Since returning from Stitches West, I have been a bit under the weather so I have spent the past week hunkered down doing much dyeing, a bit of spinning and lots of knitting and spending innumerable hours trying to figure out this blogging stuff. It's amazing how much can be accomplished when you can't go outside. Several things were on my "must do" list, two of which involved one of my favorite Stitches booth, Toots Le Blanc & Co., a small fiber business from Oregon owned by Michele Camacho and her brother. Above is a picture of some yarn I purchased from them. The light gray is a 60/40 angora/rambouillet blend and the silvery brown is 60/40 merino/angora blend, both fingering weight. The dark espresso yarn is a skein I spun from a 50-50 alpaca/jacob wool roving from Toots & Co. -- lovely fibers to spin.

I couldn't wait to knit with this yarn, so I started and finished a tilting blocks scarf using the silvery brown merino/angora. A US3 needle was used as was all 300 yards. The scarf hasn't yet been washed or blocked, but I suspect the angora will bloom beautifully after washing. The pattern is from "A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns" by Barbara Walker.

While at Stitches West, on Friday night I was determined to finish a sweater I had been working for for several weeks, wanting to wear it the next day. I took inspiration for this sweater from the Abstract Cardigan (Project #22) in AlterKnits by Leigh Radford. Rather than knit the various pieces on different needles as suggested, I revised the gauges and used a US7 throughout. The main yarn is 100% cashmere hand-dyed by Melissa Sheppard, and I drew from my stash for all of the other yarns. This is an arty sweater, fits nicely and I love it. Had many compliments at Stitches.

A few days ago, I dyed some dupioni silk I purchased at Stitches from Habu and, of course, I was itching to see what it looked like knit up. I decided to strand it with some of the pale coral silk/kid mohair laceweight yarn I also dyed last week. I chose a lace pattern called 3 x 3 leaf which I saw in Martha Waterman's book, "Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls". I'm knitting on a US4 needle and this will probably end up as a small cravat scarf with ruffles on each end.

My dyepots are calling me, and today is perfect weather for dyeing, high 70's and a slight breeze. All for now.