Splash

Not exactly the kind you do whilst swimming, but thought I'd show you my little alpaca named "Splash". I bought him from a friend of a friend a couple of weeks ago, shortly after the lambs (which he is absolutely smitten with).

Splash is a last year baby & about 10 months old. His colouring (although he looks brown in the picture) is mahogany. The sun bleaches their fleece (as it does with sheep) so the colour on top is not the true colour of their fleece. His actually has a purple tinge to it & is quite lovely. Splash will be sheared this year, but the lambs will likely wait until next Spring.

*picture by my friend Lynne Holtrust; photographer*

He is a wonderful addition to what is growing into a small fibre hobby farm. Although not broke to the halter yet, he has a nice personality & will accept hugs from Joseph & I (as if he had a choice with me around, lol). Anyway, full story at "The Funky Lamb" once again.

Peace out, Boop

Castle Critter Additions

A couple of weeks ago I bought my 1st 2 lambs off of a spinning friend. Luna is a Romney X & Blizzy is a Dorset/Charlet. Both have wonderful dispositions & are well-liked by all of the other Castle Critters.

Luna is above sporting the red collar & Blizzy is below wearing the green one. For the full story as the how, when, where & why, please go to "The Funky Lamb" where I discuss everything that has to do with my fibre biz in full detail.
Peace out, Boop

You spin me right round baby..........

This is the result of 2yrs. worth of research. As a small girl we would go visit a friend of my parent's whose whole family collected antiques. My favourite thing to do was to sit at her spinning wheel & get it to spin. Aunt Peggy would then hand me the carders & let me brush out the lamb's fleece. She didn't spin herself, but did have a small amount of fibre on hand for displaying along with the wheel.

I then would dream of what it would be like to learn to spin. A few years ago, I found out that one of our Quilt Guild members was a spinner; this motivated me to start pondering the topic once again.

At first I was shocked to find out the cost of the wheels & therefore knew that I had better be sure of what I wanted before I made a purchase. Every once in a while I would search the internet for wheels, spinning info. etc. The urge to get one got so strong last Christmas that I finally broke down, throwing caution to the wind & making my purchase on a newly acquired credit card (no lectures please).

I had decided on the Kromski Sonata for a number of reasons, the final being a review that I read on CraftyGrrrl.ca. She had just boughten one herself & talked about a deal that Coppermoose had going where you got the $120- bag for free when you ordered the wheel. It was still on when I checked the site so I ordered it.

It only took 2 wks. to arrive & when it did, I dragged my Flu-like body down to the Post Office to pick it up. In Pj's, winter coat, no make-up & armed with a box of kleenex & Ny-Quil, Mary (the post master) was there to greet me & she totally understood. She's a sewer & mail-order junkie & said she would have done the exact same thing. Pictured below is the pkg. just taken out of the box.

The wheel is attractive, smooth & I love it. There's probably some better ones out there, but for the price & compactness (not to mention the bag), I am very happy.


The picture below is of my first handspun. I got the roving from Lane's End. Lynn (lanesend "AT" cycor "DOT" ca) didn't have a lot of dyed ones to choose from because she hadn't done her dying for the new season yet, but I did manage to get this green one & the pink/purple/blue one below. They're both 30 Mohair/70 Cotswold blends; very nice to work with.


The next picture is a handspun containing Angelina Fibres. I am a distributor for them here & just had to try blending some into a roving. Not wanting to mess with the dying pattern, I broke off the bits in colour sequence, carded in the Angelina & then put back in the sequence to be spun. A lot of work, but the results were lovely. I think the sparkle is probably difficult to see from the picture, but trust me it's wonderful.


Anyway, part 2 coming soon. Peace out, Boop

"The Cure" & other stuff

This is a pillow that I designed & made last month for a dear friend who is going through breast cancer. I am happy to say, she is going to beat this thing. We are all still sending her our thoughts & prayers (because the rest of the treatment is upcoming), but we're all very optimistic & like "The Harlot" would confirm: "never underestimate the power of knitters"(especially when they're on your side).
The basic idea came from a book called Creative Kindness by Nancy Zieman with Gail Brown. The shape had been thought of by a nurse who realized how perfectly this would fit under the arm & add support to the areas where it was needed most.



I got our machine knitting group to sign pieces of cotton (with a pigma pen) so I could heat set them & sew them on the back as a reminder to the recipient of how much we all cared.

This scarf project came from the same machine knitting group (I believe that it was Shirley that did program that month). It is done on the LK150 with sports weight yarn; tuck stitch butterfly pattern.
Well, hope this is good enough for now. I have a couple of big blog entries coming up on spinning. Until then:

Peace out, Boop

Been Hacked

No pics this post 'cause well, it just wouldn't be appropriate. Yesterday I received a message from a confused & worried mother (my own) wondering if I had checked the comments section on my own personal web site (not this blog). Most wouldn't check the link, but it is under the "home base" tab on the blog's right hand side.

Needless to say, upon following my own link, & checking out the comments on the knitting poll & site, I was disturbed to find out that I had been hacked (badly). Fortunately we have word moderation on the Blog (& this is the very reason we do), but the web site itself does not.

There were a total of 39 comments (20 for the poll & 19 for the site in general) describing (in albeit way too much detail) ways to enhance, embrace, excite, etc. all of your body parts & those of anybody else in your life for that matter.

It wouldn't even allow me to sign in & admin the site until I went to my actual web host & cleared the data from there. Once deleted though, it only took a few hours until they were right back at it. The only thing I could find out about the culprits (since their IP addy wasn't real) was that they were Chinese & most likely doing this from overseas. Although I'm sure this would attract a new & different sort of client base, I decided it was best to take the official site off-line for the time being.

The blog itself appears to be fine. If you're one of those who would like to comment, but just doesn't want to go through the word verification process, I apologize, but for now this is definitely something that I won't change; obviously it's needed, lol.

Peace out, Boop

Mod Knits

So, I've been working on something called modular knitting. I've always found the concept interesting, but what got my attention was the technique taught in

the Modular Knits book by Iris Schreier. The idea being that you used short rows to achieve this geometrical look instead of doing all of the pieces separately & then sewing them together in the end. Seems brilliant, no?

The book has received high praise (5 star average on the 4 reviews done on Amazon.ca). There's even a Yahoo group here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multidirectional/

As far as the book goes, the pics are beautiful as are the patterns. At the beginning of the book they go through how to knit the various geometrical shapes & then refer to these pages during the patterns later in the book. Sometimes you're only doing part of a triangle or such & this can get a bit confusing. Or if you're like me & photocopy the pattern so it travels better & cuts down on the weight of your knitting bag (mine has been called pandoras box), this can be a problem when you forget to copy the basic instructions as well. All in all though, it's a good read.

I jumped right in (as I usually do) & started the zigzag scarf on pg. 45. It turn out beautiful even though the finishing triangle instructions were a bit dodgy.
I also made a matching hat from The Knitter's Bible: knitted accessories book by Claire Crompton. This book is a great one. A bit of everything from modular to lace & mittens to shawls. Made a few modifications (added a band inside the hat, with looser fit & button on top), but instructions were very clear.


Samantha just loves this set & has had many requests from her classmates to make them one as well (not happening unless they're paying though, I do enough charity work, lol).

Peace out, Boop

Shake your booties

So, my high school friend of many years just had her 1st child. My own kids are 11 & 8 so she was a bit of a late starter. In fact, she's 36 (aka Hockey Sioux). Her new son Liam is a sweetie, but I'm honestly happy it's her & not me. I cannot imagine starting a family at this point in my life. I guess you could argue both sides as she chose to do her traveling & such first, but I'm tired just thinking about it.
Mom & I sent a bunch of stuff, but I decided that booties were in order. (I mean, who can resist booties?) I would have made them into skates if not for the danger factor, but these would have to suffice.

The pattern itself was different than other bootie patterns I've done. It was easy to follow & such, but different it was. Started at the back of the heel to the toe, then the top of the foot & then the ribbed cuff. Once it's done however, it really does become a bootie, lol.

The pattern is from a book by Zoe Mellor called "adorable knits for tots". There isn't one pattern in this book that I wouldn't consider knitting. Great pictures, well written instructions, modern children knits. Absolutely my fav. kid's knit book for sure & I know I'll get my use out of it.

Also, since the weather was so crappy here today, I thought I'd send you all a nice big cyber mug of Betty Boop's pink hot chocolate. Enjoy.

Peace out, Boop