I've cast on a new pair of socks to have in my bag to take with me wherever I go. I hate not having an easy project to have with me.

Yarn - Verandah Yarns, merino silk, colourway Mr Darcy.

Pattern - Simple SKYP socks

For - The Love Of My Life.

The last pair of SKYP socks I knitted for him got washed and dried in a hotel laundry and now they are more like felt booties. Sadness.

These ones will be glorious, the colour is dusty dark blue and gorgeous, and the yarn itself is soft and a bit slinky thanks to the shiny silk. A joy to knit with.

 

I have committed to achieve some goals in a Ravelry spinning group challenge this month. The challenge is organised so that each spinner sets her or his goals, and allocates points totalling 100.  We aim to get at least 70 points done each month.  This is for each of us to get more spinning done, and to spin down our stashes a bit.

My goals are to

1. finish spinning the last quarter of the singles needed for my cabled sock yarn (20 points)
2. ply and then cable ply that yarn (40 points)
3. finish the yarn on my Windwheel that has been languishing for far too long (20 points)
4. spin 10 minutes a day minimum of alpaca fleece on my little spindle. Those 12 fleeces aren’t going to spin themselves. (20 points).

I have finished the singles for the cabled yarn (20 points), and have finished the singles on the Windwheel yarn, and have yet to ply them.  I might even do that tonight, you never know.  The plying and cable plying will take a while longer, I will have to set myself up in front of a couple of good movies I think.  The alpaca is on a hiatus at the moment, since I can only seem to make decent yarn on my wee turkish spindle, and crap yarn on my wheels and other spindles.  I don't know how big the cop has to be on the turkish, so I might stop spinning on it now, take the yarn off, and start another cop.  Wish me luck, I'm not so good at handling singles once they come off spindles.

Go me!

I just saw this project advertised on a board on Ravelry and I am excited!

As 2011 is the International Year of Chemistry, the Knit The Periodic Table of the Elements project will collect squares from knitters, and have them sewn together to be displayed at the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry conference, and other places. 

I signed up to knit Thulium (Tm), because I had no opinion on the merit of any one element over any other element, Potassium (K) was taken (K is my initial), and the atomic number of Thulium is 69, which is a much finer number than any other.

Wikipedia tells me that

Thulium ( /ˈθjuːliəm/ thew-lee-əm) is a chemical element that has the symbol Tm and atomic number 69. Thulium is the second least abundant of the lanthanides (promethium is only found in trace quantities on Earth). It is an easily workable metal with a bright silvery-gray luster. Despite its high price and rarity, thulium is used as the radiation source in portable X-ray devices and in solid-state lasers.

also that Thulium is

Not to be confused with Thallium or Thorium.

 So now you know.

I will have to get moving on this square, as it has to be in NZ in a month's time.  It is only a 20cm stocking stitch square in 8ply, which won't take long, and a strip of black stocking stitch for the symbol.  I figure that making the symbol will take longer than making the square itself.  Watch this space.

 My friend was telling me about her birthday party and how the prep was making her tear her hair out, and I joked that I would make her a wig.

Two days until party. GO WIG GO!

I started using some pink Bendigo 8 ply, and knitted like the wind. All was going well until I started the decreases, and somehow the graphic on the Knitty pattern didn’t fit into my head properly, and I started decreasing on the sides instead of the front and the back. Once I realised my mistake, I frogged back to half way down the fringe (WTF is BANGS?) and picking up all the stitches in rib was too much of a pita so I started again. I was thinking of dyeing the pink wig since it was pastel and a bit boring, but had found some bright red 8 ply, so decided to make a new wig with this instead.

Cast on new wig. 24 hours until party. KNIT BABY KNIT!

I finished this wig, learned how to do a three needle cast off (awesome), sewed in ends, turned up the bottom of the wig and sat it in the bamboo steamer over some boiling water while I had a shower and got dressed for the party. Took wig out of steamer, dried it out while I found my shoes, wrapped wig and headed to party.

Party hostess loved the wig and wore it all party long.

Last minute wig knitting FTW.

Finally, some fibre all spun up and ready to use :)

I bought this fibre at the Old Bus Depot Markets on Wool Day a few months ago. Isn't it GORGEOUS?!?!?


So I spun it up with lots of air, so that it can be a nice soft beannie for the new Monkey. I then plied (my first ever ply!) it with some rayon machine embroidery thread in a beautiful purple, making it look like this

Nice! I have spun up a second bobbin of this opaly merino roving, and plied most of it. It is on the niddy noddy as I type, and the rest of the bobbin will be plied hopefully tonight. Then on the niddy noddy, in for a wash, a dry and then to crochet a little Monkey hat. Awwww!