purple merino

purple merino
Originally uploaded by trillium knits

Yesterday I realized that the Tour De Fleece was upon us again.

Somewhat impulsively I thought that perhaps it was time to spin up a whole sweaters worth of yarn. I had two pounds of undyed merino from Paradise Fibers in my stash so I pulled it and the dye crockpot out.

Note to self, my crock pot does not hold a full pound of top, at least not gracefully. I couldn't stir it at all so I got some crazy color varigation. I would be displeased with this in yarn, but for roving it will be lovely since it all evens out and mutes in the spinning and plying. I'll be dyeing the second half in a couple of batches so the color should be more uniform. I'll ply the first batch to the later batches to even things out even more.

I'm thinking this will be lovely as a semi-worsted two ply knit into a nice semi fitted raglan. I guess we'll see how much spinning I can get done in 23 days!

A Knitter's Stash

I'm back from my Grandmother's memorial. As Grandma was a knitter, and I'm the only other Knitter in the family, my car came back packed to the gills with Grandma's stash.

I stayed up until 1 in the morning the night we got down to Oregon, looking through a big box of patterns that I had received upon arrival. I had no idea what to expect. She was a prolific and varied knitter when she was younger, but has been exclusively knitting kitchen items for years. I wasn't sure what she had kept in the way of patterns and notes. I was keeping an eye out for the wolf cardigan she made for Dad when I was really little. I quickly found the pattern, along with many other similar intarsia wild life sweaters. When I told Dad that I had found it, he smiled and said, "You know she knit that sweater for me twice. I dropped a lot of weight right after she made it and she just ripped it right out and re-did it for me."

It was easy to see which patterns had been used and which just collected. She marked all over them like I do. She had multiple marked up copies of a butterfly afghan pattern, so when Dad said that he had a whole pile of afghans to divide up among the kids, I was keeping an eye out. Sure enough, it turned up... still in pieces. She had knit all the squares but not sewn them together yet. They're all in purple and green, just waiting for me to finish. I'm normally not a happy finisher, but I can't wait to get started.

There were lots of her afghan patterns, some of which I'll definitely have to make. Lots of seventies kitsch and some really wonderful sweaters from the sixties that I'll be adding to the queue once I get everything organized into a binder.

Most of the patterns were ordered through the mail, in groups of 4 or 5. One group was at least a dozen ordered in the space of a few weeks. It so reminds me of my own pattern collecting, especially since most of them were still neatly folded with no notes.

I have three giant bags of acrylic yarn. I can't bear the thought of it not being used so I think I'm going to start turning it into animal shelter blankets. I'll bring some down to the coffee shop for the scarf project too :)