Wednesday 8 July 2020

A stash dash review.

I have a pot garden this year and currently, it looks ok, but for my tomatoes.  My tomatoes are not doing so well.  They look like they are drowning.  The last ten days have been so wet.  The rest of the pots look ok but for the severe lack of sun.  The plants look as if it was still mid June.

I took a quick glance at my Stash Dash goals.  So not going to make it.  Maybe.  All I have finished so far is one sweater.

The purple sweater will knit fast once my hands are ready. I have a note below about how that is going. A week of really good knitting and the very pretty thing will be done.  The shawl center might look good but there still are 7 balls of colours that need attaching and three skiens of the cream so there is a lot of knitting to do before it is done.  It takes me two days to finish a ball when I have a really good day of knitting.  

No way around it.  I have to spin.  Which is just fine because I do have some prepped and ready to work on.  Spinning counts seriously for the dash.  Each single counts and then any plyed yarn counts. Freshly spun counts threefold.  Kind of cool that.   However,  if I ply singles spun before the dash, only the plying counts and I do have some of that to do.

 

I was thinking about waiting till my new carder toy arrives to do card this fibre one more time but the new carder is not going to be here till a bit later this month or early August.  Depends on when the shipping containers are unpacked and the stock is sent to the Canadian warehouse.  According to the Canadian source  I bought my carder from, everything craft has been in high demand this spring.  It gives me a great deal of pleasure knowing that. 

Today I am spinning.  I need to weigh the bag first and see what I have and then I can begin.  I would like to pretend that I am a spinner who can spin something with a goal in mind, but I am not.  It will become mitts and or hat.  I still dream of spinning really fine and playing around with this carded prep has shown me that with a woollen spun, I can go much much finer than I have been able to so far.  Lots of time to play with that later.  For now, the goal is to get this to be a washed by me (before stash dash), carded by me (before stash dash), spun by me and knit by me thing to actually be a thing before stash dash ends.

My hand is feeling significantly better.  I have been wearing my wristwarmers at night and I have been wearing them in the day too. Keeping the pulse points warm seems to make all the difference.  Plus I have been using my power ball again.  I am going to take it easy though.  I shan't spin all day, and am going to give my hands some nice stretch sessions and good rests too.  

I aim to weave a bit later, just enough to get my trial wash cloths off the loom to see if they are the size I hope they will be.   I launder them immediately, so I can see how they turn out.  Then if I need too, I can add more warp while my hands can't do anything else.  And yes, weaving does count for stash dash, but I am not sure how.  Must check this out.

My coffee is done and that is always a sure sign that the day is ready to really begin.  Off I go.

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