Maureenie Makes Things

How To Wash Your Woolens

Once upon a time, in a pre-Eucalan world, tired of rinsing and rinsing and rinsing, and hating the huge mountain of wet towels generated because you're not supposed to wring out wet wool, I did an experiment. I put a small wool goody in the washing machine, turned it on a short cold wash, and let it do its thing. Much to my amazement, my little project came out just fine, ready to be laid flat to dry, which it did in record time. Next I tried it with something a little more precious, with the same results. This went on until I accidentally felted some alpaca socks, at which point I lost the nerve to throw in something like a sweater. 

While Eucalan has made life a lot easier, the giant mountain of wet towels still serves as a serious procrastination agent. And so what a great thing to find the solution at exercisebeforeknitting.com (whose author has some lovely designs as well): leave the agitation out of the equation. Use the tub to soak and then go directly to spin. Voila!  Life is good!

Maureen

approach the day with passion and a light touch

Danger, Will Robinson!

Once upon a time I attended a weaving open house.  I watched her dress the loom and decided right then and there that  weaving, with all its glorious potential for combination of colors and generation of pattern,was a creative cold that I wasn't going to catch.  Nope, that was one fiber related activity that I was immune to.   

Or so I thought until today, when I stumbled across the Ashford Knitters Loom.

I don't know if it was the part about using knitting weight yarn for weaving or the part that said I could have a scarf in a couple of hours.  I think it was that second part. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the second part that put me over the edge.  And to hammer the nail in the coffin, there was the part about how it folds up. You know, as in, it will fit into the studio.  And how it's portable. As in, I can work in the park while Maggie gets her outside time.

Here's something made with it:   I love the idea of mixing a woven scarf with a knitted sweater.

puskin3's pygora scarf on ravelry.com

Sigh. It all started so innocently.  I noticed that my vest (a future post) was swallowing up yarn faster than expected. After some quick calculations, I realized that I was going to be about one skein short.  This required immediate emergency shopping, since the yarn I'm using has been discontinued.  It's not easy to find, and one bumps into things while looking…

Have you heard anything about these?  A quick look at the ravelry discussion sounded like a foreign language.  Surely it can't be that hard.  

Is there any point even in trying to resist?

Maureen

What wonders and delights await?