Now back with more regularly scheduling

 Last I spoke I was down to one single WIP. Well, I have a few more now.  And that's a good thing.

I casted on a crochet sweater last week!

 

The day I did this, I agonized for hours about the colors.  I got out my stash and threw some options together, lots of rearranging and sampling stripes.  I'm sure my friends were completely annoyed by the whole shenanigans.  And Then, the day after this picture was taken, I scrapped the whole thing and started over.

Now THIS IS PODRACING, err, I mean A GOOD COLOR COMBO!  It's perfectly my aesthetic.  moody, dark, and a little romantic.  Think a librarian who has a penchant for biting necks.  So, basically just a librarian. XD

That's been getting a little bit of love every day. I can't crochet all day long, my wrist protests after about 30 minutes. So, I do about two rows and then move on to other things.

The pattern is called A Good Vintage Cardigan by Fran Morgan.  I made some modifications though.  I started off with garter stitch instead of single crochet.  Which, you may note is knitting.  why no, I don't see anything wrong with mixing the two.  I opted against single crochet because it can tend to not be as stretchy an edge as knitting, also I like the aesthetic here. I'm going to do a garter stitch button band and collar, too.  I also modified the color striping, but that's less of a modification, and more of a preference.

What else is going on?

oh yes! TDF!  the Tour de Fleece is on again!  And the Weaponized Mangoes ride again!  I have lots of fun spinning content this time.

For one, I finished a spinning project right before the tour started, it was a gradient braid of targhee I actually started last tour.

this is a two-ply that I plied while paying careful attention to the colors, so that they would line up.

It resulted in a pile of waste, but a wholly matching yarn.  So, a good trade I think!

I washed it and everything, but I didn't get a picture or yardage.  Which is a shame, cause it bloomed up nicely.  I should be more on it, man.

For the first day of the tour, I decided to start some merino alpaca I've had in my stash for ages.  I know I mentioned finn, but I changed my mind.

The cat decided to help me a bit:

She's purrrticipating.

And then I started a different braid, cause I was annoyed with how long it was going to take me to spin all that purple (I have about 8 ounces.. which is a lot).  And yeah, I see the blatant irony of starting a new thing because old thing was going to take a long time-- how much longer is it going to take now that I've started something else??  well, life is short and I wanted to spin this:

This is a lovely, lovely BFL silk dyed by my friend Morky.  She's fantastic at dying yarn and fiber and you should check out her etsy. And this fiber is so wonderful to spin.  I'm enjoying it a lot.  oh, BFL is Blue Faced Leicester.  It's a type of sheep.

Besides all this activity, I've also managed to cast on to a new sock for the lurid along.  It's for Arayti. <3  she loved bright bright things, so I'm making bright bright socks:

The yarn here is fun!  It's not my usual wheelhouse, and technically was not bought for the lurid-along.  I bought it month before last because well, it's kind of a long story.

There's a group on ravelry called Demon Trolls-- it's a consumer advocacy group.  They help buyers be aware of problematic companies in the knitting/spinning community.  There's been a lot of drama over the years from various companies, mostly independent yarn dyers who become overwhelmed with orders and, well, sometimes things turn south.  People pretend to be dead for ten minutes.

Well, about 6 months ago, we were turned to the attention of Sherry Tenney, who is a malicious cult leader scam artist who'd been doing some dirty fleecing on facebook and etsy.  If you're interested in reading more about what's happening in order to protect yourself from her, I do recommend googling her and watching the videos of her rants to customers. There's also lots of reading about her on reddit and the ravelry thread.  I won't go into too many more details, cause it's a lot.

The last 6 months have been a wild ride of microburst tornados, broken feet, COVID, moth-infested fleeces, and a whole lot of people out a whole lot of money (they established a google drive for people to input their lost $$ and it's over $12K as of last week).

Anyway, there's a dyer in Demon Trolls who uses the various dramas as dye inspiration.  This skein is called SherryTales.  the Dyer is See Jayne Knit, and she's based out of Canada.  She actually sends the yarn you order.

Anyway, there really isn't an enormous amount going on in my world these days.  Still waiting on house, still waiting on Summer to be over, still waiting.

I've ordered a few things in the last few weeks.  Mostly fiber.  I reordered some rolags from the Wooly Witch, one of the colors of my scrappy crochet cardigan is definitely going to run out, and the dyer still makes the colorway, so I indulged.  I also indulged in a braid of something else and more rolags in a completely new colorway.

I suppose I can show you those when they arrive.  Showing off purchases isn't my favorite thing to do.

But I suppose this is where I'll leave you.  I'm still cross stitching in the background, but there's not an enormous amount to share. There's been a lot of evenings staring at my phone, afternoons replaying final fantasy (again) and trying to get back into running and yoga.  Despite the new yarns and fibers and things, there's been very little inspiration and I've been having a hard time "feeling" whatever I'm doing.  In fact, I have only spun for a few hours total during TDF, and yesterday I pretty much forced myself to work through an entire album I was listening to.  I enjoyed the spinning, absolutely, I just didn't want to do it all day long for some reason.

Very unlike me.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your own TDF spinning, and knitting and whatever else you're doing for the summer.

Talk to you soon!

Cheers!