Need I say more?  (So, this has nothing to do with knitting, but I was amused for hours when I found this in my backyard…)

Ok, my interpretations:

1) Crab Claw
2) Sea Lion
3) Octopus
4) Devil
5) Tooth

What do you think it looks like?

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I spun up a storm on Saturday night and created 7 new sample skeins of Fiber Fiend Superwash Merino for Stitches West, where I’ll be having some stuff on consignment in a booth with Cookie and Kristi and Lynn (who I haven’t met yet).

First I had to try out my fisheye lens…

Here we have a skein of sock weight yarn in Willow. If you recall, I spun up a bulky sample last week… and knit it into a swatch.

Then we have Meadow in sock and bulky weights…

Next up is Midnight Sky in bulky and sock weights…

Lastly we have Flame in sock and bulky weights…

But that’s not all… I was recently reminded that I have a macro feature on one of my lenses, so I decided to try that out too!

First up is the sock-weight Willow…

Next is two views of the bulky Meadow…

Here we have Midnight Sky in bulky…

and sock weight…

And Flame in bulky…

and sock weight…

 Just a note – these are all 2-ply yarns. 

I’m working on spinning up some tussah silk in Midnight Sky into a laceweight sample.  It’s the first time I’ve spun silk, and I must say I’m loving it!  It’s quite easy to spin really thin and I think it will make amazing shiny lace!

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I bought a fisheye lens adaptor (0.25x) for my camera this weekend and I must say that this afternoon I had a bit too much fun with it…

After this one there was definitely nose juice on the lens!

It works on Siena too!

I have yet to try it on Lilla…

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The store currently consists of a spinner rack in my guest room, partially filled with fiber and yarn.  My #1 goal for the business right now is to finish dyeing all the fiber I have in my possession to fill the rack (and then some) before Stitches West, so I can have it in a shared booth there.

First we have the whole rack…

Here’s some superwash merino in Peacock, Mulberry, and Ocean

As you spin the rack around, you can see more superwash merino in Harvest, Ambrosia, and Peacock again.

Here is the Mulberry and Ocean again, with new colorway Flame on the right.

Here’s the Flame again with Sea Foam and Harvest (still superwash merino).

Here are two of the new superwash merino colorways: Meadow and Willow.

Here’s the merino/tencel blend in Fire & Ice (what I’m knitting my sock out of) and October.

Last but not least (for the fiber) is the tussah silk in sea mist and flame.

And here we have the limited selection of yarn, which will be augmented after I finish dyeing all the fiber (I won’t be selling yarn at Stitches). The colorways are: Sea Foam, Ambrosia, Fall Harvest (behind Ambrosia), and Harvest.

Here we have some close-up shots of the new fiber colorways. First is superwash merino in Willow.

Superwash Merino in Meadow.

Superwash Merino in Flame.

Here’s some tussah silk in Flame.

Here are some cool photos of fiber drying in my backyard.

Now that it’s dry, I can also show close-up pics of this superwash merino in Midnight Sky.

And tussah silk in Midnight Sky. The gray really turned out silver in the silk. I think this might be my favorite colorway yet…

I did spin up some of the Willow superwash merino into a bulky weight yarn for a sample.

And then I knit it into a swatch…

I also got a bit more knitting done on my sock out of handspun Fiber Fiend Merino/Tencel in the Fire & Ice colorway.

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Ok, so R and I took 340 pictures of the dogs on our trip North….  and I’m only posting 31 of them in this post!  So, if you have a slow computer, it will take a while to load, but I think you’ll be amused…  =) First off, we have Siena and Mojo snuggled up sleeping in Lilla’s crate. This is how they were while we traveled…

Most of the pictures are going to be of Mojo and my parents’ 1-year-old Leonberger Herta playing…

Mojo exerted his dominance whenever Herta got tired…

Until she had enough energy again to show him who’s boss.

Here she is showing off her big teeth!

It was amazing to me how many somersaults Mojo did while they were playing…

Here they are totally pooped, but still happily playing away…

They weren’t the only ones who were pooped!

Siena had a tendency to watch Mojo and Herta play…

Until a good opportunity to gang up on him occured…

Mojo wasn’t afraid to take them both on!

He even got some Herta hair as a souvenier!

My mom wanted to take pictures of the dogs in a santa hat… Randall staged this one…

Mojo didn’t want to wear the hat, but he thought it might taste good…

We took the dogs to the beach of course! Here I am with Siena and Mojo

We let Mojo off the leash and he and Herta ran around and played!

Here he is trying to bite her heel!

Herta loves to swim!

But Mojo was a bit hesitant…

After the beach and lots of play, Mojo needed a bath! Here he is all clean!

When we went to my brother’s, there were 5 dogs! We tried to get a family dog portrait (without my sister’s 2 additional dogs)…I think this is the best we could do…

Afterward Siena and Lilla remained on the couch, all snuggled up! (Siena generally growls loudly when another dog is that close, but surprisingly she did nothing this time!)

My brother’s dog Pip is much more patient with costumes…

And here’s Mojo, trying to convince you that he’s really not that much of a troublemaker…

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Ok, I admit it. I love taking pictures. I think I even love it more than knitting. And spinning.  Don’t tell anyone.

This is the Sweetgum tree in my front yard. It looks like a maple tree. When the leaves were changing colors, it was gorgeous. But now… now there are the evil pods.

So seemingly beautiful, these things are pure evil. They get stuck in the dogs’ paws. Once Jezabelle got one stuck in her paw and almost fell over. Randall thought she had a heart attack. When I was on crutches for a sprained ankle (for 4 months!) I used to walk Siena around the block, because we lived in an apartment and didn’t have a yard at that point. Once I put one of my crutches on an evil pod and almost broke my neck. They pop bicycle tires. They pop car tires. Fortunately I’ve only heard of such catastrophes secondhand…

In any case, they’re fun to photograph.

So are Calla Lilly leaves…

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Tuesday night when Kristi came over to spin, I spun some bulky yarn! It’s the Crosspatch Creations I got at Carolina Homespun a little while back. Here are the singles on the wheel…

And here is the plied yarn!

It went so fast compared to spinning sock weight or laceweight!

I love it!
I also started knitting a sock from the Fiber Fiend merino/tencel I finished spinning last week in the Fire & Ice colorway…

Here’s a peek at some of the fiber I’ve been dyeing recently cooling off in my backyard…

After steaming on the stove…

Check out the store later this week for these and other new fibers!

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As promised, some pictures of my trip North over the holidays…

This is the view from my parents’ deck… I wish I could have such a view…

Here’s a sunset from their place…

And another…

My mom made a gingberbread version of my house, complete with three dogs made of marzipan and a bougainvilla climbing in the backyard.

Here’s one of the foxes that hangs out around their place…

Here’s the sunset at my favorite beach on the island…

My dad and I scattered Jezabelle’s ashes here…

We went on this amazing hike when in Canada visiting my brother…

With many photographic opportunities…

I really love taking pictures of water…

I also love moss…

We also went to a beautiful beach nearby…

But it was high tide so there wasn’t much beach to walk on…

I thought this was a nice picture of R…

He and Mojo did a little exploring…

We caught a great sunset over Vancouver while we were driving back…

Pictures of my latest handspun and Mojo coming soom!

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I finished the sweater out of Lana Grossa Due Chine with the yarn I had. I call it Corsica.

The neckline is a bit lower than it will be in the pattern…

Here’s a sideview in which you can see the hip increases…

Here’s a closer look at the arm…

And the shoulder…

Look familiar?

I’m knitting the sweater again in Knit Picks Panache, an amazingly soft (and affordable!) yarn, 40% Baby Alpaca, 20% Cashmere, 20% Silk, and 20% Extrafine Merino, in colorway Moss, so that others may follow suit… since Due Chine has been discontinued.  It’s not so bad.  I really love this sweater and won’t mind having two.  It’s a pretty quick knit too!

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I have returned from my blogging hiatus!

First off, I wrote up the thumbhole mitten pattern, which you can check out here.

I also knit some more gifts, 2 washcloths for my parents…

One for dad…

And one for mom… both out of Sugar n’ Cream cotton.
I used size 8 needles and made up the pattern.

I knit a hat and mittens for my brother!
I used size 10.5 needles and made up the patterns as I went along.  The yarn is Crystal Palace Iceland.
The hat has some simple cables.  I added a stripe of plain light blue (one of the variegated colors) on both mittens and the hat.

Over the holidays, Pauline knit a sock from my sock yarn in the Ambrosia colorway.  Check it out on her blog or in the brand-new Fiber Fiend Gallery!

I traveled over 1,000 miles north…

I’ll post some pictures from my trip (including 5-month old Mojo pics!) after I get them organized…

I took some pictures of my first sock design…

Velma, available in pattern form, sock kit form, and Sock Spinning Kit (SSK!) form in the store.

I finished my hand-dyed, handspun entrelac soy silk scarf!

I love it!

I also went to Mary and Kristi’s spinning party, during which I finished spinning some of my Merino/Tencel fiber in the Fire & Ice colorway. Janice has some nice pictures from the party. I forgot my camera.  But here are some pictures of the finished yarn!

I love it and I can’t wait to knit up some socks with it!

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