Things have been so very technical this past week. This is not how I like it! It’s all figured out and done, so now there is a new shopping cart on the site (and it works!), plus I accept credit cards like a real store! My website is a grownup now. If I could just figure out how to get Wordpress up and running, it would be a banner week.

Shambles just goes about his business as usual. He’s no help at all!

I have all these secret projects (presents) going on that I’m afraid to show anything. I have been working steadily on the pinwheel blanket:

It’s probably 2 feet across now and I’ve used maybe 1/2 the yarn up. It’s the most fun, easy knit. Even if I forget to make a yarn over, I can just lift the strand between stitches and knit it on the next round. No mistakes! This is hand-dyed superwash Merino that’s really soft and almost cottony. It surely makes a nice blanket.

This is today’s spinning. My camera refused to capture the true red, which I hope isn’t a problem when I photograph the yarn!

I added a few new woolly wallpapers to that gallery, as well as e-cards to the site. I’m not thrilled with the e-card setup, so if anyone knows of a better (free) service, I’d love the info!

Maybe next time you visit, I’ll be rockin’ the Wordpress and will actually be able to post to the blog when I feel like it, instead of at the whim of Blogger. Imagine!

The shop is updated. I did LOTS of hand-dyed yarns this week. Most of the handspun is sold, but this one’s still there:

Even when I put the dyed fiber for that yarn together to get an idea of what it would look like, it didn’t jump up at me quite like it does spun up.

This one jumps up at you, too:

I guess it was the week of brights. Ha!

As for knitting, I’m plugging away on the pinwheel blanket, which looks kind of like a poofy hat, since it’s on a short needle. It’s a really fun pattern to knit.

I got a great book the other day- Loop-d-Loop by Teva Durham. It’s a big hardcover book full of gorgeous, clear photos (usually multiples of each design worn by different models and knit in different colors/yarns). I highly recommend it if you like slightly odd stuff. There are a bunch of very clean and modern patterns, which is what I gravitate towards. Teva has a website, if you aren’t familiar with her work. Most of the stuff in the gallery is in the book.

I’m so glad everyone enjoys the self-striping yarn. While I’m not comfortable sharing the specifics of the warping board winding procedure, since I don’t want to cheat Susan Forsyth at woolcombs.com out of her income, I have found some links for you.

Dyeing self-striping yarn without a warping board
This is more like how the warping board works
One more tutorial

Get your own warping board with instructions. It’s very nicely made, so if you think you’ll want to make lots of self-striping, it’s worth spending the money.

Yay for warm weather!!