Knitting, with Dogs

Feeling better...

but still not very productive.  If I get to sleep before 4 am tonight, hopefully I'll be better tomorrow.

OTOH, Bernard Cornwell books are good companions for insomnia.  I read most of the first Sharpe book last night.

Today's post cancelled

The blogger (moi) is a little under the weather. 

Ibuprofen is my friend.

Mara

I'm on a knitting roll.  Another FO, Mara, (Rav link) in Malabrigo, modeled again by my faithful canine helper, Jasper.

And more boringly and less clearly, on me.  The colors on Jasper are more nearly correct than the colors in the picture below, at least on my monitor.

Sneak peek and silly

A sneak peek at something purple and sparkly:

And a silly dog picture. 

If his eyes really were lasers, I'd have multiple holes through my body by now.

Nothing to see here

Move along.

But I should have something by tomorrow.

Just dog and dad

I've been busy cleaning house (don't die of shock!) so instead of knitting/spinning/weaving, here's Jasper grabbing his elk horn chewie.  Which you can't see.  Ok, photography FAIL.  But they're still cute.

Knitting catch-up

Lately it seems like all I can knit are easy, mindless things.  Part of it is because my eyes are crap, and it's very frustrating to do stuff that requires close work.  But  mindless things can be both nice and pretty.

Case in point:  The Josephine scarf (Rav link).  CO 3 sts.  Increase 1 on one edge every odd row.  Knit back.  Easy peasy.  It's good for self-striping yarn.  This is handspun I got in a swap.

Then model it on your dog Bouncer, who is trying to pretend he's somewhere else:

Then there's the Mini Mochi shawl (also a Rav link).  I didn't have MIni Mochi yarn in stash, but I had some Berroco Comfort Sock yarn in muted colors that I liked.  This one is an increase-4-sts every other row, top down triangle, with a garter row on the WS thrown in for texture.  And the knitted-on edging was less soul-sucking than most of them are.

I thought I'd started the garter ridges where it said to, but it looks like maybe I was a little late.  Oh well.  Jasper gets to model this one.

And the modeling pose we call "Puppy Babushka." 

He's really VERY patient with me and my foolishness.  Good boy, Jasper.

A lazy day

Lazy, lazy.  Husband and I had a rare day off together when he wasn't trying to catch up on sleep from working crazy hours.

So we've just been watching videos, and I've been knitting, and it's been verra verra nice.

Black Border Leicester finished

It's an energetic single with lots of twist.  I got a little more than 1600 yards in these 3 skeins.  The spinning took 9 hours total.  These skeins were blocked on the niddy noddy.

Wanna see what they looked like after I washed them?  Brace yourselves.

Looks horrible, doesn't it?  It's not.  Srsly.  When I washed the yarn, all the twist that was blocked straight jumped back in.  Skeins are tied in 8 places, so I just straighted them out.  They're drying under weight.  You might not want to do that with knitting yarn, but for the weaving, it should be fine.  It'll be interesting to see how it behaves when I get it on the loom.

Look what I got...

Look at what came to my house today:

A floor loom!  It's an older Leclerc counterbalance loom that I got via Paula.  She and Lee, her husband, brought it to the house this morning.  (Lee is one of my heroes.  He's one of those competent men who can fix ANYTHING.  I get smarter just by standing next to him.)  This is the loom seen from the back, and yes, that's part of my stash of spinning fiber over in the corner by the fireplace.

Here's the view from the weaver's position, with Jasper in the background:

Jasper and the loom:

Things are NOT as slanted as it looks here.  Maybe that's why Jasper looks so dubious.

BTW< you can see my first attempt at a homemade raddle sitting on the back beam of the loom.  Let me give you a piece of advice if you decide to make something like this:  do NOT predrill the holes on your kitchen table.  You may THINK your drill isn't going that deep, but when you pick up your work and see this:

you'll discover just how WRONG you were, and you'll feel stupid.  REALLY stupid. Ask me how I know this.  

Oh well.  Thank Og for wood filler, I guess. 

The counterbalance is one sort of loom I've never used before.  I've used jack looms and countermarch looms, but counterbalance will be new to me.  It's got a long and respected heritage, and that's good.  I'm looking forward to learning about it.  I've actually read so much this afternoon that I'm a little freaked out.  So I'm going to stop reading and just play with stuff, without feeling like I have to be MASTER. WEAVER. ON. COUNTERBALANCE!!!!!! in one easy lesson.  I give myself permission to play.  If I screw up, that's fine, as long as I learn something from it!

But I'm going to spin now and rest my brain.