This and that... a status update...

Happenings...

I woke up this morning to find a new farmer's market directly across the street from my apartment. Talk about convenient shopping! It will be here every Sunday until Thanksgiving. Here in NYC our markets are not light on the wallet, but the food is all grown locally and is organic--and healthy. I bought myself some nice breakfast to last several days...
A view from the sidewalk where the market is being held:

A partial view of the market from my stoop:

Yum,yum,yum:

For the first time in months I took the rug hooking out! Funny how the urge comes back and the motivation gets recharged. It seems that a rest period is sometimes in order, and healthy. I'm gung-ho once again to get this rug finished.

I wonder if anticipation of Tour de Fleece is partly responsible for this surge in productivity lately? I finally finished plying the too-thin merino that's been sitting for 3 weeks,

and I also started plying a spool of white Finn that I spun last year! Decided to run that one through the wheel once to freshen up the twist before plying it. After I started feeding it through the wheel I had a recollection of imparting additional twist to it once before--because it was falling apart. Now, the plied yarn has so much twist it's slightly hard. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It has occurred to me that this is what I need for tablet weaving. Good! As you can see I like to navajo ply right off the wheel onto a spindle.

Unmentioned yet: I started a new knitting project last weekend. A project for home knitting--I cannot see myself taking this one on the subway. It's Kaffe Fasset's "Gridlock Pillow". I'm using a Knit Pick's yarn called "Wool of the Andes". Seeing how I need 18 different colors, Wool of the Andes is a good choice because it comes in so many shades. I was able to find close matches for all 18 of Kaffe's colors. This is my first intarsia project and I'm following Kaffe's advice to cut short lengths of yarn to work with and let them dangle out the back of the work. So far so good... knock on wood.

To better estimate how long a yarn I need for each block of color, I knit up a 10 x 10 stitch square, un-knit it, and measured how long a yarn it took. It came up to 4 of my arm's lengths. Using this basic unit is working well in estimating how much I need for each section.

I wove another square on my Hazel Rose loom (lovely loom!) using yarn from my other ball of sari silk. This one contains vibrant colors in it, and the square came out very pretty. I wove looser so it was much easier:

The reed for the Herald is a little over half cleaned... another week or so and it can go back into the beater. Just about the time my order of New England Shetland arrives from Harrisville Designs (Yay, NH!). I'll post a pic of the 6 cones when they arrive--all very pretty colors.

My rigid heddle loom found a new owner yesterday, and I'm very glad the young lady decided to take it as I'd just purchased all that yarn Friday evening.