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Dear Ellen,

Do you like your peckers downy or hairy?  Sorry, upon reading my opening line, I realize it sounds way to much like the language of our spam commenters, but to be clear, I am talking about woodpeckers.  I believe this lovely bird is a hairy one.  The two are remarkably similar with differences only in their beaks and outer tail feathers as far as I can tell.  If those are black bars/spots on her outer tail feathers (yes, I can tell she’s a female — no red patch on the back of the head), then I’m wrong, she’s a downy.  But I would expect to see the black spots a bit better and her beak is far more chisel-like than I saw on the pictures of the downy.  Tough call.  I’ll let you know after I post this over in the “Knitting Pipeline” group on Ravelry.  Paula’s an expert.

I’ve made good progress on Manly.  I have almost reached the “joining of sleeves” point in the body entirely with the first skein of Eco+ — was very pleased to see how far it went.  I started the next skein, but realizing I’d need sleeves to join soon, decided to work on those before I continued on the body.  I’ve got one ready to go and am about a third of the way up the second.  I’d be there in no time if I hadn’t picked up two new projects that I need to crack out quickly.

The first of these is a helmet liner using that fabu pattern, Gusseted Helmet Liner from TwinSet Designs.  I’m sure your familiar with it.  (By the way, when I created my project on Ravelry for this, I became your 200th project.  Do I get a prize?  Oh wait, I already got one — that lovely Columbia roving and fun, fun gifts from China.  I am particularly partial to the finger flashlight.  Thanks!) I’m making this for a buddy who deploys in a few weeks. I found out he still only has the government issue crappy acrylic helmet liner and asked him if he’d like a good one. He was thrilled when I said I’d make him one.  I’m making great progress, but am not thrilled with the stretchiness of my cast on — believe I will finish the helmet liner and then try to pick up stitches near the cast on, pick the cast on out and then bind off using Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Cast Off.  Also, instead of doing a provisional cast on for the resumption of knitting in the round after the neckstand, I used two circs as the base and did a figure eight cast on to yield two lines of live stitches — one line oriented up and the other down. It worked great. When I go back to do the ribbing around the face opening I’ll simply pick up the stitches on the sides of the neck stand and be in business.

The next one will be a shawl for my friend Ann.  You may recall that I designed Ann’s Cap for her when she first came down with ovarian cancer.  She’s been in remission for a few years now, but her last scan showed that it’s back.  Surgery is Monday.  I’d like to be able to bring this shawl to her sometime week after next.   The pattern, from Wrapped in Comfort is perfect — named Bigfoot, I’m naming this project Ann’s Big Heart.  Her feet aren’t that big, but boy her heart is!  (I have been meaning to knit from Alison’s book for a while, but was not able to lay my hands on it.  It showed up a few weeks ago when I unpacked the last boxes from the move.) I’m doing it in Socrates — a yarn that has a very warm, very soft feel to it.

Finally, I decided to join in on a KAL on the Knitting Pipeline boards.  Quince and Company picked up a pattern that Paula designed and it is lovely, called Piper’s Journey (click through to see a preview on their site).  I’m not a Piper, but I’ve so enjoyed her podcast and being a member of the Ravelry group, so I couldn’t say no.  Mine’s called Pipeliner’s Journey.  It will, however, have to wait till I finish the other priority projects.  As it’s not yet available (it should go on sale within the week), I may finish them up just in time.  I’m making mine in Quince and Company Chickadee in the glacier colorway.

Spinning continues too…am through the 4 oz. braid of silk and merino and I have a question.  What do you do when you can’t find the end of your single?  Mine somehow disappeared after it broke during the spinning process and now I fear surgery will be the only way to recover it.  As I’d like to ply next weekend, your advice will be valued!

Love, Jan

Dear Ellen,

Today is a short day at the farm (we are heading back early for a send off party for a friend enroute to Afghanistan), but we still managed to pack a lot onto the menu.  (Not the least of which was a very yummy stew — 3 varieties of dried beans, quinoa, fennel stalks, rutabaga, savoy cabbage, carrots, onion, leeks and chicken stock plus a half dozen handsful of fresh herbs (sage, thyme and fennel feathers). Cars were washed, a new bird feeder hung and all the feeders and suet cages refilled, yarn wound, woods tromped and web site troubleshot.  I do hope that my forensic tracking identified the correct source of the obnoxious invasion from this week.

I am finding a great deal of pleasure in watching the bird feeders.  This clever red-bellied woodpecker has been frequenting them, but he also is quite self reliant.   Do you see the nut wedged into the bark of the tree?  He put it there and then he pecked it open so he could get the meat out of it.  He’s also partial to sun flower seeds and suet.

Several of our neighbors are into deer farming.  The deer are sold as venison and some of the males are kept to sell their shed antlers to the Chinese as aphrodisiacs.  It is odd to see them in fields like steers, but really not very different in concept.

Dale is continuing to enable my spinning.  Here is a very lovely solid maple and mahogany lazy kate that he built for me.  I haven’t tried it for plying yet, but did put this bobbin on to see if the tensioning mechanism seemed likely to work.  It does.

And here is a close up of the spinning on the kate — a very lovely Bluefaced Leister (70%) and Tussah Silk (30%) blend.  It spins very nicely and finely — except when I have stayed up too late spinning.  He bought it for me at the same time he bought the wheel.   Yes, enabler.  I need to go show my appreciation now.

Love, Jan

Dear Jan,

Even with Oscar keeping an eye on us, we had a fibery good time at my pal Lisa’s Saturday afternoon.  A bunch of us gathered to say hello to L’s neighbor and the lovely young woman visiting her as a foreign exchange student.

I like to think I engendered international good will by giving M her first spinning lesson.  She certainly seemed happy with the results.

Karen did not find it necessary to spin at all for her knitting.  She was stretching silk hankies, aka mawatas, and knitting the unspun fibers into a beautiful swatch.

No one attempted to knit the ball of yarn* Lisa keeps in her backyard.  I think it is a sign her stash must be overflowing!

Love,

Ellen

* An old bowling ball wrapped with telephone wire.  Lisa is exceptionally clever.

Dear Jan,

I’m so far behind at work and at home, yet I don’t regret having spent the last 3 days spinning with Judith MacKenzie and 17 other like-minded souls.  Two days of spinning exotic fibers, the luxurious nature of which hits me right at spinal level, and then a full day today of laceweight spinning - stretching our brains as we made new neural connections to enable us to spin what was more like thread than yarn.

I am spent.  But happy.

I hope you are happy, too.

Love,

Ellen

Dear Ellen,

That Erica!  She is trying to replace the fiber I talked about in my last post.  I’m not letting her.  The fiber was beautiful and in comparing it to other braids I’ve seen at shops and fiber fairs easily of the same or better quality.

My comment about the felty bits does not mean it was bad fiber whatsoever…just a bit more challenging for me than the smooth as silk, lofty fiber that Erica produces routinely.  I do intend to head back over to her etsy shop though — she said she’s got lots of colorways up right now.  And while I won’t let her replace the sunny yellow-orange braid I used on that yarn, I AM going to acquire more of her work via PayPal payment!!

I just wanted it to be clear to all of our readers that Erica’s work is FABULOUS and when it doesn’t meet her standards (which are very, very high!) she doesn’t like to let it out in the wild!

Love, Jan