Yuengling and I spent the day together at home yesterday trying out my new spinning wheel (both how it spins and how it tastes), knitting (and knotting) various balls of yarn, and playing fetch. Yuengling has sort of learned to play fetch although she has a habit of returning the toy to the wrong location. I tried to get a photo but as soon as I got my camera out she refused to bring anything back (as you can see by all the toys scattered in the background).

Attacking stuff that moves and not fetching toys is hard work and Yuengling eventually fell asleep with her head dangling off the side of the blanket but not before she stretched out to her impressive full length of about 14 inches.

Oh and I almost forgot, Yuengling is a Fred Astaire fan.

Kim and I were at our favorite antique place a few weeks ago and I found this ebony and ivory spinning wheel which I couldn't resist bidding on. It is much more ornate than my other wheel and I think it's meant for spinning flax because of the large distaff sticking out the top. I tried it out this weekend and it does spin although it feels a bit more fiddly than my other wheel. It has two bobbins (apparently spinning flax with two hands was a popular idea once) but I'm having trouble getting the one on the left to spin counter clockwise without the drive band coming off. Also several bits were broken off and I had to glue them back on so hopefully it will hold up. The hooks to guide the yarn onto the bobbin are mostly broken off so I couldn't spin much because I couldn't fill the bobbin properly. I'm planning to try to buy some tiny hooks to screw in myself but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it or not.

Well, I finished the bottom section of the sweater and then switched to the tree pattern from the original inspiration design and although there are some common colors in the two different sections I didn't like how it was turning out.

So I decided to get a bit more yarn and just carry the bottom pattern throughout the sweater but with a few more color combinations. My plan is to repeat the brown/tan background for a few pattern repeats and then switch back to the blues. I couldn't get more of the dye lot for the darker blue so the blue on the top will be a different shade but hopefully it will look ok.

I'm much happier with how it looks now though I wish the tan color was a bit darker. I think I'm getting a bit better at fair isle but with a kitten constantly trying to run away with my balls of yarn it can be a bit tricky to keep a consistent tension.

This is Yuengling (pronounced "Yingling") who we named after a great Pennsylvanian beer.

She is about 12 weeks old and we've had her for less than a week. She is super active - think "ohh look something shiny!!". She is also teeny-tiny although she's doing her best to eat as much as a cat 10 times her size. She has a pitiful little meow that she's used quite successfully already to get into our bedroom after Kim and I decided she should stay out until we were sure that she is flee free. And while writing this blog entry I've discovered that she snores tinny little kitten snores. Her favorite activities are falling off things and attacking things, often both at the same time.

She is a bit tricky to photograph since she doesn't sit still much.

But fortunately she is about the size of a shoe so I can just pick her up to suggest a more photographic location with one hand while I get ready to snap a photo with the other.

Per the encouragement of at least 30% of my readership I've added a cleverbit.org icon. I was thinking of using a professional one I found on line but given how tiny they are it seemed more fitting to make one of my own. I did at least read a tutorial on how to make rounded edges :).

Check out these lovely tea plants I got for my birthday from my brother. I can't wait for them to get big enough to turn into actual tea. I also got some tea and coffee seeds so that I can grow my own plants but I'm not sure if my thumb is quite green enough for that.

I recently started my first real fair isle sweater. I've been itching to work on my fair isle technique and try out steeking for a while and I finally got started when I went on a wool shopping trip with a friend a few weeks ago. I was going to make a pattern from Vogue Knitting (Holiday 07) by Alice Starmore but I wasn't that excited about the pattern at the bottom of the sweater so I've been using an Alice Starmore book that I got for Christmas to make my own pattern inspired by the original Vogue pattern photos. I'm still going to try out the steeks, a technique that involves knitting the sweater as a long tube and then cutting the front opening with a pair of scissors, yikes! I haven't actually gotten to that part yet since I'm still working on getting my tension right. I've had to rip out the bit above the ribbing several times - a few times because one strand was so tight that it didn't show up properly in the pattern and a few times because I didn't like the color combination I used. I'm happy with how it looks now and hopefully the more I practice the less ripping out I'll have to do. I bought the number of colors and quantities of yarn needed for the sweater in the magazine and although I've been trying to keep the ratios sort of the same in my sweater I'm a bit worried that I might run out of one or two colors. I guess the good thing about fair isle is that if I have to get yarn from a different dye lot it hopefully won't show up too much. Here is what I have so far.