Fledgling Spinner

I am fortunate to have a visitor coming soon, one who will explore the world of felting with me. Despite its popularity, I have never really dabbled in felting but was nearly immediately stuck with an idea for an experiment. A year ago, Interweave had this unusual pattern for bags, the Ravelry folk can follow this link – Dumpling Bags. Basically, it looked like a round bag once felted and I thought a quick bit of red eyecord to capture the idea of the optic nerve and a few needle felted pieces for veins post-wash, and it would look just like an eyeball. So I set about with my Patons scraps to felt an eye for carry oddments.

I played in the stash for color scraps and basically knit this monster without buying anything new. Even though the pattern calls for size 13 circular needles and double pointed, I only had straights and improvised. This was, after all, just an experiment. And here is the giantess eye prior to felting:

The pattern also calls for a couple of lucite rings to act as closures on the bit of I-cord at the end. I skipped that too! Apparently I also overlooked one more thing: the green iris yarn wasn’t wool.

When I plucked the eye from the washer I was so tickled at my first felted object I nearly overlooked the fact that one row was loose and….NOT FELTED!!

I was sure it was wool. I just never tested it…..to make sure. But! You can teach an old knitter new tricks. I am making it again and this time I might buy the circular when I go to buy green or blue yarn. Stay tuned.

I have been playing with Ravelry far more than is likely healthy. It is kind of like an accomplishment to list all of the knitting projects I have on hand. However, there are far too many knitting skeletons that come out of the yarn stash too. The green sweater front and back are just one of the projects that haunt me. The other is a blanket I have been meaning to do for a few years now. Every time I think about it I remember how scratchy and unyielding the wool is. If having good “hand” is what one says when a yarn feels good and soft and pleasant to knit than I would say that the basic workhorse yarn I made the pieces from is not only possesed of bad hand, I would say it has foot. Dry, old, cracked heel foot.

But I digress – I have knit so many pieces that it would be impossible – nay – sacrilege to frog. It also looks mighty handsome in the images I snapped this afternoon so I could add it to the Ravelry pile, thus guilting myself towards eventual completion (hopefully).

Oh – and I finished my Spring Forward socks finally.

Note the mosquito bite – Florida can be cruel…even in October/November.

Spring cleaning is a quaint notion – I am here to advocate Fall Finishing…mostly for myself. I know it is okay – even encouraged – to have more than one WIP, but that is only acceptable if you have intentions and a finish line in sight. See, there is this really horrible thing that haunts my knitting stash – the Infamous Green Sweater.

This sweater was borne of a desire to have a cable knit sweater, but before I knew about cool yarns and patterns and sleeve styles. (And also those websites and places to find the same) I kinda made it up as I went and knit it from a hideous acrylic and tried to do it as a raglan. Green sweater has tried on many sleeve styles, and none of them fit quite right. When the sleeves have a cable pattern like the ones on the body, they look like military or armored scales. Green sweater wants to be a cable knit with a lovely draped cowl neck like in one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I am sure I haven’t decreased properly….and it won’t work with the sleeves…..

Green sweater might live in the wool box forever unless I make a solid effort to finish all the other projects that I have started in and around it. I will also spin more alpaca.