A week later:

I'm no further along with the the green monster...I have yet to cast on.  I keep losing my pattern copy bought online from Interweave Knits (hope that's not a bad omen).  Fortunately I have it saved and can just reprint.  I've also been doing quite a bit of Christmas knitting - more of those Anemone Wristlets I invented and some felting.

On the felting front, there was a gathering at a lovely little sheep farm in East Sooke featuring Guljan and Janyl, two women from the village of Bokonbaevo in Kyrgistan, visiting Canada to talk about their felting techniques.  A group of west coasters facilitate the importation of their production and hold sales across the country to benefit the village which has fallen on very hard times indeed since the fall of the Soviet Union.  

The farmhouse - divine, isn't it?

Young Icelandic sheep

Show and tell:  east meets west

Some of the beautiful felted articles from Bokonbaevo

Several weeks later:

The green monster is coming along wonderfully, despite a long hiatus to knit four (count 'em, FOUR!) pairs of felted clogs for my walking buddies for Christmas.  Our Christmas luncheon is tomorrow and I plan to give them unfelted/unfulled so they can custom fit them and have the fun of seeing them transformed.  Getting back to the sweater, I'm very pleased with how it's going - I have reached the yoke on the body and have one sleeve knitted up to the yoke.  One more sleeve to go and then I can attach them and knit the garter stitch yoke.  I found several photos of the sweater on Jared Flood's blog that show different views of the sweater than on Interweave...even one of the sweater before it was blocked, spread out on the bed in his hotel room in Ireland.  The sweater is named after a pub where he hung out in Dublin.  This sweater is great mindless knitting - I knitted my way through the entire first season of Deadwood and plan the same for season two.  

  

About six months ago, I had the bright idea of spinning up enough yarn to make a sweater for my sweetie.  The knitting has finally begun after an epic process that began with that free fleece, vegetation included, that came my way earlier this year.  I spent many nights in front of the television or plugged in to my iPod teasing out the dirt and bits of straw in a large portion of the raw fleece, carded up several batts on a newly acquired drum carder and proceeded to spin it on my Ashford Traditional.  I used to have a drum carder many years ago but it was one of the casualties of a hippies-in-the-bush house fire.  The lanolin made for quite easy spinning - after all, I hadn't spun a thing since the 70's - and it was only after gumming up the wheel to the point where it would hardly draw in the yarn anymore that I switched to prewashing the raw fleece.  It turned out to be quite nice fibre - soft, good staple and not so filthy that it couldn't be rehabilitated - nice to know as I still have a ton of it!  I wanted a worsted weight two-ply and I was aiming for 32 ounces of finished fibre, just to be on the safe side.  Turns out, I'm pretty much on the money with the yarn weight.  

Then came Adventures in Dyeing.  Back in the day, I did a whole lot of natural dyeing but didn't have the heart to revisit it with this quantity of fibre.  British racing green was requested - it's that black-green of vintage British sports cars.  Maiwa Handprints in Vancouver were out of premixed green but I was assured that yellow and blue with a touch of magenta would give the desired shade.  You probably know where this is going.  I set up my little dyeing station under the carport with a hot plate and my venerable white enamel dyepot purchased in Chinatown in Vancouver in the late 60's.  Thereafter, over the course of a week I did battle with the dye pot and after four shots at it, I finally have a lovely heathery moss green, NOT British racing green. This was preceded by gold, followed by pale brown, then insipid green and finally something I can live with - the nice heathery moss green seen above.  

The hopeful recipient-to-be assures me he is quite happy with the colour - he probably knows that if he still wants that dark green, he'll be making a trip to the yarn store and dropping serious coin. That free fleece just doesn't seem to want to take the dye very easily despite repeated dunkings. I tested this hypothesis by dyeing some Cheviot roving in the same pot and coming out with great strong colours.  Not sure what kind of fleece would behave in such a belligerent fashion but it behooves one to value process over product - dyeing is not an exact science.   

This morning I made a centre-pull ball out of one skein and swatched for the Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave and scored a home run...got guage on the first try.  

Harvest Time

Today a good friend informed me that I hadn't posted since September and I could hardly believe it.  I was determined not to be that kind of a blogger when I started out.  In fact I put off blogging for a long time because I figured that if I wasn't going to keep it up, why bother?  So here I am again with lots of good intentions of doing better from now on. Thanks to Shirley for prodding me. 

Part of my preoccupation this fall has been keeping up with all the falling leaves before they get rained on and turn into immovable sludge.  Raking is great exercise and I like being outdoors when the weather is nice.  It has been a glorious autumn here on the Pacific coast and I hear the same thing from other parts of the globe...a long and beautiful fall season with spectacular colours.  Apparently it's something to do with the kind of weather we had in the summer and early fall that influenced the chemistry that makes for good colour.

The garden is pretty much put to bed for the winter, aside from a bit of clipping here and there. I like to leave the browning plants in place as long as possible for a bit of colour and structure. For the first time in quite awhile, I actually planted vegetables this year.  Usually the vegie garden is a jungle of volunteer leeks and parsley with the odd space hacked out for a bit of lettuce.  This year I mixed all the leftover lettuce seed from other years, added a bit of sand and succession planted 4 inch wide rows on the theory that at least some of the seed would still be viable.  It came up fairly thickly and I used scissors to clip off what I needed when the little leaves were about 4 inches high, leaving the roots in the ground to grow again.  I got about 3 cuttings from each row and didn't have to buy lettuce all summer long.  Of course the lousy summer (cold and rainy) was just perfect for lettuce.

Last spring, my friend Lesley suggested that planting a few potatoes might be a good idea and for added encouragement, she gave me her leftover Yukon Gold seed potatoes.  I bought some red seed potatoes called Caribe to add to the mix and also allowed some volunteers to grow from the fingerling potatoes of a couple of years ago.  And what a crop!...about a bushel of spuds from four little rows and the taste is a different category altogether from the store-bought kind. I'll definitely be doing that again. 

Not a lot of fibre news in this post but be assured, there has been a lot going on...another reason I'm so late with this post.  I finally caved and joined the Victoria Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild so the scope of my obsession now knows no bounds.  Fibre retreats, festivals, distaff days, spinning groups:  I just might be in trouble here.  

Felting and fulling has really hit the mainstream of late.  Last week Susan Forsythe was in town to give a workshop on constructing a vest from felted (accidently or otherwise) sweaters and that same week I saw Martha's latest publication with a big article on making all sorts of gift items from fulled sweaters...hot water bottle covers, oven mitts, pot holders, etc.  My vest was only about 25% finished by the end of a very intense day although I'm making good progress with the finishing since then.  I will have photos from the workshop and of the finished articles in a future post.  

My knitting has been going full tilt and I finished my cabled hoodie in time to wear it on our annual getaway to Tofino.  We go to Middle Beach Lodge every year in November and this year there was lots of time to knit in front of the big fireplace in the main lodge. I managed to finish two pairs of  wristlet/cuff thingies in Noro Blossom.  More about those along with photos and maybe even a pattern for you in future posts. For the first time, I was able to bring my spinning with me on holidays, thanks to my lovely new Louet Victoria folding spinning wheel and to my sweetie who bought it for me.  It travels very well as it is light, compact and tidy in its dedicated bag,  not to mention fun to spin with. It was the perfect activity while the rain poured down in buckets outside and the surf came booming in.  Luckily, after a spectacular storm on the first day, we had beautiful sunny weather and were able to do some nice long beach walks. Next year we're going with the extended family...daughter, son-in-law and the two grandchildren so knitting may not be an option.