large tote for knitting projects.  :)  She had a project bag too, so she understands her mom. Good thing.

One of the items I decided to work on, was my Take 2 Shawl pattern. I used merino handspun yarn for this shawl. When I spun the roving, I added some white to clear angelina to the yarn, which basically just adds sparkle.  I have really been into sparkle lately. The sparkle doesn't really show in the pictures though.

The yarn was smaller weight than I thought. No I didn't do the WPI test, I thought I could judge it.  Silly me. The shawl turned out wonderful anyway, I think.

Here's the back.

Here is the the overexposed front. Sorry about that.

When I arrived home, I wanted to crochet.  My friend Laurie has been crocheting a wonderful and colorful potholder. She found the recipe for it on Ravelry. The original is written in Norwegian and since I don't speak or read Norwegian, I had to take it to Google Translate.  When you put it into google translate, you can sort of figure it out. But, after combing several crochet stitch books, I thought I would try using a stitch pattern that I found in there.  Laurie's potholder has sharper triangle points than mine. The picture of the two potholders below is a picture from the original pattern.

Here's a picture of mine. The potholders are two layers. The picture of the back is below.

We are having unusually high temperatures here and no rain.  Not any clouds to speak of either. So, since it is so hot, many of us are putting that great solar energy to work. Here are my solar dyeing projects from yesterday. I loved looking out the back window and seeing color. :) Made me happy. I have mohair curls, silk noil and wool rovings in these jars.  Happy spinning times ahead.