Thanksgiving

Well I went to my sister's house in eastern Oregon for Thanksgiving and had a great time especially since I recently received the results from my biopsy and it was negative for cancer. Now that's something to give thanks for. And thanks to all of you who gave me support while I was waiting - it seemed like forever!! My sister, Debbie, started a pair of socks using some of my handpainted yarn and sent me some pics today. I can't believe she made this much progress. I've finished the toe of one sock since I saw her and she's almost done with an entire sock. The yarn is working up into a really nice pattern. I can't wait so see them modeled by the woman who will be wearing them. I've been doing some handblending of fiber for spinning recently. It puts an awful lot of effort into each skein, but produces a gorgeous, complex yarn with nice color changes. The variegated gray in the pics is one of those skeins.

Fun at Mason Dixon

I just went to the Mason-Dixon site and they have a benefit contest going on. You need to write poetry for the opportunity to win a raffle ticket that could win you a spectacular afghan. There are some wonderful limericks, haiku, etc. It has a theme (parameters are on the website)Here's what I submitted (they said it doesn't matter how good it is they're going to do a drawing to determine the ticket winner.):

There was a young man named Kazoo
Who's indigo smelled muck like poo
You could see him recoil
As it came to a boil:
He wondered now what do I do?

So obviously doesn't need to be very good, but it will benefit a good cause (and go buy a raffle ticket from the link when you get there.)

It had to be done

Well, I took the beefields shawl off the needle because I just couldn't get it to look right and the more I fiddled, the worse it looked. So I'm now back to the reverse stockinette rows and trying to get it back on the needles. With lace yarn, it's slow going. On the brighter side, I'm going to a dyeing workshop with my friend Meghan on Friday at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Show in Canby. Should be a lot of fun and hope to learn at least a little something about natural dyeing. Although Meghan and I have a tendancy to giggle a lot when we're together. The teacher will probably have to put us in separate barns.

I just went to my friend Cherie's blog and she has posted a pic of her progress on the beefields shawl and it's looking really great. Cherie is the owner and knitter extradoranairre at my favorite local knit shop The Naked Sheep. Don't you love the name? She and Meghan and Tiffarae are all knitting on Beefields and we all are using my handspun merino in different colorways

Well the unthinkable has happened. I dropped a stitch on my beefields shawl and allowed it to run back to a place where several decreases had been made. That one stitch is now five and I am trying desperately to re work that section to avoid ripping back 5 rows--eeeeeK. When I was new to lace knitting I had a wonderful mentor. Hopefully she is looking down on me and guiding my hands.

Newly created SpinneMann Blog

Welcome to the SpinneMann Handspun Yarns Blog!!

Well, I finally took the plunge and created a blog to showcase my yarns and handwork projects. I've also started the TKGA masters program and will be posting my progress here. Three levels to the master with a lot of work at each level. Plus one must be a perfectionist since I'll be judged by several TKGA master knitters. The image above is a lace shawl that I recently finished using Cherry Tree Hill handpainted yarn and my own design.

And this is the Beefields Shawl in progress using some of my handspun and handpainted lace weight yarn

And some of my handspun yarns hanging to dry.

I'll post more when I have time and will try to post links to other blogs (when I figure out how to do some of this.)