Projects

Mid-March already.  The weather really can't decide what it's doing.  The first week of March was the coldest weather we'd had all winter.  This weekend was warm and lovely and we got both the vegetable garden and the butterfly garden cleaned up.

I realize that although I'm constantly fiddling with stuff--usually yarn--I haven't posted much on my projects lately.  So here goes.

Sugar Cane scarf.  Last fall when Natasha and I were cutting sugar cane at the museum, she wondered if the big sugar businesses have any way of recycling the pressed cane.  I mentioned that they burn some to run the factories, some can get turned into erosion control fabric, and some becomes biodegradable paper plates and eating utensiles. So when I found some yarn made from recycled, regenerated cane pulp I just had to make her a scarf from it.  It was such a quick project that I forgot to take a picture of it.  Here's a picture of the yarn from the catalog--very pretty silky multicolor.

 

 

 

The Dog is off the loom! A loom "dog" is a project that isn't going the way you want so you don't finish it--but you don't cut it off and throw it away, so it just sits there (and obviously you don't weave anything else).  I started this about a year ago (yes--a year) by putting on a random warp of different yarns that I've spun over the last 20 years.  I thought a gray weft would bring out the colors--but instead it killed them.  I kept weaving for awhile just in case I eventually liked it--and then stopped.  I wasn't about to unweave the yard or so, and I wasn't going to sacrifice it.  I finally said the heck with it, spun up the rest of the weft, and finished it.  I don't know what I'll do with it, but I can start using the loom again.

 



Last October when we went to the alpaca show I bought a small bag of a really beautiful shaded gray suri fleece.  Suri alpacas have curly fleece that feels and acts like silk. I wanted to make something from it before the alpaca show in February.   The finished scarf is quite subtle but I love it.  And the alpaca's owners had never seen anything made of her fleece before.

Some knitters are addicted to making socks; my addiction is fingerless mitts.  I think they're cute, if you use interesting yarn you don't have to do anything fancy, they're instant gratification.  So I've made two more pairs, one for our neice Amanda and one for one of our graduate students who thought mine were really cute.

 

 



I had planned to make Rob and Jeff a new set of dishtowels (at their request) for Christmas--and they got them in March.  I did a complicated structure called shadow weave, just because I like it.  The threads counted out correctly.  When I was weaving them they looked fine (but it's difficult to see shadow weave patterns while they're being woven).  When I finished and washed them, which makes the design pop out--*that's* when I found the errors.  Truly annoying.  But at least it's dishtowels--and they're still functional.

 

 

And the Doctor Who scarf is done.

 



Not bad for a couple of months!   There are a few works-in-progress, but it's past my bedtime.