11/11

From the Daven:

Yak wars: The Saga Continues....

On Saturday (11/7), the guy purchasing the yaks (hereafter: YakGuy) finally showed up, after four failed attempts. He then proceeded to drive in the one part of the pasture I warned him against, and got his truck & trailer bogged down in about 12" of mud. After a few hours of disgusting labor, we were able to get the truck unstuck, and he headed home.

On Monday, he came back. 1.75 hours of effort (still disgusting), and we freed the trailer. We got Squeaky, Millie, and Minnie loaded up. Kai & Maria were not having it. So we decided that YakGuy would take the 3, and come back later for the other two.


A few minutes after he left, YakGuy called me to say his truck was broken (stuck in 4-wheel drive Low, could not get above 25mph), and he was going to have to drop off the trailer & 3 yaks in my pasture. So, he came back. And I fixed his truck by punching it. Seriously, I punched a part of his truck, and it popped out of 4-wheel drive. Go me.

So, we are currently down to Kai & Maria, and YakGuy will acquire them in a few weeks.


Yak wars: Side Quests

1. YakGuy did not have his credit card, so had to ask if I had any cash so he could fill his truck up to drive home.

2. Kai was very angry, and charged straight at me down a chute (no room for me to move or get out of the way). Thankfully, Kai is a very good boy and likes me, because he slammed his face into a post in order to avoid goring me. He then skittered past me. If he had not moved his head, I would likely be dead, either from goring or having my sternum crushed.






So, this isn't really going as planned at all. At least no one was sent to the hospital, and we're down to just two yaks for the next 3'ish weeks. Oy, vey.






In other news, giant baby is wearing 18 month onesies and is painfully cute, though I am biased:

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

After 5 years of having our herd of yaks, they are going to be sold and move on to join other herds on October 21st. With the addition of Alaric, I have neither the time nor the inclination to give them the attention they need, and Daven's work may require travel in the future, so he won't always be available.

Yaks are neat animals. They are smart and affectionate, but they are also big and can really hurt you, even by accident. Daven ended up in the ER twice due to yak injuries, one of which involved a CAT scan, so...yeah, I'm not thrilled with short stuff being around critters that big that can be unpredictable. We're also batting around the idea of moving closer in to town, since I remember as a kid being sad that my friends wouldn't come visit my house, with it being so far out. Over an hour on the bus, it being a pain to stay after for any activities...I still want to raise him somewhere with a bit of land, but I can see the advantages of being in a more neighbourhood type setting. Most of my neighbours, though they are nice folks, are in the grandparent realm, rather than the parent realm, so there aren't any kids for him to possibly play with as he gets older.

The sale of the yaks is the first step towards possibly moving. I'll miss them, but I haven't been terribly close with them for a couple of years. I won't miss having to pay for lots of fodder, or having a hard time with getting a pet sitter if we wanted to go anywhere. I hope they have good lives in their new herds.

I made this!

Introducing Alaric Magnus Davenson Williams. Born June 24th at 08:43. 9 lbs, 3 oz, 21.75" long. At just over a week old, he's already fitting into 3 mo onesies. He's a big boy. :)

 One day old

6 days old

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date...

Well, technically, I am not yet late. Today is the due date according to the magic math that doctors do. But...Yeah. No wee viking yet.

So, I'm distracting myself! Specifically, I cast on the Dreambird Shawl on Thursday. I went to the Estes Wool festival last Saturday with my newly transplanted sister-in-law, and picked up a couple of colour gradients from Fiber Optic Yarns that were simply drool worthy. I really wanted to use one of them, thus, spiffy gradient shawl.

I'm currently 5 feathers in, and it is a very fun knit. Excellent distraction, up until the time that my hands are filled with a more demanding project. The colours I'm using are Turquoise to Tangerine, with a main colour of a very vibrant royal purple.

I also finished knitting the Rose of England shawl, which turned out beautifully. The photos don't quite do it justice, as I blocked red on a red background, but you can get the general gist of it.

Madness

444 hexipuffs. Just short of a year in to this project. I should be able to finish 6 more before its actual birthday on April 1st. We figure I'll need about double of this to make a queen sized bed topper. Also, INSANITY. Daven pointed out as we were laying these out that the cat is going to love this blanket so much he won't know what to do with himself. I don't doubt it. So...at least another 400-450 or more puffs, then I get to put them all together. Holy crap.

Puffs, pic, pregnancy, projects

Puff count: 406. Binge watching Face Off has been great for my hexipuff production. I really need to clear off the guest bed and lay them all out so I can get a feel for how big this is thus far.

Pic of the wee Viking's sweater:

Pregnancy: Amazingly, the placenta previa that I've been stressed and :( about since the 9 week mark has actually resolved itself. This is awesome news, as it takes me from being a high risk pregnancy to a regular pregnancy. Hells. Yes. :D Also, somewhat astonishingly, I'm only 2 weeks out from the third trimester. The time has gone WOOSH.

Projects: Well, more of the puffs, obviously, but also another baby sweater; maybe this one will be less enormous when it is done. Also, I finished most of the main quilting for the baby quilt; I need to put a border on it and do a bit more edge work, but it is boppin' along. I'm also periodically poking at the Fox Paws pattern, in scarf format, made out of some of my kool-aid dyed yarn. I have a pair of toe up socks knit on a long dpn at work that I poke at whilst people are filling out paperwork, or I'm waiting for clients, as well. So, as usual, lots of stuff going on. And never you mind the classes I'm prepping for and teaching. Phys 1 is going well on its first run through, which is nice for my confidence. Another session of Phys 1 and two of Phys 2 will be spinning up between now and my due date. Oh, AND (there are so many ands) I finished my Reiki master training this last weekend with a 3 day retreat. I has a busy, not even counting my whole "running my own small business" thing. Is good. Am happy. Am also very tired. Yes yes. Tired.

One last and: We did sell two of the yaks. Our big boy Grunt went off to be a stud at a bigger herd, and his godsawful mean offspring Monster went off to no longer trouble anyone. Yes, it was hard to sell one of my critters for meat purposes, but dear gods. What an unpleasant beastie. A herd of 5 instead of 7 should hopefully allow the land to recover a little bit from overgrazing. They seem much more mellow with Monster gone, and generally fewer bulls to compete with. We are likely still going to sell Maria in a few months to join another herd; we'll see where we're at in May.

Tiny pillows

My hexipuff count is up to 351, up 140 from my last count in July. Obviously, I have not been working on that steadily, but we recently discovered the joys of Castle, and have been binge watching it. Whilst we watch, I make hexipuffs. Sadly, we are on season 5 of 7, and I still have another 400 puffs to make, conservatively, so it will not last. Let's just say I'm in it for the long haul. We'll see how much I get done before the wee viking appears. I'm still working on other projects; eventually there will be photos of both the sweater I made for myself and the little one I made that ended up being more appropriate for a toddler than an infant.  The knitting portion of that has been done for several weeks, and I just located buttons for it, so once those are on, I'll take a photo. Oh, and I still need to finish the quilt, but cats keep falling asleep on me, so it's hard to work on. Everything will get done, eventually. Just pluggin' away.

Yes, yes, knitting. That's a thing that happens.

I knit myself another blue cardigan, because I have a subconscious obsession with them. No photos, because, well, I do not feel cute lately. Eventually that'll happen.

And because we are now at 20 weeks (Eek! Halfway!) I'm finally casting on some yarn-based goodies for the tiny viking. This, in size 6-9 mo, which should work with my giant math.  Starting with the sweater, in a dark blue/purple, with a light ivory/pink/green contrast colour, then mittens and socks, skipping the trousers, and eventually a hat, though I'll likely reverse the colours and wait until after we find out how big kiddo's head is. (Daven has a big head, I have a freakishly small one; no point in knitting a hat until we have an idea who he takes after.) Using some Jitterbug that I bought back in 2007/8 from Nature's Yarns for knee high socks, before I realized that no pattern in the world believes in my calves, especially when the pattern involves colourwork. So, tiny person clothing, it is. Amusingly, the colour of my most recent cardigan is almost the same as what I'm using for the tiny cardigan. I clearly like this colour!

Another WIP

Though, admittedly, this one is a little less hands on than my knitting projects. For those folks who aren't on my Facebook, I've got a project I'm working on. It should be ready around June 20th. Or, "he" would be more accurate than "it". Yup, I'm pregnant. :) I have not yet started binge knitting baby clothes, but I have no doubt that will happen at some point.

Also on the baby front, we had a random yakling born when I was back in North Dakota a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, we finally got a girl! Her name is Minnie, and she is fluffy and adorable. She's Millie's first daughter, and the first girl we've had born on the farm who has survived. (Even with a nasty cold snap of -20F earlier this week, she was fine, thankfully.)

Oh, right. Yarn blog.

Hi! Stuff has happened since my last post. Yarn kind of stuff, and non-yarn kind of stuff.

I knit this sweater in August! I wore it to Iceland in September! It stretched and slipped and is now enormous, because bamboo has a sense of humour that I just don't get! Oh well. I bought lots of yarn in Iceland, and it was an incredible, breathtaking vacation.

I got back from vacation and promptly fell into weeks of training. I learned lots. My brain and my body hurt from all I learned, but it was good. Very little was accomplished on the beekeeper quilt. It is resting, as my math kind from the last post kind of frightened me, and I need to regain my groove.

I finished two pairs of socks in the last couple of weeks, as my husband was giving me quite enthusiastic shit about seeming to always be buying new knitting needles. He's supportive, but will cheerfully pick on me, like a good hubbinbeast should. I had great plans on continuing to finish projects, but the yarn for the Hue Shift afghan just came in, and, well...I just cast it on. This'll be my new "track the progress" project. Just so you know how the blog should look, assuming I don't fall off the face of the earth for a few months again.

How crazy is this going to be? Pretty damn crazy.

It's been about a month since the last update, and I'm now up to 211 hexipuffs. Yay! I laid them all out, measured and then applied math...Oh dear. I'm currently at about 42"x25". If I want to make a blanket for a queen sized bed, I'm going to need between...let's say 750 and 1000 hexipuffs. Oh, my. Um. Longer term project than anticipated? Also, a friend asked on FB how much that would end up weighing. Weighing bags of 50 average out to about 220 g, and if I needed 1000 of them, that'd be just under 10 lbs of crazy. If I went for the more conservative 750, it'd still weigh over 7 lbs.  Righto. That's going to have to be contemplated at some point.

My thoughts on connecting them involve making "flowers" of 7 hexipuffs, then connecting those together. A secondary thought that my husband came up with would be to make the flowers, then join those together with either plain knitting or crochet, to allow the puffs to be a little more disperse.

Puff puff, pass?

130 thus far. I'm gonna need a lot more to make anything reasonably sized. Currently about 28"x22". NEED MOAR SOCK YARN.

State of the hexipuffs

68 puffs. One full pair of socks, and four or five other pairs cast on. (I'm not even sure anymore.)

These remain super fun to make and are great for portable knitting. I'm going to need a whooooole lot more.

Hexipuff-a-go-go

The hexipuffs are going very well. I joke with my husband that these are now my spoor; wherever I go, I leave teeny pillows behind me. I've been TA'ing a lot, and they are small enough to work on without being disruptive to the classes. (Lecture classes are hard to TA for. Lots of sitting for information I already know = prime knitting time.)

The amusing side effect is that I don't have as much scrap yarn as I thought I did. I was sure I had a plastic bag jam packed full of sock ends, but damn if I can find it. I do have a few remnants running around, but this means I've started to get creative. I have a skein of 50g of sock yarn that something weird happened to, where it just started to break at random points, so that's all going into the blanket. I had a sock that the washing machine ate a while back and I couldn't bear to throw out...I'm going to try to recycle it into hexipuff form, so I can remember it. I have a couple of pairs of socks that I knit that never quite worked for me. I'm eyeballing those, too. Daven asked why I didn't just buy more yarn (ha ha ha, like I need an excuse), and I think it is because I want this to be mostly a reminder and remainder project.

With that in mind, I need to start working on all of these sock projects I have roaming around. A. I need more socks and B. I need more remnants! Besides, these things are like constantly casting on toe up socks and I feel like I'm stiffing myself on the full sock experience. :)

Bzz bzz bzz...

I had a little falling down today, over at Ravelry. It involved the Beekeeper's Quilt. I've been looking at all of the lovely "use up your scrap sock yarn" quilt ideas out there, and they all kind of left me, well, flat. With that in mind, going three-dimensional seems like a better answer! I'm sure seaming it all up will be a PITA, but I have a LONG WAY to go before I have to worry about that. The little hexipuffs are super fun to make, quick and easy. There are tons of free pattern ideas if I get the urge to start doing fancy schmancy stuff.

So. Yeah. Little hexipuffs. My future is filled with a lot of them. That's one thing to do with the leftover bits of stuffing from the various quilts I've made. Fluffy blanket, we'll see how long it takes for me to get sick of you.

Yarns I have made.

First, the Tour De Fleece yarns:

 From Right to Left, because, yes, that's how it works:
468 yd purple superwash 2 ply merino blend
148 yd Green/pink weird fail coils
256 yd blue/grey single llama
332 yd Red single mystery wool
292 yd brown/grey Navajo plied mystery wool
112 & 114 yd hanks of pastel Navajo plied mohair (Darn, I guess I could have 2-plied those, after all.)
1722 yds total

And fun art yarn spinning from a class I took on Saturday!

From left to right (what, you wanted consistency?): 
Blue silk "caterpillar" yarn, 
purple/dusk/yellow cable/crepe yarn, 
ostrich feather inclusion yarn, 
wrap and roll (so fun! And finally a use for my drop spindle!), 
pigtail yarn with beads and
 triple pass/loopy boucle yarn.

 

Touring

Today was the first day of the Tour de Fleece. I got one bobbin filled with a thick/thin yarn that I'm planning on trying to make some beehive yarn with, and I'm working on a purple bamboo/nylon/superwash merino fiber I picked up in Estes. I split it in half, and surprisingly (for me), I'm going to be trying to get a 2 ply out of it. I almost never do 2 ply yarn, as the lack of matching yardage tends to drive me insane. However, I wanted to spin a little thicker today, so navajo plying it would make for quite a thick, short yarn. So, I go outside of my comfort zone.

Also, I started washing the CVM/Romney fleece I picked up. This is going to be the first full fleece I've processed. Starting weight: 2.5 lbs.

I'll try to get some photos...maybe tomorrow, maybe not. For tomorrow is ren faire. Ooh...maybe I can bring a drop spindle along and spin in garb. It isn't like my friends aren't already aware that I'm weird. :)

(Delayed post due to internet weirdness last night.)

I'm spacing out my posts to seem more productive

See, I finished this sweater quite a while ago. I'm thinking...April, sometime. However, it was for someone who wanted to be surprised, so I refrained from sending photos. She has received it, so, picture time!

Shiny buttons!~

I have no idea why it decided to be sideways. It wasn't when I uploaded it. Sigh.

Yes, it is a very short sweater that is very broad. As a matter of fact, it is this sweater. Very different than I'm used to knitting, and it went pretty quickly. I'm really pleased with the buttons.

Current projects that are getting actively poked at are still the Knit, Swirl sweater, the peacock feathers shawl and two different traveling socks. There are, of course, many others, but they aren't getting much attention, so are sitting in knitter time-out for the moment.

Wow, I really thought I'd bragg...er...blogged about this already.

To quote from my FB: 1958 yards, give or take a few. Polworth silk blend plied against thread. (For reference, the giant green yarn is worsted weight.) 4/24/2013

I'm so pleased with this yarn. I've never spun so fine. Thank you, Colleen, for getting me started on this path 5 years ago. :)

Look at the twist in that hank! (Or lack thereof.)

Also, giant tall socks for my mom. GIANT BLACK SOCKS. *twitch* Yes, quilting ruler is included so you see how ridiculous those things are. I had a few (shorter) ladies ask why I was making thigh highs. No no. 6' tall mother.

Yarn makes for fickle loyalties.

Yesterday I went on an adventure to Mitchell, NE to visit the Brown Sheep Co. production facility with the lovely ladies from Your Daily Fiber.

They sell yarn by the pound at a flat rate at the factory store.

Oh. My. Gods. SO MUCH YARN AND FLUFF CAME HOME WITH ME.

 

Fluff! The brown will be my first goal in the Tour de Fleece.

 

 1 lb cones of sock yarn! (Colours slightly blown out.)

 Lace Weight!

More sock yarn!

 

 Sport weight yarn!

 ZOMG, more sock yarn!

And some worsted weight yarn that really really does not look like this in real life. In person it is a variety of deep shades of berry. And here is where I become fickle; I have cast on a sweater from Knit, Swirl (Thanks, Darcy!) in this berry-coloured yarn, and that is competing with the shawl for attention. (And no, the orange/yellow hank will not be involved in the sweater.) The advantage of the sweater is that it is mostly blind knitting at this point, so I can read and knit at the same time, whereas the shawl is, well. Lace. And, as always, I've got socks on the go that travel with me in my purse. YAAAAAAAAAAARN!