My order from Jimmy Beans Wool arrived with some of their fun eco-yarns.




On the left is Vermont O-wool (organic) which will be a men's hat design. On the right is Maizy which is a corn silk and nylon blend. This yarn will become some girly socks.



On the top is some Panda Cotton which is my favorite of the bunch. It is a bamboo/cotton/nylon blend and is soft and elastic. It will become some fingerless gloves with a lacy cuff. The Karaoke is a soy silk and wool blend that will become mittens. I also bought four more colors of Pakucho naturally-colored cotton since it was on sale.



I've been spinning up some lovely angora blend fiber from Anne at Wooly Wonka Fibers with my favorite Tracy Eichheim spindle. It has a rabbit design and is quite the little speed demon. This yarn will become socks for myself and DH.




Here's the rest of my spindle collection. I have a Tracy Eichheim production spindle, a laceweight spindle, a Bosworth spindle, a cotton spindle, a Louet boat anchor spindle for plying and the very first spindle I used from colorful fimo clay. I've broken off the hook many times but I can't bear to get rid of it.

If you are reading this blog entry on any knitting blog other than Knitting in Color, http://knittingincolor.blogspot.com/ , then you can be sure my blog entry and photos were used WITHOUT my permission.

I've found some entire blog entries (and my photos!) were used in two other blogs. This is apparently called blog scraping and people do it to make money through adsense. I could shorten my feed but you'd have to go to my blog every time I post so instead I'm just going to post this disclaimer occasionally. If you want to see if your blog entries are being copied, go to http://www.copyscape.com/ .

I'm still undecided about my Great American Aran Afghan squares. I have ten squares completed and an additional 7 skeins of the now defunct tomato Wool of the Andes. Knitpicks kindly sent me a list of colors they think would complement the tomato yarn and I could probably even find more of this color but honestly I'm not sure I want to finish it. I have had this project hanging over my head for years and I'm never comfortable with unfinished projects.



DH thinks I should just make a small afghan which is a possibility. I also could make a bunch of pillows but I don't really need more pillows. Hmmmm.

The skies are finally clearing here. It is now quite hot and I'm hoping DH comes home early enough to install the window air conditioners.

DH and I went to Cirque du Soleil's Saltimbanco last night and it was absolutely spectacular. It was so much better finally seeing them perform in person instead of on tv. I was positive someone was going to kill themselves about 10 different times throughout the show.

We did see a near miss - a woman acrobat was propelled flipping into the air from a swing where she was supposed to land on the shoulders of a guy standing on a long pole held by another guy and she missed. It wasn't until she started falling that I saw she was fortunately attached to a wire. The most popular performers were the acrobats who jumped on four poles in the center of the stage. One guy actually climbed up a pole upside down with only his hands.

The evening was jam-packed with jugglers and strong men and clowns and drummers and trapeze artists and live music. We got there early which was fortuitous because most of the performers come out before the show and start goofing around with the children in the audience.

I have an idea for dealing with running out of yarn for the Great American Aran Afghan but I have to wait until it clears up to take photos. At least all this rain has been creating some gorgeous sunsets.

I've been furiously cleaning the house looking for my amethyst necklace shown above. DH bought it for me for our anniversary last month from the Sundance Catalog and it had this unusual handmade clasp that was partially open. I wore it constantly so I have absolutely no clue how it disappeared. I need to stop thinking about it and just go ahead and replace it. Of course that will be when the first necklace finally shows up but I can always get a jeweler to make me a matching bracelet.





Here is the fingering weight hemp from Elann. I'm going to use these colors to make a small stranded bag. I'm pretty happy with the shininess of this yarn.









Here's the Pakucho naturally-colored cotton. (Yes, I dearly need to get a tripod.) It hurts my hands just to think about knitting with it. I have read the colors darken with washing so I'm going to go ahead and pre-wash each skein several times to see if I can't soften it a bit before knitting. I'm not sure what I'm going to make with it - maybe some thick legwarmers.

In the comments Kayla W mentioned a yarn made from corn silk so I've added that to the list of fun yarns to try this summer. It is called Maizy and is made by Crystal Palace. It has elastic in it so I will make some colorwork socks.

And in other news, I just realized the Tomato color of Knitpicks' Wool of the Andes has been discontinued. It was the color I was using for the Great American Aran Afghan and it serves me right for taking so long to finish. Tomorrow I'll post all of the squares I've finished and some of my options at this point since I only have a few more skeins of the yarn.

I often find dealing with my stash daunting. I dream of being a lace knitter with just one large skein of laceweight yarn keeping me knitting for long periods of time. The sheer numbers of colors you need for my type of knitting make the stash much larger. No matter how big my stash is, I always wish I could find yet another color during a project.

Above is a photo of my current stash - I still try hard to keep it under a certain size because of all the insects in the southwest. I recently knit up and donated my DK weight stash and most of my Shetland yarns.The empty containers are yarns that are in the freezer - I rotate all of them in and out of the freezer for moth prevention purposes.

One of the ways stranded color knitting is different from other types of knitting is that when you finish a project, you have many more partial skeins of yarn than someone who knits with just one color. After multiple colorwork projects it can become a challenge not just to use up all those little bits of yarn but also to store and label them. I definitely try to keep all my weights and brands together but I still end up with small quantities of mystery yarns.

I occasionally measure the wraps per inch of an unidentified yarn to determine the weight but more often I just eyeball a yarn to determine if it is the same weight as the others I want to use in a project. I also have no problem mixing fibers to get the colors I want. Occasionally (gasp) I don't even care and use different weight yarns in the same stranded project.



For my current chullo project I have three yarns of varying fibers and varying weights in the colors shown above. I have some Knitpicks' Andean Treasure (100% alpaca, sport weight), some Elann's Pure Alpaca (100% alpaca, worsted weight), and some Cascade Lana D'Oro (half alpaca/half wool, worsted weight) and I want to use them all for this project. What I'll probably do is use the sport weight for a child's chullo and the other two yarns for the adult hat. If I wasn't going to write up the pattern I'd probably use them all in the same hat just to give me some extra color choices.

Another issue is my need for different color combos to get inspired for a new project. I can knit 3 pairs of Arctic Spring Mittens out of the 4 skeins of Elann's Pure Alpaca Fina sportweight needed for the pattern just by switching the colors for the hand. I wanted to make a few more pairs but did I use the yarn I already had? Of course not - I bought two new colors to make additional color combos instead! sigh

This summer I'm planning on playing with some eco-friendly yarns. I've already ordered some Pakucho naturally-dyed cotton and several colors of hemp. I'm also really looking forward to trying bamboo, soy silk, and Vermont O-Wool. I'll probably try to do colorwork with them all with varying degrees of success. I've found the Green Knitter web site very helpful and educational with info different methods of yarn production with links to many environmentally-friendly companies.

Speaking of ecological knitting, here are some market bags I knit years ago from long-gone patterns. The one on the left is knit from thick cotton and much too big to be useful. Once you sling it over your shoulder and fill it up the bag will drag on the floor unfortunately. The one on the right is knit from Euroflax linen and much stronger than it looks. Both have been retired from use as a result of stretching and are now used to hold my various handknit items. I will probably make a few more (possibly from THIS free pattern) when my new yarns arrive.

One of the prettiest drives in New Mexico is the Turquoise Trail connecting the East Mountains of Albuquerque with Santa Fe. Along the trail you'll see small mining towns, whimsical hills dotted with pinons, and the funky arts town of Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid).




Some outdoor art in Madrid.




Entering town from the south.



Some of the little shops.



Some fiber related outdoor art.



If you stroll down the alley next to the Mineshaft Tavern, you'll find the Tapestry Gallery which sells some hand-dyed roving and yarns along with handwoven items.

I'm calling these the Arctic Spring mittens because they are really quite lightweight. I used four colors of Elann's Peruvian Alpaca Fina which is a sportweight yarn but I used smaller needles than what was suggested to counteract alpaca's tendency toward stretching. I used size 2 dpns for the cuff and size 0 for the hand. They have a peasant thumb and a scalloped hem and the pattern is HERE.






I have one final idea for using alpaca for colorwork. It is going to be a chullo type hat for DH. I am also making some funky socks in gray, white, and burgundy from a very old issue of VK.

I took some new photos of my cat fur spinning and knitting experiments from years ago. Above you see the cat fur spun on my spindle (I find it easier to use a spindle), plied, and knitted up in a scarf (top) and mittens.



These mittens are brown but actually the fur came from a black Persian cat I had named Pumpkin. Her fur was wonderful to spin - it could be up to 5 inches long on her tail and it had a crimp in it.



This scarf is a mixture of fur from Pumpkin and my Himalayan cat Bosco. Bosco's fur was almost as long as Pumpkin's but extremely straight and slippery. It was so slippery it was difficult to spin by itself so I mixed it with Pumpkin's fur for this stockinette scarf. The combo of furs always makes me laugh because they hated each other's guts in real life but now they're together for eternity.



I made some simple mittens with a folded cuff and peasant thumb with Pumpkin's fur. These have felted over the years but they are very soft and extremely warm.