First off, the Ren Faire. Me, Jag and Michelle drove to Charlotte on Sunday to spend the day at the Carolina Renaissance Festival. The weather was sunny and dry but on the chilly side, and the areas shaded by trees stayed pretty cold all day. The people selling Italian ices were sad and lonely, while the places with hot cider and coffee were doing a brisk business. Michelle hung out at her friend Kim’s booth, spinning and selling her beginner drop-spindle kits (very successfully!), while Jag and I wandered around, watched shows, ate and shopped.

It was way too cold for a kilt. Jag was happy to have his warm leather jerkin.

The Walking Tree Man was back, much to my delight.

I got another picture with him, and ended up buying his t-shirt. This character just fascinates me. I clearly have some unresolved “tree issues” to work out.

One of the downsides of the Festival is the number of people smoking. It’s an outdoor event, so it would probably be impossible to enforce a no-smoking policy, but it seemed like every time we sat down for a show, some exposed-butt-crack redneck loser would sit in the next row, light up and blow smoke in our faces. Take Sir Mullet van der Schproingie here, at Zilch the Toryseller’s show.

Jag and I made a couple interesting purchases; he ordered boots from the Catskill Mountain Moccasin Company, and I bought a shoulder dragon puppet. I’ve wanted one since the late 1990’s when I first saw this vendor (at the Georgia Renaissance Faire), and I figured that now was the time, since he perfectly matches my purple and black outfit. His name is Alfredo.

I also dyed up another batch of rovings over the weekend. Some BFL, some Targhee, and one hunk of Brown Sheep gray/black roving that I overdyed in greens (it sold about 2 hours after I posted it on Etsy!). I’m trying something new where I have 2 lengths of roving dyed in different colorways that can be plied together (or not, but come on, barber pole 2-ply rules!) and I’m calling them “Live and Let Ply”. (Thanks to the folks on #dhgng for all the great suggestions!)

I dyed up a bunch of fiber over the past week, including some Corriedale, which has a nice luster, dyes almost as well as BFL, and would make some nice socks. I’m also trying Finn top for the first time. It is incredibly puffy and soft, like a roving stuffed animal. In fact, I’m keeping the Finn labeled as “Teal we Meet Again” (bottom center) for myself. I generally try to leave stuff up on the Etsy store for a couple weeks before I poach it, but I may not be able to control myself with some of these.

You can also see a picture of my sweetie, helping me with the photo-taking on Sunday by ferrying rovings in and out of the house.

While taking pictures out on the deck, I noticed that I had a visitor. This is Pepe the Praying Mantis. For a bug, he was awfully cute. I think it has to do with the way his head swivels.

My mom finished a lovely scarf/minishawl she crocheted with the handspun I gave her. I think it really turned out great! It conceals the unevenness of this handspun, which is some of my first, and it shows off the colors really well.

This morning I had to do a urine drug screen as part of my accepting the position at my new employer. Are there any women who manage to pee completely inside the cup without getting the outside of the cup wet? I never seem to be able to predict exactly where the “stream” will emerge from and there’s usually a lot of bobbing and weaving going on. These places need to start providing wide-mouth funnels or something.

Christopher Buckley is backing Obama.

You’ll never believe it, but in this past week I’ve done some knitting, dyed some roving, and spun up some wool!

I dyed up 2 5oz-ish hunks of BFL fiber last week and just finally got around to taking pictures this weekend. I was going to post them both to the Etsy store, but when I went to do the upload for this one, I just couldn’t do it. So he’s staying with me and is going to be socks, I think.

I named this colorway “Biff Spilled Sangria in the Swimming Pool Again”.

Just look at that face. Could you give it up to a stranger?

This one is “Nightfall in the Enchanted Forest”. I love it too, but not as much as my happy happy green and blue with purple splashes little Biff.

I finished knitting the Berry Hill mitts and I’m very happy with how they turned out. They took a good 3 days to dry on the drying rack after washing, so I just got some pictures today. I have a metric ass-tonne of this yarn left over, so I’m going to use up the rest by knitting a Calorimetry or some other earwarmer type project to match.

Note: taking in-focus pictures of your own hands is very hard, even with a mini-tripod and a self-timer. I got a bunch of blurry pictures, some with a garden hose, a bag of topsoil, my feet, and other fun stuff in the frame.

And lastly, I started knitting the Dreaming of September yarn into some simple short-cuffed ribbed socks. The yarn is soft and squishy and dense and the colors are a constant surprise. I couldn’t love them more if they were made of sour cream. I hope I have enough yarn to finish them.

The “Dreaming of September” roving was originally posted in my Etsy store, but it was hard to photograph due to the colors and I had a feeling that it was too bright and contrasty for most peoples’ tastes, although I completely loved it. I took it off the site and got it spun and plied before the end of September, and here it is, around 230 yards of heavy sport/light DK weight Merino 2-ply (around 14-15WPI).

It’s going to end up as some very soft, bright socks.

Before:

After:

When I dye up rovings, usually I have a plan in mind. Occasionally I just gather up all the half-used dye bottles and dump them on some unsuspecting fiber, but usually I have some specific color combinations that I’m aiming for.

Good Idea

In this case, the colorway plan was “Plums and Greengages”. I pictured red and purple plums and the “frosted” paler colors they sometimes have, along with the contrasting acid yellow-green of greengages (ie, green plums). I think I succeeded pretty well in capturing what I was after and I’m happy with the colors. If this doesn’t sell, I’ll very gladly spin it up for myself.

Bad Idea

Another idea I had involved the signature lime green and bright pink colors used by hoity toity resortwear designer Lilly Pulitzer. If you’re not familiar with her work, pop on over to her web site and you’ll get the idea.

My first idea was “Lilly Pulitzer in a Blender”, but I had the feeling that bright pink and lime green and bright red wouldn’t be that great together. Then I thought, “Lilly Pulitzer Goes Goth!”, but I wasn’t too sure about black and bright pink and lime green. After a while I remembered the silvery gray Brown Sheep roving that I’ve overdyed a couple times with good results, so I said, “Hey, I’ll do ‘Lilly Pulitzer Gets Lost in the Fog’!”

Um. Yeah.

I think I might put this on the Etsy store just to see if anyone buys it. I don’t know who would want to, but taste is such an individual thing. If there are people who like malted milk balls and Clay Aiken CDs and Thomas Kinkade paintings, there must be someone out there who will just love “Lilly Pulitzer Got Lost in the Fog”.

Despite two trips to the datacenter to fix a cranky server (my on-call week ends on Monday morning, thankfully), my weekend could have been a lot worse. I got to socialize and spin on Saturday evening, I got to do a little dyeing (which is still currently dripping away on the drying rack), and I managed to photograph and post a couple rovings from the Thursday night dyeing session on the Etsy store.

I dyed my first superfine Merino, which turned out to be much less delicate to deal with than I’d feared. It takes the dyes well and is amazingly soft, far softer than the “standard” 64-ct Merino I’ve been dyeing so far, and that stuff is like a fluffy cloud. I want to get some more of this soon.

I also dyed some more BFL in a copper/rust/verdigris colorway that I’m really happy with. BFL is so shimmery that the copper color looks metallic to me.

The fact that this:

turns to this:

…is why I love to spin 2-ply. I’m thinking this might end up as some wild Trekking-ish socks if I get enough yardage. I’ve just started plying this up.

1.) Dyeing!

I dyed up 4 more rovings that I’m really happy with. These will be going up on Etsy soon to replace the 3 I sold on Friday, yippie!

“Manly McManfredjinsinjin”, some brown BFL that I overdyed.

“Mud Wrestling After The Prom”, Targhee.

“Black Watch”, some of the silver/black roving that I overdyed. This is my absolute favorite and I think I’ll cry if it sells. The pictures don’t even come close to doing this stuff justice.

“In The Gloaming”, Targhee.

2.) Spinning

I spun up and plied the Poppy Flower Fibers BFL, and it’s my most even yarn to date. A few “blowouts” here and there, but getting much better. This is really lovely soft fiber, too.

I snagged my “Dreaming of September” roving off Etsy and decided to spin it myself, since it’s one of my favorites. All mine now, mineminemine.

3,) Knitting

I have most of one of the handspun Berry Hill fingerless gloves finished, all but the thumb. I love how this yarn is knitting up. I also got to do a sewn bind-off for the first time.

The End (…or is it?)

I’ve updated the Etsy Shop with all 4 rovings, but here are some pictures of the other two rovings I dyed the other day.

First off, I dyed some of this silver-black-gray roving with purple, in the hopes that the cool streakiness would still be visible after dyeing. It is!

Before:

After:

I also dyed some Merino in red/green/blue/violet. I never get tired of this color combination.

1.) Spinning: I finished spinning and 2-plying some Merino in a colorway I called “Open Water”. I had a hard time color-adjusting this photo, the blue/green/aqua shades are really tough to capture accurately. Merino is my favorite fiber so far in terms of finished yarn, it’s so incredibly soft and squishy, People seem to hate spinning it so much, I wonder if I’m doing something wrong. If HLF is reading this and is interested in this particular batch, let me know.

I’m also working on plying some zany acid green-purple-yellow-turquoise BFL I bought from Poppy Flowers Fibers on Etsy. Miss HLF is also welcome to select this option (or wait to see what’s behind Door #3).

2.) Knitting: Some very very backordered stuff has arrived and I can now continue on the Dad Secret project, which was originally intended to be a birthday gift and now will be a Christmas gift. Sigh.

I started knitting up some Berry Hill Fingerless Mittens (pattern only available on Ravelry, looks like) with the Misty Morning handspun. I really like how these are turning out. I have no idea if this striping pattern will continue, I was pretty random when I stripped the roving down for spinning and didn’t try to keep any particular color order.

I dyed up 4 rovings on my day off, and here are the first two. Longwool fibers like these really suck up the pigments wonderfully and have a gorgeous sheen.

“Karma Chameleon”, Wensleydale top.

And in a shout-out to my boy Keats, “Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness”, Blue Faced Leicester.