Sanity Hanging by a Thread!!

Finally after over a week of can not see in front of your face fog we have sunshine and warmer temps, hope this is a sign spring is just around the corner. When we have fog that thick we have very week internet service or none at all, yesterday we had the sun come out for a bit but our power was off and on so much we had no internet. Now today hopefully everything is working again.
    Now to the Gallatin Sweater...........this is where I am now.

I had knit the sleeve without pattern but then decided it was too plain so I ripped it back and put a pattern in then knit what tan wool I had waiting for more that I had ordered, when the yarn came it was a different dye lot so I knit one row of dark brown just incase it would show the difference and now I am ready to knit the white with some pattern in it, now it has pattern in the back and on each front....................I am going to be juggling eight balls of yarn ...............yup....trying hard to keep my sanity!! plus have to figure out how many rows to knit as I am not getting gauge, so I have counted all the rows they knit on the pattern and figured out how many inches they got with their rows per inch etc. etc. hoping I am on the right track, if this sweater fits it is going to be a miracle. If I make this again it will be in pieces, if I had knit this one in pieces I could have completed a front and seen whether it was going to fit rather than do the whole sweater and then find it does not fit.  Will be so glad to get it finished!!

Meanwhile have been carding some alpaca fibre and llama fibre and pulling it into roving. The grey is the alpaca and I carded it with some grey superwash merino and the brown is the llama carded with the same grey superwash merino, it is so soft, can not wait to spin it up.  Have lots of fibre to card up, love my Patrick Green Supercard!!

This is my kitty T.V. I hung a seed bell right outside the window so the cats can sit and watch the birds, the cats are so brave when they have the glass between them, they sit there chattering at the birds but if I let them outside they are afraid of the birds which is o.k. by me.
   Well here is hoping I can post this as I have been having a terrible time getting the pictures onto the site which means my internet is not that fast yet. Hopefully this is goodbye snow and hello spring!!

Spinning and Knitting!!

The weather has warmed up a bit so have been out in the garage sorting some white llama fibre to wash before sending it to the processors. Fingers were frozen by the time I had enough fibre in the wash bags but got it done as it is soaking in the washer. I wanted to card some fibre down in the workroom but it is so dry down there the fibre is flying all over so thought if I wash some fibre and have it on the rack it will give me enough humidity.
     Meanwhile I plyed the singles I finished spinning last night from the roving I got for Christmas from daughter M.J. For the first bobbin I spun I had just divided the roving into two but was getting long stretches of white so the next bobbin I divided the other half of the roving into two before I spun it and the colors worked better, but who knows what it will look like knit up. She has been washed and is now drying. Out of the 220/4oz roving I have 290 yds of yarn, now to look at a few patterns and decide what to knit out of it....thinking of a lacey scarf....will see. 

Now onto the Gallatin Sweater..............I managed to find a size six small round needle to knit the sleeves in the round, had to borrow it from something else I was knitting, so got the sleeve knit putting the same pattern as on the bottom of the sweater on the bottom of the sleeve, I had decided to knit the sleeves in the tan color with no more pattern but when I went to wind another ball of tan into a ball found I only had one ball left, not enough tan color to finish the sweater but had a lot of the natural color so knit the remainder of the sleeve in the natural......am deciding whether I like that or not.........finally I went onto Raverly to check and see if anyone else was knitting this sweater and if it was only me that was having problems........17 people knitting the sweater........

Ravelry: Project Gallery for Gallatin Coat pattern by Nina Isaacson      everyone is having problems and unless they had ordered more yarn they were short too......so have decided that I will knit up what tan yarn I have and have ordered more of the tan yarn to finish the sweater. It can have a little time out while I am waiting for more yarn. I am also having gauge issues with the rows per inch...and so are other people.  I had increased a few rows in the length as I went along for the body but have been concerned with the arm length. I have been making notes as I go along as I really like this sweater and the yarn they used in the kit so would like to knit another one......who knows who this one will fit when I am finished.
    I know this is crazy...........but I did control myself...........when the workmen came to replace the shingles on the house yesterday (that the wild wind blew off a couple weeks ago) one of the workmen was wearing a sweater knit with the heavy yarn with neat patterns on it...........I don't know whether it was that it was so cold out.........or I quickly regained sanity...........but I put down my pencil and graft paper and went into the other room............I really wanted to go out and quickly copy the patterns he had on his sweater............What can I say........there are enough stories going around about the crazy lady who lives on the hill...........but you know.....if it had not been so cold out.........

Does this look like Spring to you??

It looks like Christmas to me!! All my Christmas cactus are in bloom. It is -20 here right now but the sun is shining so you can fool yourself into believing it is warmer. We were supposed to get a warm day during the last week but do not know who got it as we didn't. Hurry up Spring!!

I have the Gallatin Coat from KnitPicks knit up to where the sleeves are supposed to join and then you finish the sleeves as you knit the yokes. The owl chart knit up fast as it was a non-directional pattern, it is just really heavy when you are knitting the back and fronts together, hard on the back. I started a sleeve which is knit in the round on four double points, got the cuff finished and just realized I have to change to size 6mm needles and do not have any in the house (that I can find) so do I continue with the 5.5mm needles or wait until I can get somewhere to buy some 6mm needles, trying to think of somewhere near that would have needles that I do not have to drive over an hour to buy them.......what would happen.....if I just increased a few more stitches to make the gauge....am off to measure the difference in my knit gauge between the 5.5mm and the 6mm needles. I changed the pattern in the sleeves as I think the original pattern is just too busy for me, makes just too much going on in the sweater, so will match the sleeves to the bottom of the sweater past the first pattern knit and then knit in plain stocking stitch in the dark tan.  Anyway....that is the plan...will see as I knit along. Off to measure the gauge difference between 5.5mm needles and 6mm needles.