Yeah I’ve been carding batts and building spindles instead.  I am so swollen with water and puffy from being prego - that my hands go numb very easily.  So if I try to spin or knit I loose all feeling within about 2 minutes.  So, I have put that aside and I have been making spindles and batts instead.  I went to a local fiber festival, and the stone spindles were a huge hit with the spinners there.  I sold nine, and still had some left, so I have opened an Etsy shop.

I have filled it up with the products of my labors.  I have a few of the hand carved spindles available, at this time only through the spindle and batt club.  The  club is actually quite a lot cheaper than purchasing individually, I may have to raise the price some.  The fiber you get with the spindle, although super nice isn’t the level of luxury that the batt club is though.  The spindle is actually made and glued together though, instead of using a grommet.

The grommets are nice, because you can assemble the spindles quickly, but the thing is that you always have a little wobble, and have to adjust the whorl quite often.  Still, is this batt not georgous?  I am loving the angelina and soysilk blended with wool in these “Bling” batts.  That is this months theme.  The subscriptions are coming in, and I only have a few left for the next three months, so I guess it is catching on and doing pretty good.

Another shot of a spindle for the club.  I am still working on putting wpi tools on the ends.  I will probably be doing some carving on the tops of the shafts too, but I’m starting small.

I have also been making some hand carved wooden spindles, not just using the stone beads.   Here is one I made with a horse on the whorl.  It wobbles a bit, but still spins very well.  I cut a little too much out of the face part.  I may try to take more off the other side to balance it out.  I don’t know if I can sell this one, as it wobbles so at the end.  Other than that it is fine, but it might bug some people, what do you guys think?

It is beautiful, and that counts for something, it is made to be more of a showpiece.  The battle between form and function is always a struggle when you are producing art that is used for something.  I dropped the function side on this one just  a bit than I normally would, but I like it all the same.  The wood is purple heart and this is the natural color of it.  It reacts to sunlight and turns this lovely color.  When you carve into it though, it is brown like mahogany or something.  Once it sits in sunlight for a few minutes though it turns purple.  It’s really cool to watch.

Two more wooden whorl spindles, one in maple and one in purple heart.  These are just plain flower motifs.  I am working on more designs.  My sister requested a cat.  I was thinking it would be fun to have people commision a spindle with their logo on it, or a special pet.  What fun! These are also destined for the spindle club.  I need to prefect the design and get them more consistent.

So I have been dying and carding too, in generall enjoying myself while waiting for the baby to come.  Seems like it will be forever before it is time.  I am seeing lots of pink coming out of the pot, mixed with purples and blues.  You would think I was 9 months pregnant and expecting a little girl baby with all this fiber…heh heh.

Here are a few batts I made for pictures in the Luxury batt club -  Purples!  and Pinks!  I can’t seem to help myself, I am hopelessly trapped in a downward spiral of girlie colors.

But OOOHhhh so lusious anyway, this stuff is something else!  It’s half 16 micron merino and 1/2 Optim!!!  To say it is soft, is just an understatement.  It feels like nothing you can even imagine…I love it.  But I can’t spin it right now, I have to wait 

Oh look, more purple and pink!

well, I may have it out of my system, excepting of course the angora, optim and 16 micron merino laying on the table that his hot pink, dark purple and pale purple….I think that is going to do it for my pink fix.  I hope.  Anyhow, this is the stuff I am making theluxury batts for that club out of.  It is going to be SO hard to ship it off, that’s all I can say.

I also got my hands on some BABY suri alpaca fleece, a whole POUND of it!  I dyed some purple of course lol.  Like most locky type of fleece it dyed all sorts of colors, and I will be very excited to see how it actually looks carded.  The natural color was silvery gray.  It feels like kid mohair to me, but nicer and softer.

Finally I dyed two skeins of yarn that Heidi my friend in Norway sent me.  These are just beutifully spun and so soft.  Of course I had to dye them baby colors.

They still turned out beautiful, and will make something very very nice for a baby.  I will probably use the blue for a lace scarf, it is subtle, periwinkle color with some slightly more purple places.  It is a little more gray than it looks, so it will make something really nice for a grown up.  The other will be made into something for the baby or one of the girls I imagine.  I may spin more to match for a sweater or something.

Beaus sweater is coming along, he has started the sleeves now, but I haven’t any pictures.  I am really likeing how the handyed fair isle looks.  It is a EZ yoke sweater, and I have ordered a pattern he liked from School house press for the neck.  I’ll get a pic soon - here is one of my sample sleeve.  If you recall I started this sweater and he took it away from me in the hospital when our daughter was having her belly button closed.  Bye bye beautiful sweater….

He’s been slow at finishing it, but he has picked it back up and is working on it.  I’ll get some pics of his version, as this was just my test swatch for the sweater.

My point is, that the pink handspun looks fantastic for the fair isle and the gray is just some plain yarn I bought in a huge hank.  It makes for a really nice looking effect, shows off the handspun, but is a much smaller spinning committment.  You still get all the satisfaction of the handspun look though.

Speaking of fair isle, I want to encourage all of you to learn how to knit with the other hand.  I knit contenental normally, but with patience I have also learned to knit very well american style and now fair isle is so easy and quick too.  It really is worth the time to learn to knit both ways.  Just spend a few minutes a day, maybe 5 or 10 on an “other handed project” something simple like a hat knit in the round or something.  I think you will be surprised how quick you can pick it up!  Good luck!

I don’t know when you’ll hear from me again, but I will pick a contest winner before next post.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!

I really have been bad at blogging. I’m sorry about that..

We will have a new contest winner, but I will be waiting to choose one since I didn’t blog much last month, so I will give a few posts this month, and run the contest from the 15th.  I have two packages ready to send, sorry they are late guys, but they are really good.  Michelle’s package was very difficult, because she doesn’t like spindles, and she has her own Shetlands, so i had to really dig around for her package lol.  Ems was hard, because she lives in Canada, so I boxed it all up and got to the post and realized that I was going to have to pay A LOT to ship it.  More than the package was worth, so I had to find new stuff to send, and get a big envelope.  I have finally gotten some nice stuff together for both of them, and now it’s just managing to get to the post. So be patient girls, it’s coming soon, I’ll let you know when it ships!

Trying to get the next issue ready, and still dealing with life. Darn life, keeps interrupting things.  I have the next issue to get done, and frankly it looks like it will be late this time.  I just had too much to get done, and people were so busy over Christmas that they didn’t send much in this time.  SO if you have anything neat (Like a chicken shaped tea cozy ahem, Em!)  please send me an email, I would love to include that, and any other fun projects.  Also if you have posted any tutorials or interesting discussion on your blogs, I will often use those too, so let me know.  The worse that will happen is that it will be so good it will make me look bad.  We have gotten a big surge in traffic since the Knitty article published, and apparently since Knitty linked ot us, Google now thinks we are pretty darned important.   SO, this is a great way to get more readers on your blog, or on your website.  Enough about that, here’s why I haven’t finished the next issue…

Elizabeth my 5 year old had to have umbilical repair surgery, she had a slight hernia, so they closed it up because it can apparently grow over her lifetime and become dangerous later. So that was fun. She has recovered nicely and is running around like normal. She managed to milk two red dinners out of it. Her favorite food is Sweet and Sour chicken, or Lemon/orange chicken. Her appetite was quite subdued for about 5 days afterwards, so we were trying to get her to eat well. All in all it wasn’t so bad, but I am so glad it’s over.

We have also been running the cold and flu marathon. All the kids and I have both had stomach flu and colds. December and up till now have been constant. That’s how it goes in a larger family though. Even Beau caught a cold this time, which despite his denial is rare. He is now recovering, while the rest of us caught it back at the beginning of Dec, so that’s how long it took him to catch it. Now we have all had it, and gotten over it, so hopefully cold/flu season will come to a close for the Jackson family.

Beau took my sweater too. I was knitting a sweater for Teresa, but now Beau is knitting a sweater for Teresa. We were in the waiting room for the surgery, and he of course didn’t bring any knitting. I of course brought four different projects, you know, so that I had just the right kind of knitting to do for my state of mind. You never know what kind of knitting you will want to do in a situation like this. You might want a difficult lace pattern that will keep your mind busy, even if you botch it. But then you might just want to knit as fast as you can and not think about anything at all. So, I couldn’t just leave him to sit there and stew over his poor little girl going into surgery.

So I gave him the sweater. He’s doing quite well, although his gauge has loosened up a little too much the last 10 rows or so. I am trying to decide if he should pull some of them out, because it really isn’t a big fit problem, but the material at that point is starting to look a bit sloppy and won’t hold the wind off as well.  It was supposed to be a straight up sweater,not sloping.  I knit them straight for the girls so that their skirts are accommodated without stretching the sweater.  So it was pretty much the right size at the pink stripe, a little big for growth.

What do you guys think? I don’t want to tell him, rip it back unless it really needs doing, he really doesn’t want to rip it back. But on the other hand there is a lesson to learn, and an important one. Better to rip back 10 rows now, then have a sweater that you aren’t happy with later.  He seems to think that the sweater will shrink or that he can felt it, but I think this is a bad idea.  It really is beautiful though, and he’s doing an excallant job.  I am not trying to pick on him, I just don’t want him to be mad at me later if it needed tearing back.  Even worse I don’t want to be mad at myself, because I am such a jerk about these things.

See, it doesn’t look too bad, this way.  I don’t know what to tell him to do.  If I tell him to rip, which is my gut feelings, he’s going to be annoyed.  If I tell him not to, then he’s likly to be way annoyed at himself and me.  Mostly I just had to have such a pretty little sweater not come out just right.  This is an EZ yokeless sweater, a perfect beginners sweater.  I love this pattern, but I’m concerned if he doesn’t correct this guage thing, where it can go.  For reference, the stitches above the pink color work are snug but loose (about perfect imo) on size 7 needles.  The last row fits easily on size 10 or 10.5 needles.  SO it is a big change.  I am thinking that he needs to learn to control the guage, and look at his work every few rows so that it stays on track.  Maybe I’m being overly picky, or to hard on him?  I am a perfectionist.  But then, it really isn’t too many rows, only about 5 or 10.

You can see the change better in this picture.  His knitting really is so good for this stage, and this is a perfect project for him, so I don’t want to discourage him, but I also don’t want the sweater to not fit or look right.  So you guys can help us to decide what to do with this project, and then we can feel better about the decision.

On my knitting, I have almost finished the fingerless gloves.  Pics of that soon.