Gale's Art

I hope everybody is having a great week. I'm at the end of my summer break. It's back to school/work for me on Monday. I still don't know what I'll be doing but until I hear otherwise I'm assuming I'll be in the library.
I spun up 4 oz of Gale's Art merino roving in the proud peacock colorway.


There is 385 yards of 2 ply here.

I have another 4oz that I haven't spun yet.

I think I will try and spin the next 4 oz thinner to get some socks out of them. Maybe.

I got this merino top roving a couple years ago while at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival from Ohio Valley Natural fibers.I don’t know how much I spun but I can tell you I still have a lot left over. My original idea was to spin enough of this to make a sweater but I’ve gotten bored spinning it so I Navajo plied it to get it off my bobbins to make way for something else. I really should invest in some more bobbins.

Here are the singles.
Here’s what I got after Navajo plying.


I thought I had about an even amount of singles on each bobbin, maybe a little bit more on one but I ended up getting 143 yards from one and 238 yards from the other. I haven’t checked the wpi but just from looking at it I can tell I spun one of the bobbins thinner than the other.
Well at least I have another 2 plus pounds of this stuff to play with to try and become more consistent. It is a pretty color and much softer then I originally thought it would be.

We got this post card in the mail a few days ago. I thought I would share it with you.If you can't see what it says, click on it to make it bigger.

I don’t know who Van is and I’m sorry he lost his cat but loved reading his lost cat card. His description of what his kitty responds to and the fact that if you find his cat he wants you to feed it then call made me smile. I use to refer to the shaking cat food box as the intenational kitty call :). It must be more unique then I thought. Hopefully he has found his cat.

Nothing but spinning

I started seeing the posts in blog land for the Tour de Fleece but decided not to commit. That doesn’t mean I’m not involved. I’m a very active spectator. And like most spectators that are admiringly watching all the participants I couldn’t resist doing some spinning too. Here’s what I got.

This is the sheep 2 shoe kit from The Fold that I picked up from MSWF.

It is super wash merino, and is called Rainbow. The roving in the kit is incredibly soft and I absolutely loved spinning it. This had to be the most buttery stuff I have spun so far.
However, I think the results I got should be called Rainbow Gone Wild. I didn’t exactly follow the directions of how to divide the roving and spin it. Ok, I didn’t follow the directions at all. I divided the roving different then what it said and I 2 plied it instead of 3. I two plied it because the yarn came out thicker then what I was wanting. Then there are the colors. Wow, the colors are all over the place. I knitted up a swatch and I could see no pattern at all with the colors.
I’m not sure how I feel about it. I do know that I will not use this to make socks. Well, not at this time. I’m putting it into the stash for now.

I also finished spinning this super wash merino I got from Little Barn at the festival.
It’s funny because both rovings said they were superwash merino but there was a big difference in how they spun. I guess it depends on the sheep, processing, how it’s stored etc. Not to say this wasn’t fun to spin. It was just a different quality then the other roving.
This one is just plain vanilla so to say. It will work great for socks but I might dye it at some time.

I hope everybody is having a great weekend.

Random Rainbow

I’m not sure what to think of this yarn I made.



I guess I should start from the beginning. I got this sheep 2 shoe kit from The Fold at MSWF. The roving in the kit is incredibly soft and I absolutely loved spinning it. I didn’t exactly follow the directions of how to divide the roving and spin it.



Ok, I didn’t follow the directions at all. I divided the roving different then what it said and I 2 plied it instead of 3. That’s because I spun the singles thicker then what I should have imo for socks.



I have been playing around with this yarn. First, I knitted up a swatch. The swatch was not bad. The colors gradually changed from one color to the next but this was done with a cast on of only 15 stitches. I knew that once I casted on enough stitches to actually make something with, the colors would not gradually change. I decided to cast on for a sock anyway. Oh my, the colors are all over the place. There was a kind of striping from darker shades to lighter but no real pattern to it.

So I then decided to use an entrelac pattern.

This might be acceptable but the yarn is still a bit thick for socks to me. I’ve decided to frog it and set it to one side for awhile.

Brown BFL

Thank you so much for all the nice comments on the bayerische socks. I really do appreciate them.

I finally finished spinning and plying the brown BFL that I got from Misty Mountain Farm.

I really enjoyed spinning this. It just took me a long time because there was a 1lb of it.

I Navajo plied it and managed to get 642 yards. At first I was a bit disappointed in the yardage. I thought I would have gotten much more out of this roving, but then I started knitting with it. First I used size 6 needles, then 7, 8, 9, 10 ½, it wasn’t till I got up to the sie 10 ½ needle that I actually started liking how the stitches looked. I went ahead and knitted a little more with a size 11 needle. It looked so much better with the larger needles and it felt so much softer.

So after calculating the stitch per inch this yarn could go for a bulky yarn. I got about 3 ½ stitches per inch with it, yeah. Now I’ll probably go to ravelry and spend a good bit of time looking for patterns that might work with this yarn.

On the Bobbin and Inventory

We’re down to the last few days of Spring Break for T and D. It was a different Spring Break for me because it was the first one that I had to work since they have been born. To add to that feeling weird, Rudy took the week off, so I was the only one leaving home for work.


I must say it was a very relaxing week for me though. Since there were no students or teachers on the school grounds, it was a work at your own pace kind of week. I decided to do inventory on the books. The librarian that I work with told me it hasn’t been done in years. I almost finished the inventory but there were some computer guys that came in from the county that wanted to take the system down to do some upgrades. This meant that I couldn’t access the software for the inventory. I’m hoping to go back by the school over the weekend to finish the last few books.


Doing the inventory was a bit bittersweet. It was great to find books that were labeled lost or missing but the overall number of books that has walked out the door without being checked out is a bit overwhelming. Right now the number is over 500 books. Maybe I should look at it a different way. If it’s been 3 years since the last inventory that would be around 167 books a year, which doesn’t sound as bad. I also noticed the craft books need some serious updating. I saw only one book on knitting and only one on crochet. One was printed in the 50’s and the other in the 60’s, ouch. What kind of knitting media assistant am I to let that happen? To make up for it I’ve been thinking about pitching an idea to the principal about starting an after school knitting club next year. I will also start looking around for some children friendly knitting books to put in the library. I know the klutz books are good. Dax has one and has used it a lot. If anybody has some more suggestions then let me know.

Well on to some fiber stuff. Pictured in this post is some BFL roving that I got with my wheel. There is a pound of this stuff and it is spinning up nicely.


I had decided to take stock on my yarn and fiber supplies. I want to get an idea of what to look for when I go to Maryland. I was amazed to notice that I think I have more roving then yarn. So I need to get spinning before I even consider adding more roving.

As for my list, most of the roving I have is un-dyed so I’m going to add dyed roving to my list of things to look for, along with some dyes so I have some color to play with the roving I already have. I would also really like to see if I can find some of that pencil roving and of course I will look at the fleece. Well I can see that my list is starting to get long. This is just the list of things to look for in the spinning department, oh yeah add bobbins to the list. I need more of those to.

I hope everybody has a great week.

On the wheel

Here’s what’s on the wheel, pretty boring heh?

It’s my first time spinning merino wool. I probably should have dyed the wool before spinning it but decided to dye it after. My best description of spinning this is smooth and sticky. I usually sit outside to spin and it is humid here. I found the merino roving likes to stick to me, my chair, the dog, the table. You name it, it will cling to it. However, once I figured out how to contain it, it would just slip out of my fingers onto the wheel so smoothly and it is very soft. I’m hoping to ply it soon and turn it into socks.

Speaking of socks Dax has decided she wants to knit some socks. It’s a good thing I love her so much because I opened up my sock yarn bin and said choose what you want. I saw her hand roam over my opal yarn and I thought to myself, oh those are my favorites. She then decided she liked the lorna laces yarn better, I thought, oh, my lorna laces yarn, sigh. She then thought nah maybe the socks that rocks yarn. Ok, it took me a long time to finally get some socks that rocks yarn but if she wants them she can have them. But then she decided that she liked the cladia handpainted yarn best.

So the cladia yarn is now on the needles and being made into a nice pair of socks. All joking aside I’m very pleased that at least one of my children enjoys knitting almost as much as I do. I did show both Tyde and Dax how to knit but it just didn’t stick with Tyde. He likes playing with my spinning wheel more then knitting needles so I still think he might come around one day.

The other big event is that we are now down to one more inspection on the house, the CO (certificate of occupancy). We are hoping to get this done on Thursday. All I can say is that it’s been a long three years.

I decided to end this post with a picture of Rohan with a bad hair cut. Dax insisted that we needed to shave him. I have to admit he does seem a lot more happy. But, he sure does look funny. She got tired of shaving him and left his head, tail and feet alone. He has a lion look to him.


I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Blue stuff

Here’s the blue stuff all spun up. I’m actually going to refer to this as the blue stuff from hell. This stuff was hard for me to spin. It had a lot of grass/hay; at least I think that was what it was, in it. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough of it for the vest and that I wouldn’t be able to spin it to get correct gauge for the vest. I usually spin thin and I do not have a lot of experience in spinning. So, I don’t have much knowledge to know how much yarn I can get from the wool I have and how to get the gauge I need for a project.


It took me twice as long to spin it because of the time that I had to spend picking stuff out of it. I couldn’t remember how much there was of the blue stuff and was hoping that I would have enough to make the Provincial Waistcoat from IK winter 2006 magazine. Um, I was way off, I have 326 yards of the blue stuff. That’s all :(. I will need 750 yards to do the vest. I’m not even half way there. However I did get the right gauge with the blue stuff for the vest, as if that matters now. I learned a few lessons, look at the roving to cheek for stuff in it and also mark how much there is in the bag or get a good scale to measure it. Maybe I can make a hat out of it. Actually it will probably go in the closet. I’m not in a hat mood right now.

But I’ve got another project that I’m itching to start. Did I mention I’m going to the Maryland sheep and wool festival! I am so looking forward to this trip. Dax will be coming with me and I will meet up with my sister and my niece. This will be the third year I’ve been able to go, Dax’s second year. I’m keeping my fingers crossed the weather will be nice. We will be camping out. I’ll have to post about the next project later. Both Tyde and Dax are waiting on me to boil some eggs for dying.