BLOG MOVED!

Thanks to all my loyal readers. I have grown tired of the struggle with blogger and I have moved my blog to wordpress. You can find it at

http://amysbabies.wordpress.com

Please remember to update your Bloglines, Google Readers, or your prefered method of blog reading because I hope you will follow me to the new site. All the same posts are there. All the comments that were lost in the Haloscan incident have been restored. Unfortunately this caused the loss of the comments from the past month. I have all the links to other blogs on my side bar and I will be slowly adding back all my badges and other frew fraw on my side bar as time permits.

Thank you for your understanding and loyal readership!

Tour Update

Yesterday I finished plying the Nightshade. It came out so fantastic! I adored working with this fiber. It was the first time I had used Coopworth and I think I wouldn't hesitate to use it again in the future. It came out to almost laceweight! I am getting closer to my goal every skein I make. I think this would make a fantastic shawl. The colors are so rich and I can't wait to see what they look like when they are all worked up.

As soon as I was done with that one, I started on my next set of fiber. This is Tulip from Spunky Eclectic. I think this one is going to be closer to a true laceweight. It is spinning up super fine and it is taking forever to fill a bobbin. I still keep having to remind myself to spin thinner, but I am getting better at it.

And because this is just a super cool photo, this little guy was found by Joe out by the laundry room. I have been living in the desert all my life and this is the first time I have ever seen a horned toad out in the wild! My husband shot this great photo of him just chillin' by the sidewalk.

I Live

I am still alive and crafting! Things have been a little out of control for the past week or so. 90% of my craft supplies have been packed. I kept out some small projects and some fiber to keep me company.

I finished the kitchen rug

Here it is on the kitchen floor of the new house. It looks great in the kitchen and I can't wait to stand on it when I wash the dishes for the first time! (I don't think I have ever looked forward to washing dishes like this in my whole entire life) Here are the specs:

- It came out almost 3 feet across
- Crochet in a spiral increasing 9 stitches each round using a G hook
- Hand spun wool blend in a chunky weight
- Three colorways from Spunky Eclectic were used: Toronto and Nova Scotia were spun together to make the center and the border, Path Less Taken was used for the middle band.

I have joined the Ravelry community! I am amysbabies over there. I am loving all the features and the ability to keep track of all the things I want to knit! All the books I want to get, all the yarns I want to use, all the needle sizes I don't have yet. It is my new project enabler. I didn't realize I had such an enourmous list of projects I wanted to do in the future until I joined Ravelry. Thank you Ravelry!

The Tour de Fleece started this week! We have over 100 participants this year. You can see all the fantastic handspun over at our Flickr photo pool. I set the goal of spinning laceweight by the end of the tour. I am not sure my wheel spins fast enough for this goal, but I am sure going to give it my best. I started with this mystery fiber that I got in a swap last year.
You can see it is a great tweedy blend of a whole bunch of other things. It isn't the softest, but it is a fantastic Saphire blue! I could only get it down to sock weight. It was a lace weight single, but I wanted to get a two ply going for some strength in the finished yarn. I used my smallest whorl and treadled quickly, but it is like taking a small car on the freeway and pushing it to 85 mph. My poor little wheel shook so hard I thougt it was going to shake apart! I know there is a fast flyer kit for my wheel, but I don't think it has the weight to withstand a fast flyer. A bigger wheel like a Lendrum or a Louet might have a weight advantage. Plus what a great excuse to purchase a second wheel ;)

I have moved on to my second attempt at laceweight. I am using some fiber from the Spunky Club over at Spunky Eclectic. It is a Coopworth roving in the Nightshade colorway. Again I don't think I have anything lighter than Sock weight, but this fiber has been a dream to spin. It has been so smooth and it drafts like a dream! I finished spinning the 8 oz today and now I just need to ply it.

And a photo of what I have begun calling The Painted Lady!Her paint is FINALY done correctly (third time's the charm, tons of drama) and we are supposed to get the keys sometime between Friday and Wednesday. Kind of like waiting for the cable man when they tell you he will be there between 10am and June. The front door is the same color red as the trim.