Marnie, speak! Good girl.

What do you think of the shawl?

I ripped her out and washed and dried the yarn, so I could start over. There was a problem, several rows back, no life line and not enough shawl in existence to really warrant a tedious fix, so I ripped her. The deadline is so far off, that I'm not terribly bothered by that.

But it hasn't all been the foul smell of failure. The Dragon Hoodie is progressing beautifully.

I'm working on the hood right now and will begin all the little dragony details after that.

In spinning news, my parents sent me roving for Christmas. What? Christmas is a week away? Are you saying that when I get a package at my door, a couple weeks before Christmas, with my parent's return address, I should know not to open it? Insanity!

And look at what was inside! Each bag is half a pound of gorgeous roving. The left two bags are a rich olive green Corriedale roving. It appears that MJ has almost identical roving, herself. I met her in person for the first time this weekend, at a knitting get together. It's a little eerie that we both have matching Kundert spindles and green roving, if we hadn't been seen in the same location at the same time, someone could have assumed we were the same person.

I managed to snap a pic of the Corriedale, on the spindle this weekend. She has her own ray of sunshine here. That means this is the only picture with enough lighting to be any good.

It sort of makes the rest of the pictures look even worse. I began spinning this on the Kundert, and it spins well, but I really found myself feeling like I had to spin pretty thick singles on it, so I switched to the Golding. I may have to invest in a few more Goldings just so I can spin more than one roving at a time. This 0.9 oz has been perfect for just about everything. I love it.

This is how it looks plied. The color is really a true olive green, despite the variety of shades you see here. When I was spinning it near daylight, I saw undertones of yellow shine through, it's actually quite lovely.

The other roving in the bags is a Merino/silk blend. It spins up into more of a sage green shade because the white of the silk soften the colors.

You know, though, there's a pretty good chance that I'm not going to be able to spin all that roving by hand. I mean, I'm a relatively quick spinner (spindler? spinster?) but a pound of sock weight yarn is a lot of yarn to spin. So Julia and I are talking about renting a wheel. I'm a little scared to go down that road, but I think it's time. Look for news of that next year.

As I reported before, almost all my knitting has been on my stealth project so I can only entertain you with spinning, for now. I hope that those of you who aren't spinners aren't too bored with it all.

After such success with my soy silk roving worked on my 0.6 oz spindle, I thought I should try it on some of my other roving.

The result is about 52 yards of two ply Lace to DK weight yarn.

More yarn porn after the bump

Ah, my beautiful new spindle!

One of the reasons I asked for a heavier spindle for my birthday was because I wanted to start spinning different weights of yarn. Of course, any of my lighter spindles can be used to spin chunkier yarn, but I think the extra weight is helpful. So, after practicing with some spare merino, I pulled out my gorgeous olive green Corriedale and I tried spinning some thicker yarn.

The singles are about a DK weight, it's much thicker than I usually spin, but by the end, I was getting pretty consistent results. Since I use the Andean Plying method, my most even bits are plied against my most inconsistent bits so the overall effect doesn’t look so great, but I can live with that.

When plied, I got something around a worsted or a little thicker weight. Actually, fresh off the spindle, it was more of a chunky or bulky weight, there was a lot of loft, but having washed and hung the yarn, I’ve still kept a bit of loft, but the yarn is closer to worsted in weight. I still love the finer weight yarns I’ve spun, but it’s good to practice spinning a bit thicker.

As for the spindle, it’s working beautifully. A couple people asked if I had noticed a wobble or any other problems, and I have not. This is a beautifully balanced spindle that gets enough momentum to keep spinning and spinning. I would guess that people who have had problems may be using a design without as much symmetry, which could throw the balance off a bit. That’s just my guess.

You know how I said that spinning puts Thea to sleep? Well, that seemed as good an excuse as any to spend some quality time with El Matchador.

At first, I thought I'd just spin up enough of my Cotswold to have a skein ready when I run out on my skirt.

But once I plied the yarn and skeined it, I had, what appeared to be, a relatively small amount of fiber remaining, so I figured, what the heck, I'll spin up the rest.

The result is a skein that is 297 yards long and a second skein that is 217 yards long. Added to the 225 yards I already have, I have a total of [insert calculator here] 739 yards. That should be plenty to finish the piece.

Thea helped me with the photoshoot. It's nice that we can have both an out of focus AND poorly lit image. She's really an artiste.

I'm not going to do another whole round up of the yarn, since I've already done one here and it's the same, only different, or whatever. I will say that I continue to really enjoy spinning this yarn. It is well prepared, with only a little bit of vegetable matter and the colors are gorgeous.

In my next post, I start doing the spinning equivalent to making a gauge swatch. Good girl, Marnie, here's a cookie.

Quick question, would anyone out there be interested in some very basic tips for using Photoshop to adjust color and exposure in an image? I'm no expert and I sort of wonder if anyone who can afford Photoshop, already knows it well enough, not to need any help, but if folks are interested, I'd be happy to do a tutorial. Just leave a comment with your thoughts.

For the most part, when I spin, I grab my fiber, pick a whorl and go for it. I think this has worked out for me, largely because I tend to spin small quantities (generally around 2-4 ounces) and I have a pretty limited skill set and comfort zone with spinning. Even my last batch of fiber, which was closer to 7 ounces, came out pretty consistent despite my making little effort to check consistency along the way.

But, like the person who has reasonable success knitting patterns without making a gauge swatch, past successes do not mean future success. I've been holding onto a pound of fiber my parents got me, for over a year, awaiting a time when I felt I had the skill and patience to spin up the whole lot into enough yarn to make something substantial. I'm not sure that I've actually met either of those qualification but dammit, the fiber is gorgeous and I want to spin it.

Spurred on by Amy's great article in Knitty, I decided to try to approach this project with a semblance of a plan and, perhaps, some organization.

A while back, I ordered these Spinning Project Cards (I refuse to spell the last word with a "k" unless someone can give me a good reason for it being spelled that way) by mistake, thinking they were something else.

They are basically index cards with preprinted areas for information you might wish to include about your yarn. I don't think I'll be ordering them again. For the same price, one could buy a pack of 100 index cards and only include the info relevant for the project. I am not saying these are poorly designed. If you like the look of clean, unlined cards, and spin enough that you don't want to have to write out all the labels, this might be totally worth it for you, just not for me.

Even so, I had no normal index cards lying around and no need to waste these. Surprisingly, despite the myriad of fields preprinted, there didn't seem to be a spot to indicate the whorl used so I just slapped that info in wherever.

If all goes according to plan, I should be producing a 3ply yarn (off of three bobbins, not Navajo plying) that works up to, oh, 14-15 WPI. The fiber is corriedale in a beautiful deep olive shade.

So far, it's spinning up quite nicely. The fiber is well prepared and needs only minimal predrafting. We'll see how long I can spin a plain green fiber before I get bored. Luckily, I always have my spindles.

In doggy news, Thea seems to be healing up well enough. She's still a bundle of energy and I think I'll be as excited to be able to let her play as she will.

Our vet is quite awesome. Check out what we got in the mail yesterday:

They took a picture of the little girl, before her surgery and printed out this lovely award. If you click the image, you can go to flickr and find a higher resolution version. Check out the text below the Vet's signature.

We pulled the crate out of the bedroom for use when the two of us have to leave the girls unattended. Theoretically, the crate should be for Thea, when she needs some quiet time.

Panda, however, seems to think it's all hers. Could you say no to that face?

As for the Photoshop tutorial, it sounds like there's enough interest that it's definitely worth my doing it. Getting stuff together, I'm thinking I may have to break it out into a couple smaller, more digestible pieces. Hopefully, the first tutorial will be posted by the end of the week.

It seemed about time to move the skirt to some waste yarn and see how it's coming along. I have mixed feelings

• The crochet: I think the motifs are cute and hang nicely.
• The colors: While I don't usually buy these colors for myself, I think they are lovely and the colors compliment each other nicely.
• The chevrons: Who doesn't like chevron? It breaks up the horizontal nature of the subtly variegated yarn.

Things I don't like:

• Yarn choice: I feel like the main yarn should be a little drapier. I don't feel there's enough weight to the piece to pull off the effect I'm envisioning


• Skirts: I don't wear skirts. What the hell am I thinking?


• Shape: Would a-line instead of straight have been better?

I'll probably finish the piece, just to see how it comes out, but I'm starting to think there may have been a better project for these yarns.

On the plus side, I should have 300 or more yards of the main yarn leftover when I'm done. What will I do with it? I dunno. I'll have it nonetheless.

I've been spinning bits of the Corriedale, here and there. It's been quite relaxing and mindless.

I'm annoyed, though, with my Woolee Winder. It's great, don't get me wrong, but it really upsets my sense of balance that it doesn't load the yarn evenly. Some of it appears to be that the whorls from Schacht aren't perfectly machined. There's an ever so slight gap, but I'm realizing that it's not enough to account for the severity of the imbalance.

Has anyone else who has a Woolee Winder seen this and if so, is there a way to fix it?

Oh and Thea had her stitches taken out and has been taking full advantage of the ensuing belly rubs.

A little while back, I posted this picture and lamented that my WooLee Winder wasn't filling evenly.

It's going to take some fine tuning, but I'm definitely seeing improvement.

The skirt is progressing. After taking this photo, I threw in a lifeline and am now deciding how I want to work the chevrons into flat stitches. The key is not only making smooth transition from the zigzag to flat, but also adjusting the gauge which changes from 8 stitches per inch in chevron to 6 stitches per inch flat.

And look, my garden gave me another bloom. I am pleased.

I don't know how obvious it is to you, but I think we have two different varieties of Cosmos here. The smaller flower actually has slightly different shaped petals than the bigger one. I may be totally wrong but since we dumped several different mixes of seeds here, I think it's possible.

And finally, I'll be posting an interview with Donna Druchanus at the end of the month. I'm day 23 of her blog tour. I'm about halfway through the book now and gathering my questions.

I've worked with Donna before and am really looking forward to the interview. Expect lots of questions about the book and her travels and maybe some little tangents into her other interests. I just hope that I'm able to come up with questions she hasn't already answered a million times.