It's been a whirlwind month ... first Rhinebeck, which was awesome (as always). Good friends, good times. I'm always so sad when Rhinebeck is over, and I have to wait another whole year for it to happen again. Now I'm gearing up to head to the Knitter's Review Retreat next week. But, before I do, I've managed to snap some photos of some of my recent projects!

I was home for three days after Rhinebeck, and then left for SOAR, which was held in Sunriver, OR. It was a wonderful, if exhausting, week. I took a three-day workshop from Sarah Swett called "Spinning for Next to the Skin," which was just amazing (do go check out her website, her weaving and knitting are absolutely incredible). Sarah brought 4 lovely fleeces ~ a black rambouillet, white debouillet, gray polwarth and brown/tan rambouillet. We worked with all of them, doing different preparations (combing, handcarding, drumcarding, flicking). I loved the drumcarder, and have ordered one of my own ~ a Pat Green Happy Hybrid. It should be here in a couple of weeks, and all I really want to do is recard and blend my whole stash, spin really skinny yarn and knit sweaters on size 2 needles that I can wear like teeshirts and lightweight clothing.

I also took 4 retreat classes: the gentle art of plying, with Judith MacKenzie McCuin, Color Blending with Deb Menz, and Teach Spinning and American Longdraw with Maggie Casey. All are already favorite teachers for me, and I loved every class and learned alot as well, that I'm looking forward to incorporating into my own spinning. Being in class with these four women was amazing and so overwhelmingly inspiring; they are all such fantastic and accomplished artists.

Here is yarn from the color blending retreat session with Deb Menz. I had a base of tan colored combed top, which I drumcarded with 6 other colors ~ more and less saturated, complimentary and opposite, and lighter and darker. Then I spun singles from all of them and navaho-plied them into this skein. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, though I'm thinking of a felted bag to hang on my spinning wheel ...



While I was at SOAR, I spun two good-sized skeins of 100% cashmere top. Not sure of the yardage, but it's sort of heavy sportweight. I'm knitting a pair of the Lace-Up Mittens designed by Sara Lamb in the new Homespun Handknit book. I love this pattern; it's so easily adjustable to different yarn weights.

100% cashmere handspun yarn:



And mitten number 1:



The samples from my other classes are still lost in the void of unpacking. Sarah kindly let us all have some of the different fleeces from the class, and I came home with 4 lovely little fluffy batts. I'm planning to spin them fine, and knit a pair of 4-color mittens. More on that later.

This past September, I spun up some superwash merino top that I had leftover from the 2009 club. I had dyed it in pastel shades, which is not something I do alot, but I like to be different with the club fibers and give subscribers different colors, different saturations, and different methods of preparation. So, the leftovers became a three-ply worsted weight yarn that I knitted into a cute vest for my soon-to-arrive new niece:



Lastly, back in October I knitted yet another pair of Maine Morning Mitts from Clara's first book, The Knitter's Book of Yarn, for my friend Anjee. These are from handspun 50/50 cashmere / bombyx silk top, also left over from the 2009 SFT Handspinning Club (it's nice having leftovers :-D ):




Oh, and by the way. My apologies for the terrible photo quality. I took these with my iPhone, because I am ::in between:: cameras at the moment.