My hands hurt. I'm not exactly sure how, but I've managed to do something to both hands so that they hurt quite a bit. It's something like tennis elbow, according to my doctor, so that's great. What it really means is that I haven't been knitting or spinning in over a week, and I'm getting twitchy.
The Finn fleece is dry now and ready for a good scour. I'm going to have to do it in bits, but that's okay. It's easier on my hands and all. I also managed to get a small Finn scoured fleece in a lovely grey that just needs carding that I'm really excited about, and then a Michigan mom with kids in 4H was selling their Jacob fleeces, and well, I had to get one of those. So... I have a lot of fleece to process and then spin up right now. The ultimate plan, so far, is to try to spin it all up close enough to the same so I can make a natural colored, possibly naturally dyed as well, fair isle sweater for myself. It feels right in my head, but I won't know if that's actually possible until I get to the spinning. Once my hands let me, that is. *sighs* So, the Jacob fleece has to go in the fermented suint bath I kept, just in case I got another raw fleece, the Finn fleece needs to get scoured, and everything needs to get carded, possibly combed, maybe dyed, too. All that means that my dang hands need to heal up despite needing to get the garden in this week. Maybe that's why my hands hurt....
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A very nice sheep farmer posted in a group I'm in on FB saying he had a ton of polypay fleeces he wanted to just give away. Honestly, I thought it was a scam or, at least, it could be a scam. Who gives polypay fleeces away for free?! He just wanted to charge shipping. Given that I really wanted to process and spin up a fleece this year, I figured it was worth giving it a go. It came today! I'm so happy! Next up, I have skirting to do (going to skirt this one heavily and use whatever I kick out as compost/mulch in the garden), then collect enough rainwater to do a fermented suint method cleaning as the first cleaning. Then, scour and dry. Then, I will have to decide whether to card it up or comb it on my new 3-D printed Viking combs. I've been testing them on a Romney fleece I just didn't like on the carder, and they're working pretty well! It's been a long time since I've fully processed my own fleece. It's time.
My FND physical therapist told me last year that spinning yarn is a great PT exercise for me and that I'm supposed to do it for 15-20 minutes every day. It's hard to remember to do it every day, but this project should help towards that. I've been toying with doing a more traditional fair isle sweater using natural dyes and some naturally colored wool that I have in the stash. It would be a big project, but I think it might be doable, especially with this fleece to add to it. In the end, the wool has to tell me what it wants to be. We'll see what it wants as soon as it's all clean. We all have them, the WIPs hiding in bags or boxes in the corners and crannies of our homes, the ones we put in time out because something was wrong with the numbers, the yarn or needles hurt our hands, the child grew up, the project got too fiddly. You know what I'm talking about, right? Right? Just me, then?
Anyway, I have many WIPs going at any given time. I've lost track, but I usually have over ten knitting projects lying around the house at any given time. I need one that's easy and fairly mindless, at least two or three sock projects (I tend to make those very plain so that they're easy and mindless, just on smaller needles), a couple of colorwork projects or more, a couple of lace projects, at least one sweater project that I'm going to finish any day now, and the hat projects from fall that I never finished. Oh, and the charity projects, like the current prayer shawl and a helmet liner or two for kids' friends and loved ones in the military. I have found that this system means I'm very slow to finish, but I'm more likely to knit every day like I should for my health. This way, I can choose the easy project for when I'm struggling with brain fog and the charted projects for the days I'm doing better and need a bit more of a challenge. It just takes me longer to finish anything, but being a process knitter, that doesn't bother me as much. The problem starts when I put a project in time out. The one that I set (or threw) aside because the numbers weren't working out or the yarn doesn't like me or the needles hurt my hands or it was for a particular reason and just wasn't working out for that. Every couple of months, I go through those and pull them back out, looking into why I put them in time out. Some, I'm able to fix and finish up. Those always make me feel better. Then there are the ones I have to give up on. This week, I ripped out all of the lace sampler stole I'd been working on for awhile (four years, seriously). I'd been trying to force it to work because the yarn and needles just feel so lovely in my hands, but I had to give up on it. The lace panels...I just didn't like them. It was a mystery knit-along, and several of the lace patterns just weren't pretty to me, not my style. Following lace charts is tricky for me these days, so even though I was more than halfway, I knew it would be a good while before I could honestly work on it and finish it. I pulled it out after much musing and trying to find ways to like it, and after a good look, I went with my gut and ripped it out. It was therapeutic, to be honest, allowing myself to be honest about how I felt about the pattern, letting go of any expectations for the final project, and admitting I really just don't like or wear stoles. I prefer bigger shawls. So, in digging through my patterns, it turns out I might have enough yardage for an easier lace shawl that will be big enough for me and has easily remembered repeats (well, maybe not so easily for me these days, but easier than the other one). I'm just working through the rest of my pattern stash to see if there is anything I'd rather make, and if not, then we're in business. It feels good. It's shearing time again, and all those luscious fleeces are going up for sale on FB and elsewhere, and I cannot even tell you how badly I want to get one and process it entirely myself. It's been awhile since I've done one, and it feels like this might be the year to do it.
Except... Except, I still have a good bit of a Romney fleece that I never finished flicking and carding, let alone spinning. Except, I have a lamb's fleece that I paid for the scouring only for it to really need combing and I don't have combs. It just isn't spinning well from flicked locks or doing well on the carder (nep city). I really need to work out a better carding space, first of all, since the last time I had it going it was a bit too low for me and got my fibromyalgia all upset (hence the still uncarded fleece). I really should get a set of Viking combs after years of drooling over them, which would help if I get all this other stuff set and get a fleece next year. But I want a new fleece. A Finn or that gorgeous dark grey Romney I just saw or some Clun Forest because I got some roving that spins up like butter and now I want to see what a whole fleece would look like... Except... Except, while I'm supposed to spin for 20-30 minutes a day as my FND PT, I haven't for a good week and was spotty about it before that. Except, I have a good bit of white Romney roving, the Clun Forest roving, and the light brown (merino?) roving I've been slowly working through for years and years (why did I buy so very much?!). I'm thinking a fair isle sweater with natural colors and some natural dying if I do up the two Romneys, more of the light brown, and the Clun Forest. This, somehow, has not made me get back to spinning every day like I'm supposed to. Except, now it's seed starting season, spring cleaning season, and get-the-gardens ready season, so do I really need yet another project? No... I mean... no. But all the pretties! And now I have to go wrangle the very loud geese who probably are bothering whatever is going on at the school next door. *sighs* *whispers to self* I still want a fleece. While it isn't practical or helpful to actually knit for Ukrainian refugees during this war (please donate money for that if you can), the war sure has been making my fingers itch to knit something to show solidarity with Ukraine instead of finishing last year's temperature blanket or all the socks or even start the green sweater I want to get going so I can wear it around the garden when needed.
During wartime, I tend to knit helmet liners for soldiers. I've lost track of how many I've knitted. I have a friend whose son is finishing up basic training in the US Army, and the likelihood of him getting sent to Europe for whatever reason is going on by then is very, very high. So, I got some of the superwash Wool of the Andes on sale at KnitPicks, and I cast on. When I'm reading the latest updates on Twitter, I pull that one out and keep knitting the ribbing (6" of ribbing to start) around and around, making sure to check for mistakes, and I think of the young man who will end up wearing it. I think of the Ukrainians fighting to protect their democracy, their land. I think of the Russian soldiers, just kids, sent to die for no good reason. I think of how wars are won with other people's children, never with the kids of the rich or powerful, with people in my family who have proudly served. And so I knit around and around, hoping the movement of my fingers will calm my heart as it breaks for all those involved in fighting and fleeing this horrible, horrible war. I have a sock pattern and Ukrainian colors in KP Palette, but my hands haven't been okay with the size 0 needles, so a helmet liner it is. May he never actually need it to wear in a battle, and may he know he's been prayed over by his mom's friend miles away. Does anyone else feel like winter is sweater knitting weather? For some reason, I get itching to knit sweaters every winter and get twitchy if I don't have any on the needles. Since my husband's sweater is done but for the button band (really need to finish that!), it was time to go through the WIPs pile and find a sweater I hadn't finished yet.
I have all these sweaters planned, too, so I had to figure those out, too. Did I want to start a new project or finish one still on the needles? All those new projects are calling me, but the turquoise silk/wool blend sweater really needs to be done. It is just the right weight for spring, and the bright color will help me feel ready for spring. Worse, I only have half a sleeve, a second sleeve, and the finishing to do. *sighs* Time to get to knitting and finish this one up, finish up my husband's sweater, and then I can reward myself with starting the new green sweater project calling my name from the stash. I actually learned how to spin yarn just two years after learning how to knit when I was a kid, so I've been a spinner for a very long time. I have two wheels, one wheel I am still working on fixing up to see if it's worth keeping, several drop and supported spindles, and lots of fiber to spin as well as a drum carder for fiber prep. Spinning, though, is one of my crafts that tends to get put on the back burner unless I have a specific project I'm making the yarn for. Last summer, in creating a treatment plan for my FND (Functional Neurological Neuralgia), the two physical therapists I saw recommended spinning as one of the best forms of PT I could do since it requires the use of both hands and one or both legs while paying attention to what the fiber is doing. They, the one at the Cleveland Clinic and the one here locally, both said I needed to spin for 15 minutes a day and try to increase that over time to 30 minutes or so and that it would be one of the best ways to help my brain retrain itself since many of the PT moves they wanted me to do involved making me do two or more things at the same time, so spinning yarn was perfect. I will admit that I haven't been very good at making sure to spin daily, though I have a good bit of local Romney roving I'm going through when I do spin for my 15 minutes or more. I'm thinking it might make a decent sweater in the end since I'm not working on spinning it perfectly or tightly for socks, and I should have plenty of yardage. I was working on a Polwarth/Merino/Silk blend for a lace shawl project, but when my FND is bad, I can't concentrate enough to make it the fine, consistent thread I need, so I switched to the Romney. And then I found the Clun Forest roving on FB Marketplace. Grown and processed in Wisconsin, I couldn't help but be intrigued. I started looking up Clun Forest sheep and what their wool is usually used for, and while they are a more popular breed in the UK, they aren't very numerous here in the US. A truly multipurpose sheep breed, I can't help but think they would be perfect for any homestead. Soft, fine wool (that my fingers are itching to spin now that it's here!), good for meat and milk, healthy sheep that lamb consistently, sturdy even in wetter environments, what's not to love? Honestly, if we could have sheep here, and I really wish we could, I would want a couple of Clun Forest sheep. This roving is absolutely everything I love in a spinning wool. It is soft, has just the right amount of grease for me, is springy, and it practically spins itself. I had the idea the other night of spinning it all up, then spinning up some light brown I have in the stash, and making a fair isle sweater. The colors should work together well, and I've been wanting to make a fair isle yoke sweater for awhile. The last one I made is a bit small and has some alpaca in it, which my body has decided, sadly, it doesn't like very much. I have never made a full sweater from my own handspun before, despite planning various projects only to reject those plans and go with something else, usually a shawl. This could be my next serious project, and now I have to finish up the bobbin of Romney I'm on, ply that up with the other bobbin, and get to work getting to know the Clun Forest and then spinning the brown to a similar grist/weight, and see what I can make happen. So, stay tuned. I'm supposed to spin every day, so this just gives me even more of a reason. The Romney will likely end up becoming a natural dying experiment, and that might get added to the fair isle sweater too, who knows. Either way, I have even more reason to do my needed PT. It has become an annual tradition for me to sit down at the end of the year or beginning of the new one and think through all the projects I want to knit, spin, stitch, sew, whatever and try to figure out what is realistic, especially with my health issues. I used to be able to do so much more before the Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) got so bad, but as long as I can still stitch or knit, I can keep creating things for myself and loved ones. Some days, that's all I can do, making it important work. So, to hold myself accountable, these are my crafting goals for 2022.
Knitting:
The big issue I need to work through this year, more than anything else, is that my FND and fibromyalgia make all of this difficult, especially on bad days. That said, I can't keep losing bits of myself to these conditions, and crafting brings such joy. Just going into the fabric store today to get grosgrain ribbon to finish off my husband's steeked sweater and having one of the clerks mention it and say I did a good job on it (when I can see every single mistake) meant so very much. I really do need to keep crafting, and I hope these goals help me in my health and more. I have been working on my husband's Spice Sweater for over a year, and it is currently sitting in a Kookaburra Wool Wash soak before I rinse it out and block it before figuring out buttons and getting grosgain ribbon to cover up the steek. I'm so happy with how it turned out, though to be fair, my husband has gained a bit of weight back since I started it and used those measurements. I'm hoping it will block out a touch bigger, and I'm trying to figure out how to make a placket for it to button in. Otherwise, I'm calling it done. The knitting is done at least.
On this amazingly cold, snowy, and windy day, I've also been working on a pair of socks for me. I'm breaking out the temperature blanket next since the house is chilly. I really need to finish a few things, go check on the ducks and geese, clean out the pellet stove, figure out dinner (leaning toward a frittata with all the duck eggs we have), and then settle down for more knitting and some spinning, which my PT at the Cleveland Clinic told me to use for physical therapy. I've been spinning up some white roving from the stash that I want to say is Romney. I got a good deal on it from FB Marketplace, and I might have enough for a sweater for me. Still, I do need these USC Trojan socks... and yes, I do see the mistake in the ribbing. I'm leaving it in as a reminder that I'm far from perfect. Like many knitters, I started a temperature blanket last year. First of all, in my defense, I got my gauge wrong, so I had no idea it would be so very big and use up so very much yarn. Secondly, it's all in garter stitch.
I'm still on July. It's the end of December. So . . . yeah. I'm way, way behind. Lately, I've been trying to finish my husband's Spice sweater (was supposed to be for his birthday last spring, then his Christmas present) and the Christmas washcloths, but it's time to pull out that behemoth again and get to work. So it will take me two years for just one year's worth of data. That's okay, right? |
CarinaI go by Bina on Ravelry, have for years, and used to have a knit blog ages ago. With everything going on with Ravelry and elsewhere, I think it's time to bring back the knit blog. Archives
April 2022
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