August Sweater, WIP, Yarn School, Batts & a shiny new egg!

YARN: 5 balls Knit Picks Andean Silk
PATTERN: Generic top-down raglan with lace panel, short sleeves, 1×1 ribbing at collar, cuffs & hem
NOTES: No shaping. I wish I had shaped the waist. It’s cute enough, and the yarn has enough drape that it’s not dumpy even though it’s boxy, but it would be way cuter with curves. I have plans to rework this one, making it superawesome! Superawesome. I might give this one to my mom. She seemed to really like it, but maybe she was being polite.

Right now, I’m working on a top-down raglan pinafore dress. It’s not coming along as quickly as I’d hoped because I keep frogging and reworking. My main challenge is really trying to think in terms of a pattern instead of just making it fit me and only me. If I can wrap it up soon (tick tock, tick tock, looking grim), I might have a home for the pattern. The goal is a loose short-sleeved pinafore for winter layering over LS tops, long underwear, summer dresses, etc. And while I do love knitting off the cone, I’m beginning to wonder if I ought to have wound off my donegal and washed it first, since all the stitches lean. And since the skeined stuff is washed, I think. Or is it?

And I’m busting ass getting ready for YARN SCHOOL and FELT SCHOOL!  (We still have spots, including some more newly-added private rooms and discounted group rooms! Register now!).

This year, we have 3 official helper bees, PLUS two cooks. I love cooking, but I’m really excited to be out of the kitchen and into the yarny fun this session. Marissa’s menu looks absolutely delectable, and if the weather cooperates, we may get our hands on the last of the bounty of this summer’s CSA for our veggies. And this year, our beef, eggs & some dairy will be local, too!

The best part of all the extra help is that I get to teach a bit more. I’m going to add a prep lesson and a yarn planning lesson to my batt carding demo, and I think I’ll make some yarn samples spun different ways off the same batt.

Speaking of batts, August Cuckoo for Cuckoobatts Club batts went off today. They’re as cute as a button! You don’t get to see them until next month, but in the meantime, here are the last 2 months’ club batts:

July: Head on the Door (alpaca, hand-dyed wool, hand-dyed sparkle, angelina sparkle)

June: Summer Storm (superwash merino, alpaca & wool, with bamboo & hand-dyed sparkle)

And the last exciting news for the week: One of the cousins gave me an egg yesterday! Here it is, artfully modeled by Irma & Wayne (made by moxie):

The cousins are Patty and Cathy, the 2 black Australorps. They’re named after Patty Duke and Cathy Lane, identical cousins. I was going to call them Patty and Selma, but they don’t have a punchy theme song. You can tell them apart only by Cathy’s lighter feet and Patty’s more iridescent feathers, but not just at first glance. One of them was skulking around inside the coop in the middle of the afternoon. I didn’t catch on until she let out a loud BA-CAAAAAAAWK! and came tearing out of the coop. I ran in and found the egg, but by then she had blended back into the group and I didn’t know who had produced our beautiful first egg.

Afterwards, I made a little privacy curtain for the nest box in hopes they’ll use it instead of dropping it in the corner of the coop: