In September, I picked up this amazing 4 ounce polwarth top from Kate at woolgatherings at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. I loved everything about it, and I knew it needed to be spun and quickly, so less than two weeks later I had this yarn:

450 yards of fingering weight three-ply, I kept staring at it longingly while I waited to be able to cast on with it. And then, less than 11 days later, I had a finished pair of moderately tall socks:

Since then, I've fielded some questions about the technicalities of how I managed to get them to be as close to identical as they are so I thought I'd do a little write up and break down all the pieces of how I got from fiber to socks.

First, the fiber had a lot to do with it. The way many woolgatherings tops are dyed, the colors transition gradually between each other, and there are big chunks of each color. Starting with a top dyed in this nature makes a world of difference in getting a yarn that knits the way mine did.

Splitting. I split the top vertically. This meant I had two tops of roughly the same diameter (I didn't check this but I got lucky and each half of my top was half of the total weight of the fiber.) These two halves weren't perfectly identical because, as with anything hand-made, the dye wasn't 100% even across the top.

Spinning. I spin everything on my Kromski Sonata. For spinning the single, I used my standard flyer and a 4 ounce (standard Kromski) bobbin. I took the first half of the top and spun it from one end to the other. No fluffing, no pre-drafting, just straight from the end of the top. When I got the single spun from the first half of the top I grabbed a small tuft of some obnoxiously orange fiber and spun it in to mark the middle. Then I spun the second half of the top, making sure I started with the same end of the fiber I'd started with for the first half. At that point I had one bobbin of finely spun singles with a bright orange blip in the middle.

Plying. I wanted a squishy, round 3-ply yarn and I wanted to keep the colors distinct so I opted for a navajo/chain ply. I made sure that my middle divider was its own distinct little section (so I could cut it out after I wound the yarn) and plied it all onto one bobbin. After spinning I skeined it up, washed and whacked it as I normally would. For plying I switched flyers and used my jumbo flyer. It has the benefit of having an 8 ounce bobbin so I don't ever have to worry about whether or not 4 ounces will fit on one bobbin.

Knitting. I didn't do anything really specific with the knitting to make the colors work out. I did cut off about 1 yard of yarn before I started the second sock, but that's all the monkeying I did with the yarn itself. I used a generic toe-up method for knitting the socks, with a flap and gusset heel. I incorporated some increases into the top of the sock, where I started the ribbing. That should help them to stay up well and keep them from cutting off the circulation in my calves.

So, the reality is that I got pretty lucky that my splitting worked out so perfectly, that my spinning gave me only about a 2-3 yard difference between the two halves of the fiber and that they match up closely enough that they look so similar. If you look closely, you can see that one sock has longer runs in the first set of colors and then shorter runs in the middle, and that the final set of colors was pretty close to equal, although more intense on one sock than the other. That's due to slight offsets in the colors across the top. I wish I'd thought to take photos of the top after I split it, but I really was flying by the seat of my pants so I didn't even think about it.

For more technical details about the knitting of the socks, see my project on Ravelry. Click any of the photos in this post to see them on flickr, where you can see larger versions.

This holiday season has been a tough one for me, but I've been working hard to find joy alongside my sadness. Happy holidays to everyone, may your days be filled with as much joy, peace and love as can be packed into them!

There's a million more things to be thankful for, and I assure you that I'm likely thankful for them all. Even with the sorrow, it's a good life that I have.

And now a little Thanksgiving story. The last time my immediate family was all together on Thanksgiving was in 1998, when my sisters and I were 15, 17 and 19 (before I went to college too far away to come home for a long weekend). After my parents divorced, we would have an early dinner with my mom, drive over to my dad's house and have a second full dinner around 6 or 7. This Thanksgiving, we were all sitting around the table and out of nowhere, my younger sister bursts out with "And that's why I wear sweatpants!!" Or at least that's what the rest of us heard. To this day, she swears that what she really said was "Guess why I wear sweatpants?" The four of us ended up laughing until our bellies hurt.

I hope everyone who reads this has a fabulous Thanksgiving, if you celebrate, and a wonderful Thursday if you don't!

Today is National Bundt Day. Stacie pinned The Food Librarian's celebration of the bundt cake recently and since I love a bundt cake (delicious cake, little to no frosting, perfect for unfancy days without a lot of fuss), I decided I need to join in.

I baked the blueberry lemon bundt from martha stewart and it's delicious, although the lemon flavor is perhaps a little more subtle than I'd like. I suppose I could solve that with a lemon glaze or by adding more zest or some lemon extract though.

Larry Donaghy b. August 13, 1953 d. January 28, 2011

It's virtually impossible to sum up in a few short paragraphs all that my father was. He was 5'10", bald and bearded and heavily muscled in a way that only comes from manual labor. He had an insatiable desire for knowledge, a ridiculous love of practical jokes and an amazingly tender heart towards children and animals. He loved beer, Hawaiian shirts, jigsaw puzzles and mystery novels. He lived very simply and was generous almost to a fault. He hated to throw anything away if there was any chance that it might be used again in any way. He was also one of the most important people in my life; one of the guideposts by which I defined myself. Without him, I am missing a rudder.

My father had large, square hands. They were always calloused from working in the fields because he frequently eschewed the many pairs of gloves he owned. A normal day in my childhood could find him operating a sawmill, chopping wood, making hay, milking goats or doing any one of a million other farm chores. Most people would have called him a man's man, tough on the outside. What most people didn't know was the inside his heart melted for his three little girls and it was not uncommon to see him with his beard or what little hair he had held back by plastic barrettes, braided into many tiny braids or otherwise decked out sparkly little girl accessories. He loved to tease and torment us; he would shake his wet beard over us after a shower or throw his stinky socks at us at the end of the day. One day when a friend was over, he was expounding on the joys of being an adult as he passed around that evening's dessert--swiss cake rolls or some other Little Debbie snack cakes--and without warning he reached out and BANG! slammed his hand down on the friend's cake, telling her he could do that because he was an adult, and that was what made being an adult great. He did also swap her mangled cake for his.

My father sang to us a great deal. While he did not sing outside the house and I can't recall the way it sounded when he sang now, I know he sang a lot. The song I most remember him singing to me was You Are My Sunshine, which has always made me cry. He would wake us up on summer mornings by bellowing "Rise and shine and give God your glory glory", his rich, round voice refusing to allow us to remain sleeping. He sang songs while we worked, teaching us to use them to work on the same rhythm. Frequently sung songs also included Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side and Stealers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle With You. He was a terrible dancer, but he did a great deal of that around the house too, doing what we all affectionately called "the white man shuffle." He loved the song The Safety Dance, and when we played it at my wedding, he made a point of telling me--as he grinned--that he was so glad I'd played "his song." He loved The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, Lou Reed, The Byrds, Flat and Scruggs, Arlo Guthrie and loved rock, old country, bluegrass and jazz in general.

My father was not always the most patient of men. Sometimes we argued and sometimes we yelled. I did inherit my stubborn nature from him, so it's only natural that we butted heads every now and then. The greatest gift he ever gave me was that I have always known that my father was behind me, proud of me and ready to catch me if I fell. Even as he kept his worries and sadnesses from us, he was free with his love, hugging and telling us he loved us as frequently as he could. A phone call to him could stretch for hours. The last thing he said to me was "I love you" and as I struggle through my life without him, I can think of no better gift he could have given me.

Happy birthday Daddy. I love you more than words can say, and for you, one last time, The Safety Dance.

excerpted and adapted from a post at Letters to my Father

Today is my mothers's birthday. I'm sure if you asked how old she is, she'd tell you she's "old enough to know better." I cannot tell you all how wonderful my mother is. She's my support, my good friend, one of my biggest cheerleaders and she gives great advice when I ask for it (and sometimes when I don't.)

When I was growing up, waking up on Saturdays in our house meant heading downstairs to see Mom in the kitchen, her hair pinned up with a large barrette, singing along to the sounds of oldies playing on the radio while she baked bread or did dishes. She worked full time and still managed to bake most of our bread and can and preserve a vast amount of fruit and vegetables from the garden. She also managed to sew most of the clothing my sisters and I wore until we grew old enough to prefer jeans and tshirts to handsewn clothing.

Mom has been responsible for my education in many things. She taught me how to cook, bake, can and preserve, knit, crochet and sew--all tools that have served me quite well since then. She taught me how to appreciate sarcasm and how to laugh at myself. She inspires me in so many ways, the least of which is her tenacity and her zeal for life; she took up tap dancing at an age when many adults are starting to think about slowing down and recently she's started spending a great deal of her free time hiking through the hills and mountains near her home on the coast of Maine. In short, if you asked me to pick the perfect mother for me, there would be no contest, I'd choose the one I got every single time.

Happy birthday Mom, I love you more than I can possibly ever put into words. I feel so lucky to have you.

That blob on parking guy's knee there? Let's take a closer look:

Yup. Parking lot yarn detritus. The knitters were here.

My birthday this year is bittersweet. I'm excited to be turning 30, excited for the start of a new decade of my life and excited because I just plain love birthdays. But it's a hard day in that it's the first birthday my dad isn't here to sing happy birthday to me. When I turned 27, I thought he forgot my birthday. He came home to messages on his answering machine from both of my sisters reminding him to call me so on my 28th and 29th birthdays I got emails from Dad that said the following:

28: (subject line "burpday")
Happy Birthday . This is to let you know I haven't forgotten
and to keep my answering machine from overloading with messages from
your siblings to remind me. I will give you a call when I get home
from work around 10 . Love Dad

29: (subject line "HAPPY BIRTHDAY")
I will give you a call after I get home from work tonight.Have a
Happy Birthday .  Love Dad

My dad had a way of calling on people's birthdays that involved singing loudly before actually saying hello to the birthday person. I would answer my phone and he would belt out the birthday song and follow it with "HEY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This is Dad." As though I didn't know.

While I'm missing my (crazy) father, I'm also thrilled that my mother is here for a week-long visit. We're partying it up with friends today, I'm entering my 3rd decade on this planet as I hope to go on--with good friends, good food, and a gallon of margaritas.

(cross-posted on Cathartic Ink).

First, the finished. I cannot resist a fat-bellied gnome, and this one from sewingseed is particularly glorious. I happen to have a great deal of natural colored linen fabric that I trimmed from the bottom of some IKEA drapes; I believe I cut about 18" off the bottom of each panel which left far more fabric than I felt comfortable throwing away! I used a small piece of this fabric to stitch the gnome on. Once it was done I gave it a quick wash and press and turned it into a wee fat-bellied gnome sachet:

I stuffed it with some lavender that I've kept stored in an air-tight container; I harvested and dried it the first summer we lived here, when we discovered that I'm horribly allergic to it. Very short bursts of exposure don't bother me too much so I threw the buds inside, sewed it closed and tucked it straight into the mail. The sewing was super quick and easy, but the stitching took me about 6 hours because I might just be the slowest stitcher ever.

My work in-progress is for my husband. We're both big fans of Doctor Who so when I came across this Pixel People lineup of all 11 Doctors by weelittlestitches I knew that it was something that he had to have for his very own. I'm a little bit further along than this image:

I've since stitched the 8th doctor in too, so I have 7 doctors left before I can wash, press and frame it. My one regret is that two of the doctors have a fair bit of un-outlined white and I chose white 14-count aida cloth to stitch it on so I might have to figure out how to help those doctors stand out from the background a little bit better.

A note about some great service I received getting set up to start these projects. I bought most of my initial supplies at Mindy's Needlepoint here in Eugene where I was treated with great respect despite my lack of knowledge about what I was buying. I was given a recommendation about what needle size was correct for what I was doing and got some great help in finding all of my floss colors. Two thumbs up.