Guess what? We have winners!

They are:

Karen from Oklahoma

Melinda from Slightly Obsessed

MX from ARKnitKnut

and

Penny from Penny Lane

I’ll be sending you e-mails to find out your prize preferences and what colors you like!

Congratulations!

Thanks everyone for playing along with me (I had 28 entries!!!) and the Happy Blogiversary Wishes! I had a great time!

Special thanks to Agent B for pulling the winning names…

In dyeing news, I finally got more dyes stocks mixed (I’m moving up from ProChem One Shots to ProChem WashFast Acid Dyes. There are more color choices so I even bought their color card. I am so excited about the colors that I am dyeing with today. They are all my favs — purples and greens, pinks and browns… I can’t wait to see how they come out! Oh, and how can I forget that I did some tie-dying this weekend too! I can’t wait to post those photos!

Once again, congrats to my contest winners and thank you so much for all your nice comments. Love them all!!!! I can’t wait til Punkin comes to fold my laundry. I have a feeling that may take a while since it looks like she lives in Oregon… hummmm…..

Oh, and one last thing… Check out Angie’s blog at Knitrelief. She make her own Lazy Kate! I’m going to have to pass the thanks back once again to Leslie for the wonderful instructions that IHA and I used to make our tutorial… Thanks Leslie!!!

I can’t quite get my act together to post about anything knitterly or spinnerly tonight. It has been a long week and it is summer and girls want to play, you know…

I have a couple of photos for you though. This one is of Agents K and J doing the whipped cream pie eating contest at IHA’s company picnic last night. I just love that Agent K , the almost teenager that she is, still has enough kid left in her to do these kinds of things and completely enjoy herself.

Here is something wacko growing in my garden. My bee balm has gone double decker!

Crazy thing, isn’t it?

Also, don’t forget there is still time to enter my blog contest! I was so excited to get all those comments! I tried to e-mail back to as many of you as I could! Please know that I loved your comment even if I didn’t get a chance to reply yet! The Agents and I are very excited for the drawing on Sunday morning!

Oh, and one last thing, I wanted to post a couple of shout-out links to some Etsy shops that I have frequented:

LisaEverettDesigns.etsy.com – I bought some cute little pendents from her and they are as cool in person as they are online.

Dragonflies.etsy.com – I bought some fridge magnets at this shop and they look so nice that even IHA noticed them and he never notices anything!

Spinsanity.etsy.com – This shop sells decorated hand spindles. I haven’t bought any yet, but they intrigue me.

Stringsandyarn.etsy.com – This is another start up fiber shop like mine. I like that Jodie is naming all her colors after music she has played on her violin. She is a little low on inventory right now, but I think she is planning on updating soon.

Paperlove.etsy.com – Knitcole linked to this one the other day on her lj and it sells some really cute notecards and gift tags. After Agent K saw the gift tags, she decided she wanted to make some things for Etsy too which kept her busy for almost an entire day!

I wonder if there is an Etsy Junior?

Friday, July 27 is my first Blogiversary!!! In that time, I have written 193 posts, received 1,189 comments, and Akismet has blocked 10,817 spam comments. Akismet works hard. He deserves a raise.

Hey, do you remember when my blog looked like this:

I loved that Chocolate Bar theme, but it wasn’t very robust. I’ve moved on to these wonderful sidebar widgets that I love so much and keep me from breaking my blog at 11:30 at night and completely freaking out! I have also learned so much html and even some xhtml and css in the past year. Actually, I think, quite a bit if you consider that I knew nothing when I started, not even how to hyperlink!

Anyway, I could wax on about my year in blogging all night, but this post is supposed to be about my

CONTEST!!!

Yes, there is a contest of course. What is a blogiversary without prizes?? And Cake!!! Of course there will be cake!!! Yum!

So the contest is easy! All you have to do is write a comment under this blog post. That’s it! Ok, well, that is almost it. I think it would be nice if you could tell me something that you may have learned in this last year that you didn’t know before or if you could just let me know about a post or photo you particularly liked. That’s it. That is not too hard, right? Of course, if you just want to leave a comment to say “hi,” that is ok too — you can still win.

What will you win??? Well, I don’t know yet. I think it will probably be specific to the winner. You know, if you knit then I’ll send yarn. If you spin, I’ll send fiber. If you scrap, I’ll send something croppy-ish. Of course there is always chocolate too! I think there will be even more than one winner. We will write down names and draw winners from a hat, or maybe I’ll put you into excel and generate random winners that way. I guess it all depends on how I feel that day. Oh yes, that reminds me, I think I’ll have the contest close at midnight on Saturday, July 28. How does that sound?

Guess what I did today?  I made this:

It is a lightbox so I can attempt to take better photos!

Here is another view:

I joined some groups on Ravelry (none of which I have had time to post on yet), one of which is the Etsy group.  While reading the forum posts last night, I came across a link to Strobist where I found the most excellent directions on how to make a light box to photograph objects with a white background.This means I can now take very artsy roving photos like this:

Anyway, making the box was really easy and I had plenty of time to make it before leaving for my new job this morning.  (Yes, I have new job!!! But I’ll write more about that in a future post..) (What? Don’t you think a blog should have a bit of intrigue???)And one more thing before I’m off to bed, and I leave you this post so you can comment your hearts out.  I just wanted to share a link to an interesting Norse Mythology “legendary saga.”   I was researching a colorway name for a roving and I came across this story of Kara and Helgi.  Etsy doesn’t let you do hyperlinks and I just wanted to share.

Thanks for reading!!!  I’m off to read HP7 now!

I did a little stripping, spinning, and swatching exercise this week.  I was thinking about hand painted rovings and the different effects you can get by plying it different ways.  One of the the topics this week at Spinning Spider Jenny’s blog was about stripping your roving before you spin it.  I thought I would take a section of handpainted roving, strip it, spin it, and then ply some of it 2 ply and some of it Navajo 3 ply and then swatch them and then see how the different colors intermingled.  My hypothesis was that the Navajo 3 ply would be more stripy and  2 ply would be more homogeneous with less of a stripy look when knit up.  Let’s see what happened, shall we?

This all started with 100 percent superwash wool roving.  I hand painted it with purples, greens, and charcoal dyes (I was going for a “stormy war goddess” effect.)

I had about a one yard section that I split into 8 which I then predrafted before spinning.  My singles were approximately 18 w.p.i.  (I have no photos of these; I don’t know what I was thinking.)

Here is the resulting  Navajo 3 ply yarn:

and the resulting  2 ply yarn:

You can see the ply back on the w.p.i. gauge has a long bit of just green.

Here are the 2 yarns next to each other.  You can’t really tell if one is more homogenous than the other by just looking at them.

Finally, there are swatches!

2 ply:

(U.S. 6 needles, 20 st/4 inches)

3 ply:

(U.S. 6 needles, 17 st/4 inches)

and both together:

And as to my hypothesis? Well, they both stripe.  The 2 ply has stripes that flow into each other very gracefully while the 3 ply has stripes that are more abrupt.  I think if there had been a wider range of colors in the roving, the Navajo 3 ply would come out looking much different than the 2 ply.  I also think that if I had taken the time to do one with a conventional 3 ply, that would have shown the greatest homogenization with the least amount of striping.

What do you think?  How do you like to spin your handpainted rovings?  I bet if you gave the same roving to 10 different spinners, you would get 10 different yarns!

I can’t believe this is Connecticut. Even though every day has not been perfect, I think we might be having a record number of beautiful days this summer!

I have some dyeing and spinning stuff to write about, but that is going to have to wait for a less sunny day as we have to get outside and enjoy this weather. I do have some photos that I want to share though.

Last year I wrote this post about Daylilies. Since then, I did indeed acquire Siloam Merle Kent from Olallie and here she is. So cute!

And just to show she is really growing in my yard…

Here are a few other photos that I hope you enjoy! Have a great day!

We had Crazy Hat Dinner tonight to commemorate Agent J’s success in earning 20 stars on the chore chart so far this summer! Not only did we have crazy hats, but Agent J received her Spotted Frog Webkinz as her incentive prize. The other 2 girls are close, but not quite there yet. They get stars for doing things like remembering to breathe emptying the dishwasher or tying their shoes taking out the trash. No, seriously they are pretty good. It is just that sometimes it seems like they squirt the Windex, do a couple of wipes, and they think that is star quality chore doing. I have a new sign up to remind them that stars are for jobs well done with effort. I do have to say that they are getting pretty good at cleaning the kitchen when they can cooperate with each other.

Of course I have some photos for your entertainment pleasure:

Not only did the girls make their own crazy hats, but they made my crazy hat as well:

This next guy, we don’t know who he is, he just showed up for the toasted pita pockets:

Here is Agents J and B signing onto Webkinz. I think she named her spotted frog, Julia.

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is such a gorgeous day here so far! I’m trying to blog outside, though the sun is pretty bright making it difficult to see the screen. This was a great week for solar dyeing and I have some new natural dye colors to show you. I did manage to get some very light green color with Hayscented and Bracken Ferns. (For anyone new to my blog, I use alum as a mordant in all my natural dyeing.) The Bracken Fern broth was a golden brown so I was very surprised to end up with a light green color. The Marigold blossoms with their pink broth gave me a nice yellow color.

This week, I am brewing up some Coreopsis and Daylily blossoms (pictures during the week, I hope).

I finally took my the apron class at Gone Quilting that I wrote about quite a while ago. It turned out to be quite different than what I had anticipated. For some reason I had expected it to be a very large class with a lot of hustle and bustle and it actually turned out to be a semi-private class. Also, the other student was a very nice lady I know from the LYS who reads my blog! (Hi M! How far did you get on yours?) I was hoping to complete the apron in one evening and I probably could have if I hadn’t been so tired. The instructor, Diane, was very friendly, pleasant, and knowledgeable. I don’t really have the time right now, but I hope to take more classes there in the future.

This is what I have so far:

Knittingwise, I have not been very productive lately. I did start Fifi and so far I am problem free. I have noted that a few people have written on the Sexy Knitting blog that armhole area has not been large enough and this could be a problem for me as I usually have to do extra increases there. I am, however, nowhere near to the trying-it-on stage yet.

Project: Fifi by French Girl Knits

Yarn: Rowan Calmer in color 490 – Vintage (This is a light lavender.)

Thoughts thusly far: The yarn is soft. The pattern is well written. I just need some more time in the day!

In other news, I sold my first handdyed rovings on Etsy last night! Yay and Whoo hoo!!! Now I get to find out how the rest of it works. So far it seems pretty easy as my buyer has paid with Paypal… So, I guess I’ll just be off the post office tomorrow! I still have more things to add. I have dyed all the roving/top that I currently own and I’m waiting for a new shipment. I still have to explore different vendors to find out the best places that are out there.

Here are a couple of things that I have learned this week about dyeing. First, if you use foam brushes to paint your wool/yarn, do not put them in your main dye jar if you intend to save it for future use. I really think that the foam brushes harbor mold spores and are not to be trusted! Second, it is ok to put superwash roving through the spin cycle, but not Blue Faced Leicester! Felt-a-rama! I don’t know what I was thinking!

So to finish up, I have a cute Agent J riding a John Deere photo:

We may be off to watch Harry Potter this evening. We can’t wait! Hope everyone has a great day!

Things are finally starting to come together for me. Today is finally a day of accomplishments! I spent the morning mixing dyes and getting some more rovings out into the sun. You may be wondering, “Why the heck is Spincerely so intent on getting all this dyeing done?” Well, the answer to that is that I finally(!!!!) opened my Etsy Shop. Yes, I know, I have been talking about it forever and I have finally (!!!!) done it! It is very exciting! I felt like I was actually working this morning. It is very motivating. I still have so much to learn too! Now you are probably wondering, “Where the heck can I find this Etsy shop anyway?” and the answer to that is at: www.spincerely.etsy.com. Please go and visit me. I know, I need to work on a lot of my styling and wording, but I have to start somewhere, right?

So as much as dyeing is hard work, I found that naming the colorways was even harder! I tried to get the Agents to help. I thought together we could come up with some clever names and it would be fun and the names would be cool. I look at catalogs and websites all the time and notice the names of things and I always thought that I would be good at it. Well, that is just not so! I named my first one Cleverly Clover and that was fine, but when I had to do more, I just couldn’t think of anything. Then I remembered this awesome book that I bought when I was expecting Agent J. It is called The Complete Book of Magical Names by Phoenix McFarland. I looked through it and there is a huge section of Goddess names so that is what I’m going to use in my Etsy shop. All my colorways will be named after Goddesses. It is fun, educational, and it saves some of my brain cells for other activities.

It takes a bit of time to add each item into Etsy. I hope I get a bit faster at it! I do have some other things like beaded stitch markers, some felted items, and some handspun to put in it, so if you check it daily there may be new items all the time! And please, if you have any feedback please feel free to share it with me. Have a great evening!

I don’t think there could possibly be any better weather for solar dyeing, do you?

I mentioned in a previous post that I finally procured the ingredients needed to make Terry’s Tubs for solar dyeing. Now, I finally get to show you photos of what they look like out in the field doing their jobs.

I currently have a baby one that I’m using for natural dyeing:

The yarn inside of Baby Tub is swimming in a broth of marigold blossoms from the flowers pictured to its left. It looks good from here, but sometimes you take the yarn out just to find that nothing “stuck.” I think I will let it swim for another day or two before I rinse.

I also have a full size Momma Tub that I’m using for my ProChem handpainted dyeing. I stuck my *former* oven thermometer in there (which I never looked at when it lived in my oven anyway) and temps were seriously going through the roof (aka “going roof!”) yesterday. I think I hit 175 degrees! All the dye is being absorbed so that means it is working. So much easier than having to set the hotplate up outside to steam the yarn one little batch at a time. (I’ve notice a lot of internet people oven dye and I think this (Terry Tub solar) is a very similar method. I’d like to try oven dyeing but I only have my one oven in my kitchen so I can’t do that yet. I asked IHA if we could get an oven for our garage and he said, “Sure.” He is so easy! You never know, someday we may see one hanging out by the side of the road or an inexpensive one in the Foothills Trader.)

Here is some of the solar dyed fiber from a previous batch than the one shown above:

Now I’m looking for a clear storage container with a clear cover to make into a sort of “mini-hood.” I went to Walmart and they had clear containers with colored lids and colored containers with clear lids, but nothing that was totally clear. (Although now that I have a sheet of plexiglass, I could use Spider Jenny’s method and place the plexiglass on top of a cardboard box with cut-outs for one’s arms. Though please note that one still needs to wear protective eyewear and a mask for working with dye powders.) I’ve been using so much dye that I need to mix some more. I think I may do some for the upcoming Project Spectrum colors. The August/September colors are Brown, Orange, and Purple. Now that should be interesting!

Hi Everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday week! Tomorrow it is time to get back to “real life.” I even went to the store tonight to get cold cuts to be prepared. However, I went to Price Chopper, home of the world’s slowest deli, and I had number 33 and they were on 19. No way I was waiting!

The Agents are all back from camp and we swam them hard today so they shall sleep well! Tomorrow, two of them are off to day camps so the driving begins! Oh, what fun! Really though, I think I just have this one week where there is lots of diving and the rest of the summer all the driving is closer to home.

As my new banner proclaims, I have been doing A LOT of crafts! I don’t even think I will have time to blog about everything I have been doing! One of the more exciting things is dying and I will be posting more about that during the week, but let’s just say my Terry’s Tub components are no longer head wear and they are “going roof*” with high temps!

One of the really romantic things that IHA and I did while the agents were at camp was to make a tensioned Lazy Kate. While at Brighid’s dyers, I was lamenting my lack of one, and Leslie suggested that I make one (I wonder how close this is to what she described to me?). Spinning Spider Jenny then suggested that I make one and blog about it. Hummm… like I need more things to do! But I did it with IHA and I photo-chronicled it in infinite detail and now I’m going to share the experience with you.

{Just an aside to my non-spinning friends: A Lazy Kate holds bobbins of “single” spun yarn that are spun together to make a thicker, more balanced yarn. Finished yarn can have have all sorts of plies to it. You can actually keep it as singles (it will have a little “energy” to it), or you can have 2 ply or 3 ply, or you can ply 2 stands of 2 ply together. The possibilities are infinite. If you have a Lazy Kate that is tensioned it helps to keep the singles from tangling or knotting up on themselves as they go back through the spinning wheel to be twisted with their mate(s).}

First, we choose a piece of wood from the garage. I had a choice of pine, oak from our own trees, or left-over maple from a long ago rocking horse project. I chose the maple because it was really pretty and also had substantial weight. We figured out the size that we would need by placing 3 bobbins and the tensioning knobs (found at Webs by LFG) on top. IHA used one of his long neglected power tools to cut it to size and I gave it a good sanding.

Next we did a little more detailed measuring (or rather IHA, the engineer did).

Oh and we also had to find some dowel and find the right size drill bits to match the size of the dowel and the size of the knobs. This was probably the most difficult part as finding anything in our home always seems near to impossible even though we probably spend a quarter of our lives cleaning and organizing. So then he drilled in the holes and

cut the dowel with another long neglected power tool.

I sanded some more.

IHA inserted the dowels and they have a really nice tight fit. I put a little wax on the tensioning knobs before putting those in as they have to be able to rotate a bit.

I added some string for the tensioning and it seems to work. Time will tell though, I hope to test drive it soon! I’ll be sure to let you know how it works!

* When temps get hot, I always think in my head “Going roof! Going roof!” That is what Agent K would say when she was wee-little and we would take her temp and she had a fever. “Going roof! Going roof!” You don’t even want to know the thing she says now! Not that it is what she says that is bad, it is just the sheer quantity of how much she can talk! At least we always know what she is thinking:)