It's in the bag

I recently found out that my home town of Snohomish, WA has a guild- the Snohomish Knitters Guild. And on August 5, they're attending a Stitch 'n Pitch night with the Seattle Mariners.

And in order to Represent, SKG had some knitting bags made.

One of which is now mine, all mine. It's a great bag- with pockets and snaps, and I love the adjustable shoulder strap. I envision using it for many things, not just knitting. I may... just maybe...if I am lucky, though I won't know for sure until probably the last minute... be able to drop in for a minute, on the next SKG meeting (July 13). And since Snohomish is a loooong way from South Dakota, that's a big hint about what's happening this week.

So things are a bit busy at my house, what with the cleaning and the packing and the list making (top of the list: do not miss the plane). But of course, I have taken time out to play some more with Adobe Illustrator.

Here are some vector knitting motifs, including 2 original art-brush borders that I designed (which ate up many hours, lemee tellya), that I plan to use for some yarny-type fabric that I want to design through Spoonflower. I see some knitting needle cases and bags in the future (though not the very near future because Spoonflower is quite popular, and growing moreso, and order delivery is a bit slower than expected... and because of that aforementioned flight thingy, which is coming up soon).

However, three of my earlier Spoonflower fabric orders should arrive tomorrow, which will be lovely. In fact, they'd be here today, if there was mail delivery (darn holiday anyway), so I can post pics (fingers crossed) before we leave very early on Wednesday.

Spinning a Yarn- one way or another

I finished spinning the Long Wool of Undetermined Variety and Origin, Though Probably Romney, Acquired in an Exchange I Think. I ended up with approx 985 yards, and 1lb, 8 ozs of lovely, shiny, 2-ply yarn. As with all of my handspun yarn, it's dense, and I think it will probably knit up at worsted weight. The color in the above pic is closer to the creamy white of the yarn (as opposed to the whiter-white of yesterday's shot). I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it'll be pretty.

This is the wool destined for the wheel next (I'm on a roll... or a spin, as it were). I bought all three of these Romney fleeces several years ago, from Iron Water Ranch, in Oregon.They were each the most beautiful, cleanest, yummiest fleeces I'd ever seen- long staple, not a spec of VM (vegetable matter- hay and weeds), glorious color and feel (and scent- I love the smell of raw wool). The white was a Grand Prize winner, the silver gray was so beautiful, I almost hated to wash it, and the charcoal was a lamb fleece that was incredibly soft (Romney has a lot going for it, but soft isn't usually part of the mix).

I washed the three fleeces myself, and then sent them to Abi Hutchinson of High Prairie Fibers, for processing. Abi produces the most wonderful pencil rovings- they practically spin themselves, and I recommend her without reserve. I had already spun most of the charcoal (only this bump is left), and all but 4 bumps of the silver. I have a lot of the white left, in part because I usually find spinning plain white wool boring (not this week, evidently).

I'm going to start with the charcoal, and then work through the silver, and maybe the white (though by then, I might be hankering for some variegation).

And when I'm not spinning, I'm still thinking about yarn. It took me all afternoon yesterday, to design this custom brush in Adobe Illustrator. It's not that the process is tedious or slow, it's that I'm a total Illustrator Newbie (and a very recent convert to vector drawing), and it took me forever to figure out how to trace my drawing, how to enter that into the custom brush panel, how to use it properly, and then how to color it. But I have it down now (I hope), and I intend to design some yarny fabric (through Spoonflower, of course) for cut-n-sew dpn holder that will fit on a fat quarter (or anything else I might want to make with a yarn-themed fabric). Today, I may sew up a prototype, just to make sure that my measurements for the sock needle case work right.

I'll let you know how it goes.