Why yes, it IS my birthday! My MIL doesn’t believe one should make one’s own birthday cake, so she borrowed my DD yesterday and they returned with this. Thought you might like a slice, too!
The air is getting a bit chilly….time for some lovely silk and merino Zephyr lace yarn…perfect for knitting or weaving beautiful shawls! Hope you enjoy this baker’s dozen of new hand dyed colors as much as I enjoyed making them.
Hi All,
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything of substance, and I apologize for that. The longer it got, the more I felt I needed to post something AMAZING, which meant I put it off even more! LOL.
We’re back to homeschool here, which has been a challenge in getting routines and attitudes (mind included) in line. In light of that, here’s a bit of ‘What I did this summer’.
June was spent sweltering since our air conditioner gave it up. It wasn’t that old, but not a great brand, and the furnace was from when I was in middle school, so we thought it would be a good plan to replace the entire system. Which meant getting several bids (still haven’t heard back from the third guy, guess he was too busy for us!). Loving the new system….we have a dual stage blower so we can filter the air more, and the thing actually BLOWS.
As part of the HVAC fiasco, I wanted a second return put in, so we pulled down the ugly ceiling tile in the basement. Oh, and we had a Radon Mitigation System put in. Once our checking account recovers, we’ll look at having rewiring done, and finally get a new ceiling put up down there.
Also in June, I took an art class with my eldest cub. It was all about clay, and here are some things we made:
We both had a good time with a fairly new medium for both of us. I totally forgot to make a yarn bowl, though. Ah well, maybe I’ll take it again when the other cub is big enough!
That’s about all the update I want to chew off for now…..getting ready to go to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday and meet up with some Ravelry friends. Hope your weekend will be eventful and fiber filled!
We’ve just returned from vacation, and I’m busily catching up on emails and packages and scarf orders. One thing I did before we left was to send out the Tiger Club.
The Fiber Club this month was 100% Bamboo Rayon Top. It is a beautiful silky fiber, and takes dye in a pretty impressionistic way. Meet Tropical Breeze:
The coordinating hand dyed sock club yarn for this month is Panda, a merino/bamboo rayon/nylon blend. Between a different set of dyes (can’t use the same ones for bamboo and wool!) and the superwash merino, the dye was slurped up and we ended up with more of a ‘Tropical Gale Force Wind’, but still quite lovely.
Want to get or share ideas and projects with other people in the club? Stop over in the group on Ravelry!
USPS is telling me that all the packages were delivered today, so I’m going ahead with the June reveal. Here are my inspiration pictures: Day Lily and Rose.
I wanted to capture the gradient by hand dyeing from pink to coral to intense pinky-orange. Easy enough to do with the fiber, but trickier to get sock yarn to go from cuff to toe in a gradient. More about that later…..
This month, the fiber of choice is Corriedale. It is a beautiful soft fiber that is a little bit more sturdy and longer stapled than merino. I love to spin it, as do many spinners….it is my best selling wool. Single clubs received a 5 oz braid as shown below, and double clubs received a braid that is dyed from light to dark and back again.
The yarn is also Corriedale wool, but this time a blend of 75% and 25% nylon. It’s a nice soft sock yarn that should wear well. I’m trying it out myself and I’m looking for your feedback also. I’m looking for a nice smooth and sturdy sock blend with nylon to join the lineup.
If you are new to The Painted Tiger, you may be wondering what this is. Why would I send you a ‘scarf’? Well, this is a Fillet of Sole (which refers to the prep, not the yarn base). It is a sock blank consisting of two strands of yarn knitted together, and then dyed together. You’ll get socks as identical as you can get from hand dyed yarn.
But what do you do with it? The Fillet of Sole is set up for two at a time sock knitting. Simply remove the waste yarn and cast on your two socks (toe up or top down, depending on your preference). Don’t know magic loop? That’s ok, just use two circulars or sets of DPNs.
Don’t want to knit them both at once? There’s some options. You can knit one strand and ball the other. This is a great option for using the yarn in a shawl or scarf….you can knit up to the middle, and when you are ready to knit the second half you’ll have the ball all ready to come down the other way with the gradient making a mirror image. If you want your second sock to match, though, you’ll need to reball to get the right end out (unless you made a center pull ball).
Don’t care for the kinks? You can relax them. You will need a swift with a fair amount of post room (you will be separating the yarn into two separate skeins on the posts). Or you can walk around a chair or two. You may need a helper to turn the swift. Put your finger between the two yarns, and unravel the blank, keeping the two yarns separate.
Once you have separated the two strands, tie the new hanks tightly in at least 4 places with waste yarn. They will boing up and look like a clown wig when removed from the swift or chair, so lots of ties will keep the tangles from appearing. Give the hanks a bath, and hang to dry with weight. A soup can suspended in the loop works well, or hook a full spray bottle on it. Allow to dry, then ball and knit.
I hope you found the June Tiger Clubs to be as beautiful as I did! As usual, sign ups are always open. We’ll be exploring a ‘cool summer’ fiber for July, don’t miss the boat!
The box says it all! Original delivery date of this guy was last July, but circumstances happened, the plans changed hands, and the plans were improved. Now I have this. Um. Granola?
Yup, more packaging than parts. Just how I like it. Nevermind my poor Emilia RH Loom looking all forlorn over there. I’ll get back to that project, really I will!!!
Become a little clearer now? Ten minutes of assembly later, and I had this beautiful little Pocket Wheel in Cherry. Plus on Walnut bobbin just to be contrary. Just in time for the Tour de Fleece. I’ll be quiet now and let you look at the grain. Yum.
You will note there is no pile of yarn on there…..because I knew if I started spinning I’d never get the blog post done. Ha!! I love her, she is beautiful! Thanks, Jon!! I’m thinking of calling her Freedom or Liberty or Independence (Indie for short)….something 4th of July and cherry pie. Suggestions?
It has been an interesting couple of weeks in our household. One night we are hob-nobbing at the symphony fundraiser (I donated a couple of scarves), and the next we are enjoying crazy high humidity. We knew this was coming….the furnace is from the decade of bright colors and high mall hair, and the air conditioner is a non-reliable brand. But really…..did it need to go during the wettest June in recent history?
I can’t complain too much. Most of the first week it was decently cool, and I spent a whole day entertaining handsome contractors. Last weekend was warmer, but we had an air conditioned family reunion to attend. Which leads us to this week.
We finally have 2 of the 3 bids, and although I thought I was prepared for the cost…..yikers. So we’ll be making a choice really soon, but will need to suffer the heat while they order the units. We’re looking at 3-4 days of hot, and lows only in the 70’s. So today we ate out for lunch and did some wandering around in cool stores (Target must be feeling the economy, too….it used to be meat locker cold in there, but now is just cool). Tomorrow the plan is to watch Toy Story 3. Yay!!
This week I’ve also been learning about the rat-race parents run. We homeschool, and so far only one kid has been involved in activities. This week and next, I have two kids that need to be at opposite ends of town at 9am, and neither can be dropped off early.
One is doing Safety Town, a fantastic program for K students to teach them a bunch of, you guessed it, safety things. So far they’ve learned stranger danger, about natural gas (exploding house….cool!), electrical safety (complete with Louie the Lightning Bug), they’ve toured ambulances, and enjoyed seeing and petting search and rescue dogs. Tomorrow they get to squirt a real fire hose. Oh, and they set up this little town (mini Pizza Hut, anyone?) and the kids take turn driving pedal cars and learning to cross the ‘street’ safely.
The other kid is taking Clay Class at the local arts center. She built a pinch pot, created a squirrel statue, and we built a slab decorative birdhouse together. I’m glad I have the opportunity to help her, because the instructor set up the class to be grades 4-12 and to be quite open ended beyond the beginning pot project…and to be honest there isn’t enough of her to help everyone. It’ll be a wonder if the kids projects don’t all explode in firing (can we say air bubbles?), so here’s keeping my finger crossed. She gets to try throwing next week, and she is pretty excited about it.
Well, hope you are keeping cool and your activities allow lots of time for knitting or spinnng or weaving. The good news with all this heat and moisture…..the potatoes and black raspberries are doing great….and the corn in the fields have definitely passed knee high long before the 4th of July….I’m hoping to see the welcome sight of pickup trucks filled with sweet corn on the street corners soon!
For the month of May, I didn’t have to look far for inspiration. The wooded ravine that is part of our property has filled out into a beautiful, cool, and inviting retreat. Thus I present Forest Fantasy.
The fiber is Wensleydale, which I dyed with a somewhat random technique which I call ‘layering’. I was thrilled that the club came out ‘uneven’, which means I got to keep 4oz. I look forward to spinning it (once I get the green project that is already on the wheel done!).
The yarn is Tiger Twist, my favorite dependable smooshy bouncy sock yarn. I used a totally random drizzle technique for these, building up layer after layer of color.
Hope you enjoyed this look at the May Tiger Sock Yarn and Fiber Clubs, and I look forward to this month’s adventure. There’s plenty of space in the clubs, and June is open until the 15th. Join for as few or as many months as you like!
I admit, I haven’t done much constructive gardening this spring. Between beating back the garlic mustard, stinging nettles, poison ivy, and the super-prolific mystery weed; I just haven’t had the time. So instead I’ve been enjoying what has come up this year.
We have a rather treacherous hill that I prefer that Mr. Tiger not mow (but we must retain its smoothness for winter sledding), so two springs ago I seeded it with wildflower mix.
At the top of the hill is this spike of purple lupine, and I noticed a few more are coming.
And at the bottom of the hill I noticed today a new patch of wonderfully charming columbines in a pale lavender.
In the middle are sprinkled patches of blue flax. Love these little flowers.
I love how the wildlife have returned to this part of our yard now that it isn’t a baking hill of grass. Here we have some soon-to-be-caterpillars.
The next wave of flowers on this hill will be daisies. If I remember right, they are yellow. We’ll see!
Bordering the shady side of the hill is my row of black raspberries (I showed them off last year). Looks like we’ll have a super bumper crop….I can’t wait!
And at the top of the hill in my shade garden, I have a few new blooms also! This is a geranium variant, and will bloom all summer. It looks great peeking out through the hostas.
We also have our good ole reliable salvias. (Well, when I remember to pinch them off.)
And one more picture…..this is a charming columbine variant, so delicate and pretty. And not blue or purple….lol! What actually clinched getting the camera out for me was a shimmery blue damselfly that was basking in the sun, but…alas….she flew before I could get the camera.
On the vege front, I have potatoes just coming up, and the lettuce, peas, and spinach are doing well. The oregano needs a haircut (wouldn’t hurt the thyme, either), and I’m trying to decide if I’m actually going to build more garden boxes or just put my peppers and tomatoes in pots this year. If it stays hot like this week (seriously…..60’s last week, 90’s this….hubba wha?) then boxes aren’t going to happen.
Hope your garden is doing well, feel free to share yours. And if you know of a foolproof erosion control plant that grows in full shade in zone 4, do let me know. We have a lot of hill to hold up, and the naturally sprouting baby maple trees are not doin’ it for me (or the hill).
(PS, if you read through this whole thing to see if there’s a teaser for the May Tiger Clubs…..sorry to disappoint! This month’s colorway is too easy to guess from a hint picture, so I’m not gonna do it. It IS lovely, and it will go out this week. The fiber is a new one for me, I’m loving it’s soft wavy crimp.)
Just like spring strawberries, it’s the short but sweet season for striping yarn! Before it gets too hot, I’ve been walking, and walking, and walking to make up and undo huge skeins to make this striping flag yarn for you. Here are some projects done in this yarn from past years:
Details on these projects can be found on Ravelry.
As you can see, Stars and Stripes, Forever is a patriotic self-striping yarn that makes a mini American Flag pattern of alternating red and white stripes and a field of blue with stars. Usually, self patterning yarn is just too labor intensive for me to put into regular production, but I am committed to making this yarn every year to honor the USA and our serving forces. Thank you to all those who have served or are serving in our armed forces.
I released this yarn to people on the newsletter yesterday, but there are still a few left. Snap them up before they disappear!
I’d like to do another run (or walk, lol) of these, but summer busy-ness is looming, so…well….don’t count on these being available later!
