One, Two, Three

I was going to share some projects with you yesterday, until the electricity went out for 2 hours. Of course, that may have just been a good excuse!  I'm good at that, excuses.

So, here we go.

First of all, like many other knitters, I almost always have a pair of socks in tow.  When we went to Santa Fe, I pulled out a bright, cheery sock yarn - a self-striping ball of sunshine to work on during the trip.  The first sock went very quickly, indeed, as I wandered through the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and knitting.  The second sock came more slowly but I've finally got them finished.  (edited for yarn brand) It's Red Heart Heart and Sole  sock yarn.  It's one of those that's imbued with aloe.  I can't tell a difference but I'm sure it's there.  It didn't necessasrily feel all that soft when I was knitting it but now that it's been washed it, really softened up and makes a very comfortable sock indeed.  See if this doesn't look Santa Fe to you.

While on our trip, we had a side trip up north.  We were headed through Espanola with Gladys, the Navigation lady telling us, 300 feet, turn right (I heard a lot of recalculating, recalculating while I was driving).  We were quietly driving through town when I looked to my right and saw a door marked with "Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center."  I think I surprised my mother when I yelled out, "Fiber!" and whipped into a parking lot next door.  She took it in her stride, though, knowing me as she does.  What a wonderful place!   Along with a beautiful Navajo spindle and a drop spindle, I found some Frabjous Fiber blue-faced leicester in the most intense greens and blues.  If you've followed this blog at all, you'll know how much I love this fiber and how much I love the colorways of this company.  Truly Frabjous.

Blue-faced leicester is one of those yarns that is soft, long-stapled, has a sheen and takes dyes amazingly.  It really almost spins itself and, I think it's the very best yarn to learn to spin finer yarns with.  It's definitely the first thing I would recommend using. This 4 ounces of scrumptiousness was spun "s" singles and "z" plied with 2 plies and it came out to probably fingering weight.  I split the roving into 2 sections, spinning one of each of two bobbins so that it could be easily plied.  The colors were so intense that I had just couldn't get enough of spinning it.  However, as often happens, the color characteristics were somewhat lost in the plying.  Instead of these nice strong colors, I felt it was muddied a little bit.  Now, if previous experience has taught me anything, it's taught me that when it's knitted up, all of those colors are likely to come to the fore again.

The final project to show you for you now is a tatted baby bonnet from a 1925 Needleworks magazine:

I can't tell you what a kick I'm getting out of this.  The pattern has been very easy to follow - so far, so good.  In fact, I keep thinking that I'm going to be breezing along, thinking there's nothing to this tatting lark, when the universe is going to knock me down a peg.  Careful does it.

While I'm thoroughly enjoying this, it also makes me really miss my Grannie.  She thought tatting was so pretty but never learned to do it.  She would be thrilled with this.  So, here's to Gran...