Llotis Knitting Needle Gauges and Shetland Pi KAL WIP

Llotis Knitting Needle Gauges are now available for sale in my etsy shop. We have natural wood ones and we also have these purple stained ones. 

All of the needle gauges have a protective beeswax and orange oil wood finishing product applied to them. They measure US knitting needle sizes 000, 00, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 1/2, 11, 13, 15 & 16. There is a handy WPI (wrap per inch) tool on her neck for measuring your handspun or other yarn.

In more business news Llady Llama Fiber Co. will be vending at Knox Farm Fiber Festival in East Aurora, NY on September 25th from 10am-5pm. If you are in the area please stop by and see us!

In knitting news I've been participating in WendyKnits' Shetland Pi Shawl KAL. I'm using Llady Llama Fiber Co.'s Llore Sock Yarn that I hand-dyed in my favorite color. Yay for being able to actually use some of my yarn! ::grin::

I'm only on the tail end of clue #2, but life is pretty busy right now so I'm not in any rush. I am very pleased with how it is coming out and as always Wendy's patterns are lovely!

Wool Combs & Ravelympics Progress

Last week I splurged on a little fiber tool reward for myself and my business. Thanks to my very wonderful customers, I was able to afford some Paradise Fibers wool combs and the wool comb pad.

Of course I had to try it out right away! I have 6 oz. of llama fiber that's been waiting to be combed for almost 2 years, so I lashed some on and away I went. The picture below shows my very first handcombed roving! It also shows my makeshift diz and the darning needle I used to pull the fiber through the diz (they are my scale models here).

I'd love to comb all of it up right away but I must restrain myself and focus on the spinning I'm trying to complete for the 2010 Ravelympics. Being a huge Doctor Who fan I am once again on Team TARDIS. My event is the Flying Camel (the spinning event for those not in the know). I have set a goal to spin up the remaining 10 oz. of mystery wool that came with my spinning wheel. So far I have spun 2 bobbins full and I am currently plying those up. I was going to just spin up the singles for the event, but I don't have enough bobbins for that. Here's a plying shot:

Below is a picture of my lazy kate with the singles I am plying and the big 'ol stack of roving I have left to spin. Beast Boy is helping to cheer me on!

Here's a close-up of the singles (with Beast Boy peeking from behind lol):

This is some reward roving I dyed up for myself. It's about 2 oz. of SW BFL that was left over from my base roving for the shop.

I started spinning it up for some laceweight yarn just before I decided to enter the Ravelympics (it was a very last minute decision this year). Unfortunately due to my bobbin shortage I have to wind this off into a center pull ball to free up the bobbin and come back to spinning it later.

I am also knitting up 2 pairs of socks for Heather's two girls. They love to see me spin and knit when I am over at their house and they asked me for socks a couple of months ago. I am on the heel flap of the first sock (I love how fast they are going being children's socks). I am bound and determined to turn one or both of them into fiber arts geeks (Heather knows about my devious plan and has no qualms about it) so they're each getting some nice soft, warm, squishy, sock inspiration!

I'll try to post another Ravelympics update later this week!

OMG BLOG UPDATE!!! Image Heavy

First, gratuitous pictures of our trip to NC for Thanksgiving:

It was really too cold to go in the water, but that didn't stop Rach and I from going in up to our waists! Oh I LOVE the beach!!!
This is Arden's shawl all done (and in time for X-mas too!) modeled by my lovely girlfriend Rachel. And yes, that is a giant ceramic badger in the lower left corner. Rach loves badgers the way I love llamas and she made it in her Handforming Clay Studio. Leila is poking about in the bottom right there.
Here are my Mom's Monkey Socks all complete. (Thanks Mom for the picture):

These are my Dad's socks.For some reason the first one self-striped beautifully (it was not self-striping yarn) and the second one refused! I cast it on and ripped it out 6 or 7 times before my Dad said I should just knit them and get it over with. Sorry these were late Daddy!(Thanks again to my Mom for the picture):

My Mom has been inspired by the handknit socks I made them and has picked back up her knitting needles after many years away from them. She had never knit socks but I showed her how to make a baby bootie with a heel flap and gusset and she's been feverishly knitting socks for her and Dad since!!! Yay someone to enable and share fibery goodness with!! I don't know if I've mentioned this on the blog but my Mom is my best friend and I call her and talk with her every day, so it's exciting to have her as a knitting buddy too! (Like we really needed more to chatter on about!)

Speaking of Mom, she bought me some stash when we went yarn store crawling in Buffalo this January during their visit to buy my laptop (SQUEEE!! I love my new MacBook more than life itself...and it's purple!!!::licks laptop::) I've never tried Flat Feet and I was helping my Mom pick out her first sock yarn ever, so she get me this as a pressie!!!

At this point, chronologically speaking, my life blew up. With the help of my parents I decided to leave school and pursue other things. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make but my parents were beyond amazing about it!! I have mental health disorders (those who get squeamish about such things can scroll down, there are more pretty pictures to come) and I've taken time off of school before to deal with them and come back and it was just not working out. I was stagnating there, and using it as an excuse not to grow. I may go back someday, I may not, but for now I am focusing on new endeavors and it has really been good for me!

I still am going to keep the new endeavor a bit secret until I know more, but stay tuned!

I had a spinning swap in January for which I spun this lovely batt from Crystal Creek Fibers (nice transition huh?):

It turned into this yarn: (Photo compliments of my swap partner Hattie because I forgot to take any ::headesk::

 I received this lovely skein in exchange (I don't normally like glitz but this is quite subtle and nice):

I spun up another Crystal Creek Fiber batt (I adore her batts!!) for myself. This is the single, I'll probably do a 2-ply.

These are Mark's Slytherin socks that I just finished (sorry for the lateness Mark!) I'd never done two colors before and I had to wing the heel a bit. If I do another pair with accent heels I'll start further up the heel flap with the color change, do a peasant heel or do toe-up.

This is what I'm spinning right now. The amazing BFL I picked up at the Knox Farm Fiber Festival this fall. I'm going to handpaint it when I'm done.

I still need to make Rach's holiday socks (it's a good thing she loves me), but I need to order size  1 1/2 needles from Knit Picks.

I also need to make my sister's 80's Glam Rock Legwarmers (she asked for them, what can I say, we were children of the 80's) and a BSJ for a friend of the family who is due in April (yikes!). I don't have the yarn (or the money for the yarn) right now so I'm kinda stuck on those.

I'm making the Putting on the Ritz Legwarmers from Knit Picks (these are actually cool legwarmers, not the cheezy 80's kind) for myself and I am done with one. I still need to seam it and I need buttons.

Whew, so much to update on. Hopefully my blog posts will become more frequent again and I promise I'll let you in on my secret soon!!

Knox Farm Fiber Festival

As I mentioned in an earlier post I visited the Knox Farm Fiber Festival on the 27th. My GF and one of my good friends went with me and we had a blast! They were quite patient with me as I dragged them from booth to booth and back again, visited the llamas 3 or 4 times and searched for a sheep shearing that was advertised but no one in the place knew anything about. Did I mention the LLAMAS!?!? I LOVE LLAMAS, they are my fav animal (okay, it might be more like an obsession, but I WILL own llamas some day)!!!! All in all it was a great day and I got a great fiber haul (not to mention Mighty Taco on the way home!!!!)

This is my haul on my car:

I got 6 oz. of washed llama (it has some VM but I'm hand picking it and I'm scoping out some Indigo Hound Viking combs):


And a closeup:


4 oz. of combed llama top:


8 oz. of BFL (OMG I know why it's so popular it's luscious!!!):


A 2.5 oz. Coopworth batt:


A closeup:


2 oz. of Bamboo:


2 oz. of Tencel:


1 oz. each Silk Caps (in my fav colors):


8 g Silk Hankie:


Of course I couldn't post about the fiber fest without showing some animals!!

A very sweet female llama who liked to go in circles and trip you with her lead:


A very cranky male alpaca who growled at everyone:


3 very mean sheep who kept coming up to the fence like they were going to let us pet them and then scooting off to the far end of the pen whenever we got closer than 6 inches to them (they were taunting us!!!):


A llama momma and some babies from the booth I bought my llama fiber from (squeeee!!):

My distraction, Stash Pics

Here she is, the tiny little distraction that is my excuse for not crossing the finish line for the Ravelympics. Her name is Leila and she was a VERY unexpected addition to our little family. We found her the 21st of August under my car in our driveway. She was very emaciated (this picture was taken a couple of days after we got her), flea-bitten, but soooooo lovable. We adopted her and the vet said when we found her that she was 6 months old bsed on the size of her teeth (other than the fleas she had an intestinal parasite and we still have to get her fixed next month). She's now a healthy 4 pounds and still such a love!!! Orpheus (our 2-year-old, 14 pound cat whom we found as a stray and adopted when he was 8 months old) adjusted pretty quickly to her presence and they get along just fine.

Orpheus was also starved when we found him and so has always been very obsessed with food (as starved animals have a tendecy to be), but he actually backs down and leaves his food to Leila if she's around. It's so bad we have to lock her in the bedroom to feed Orpheus and then feed her when he's done!! If we feed them at the same time she'll run between the bowls and eat from them so fast that Orpheus won't get a chance to eat anything.

Here is after a couple of days. (My cats love to lay all over the bed and get the matress pad all cat-hair as soon as I've stripped the sheets for the wash):

This was taken about a week ago...they are sooo cute (and look how much Leila has grown)!!

She is a narcoleptic gremlin cat who loves laps and naps more than anything else (well, except food). She'll lay in my arms like a baby or lay on my lap while I spin and fall asleep within 2 minutes. At night she either sleeps on my chest, between my ankles or between our pillows (I've accidentally squooshed her lots of times but she never gets discouraged). She is mischevious as all kittens are but she's a lap cat and extremely cute, so I forgive her.

On to fiber-related things:

My first plied-on-the-wheel yarn is in front here and there's another center pull ball of singles in the back:

This is the rest of the fiber that I got for the Ravelympics (It's all spun now but I haven't taken picstures of the finished yarn yet):

4 Oz. Ramboullet in the colorway "Glee" from FlawfulFibers


A sample of Shetland they sent me with the Ramboullet


4 oz. of Superwash Merino in the colorway "Amethyst" from DyeabolicalYarns

Next post: Picstures from the Knox Farm Fiber Festival, including new stash pics!!