Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The cardinals are back!

I know, that has nothing to do with knitting, but I'm facing a back window as I type this and just noticed the female. I'd heard they were back but this is the first time I've seen them! Really, it's amazing, and all thanks to my neighbour's bird feeder, but we get a cardinal couple living across our back yards every year. I'd love to see their babies some time too but I guess they put their nest into some other part of their mini-territory.

So, yay, it's spring!

But back to yesterday's suggestion box. I am totally intrigued by the wet felting idea and especially by the notion of knitting with roving. Still, if Kathi says she doesn't love doing this, there is probably a really really good reason, and I might actually hate doing it. Perhaps I should test this theory on some less magical roving than what I want to work with? Like, for example, the shorter hank of roving I bought for needle felting and whose colour I have come to dislike?

Another ack! that occurs to me now that I have my yarn all sorted out - more on this organizational solution later in the week - is that I need more wool (or possibly wool blend) in neutral colours. Like, maybe a whole lot of it in just one neutral colour so that I can do larger projects using some of my hand-dyed gems as accents. But since I've been spoiled by all the luxury yarns, I want the neutrals to be super special too. I'm thinking about something from Toots LeBlanc after reading about it on Blue Garter (I totally trust the instincts of a girl who produces work as wonderful as hers), or possibly a subtly-dyed something from Tanis Fiber Arts. I have a skein of the sock yarn in Shadow and ohhhhhhh. I would love to try the Aran weight.

So, suggestion box still open, especially for favourite neutrals to add to my shortlist!

3 comments:

Kathleen Taylor said...

Our birds are back too- I love hearing the blackbirds gossip with each other when I go outside.

I think the reason that I don't love knitting with unspun roving is that the yarn/fabric is too variable for me- it's hard to pull uniform lengths of roving off, so it's hard to have any sort of measurable gauge in your work (not that I'm against improvising). Also, I must pull on my yarn a lot, because I invariably pull the roving apart and have to layer it a lot to get a continuous strand. But it does look lovely when finished. Worth trying anyway.

Kathleen Taylor said...

Here's an example of knitted unspun roving (this person sells patterns and tutorials):
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=15921108

And here's another link, with pictures:
http://www.dudleyspinner.com/createwithunspunroving.html

Mary Keenan said...

Kathi, those projects look fabulous!!! Wow - nothing at all like I was picturing - I was thinking fluffy, but this is just like yarn. I am totally going to get into trouble if they are selling hunks of roving at the country yarn thingy I'm going to in April...