Spinning Update

Well, I know how to upload a picture, I think. Here is a picture of the shawl I am making using the pattern from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. I made this shawl previously using a lighter weight yarn. This time I am using Briard hair that I spun. I wanted a warm, cozy, comforting shawl for those dreary winter days when it seems that spring will never come. The briard is my Britty, passed on over 3 years ago, but I have bags and bags of her hair. My son told me that I can never come to his apartment and tell him he is a bad housekeeper, no matter how many dirty socks are on the floor or dirty dishes in the sock. He does not and will not keep bags of dirty dog hair in the closet. And I have six or eight.

Anyway, the brown is Britty hair. The green is from some odd roving I had picked up somewhere or other. It was actually an incredibly ugly green and gray, but it spun up beautifully. And the red is brown sheep's wool that my sister sent me a ton of because she met the sheep and it is really soft and wonderful wool. But it's brown. So I dyed it brick red (color choices are limited when the base is brown). And I think it came out pretty nice. most of the shawl is straight knit in the round, but I am throwing in some knit 2 together then yarn overs. and some rounds I am doing a gull stitch. That and the color changes makes it kinda nice. At the moment I am out of yarn. And as soon as I finish the spool on my wheel of lambs wool, I will start another spool of Britty yarn. Looking at the picture, it looks a little bit like a large brown turd, but I am knitting on circular needles and I am not about to take some hundred odd stitches off the needle. You can get the idea. It is basically a big, round shawl that you fold in half when you wear it. And the Britty hair is wonderfully soft and luxurious.

I also filled in some of my profile and uploaded a picture of me on the couch in my old house with Sophie & Luka. It is one of my favorite pictures. I used to have it as my desktop picture at my last job.