Say Hello To My Little Friend

So much to report, and many pictures!

First off, the new loom!



This is the 24" LeClerc Compact loom. It's a 4-heddle/6-treadle loom with the ability to go to 8-heddles. I have a 10- and a 12-dent reed for it. I had to replace the side knobs and the crank, but other than that, it's all ready to go! Sadly, I am a participant in this year's Tour de Fleece, which I am focusing most of my energy on, and I don't think I will get to any weaving until the end of July......



These are my outrageous goals for the TdF - I know, it's a LOT! I'm hoping to make sweaters out of the top bundles, a 5-ply (!!!!!!) with those center batts, and break it all up with some lace and what-nottery with the rest. I AM a huge fan of the Tour de France, and plan on watching it every day, so why not spin through it all as well? Please, no betting on how far through this pile I'll get.

As "training" I cleared off all the bobbins, finally getting around to finishing this:



That's about 200 yards of New Zealand Polwarth from Southern Cross Fibers in the "Budgie" colorway. It's absolutely delicious and squishy. It was wonderful to spin and maintained a TON of springiness when it came time to ply.

Anyway - I'll be doing fairly frequent TdF updates, and I have a book review for the rest day. See you soon!

Juneary Knit & Spin

Just as the Juneary weather seems to be coming to an end, I've managed to complete a couple of handknits. The first lovely is something I've wanted to knit for quite some time now, but just now got around to (with a little bit of help from the Webs sale) - the "Shocking!" skirt by Veronik Avery:



This is a very fast, very easy knit. There was some confusion in the tuck row as to which color yarn to use, along with ending up having to do 2 WS rows in a row. This was all worked out by the time I got to the same point the second time around - the pattern is knit in 6 continuous panels - and I was able to breeze through the remainder. The final grafting row, however, was a bit of a nightmare. In completing the Kitchener stitch as written, you would end up with an extra row of Color A. I opted to remove the waste yarn from the provisional cast-on and grafted to my first wrap-row. This proved to be less than ideal; it took a bit to figure out the count using the wraps, and I had to fudge things a little bit to fit things together properly (I was also too lazy to go back and resolve all of what I had already done).

This skirt was knit in Cascade 220 on US 7s. I expect it will get a lot of wear during the cooler months, I'm just hoping that it doesn't pill.

In other feats of completion, here are some socks:



I started these a while ago, and actually completed the first sock - of course, it was the second one that I got hung up on. The solid yarn is Reynolds Soft Sea Wool, and the awesome brown/grey/white is my own handspun 3-ply, from the delicious "Peat" colorway of HelloYarn fiber club. These socks are so freakin' squishy.

There has also been spinning:



200 yards of Romney in the "Pansy" colorway, from the Spunky Eclectic May 2009 Club.



~520 yards of Super Sproingtastic Merino in the "Spring Loaded" colorway (and boy howdy is it spring loaded) from HelloYarn.

I also picked up a Floor Loom! I'm waiting for some parts, so no pictures right now, but soon soon soon. It's the LeClerc Compact model, with a 24" weaving width. It's an X-frame, 4-harness/6-treadle folding loom that I can't wait to get to.