Bad Planning and a finished Chullo

I have spent WAY too many hours in the last couple of months re knitting things.  Like, hours and hours and hours. For garments, I usually swatch, but even when I do sometimes things don't fit.

And even if something doesn't need a swatch I decide, despite 50 hours more or less of work on it, that it's the wrong size, or I'm doing the wrong item (scarf vs. wider dresser scarf...), I frog and reknit.

For example:  I have some handspun which I did several years ago. Early handspun effort.  I loved the colors by Gale in the initial roving, but once spun up the lavender tones were...well.. a little too dim and undecisive for me. (A nice way of saying that pale pinky lavender makes me nauseous, even when offset by yellow...).  In an effort to destash, I pulled it out, decided that the yarn would look great in  the Morning Surf scarf pattern.  I had seen it in a 2008 issue of SpinOff and apparently it's now available for FREE! In the initial spinning I added some beads. It looked like dresser scarf project when I started the clever pattern, then realized that the beads at one end destined it to be a neck scarf.  I've started this FOUR countem FOUR times in different widths.  Hopefully now I've got it right.

The pattern does REALLY WELL at bringing one's eye to the unplanned color variations. Despite the fact that this is an early spinning effort,  I will give this away.

SO with all the reknitting this summer and early autumn, it was with EXTREME PLEASURE that I FINISHED something.  Son B requested a chullo in Clemson colors.  Yes, Virginia, there IS a Clemson group on Ravelry!!

B has a large head, relatively speaking.  (I also had to start this project several times but as it's bulky weight, it finished quick once I figured  it out...).  I found, thanks to Bernat, a top down chullo pattern.  (All of the prior chullos in my life were bottom up...). The pattern is in this free ebook. Oh, thank you Bernat.  Thus, I could knit until the crown fit B's head.  He loves the photos I've sent...I'd better get it to him before football season's over!!

Susan's travels and more Peruvian textiles

I am lucky to know  three people (on two different trips) who have hiked the Inca trail to Machu Pichu  in the last two months...as you might know, I myself merely took the train and the bus...

AND my friend Susan who I stayed with last weekend on a quick trip to Massachusetts has also been to Peru as well. Susan shared some of her handknit and backstrap woven purchases.  I only had my camera to photograph with so the photos are not great...

I love the brilliant green and black hat and the motif of the second woven strip.  Both hats are alpaca.

I did some internet searching and came upon this great thing

Apparently this was the garb of the Peruvian downhill ski team during the 2010 Winter Olympics.  How grand!  Wonder what the fiber was?  Here's a link with more:


http://blog.oregonlive.com/knitting/2010/02/knitting_in_the_actual_olympic.html

While visiting Susan and Son R, R and I went to the MFA, one of my favorite places.  I hadn't been there in years.  The highlight of the visit was this

These are REAL taxidermied hummingbirds turned in to a brooch and earrings, done in the 1870's in England....The link to an MFA site with more discussion is here.  You can't see from the photo, but the beaks are gold and the eyes, rubies.  They look a little like scared hummingbirds with Buckwheat haircuts, don't they?

Ironically, after arriving back home, I was watching my feeders on the porch the other night.  It was early dusk and I could see the red rim around the humingbird feeder but not the small thing flitting around it.  (It's almost the end of hummingbird season here although I have an acquaintance who had one at her feeder all winter last year.) At first I thought it was a dark little skipper, but after a bit I realized that it was a juvenile hummingbird.  Magic!

A spider thing and a new Savannah yarn store!

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article on garden spiders in the Sunday paper. 

I started looking at webs a little more in my yard and saw what I now know is a Spiny orb weaver and her web.  I tried to take a photo (on automatic mode, of course) but the spider and its slender web were so fine that I had to go to manual focus.  Got some lovely pics.

What a weaver she is!  Does anyone else in nature weave their own fabric?

Meanwhile...visited a new yarn store in Savannah, The Frayed Knit, opened by my friend Jennifer, here's Linda out front.  Of course, I bought some roving.

I would like to spin Linda's hair!!