Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

I am home in Georgia and, after a week, still playing catch up. This year I had the privilege of teaching at Unwind. This was year #8 for this gathering. Nancy and Sue put together a delightful retreat! There is time for learning, time for shopping, time for food, and time for camaraderie. Each evening after the afternoon classes but before dinner, we enjoyed happy hour. One suite had the wine drinkers and the other suite had the tea drinkers. I am a tea drinker, so I had a great time hanging out with the scone-munching crowd. A least a couple of us brought an assortment of teas to share. And some inspired soul brought Girl Scout cookies! I did fail a Will save against just one delicious Samoa. Some items from this year's Unwind goodie bag. There was also, of course, yarn! This year's goodie bags were sock project bags made by Marie. The bags include a measuring tape and attached pop-up snips. (Notice the snips retract inside their case when not in use.) There's eve...

Today is the first day of Tour de Fleece 2016. While I am not formally participating in it, I do have my fingers in some spinning projects right now. To kick off the occasion, I decide to post this video from July of 2014. These are Leicester longwool locks from Rivendell Farm in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. These raw locks came from a ram. As you can see, Brûlée likes the male smell. He rolls around in the locks so as to get the smell on himself. I've seen this scent anointing behavior in other animals, such as my favorite pandas at ZooAtlanta. As a spinner, knitter, crocheter, and weaver, haven't we all had a moment when we wanted to just roll in the stash?

I mentioned the Leicester longwool in the post about Maryland Sheep and Wool. I have an upcoming swirl jacket class at The Whole Nine Yarns. I've worn my first swirl jacket a lot . I thought that this time when I teach the class, it would be fun for me to make myself another. I'm also trying to knit from stash because, really, I do not need more yarn. The problem, of course, is that one doesn't need more yarn, but the next project in the queue seems not to match any of the yarn in the stash. Why is that? With some consideration, I did decided I could make my jacket using two handspun yarns already in my stash. #1 Blue-tiful:  #2 Louet Northern Lights: I also decided it would be fun to have a trim of long locks around the outer edge of the jacket. Fortunately, I took Esther Rodger's "Tailspinning" class at STITCHES South this year. And I took Merike Saarniit's "Microwave Rainbow Dyeing" class last year. So I know a little bit about how...