Jananas

I spin. A lot. Sometimes I forget how much until I look at the pile of yarn that is sitting on the table waiting to be finished. Life has been a bit hectic lately, so I haven’t had (or wanted to find) the time to finishing yarn, label it, etc. This morning I realized just how much there is. When we get back from our visit to the States this weekend, I’ll need to find some time to tackle this pile.

That is 17 skeins of yarn that I’ve spun in the last four weeks – early morning cell phone photos don’t do it justice. Its actually not even everything that I’ve spun either (eep!). There is some Hello Yarn, Southern Cross Fiber, Sweet Georgia, Spun Right Round, and Juliespins. There is Merino, Targhee, BFL, Wensleydale, and for the first time ever – Jacob. There are singles, two ply, true three ply, and some navajo ply.

My new hang ties arrived yesterday (a separate blog post is coming because they are that awesome), so next week I’ll have to finish this yarn, go through my hand spun stash, label some skeins, and drop off more yarn at Wise Daughters and the Knit Cafe!

I’m very lucky to have an awesome (almost) sister-in-law. Kerri and Chris just moved out to a small farm, which came with a barn! Of course, we started discussing livestock and we may have purchased two lovely Border Leicesters who may have arrived last night…

Blogoverse, meet our sheep! First up is Beatrice, named because all of her kin are also named after the Royal Family. She has a lovely (albeit dirty) rear.

Next is Sweater! My intentions are obvious (thankfully I didn’t name her lamb chop!).

Lastly, the two lovely ladies hanging out together. Even crazier is that two alpaca brothers (Pete and Prince) are arriving on Wednesday.

We’re heading down to Ohio this weekend to get some last minute wedding related stuff sorted out (like licenses, ha!). I’m stoked to get to see Kerri and Chris, hang out with our nephew Harper, and play with sheep!!

For Christmas, Jason’s sister gave him this lovely quilt. I might get the story a little wrong (feel free to correct me Kerri!), but I believe that Jason’s grandmother started this quilt for him when he was little. For various reasons, it was never finished. When Kerri was helping clean out their grandpa’s house last year she came across the mostly finished quilt pieces. As a Christmas gift (or miracle), she had a local quilting group finish assembling the quilt and gave it to Jase for Christmas.

Its been on our bed ever since. Which means that we have two handmade blankets on our bed – how crazy is that?

I found out that a friend recently had a child (more specifically, their partner did). I spun up 12oz of Juliespins’ superwash merino in the Circus colourway. I divided one braid into sixths and spun each. I spun the other braid in one fell swoop. Then I plied the two together. The result was that one skein was predominately blue/green and the other is red/orange.

This weekend I cast on for an easy baby cardigan. Little Raglan cardigans are starting to become second nature. I don’t necessarily know sizing off hand, but as long as I know how many stitches to cast on and how many I need for the sleeves, the in between bits are pretty brainless. I cast on Friday and this is where I am this morning.

I’m using the more green skein for edging, which I quite like. I’m also splitting up the use of skeins on the arms so that the two are better matched (well, hopefully they will be!). Its funny, the last baby cardigan I knit was longer and narrower compared to this one. I need a toddler on hand to write down my own kids clothing size/measurements database to help me with stuff like this.

I really like this sweater and am debating switching it up and gifting it to someone else because I feel like this sweater needs to be appreciated/loved hard. Ah well, baby things knit up so fast that it’ll be easy to get away with this.

I spun up 4oz of Hello Yarn’s Askew colourway. This was my first attempt at doing a colour gradient. I separated the colours as best I could and then spun, roughly, from light to dark. I believe that this was Romney, a long wool. Have to say that I’m not 100% sold on long wools (I feel similarly about short/fine stuff). I guess I’m a middle of the (wool) road kinda gal.

I think that this might be destined for a weaving project!