Angora rabbit fur is 7 times warmer than sheep’s wool, so they stay pretty warm. The back and sides of the cages are covered with tarps, so they have little caves. In the bitterest of cold, I drape a tarp or quilt across the front of the cages at night, and they stay toasty warm.

Anyone who gets a haircut in the winter gets a little jacket until the fur grows back to about an inch long, or until they chew the jacket off.  Not a fancy jacket, it’s the equivalent of a sweatshirt sleeve with holes cut out for their front feet.

So the water bottles didn’t actually freeze solid today, more like slush, but too solid to drink. They are defrosting inside and the buns are joyously slurping warm water from their bowls outside.  Brrrrr!

So, since winter is over, and I wanted a break from hats and gloves, and I can’t take my loom with me, I decided to knit Haylee a teddy bear. I searched Ravelry, on of my favorite time-suckers, and found a great traditional looking bear. I matched it up with some handspun, not mine, some from the stash that I bought way before I learned to spin. Of course, I had to then order new needles. I do have a pair of walnut Brittany needles. Since I bought them, I have evolved to realize I prefer circular needles, Addi turbos to straight needles, even when I am not knitting in the round.

So I started with the Brittanys, and ordered my Addi’s which I got 2 days later from Paradise Fibers (just a fan, no affiliation).

So, I am sure you are thinking this post is not happening in the right season, and you would be correct. I started the draft for this post and….and I don’t know what. Probably sat down to knit and promptly forgot about it.  So I will finish it now.

Did I mention I knitted the bear, which is knitted in parts, then stuffed and assembled. I knitted a head, body, 2 arms and 2 chubby legs. Then I stuffed them, and the stuffing showed through….boo! Hiss!  So I very carefully disassembled the bear, and ripped out the knitting, all of it (sniffle!). That is called “frogging” in knitting-talk, rip-it. Get it?

I went back to the beginning with smaller needles. Yes, I did knit a sample swatch the first time, and it seemed fine, but I didn’t stretch it as it would be when stuffed. So this time I knitted my sample swatch and then stuffed it and the white stuffing did NOT show through the brown bear. YAY! I finished knitting the bear, I guess it was actually my second bear, assembled it, embroidered the eyes, nose and mouth, and was quite delighted with the results.

Haylee’s bear is done and heading for California tomorrow.  I hope she likes it!

Now I can get back to the loom and do some hand weaving. I have yarns picked out for several projects: tea towels, scarves and hand spun yarn to make yardage for a bog  jacket.

As for the rug loom, a project to help use up the 11 yards of warp still waiting to be woven: basket weaving on a loom.  Saw this demonstrated at Francis Irwin Handweavers  http://www.francesirwinhandweavers.org/ in September and I know it will be fun.  The basket is actually woven flat and then some of the warp threads are pulled tight to make 2-D into 3-D.

You hand weavers out there might point out to me that using my loom will eat up the fiber more quickly, and that would be true. And I have lots of piles of projects waiting to be warped and woven…tea towels, scarves, table runners. But I need some easy-to-bring-with-me projects too, and quick to finish.

So enter hats and gloves.  These also use up the single skeins of beautiful wool yarns I bought when I knew little about either hand weaving or knitting.  I’d like to say they are easier than socks, and to a degree they are. But of course, I love texture, color and lacy patterns. And I will actually have a few of these done in time for winter!

Just off the needles: Perri’s beanie, a pattern a found on Ravelry.com and actually purchased. There are so many great free patterns out there, but when you have a cousin whose name is Perri, how could you not make this hat for her????

not the clearest image, but I'm new at this taking a pic in the bathroom mirror thing

On the needles now: Exeter, also downloaded from Ravelry.com  is another quick hat pattern, rib knit for most of it, with a nice finish on the crown that kind of looks like arches, the arches at Exeter is what the author notes. The yarn, from the stash, is called Fringed Sagewort, and  is one of a collection of yarns from Beaverslide Dry Goods, one ball of several different colors. Yeah, yeah, what was I thinking???? Uhm, that the colors would all go together and could be made into something bigger, like a sweater. Right. Now I know how much yarn it takes to knit a sweater. And how much time.

So, hat, gloves, mittens, socks for my friends and families. And anything larger needs to be woven. Well….I may have enough variegated green for a sweater, if I can adjust the needles to get the right gauge, and then make notes on the pattern after I make a swatch.  Ok, if I’m going to work that hard, I’m gonna weave!

I do, however, LOVE weaving! I finally got my computer straightened out, and drove poor Ingrid nuts getting my activation codes for my Fiberworks PCW software. Yes, I had to download it 3 times since December, and one time, I lost all my saved drafts, and everything else on my computer.  Water under the bridge, since most of it has been found or redone. Nothing critical lost, mostly inconvenient and annoying. So anyhow, I can use my software again.

I participated in a dishtowel exchange which was due in March. That was fun, and I am so glad I had the software to adapt the draft from VAV magazine.  http://homesteadweaver.com/towels2011.htm  It was fun, a great challenge, a stash buster, and I got 6 beautiful towels in return.

I’m weaving like crazy now to be ready for my second exchange of the year, due June 1. This one is with my guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers. I designed the draft and rummaged the cottolin stash for the complimentary colors and then did nothing since, oh, March. They are on the loom now, and I have been playing with treadlings, so that will be the samples that go with the exchange. Only four towels for this one, easy peasy. That will make my number of handwoven dish towels 11. They are so pretty, and so sturdy. I am keeping the Costco raggedy towels for mopping up, and the handwovens for oh, well, drying dishes. And using in the breadbasket and such. No icky spills for these babies!

Here’s a peek at what is on the loom:

Here’s how it went: Each participant put up to 5 different yarns (any amount of each, but enough that something could be woven with it) in a paper bag. Also in the bag was a questionnaire about the person. Then each person picked a bag that wasn’t theirs, and was challenged to weave something for the person whose bag it was.

I received an awesome tunic.  That’s me thanking the weaver, Robin!  And modeling.

I am giving 4 yards 22 ” of fabric to Daryl Lancaster, http://weaversew.com/wordblog/.  She has been very encouraging and patient. I am hand delivering the fabric tomorrow.

So on to the next UFO (unfinished object for you non-fiber types).  Bonnie Inouye  http://www.bonnieinouye.com/ came to the guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers jockeyhollowweavers.org, last year, and taught Advancing Twills. It was really a class on designing advancing twills, was very interesting, and right at the tippy tip of what I could wrap my brain around. At the time, I did not own weaving software, but I muddled through the workshop. I did get home and had to resley the loom, as the finished fabric was not dense enough.  I wove a few inches, and the rest of the warp and the loom have languished since.

So I dusted off the loom and decided to weave this off. I read through the handouts, and chose what to do next. In the past, I would painstakingly hand write the treadling, or in this case, the lift plan. With the software, the right tool for the job, I had the lift plan ready in less than 10 minutes. I also learned a few more tricks that the software can do to speed up my paperwork time to give me more time to weave.

Ok, for the non-weavers, this is a pic of the loom. It is called a table loom, and is operated by levers. The lift plan tells me which levers to press to get the pattern that I want.  For me, it is much quicker to use my looms that are operated by pressing treadles with my feet, but that’s another mini-lesson.

Off I go to the studio now, to turn another UFO into a FO. Happy Weaving!

For today’s project, we had an indigo vat; a huge pot of onion skins which members have been collecting for several months; and the great avocado dye experiment.

I love dyeing with indigo. It is so much fun to put white yarn and wool into a murky greenish-yellow pail, and remove greenish yarn and wool that turns blue as it oxidizes or get exposed to the air. It’s a fun and magical process.

Onion skins are a favorite with dyers, giving a lovely golden-yellow. As I went over my notes and books before the ladies arrived, I noticed that onion skins could give a range of colors from yellow or orange to rust.  Today we got the most beautiful rust color, a first for me. Not that I have dyed with onions skins a million times, maybe 5 ,but haven’t seen this beautiful color before.

I almost swooned. Luckily, as the hostess, I get to keep the leftover dyes, and there will be another day of dyeing in my near future!

We also did the Great Avocado Dye experiment. It is a fun idea to think about getting colors from the parts of the avocados that we usually discard, but the results were not as exciting as the idea of it. My personal opinion is that it’s way too much work for not so great color. The colors are nice but so pale!

Over dyeing the pale  color with indigo gave a really nice colonial blue, but I don’t see myself spending too much more time or energy on using avocado pits and peels as dyestuffs. The article that we used as a reference indicated that the author got some deep colors: rust, maroon.  Our consensus is that she used fresh avocados, like 15 lbs that she convinced the grocer to give her since they were past selling condition whereas we saved ours up, either freezing or drying them. I did a pre-dye day experiment with disappointing results, and thought if I chopped the pits up smaller, I”d have better results. Nope. I did manage to strain the resulting mush poorly and leave pit residue all over the yarn that dyed up very pale.

Luckily, my friends are very forgiving, as this is not an irreparable mistake, and we had a fun day together. The onion skins results far made up for it, and the magic of the indigo is, well, enchanting. As far as my blue fingers, the dye binds much better to fiber than skin, so it will be mostly faded after one sinkful of dishes.

I have finished the Nutkins socks with short row heels and toes. I am sure I have done much more unknitting than knitting in this project.  They aren’t perfect, but I am quite please with them. Yup, keeping them! 

I sought feedback from some master knitter friends, and both were very nice about my small, even gaps; but gaps they are.  The rather large hole on the right sock in the brown stripe is actually part of the pattern; note to self, be aware pf tension while knitting.  I will have to have one or both of them show me their techniques for managing the gaps while doing short row heels and toes,  just in case I might want to try them again. Ha-ha!

I am in my second year of stashbusting knitting yarn, weaving yarn and spinning fiber.  So I perused the remaining stash of sock yarn. Looks like there isn’t too much left:  seems to be enough fine sock yarn for one or two pairs, maybe a pair of Dobby socks, and a sock knitting blank that still needs to be dyed. If I have withdrawal from knitting socks, I think I have some superwash merino wool that can be spun up and dyed.

BUT, since my new Baby Wolf loom arrived, my time at home will be spent stretching my weaving muscles! Yippee!

NJ has finally had enough rain that the ground has become so saturated that the water is finding it’s way into my basement. So far, towels have been keeping it in check, it hasn’t gotten near the looms. The one storage closet that is damp will survive, as all the items in it are safely in plastic containers. Since I had seepage during the summer, the lowest boxes in the closets are raised off the floor. I can deal with a little water, and am grateful it’s just a large puddle, not completely submerged.

Watching Kelly’s Heros now, what a riot. A very young Clint Eastwood is always fun and Donald Sutherland as Oddball just has me rolling on the floor.  Somehow, I’ve never seen the whole movie.  Shhhh, don’t spoil the ending!