Still here, still knitting

Wow. Work has been keeping me busy, as indicated by large gaps of time between posts. Somehow, I've still managed to get some knitting done in that time, mostly small projects. I gave up trying to further felt my birthday bag after a couple more spins through the washer, with additional ice bath shocks. It did shrink a tiny bit, but it's not as felted as I'd like it to be. The birthday bag will still be perfect for toting around light projects like hats and scarves, or socks if I ever get around to knitting a pair.

I made a second felted bag out of Lopi that finished quite nicely. I made up a simple triangle pattern for the top part of the bag, trying to practice my hand at creating fair isle patterns. I took this creative impulse one step further with the leftover leftovers, with which I made an earflap hat, loosely based on Vinter Lue. I essentially used the same stitch count, but significantly changed the pattern for the body of the hat.



Last Saturday was our S&B field trip to the Fuzzy Farm! That was a fun treat. Gayle and Rich warmly welcomed us to their home, and so did the critters. We stopped by right in the middle of shearing time, as this picture will attest:



Gayle showed us a pile of bags stuffed with fiber from various individual llamas and alpacas, and we were allowed to stick our hands in for a fiber feel. Yum!!! It was so tempting to just lay on top of those bags and roll around in it. Gayle also had samples of spun yarn and finished objects for us to peruse. I'm still on my yarn ban until August, but I put in an order for some gray sportweight yarn to make a shawl from. The batch of fiber from this year wasn't back from the mill yet, as it was just sent off. We were also lucky enough to see some new arrivals to the Fuzzy Farm:



The cria on the left is Thumbellena, who was born on my birthday! The smaller dark brown cria in the center of the picture is Holly's Dolly, only 4 days old when this picture was taken. And of course the two adults are the proud mama llamas. Hopefully we can add an annual trip to the Fuzzy Farm to our S&B field trip agenda. Don certainly seems to have made a friend. (And check out that antique camera!)



So, that's the scoop. At tonight's weekly meeting, I'm hoping to pick a shawl pattern to work up with the silk yarn Beverlee got from eBay. I started working up a test swatch last night and a single strand seems too thin for the pattern to show up well, so I'll consider doubling it. If that is the case, I'll need to borrow a ball winder from someone or I'll be winding by hand for the next month! The finished product will be assuredly decadent.