Yes, I know Leia had dark brown/black hair - but don’t you think the gray is appropriate? It has been about 30 years since the original Star Wars, so Leia would be quite a bit older by now.

Has anyone else done any Halloween knitting?

These caps were knit from a baby alpaca yarn using this pattern from Headhuggers.org. The hats knit up very quickly, took very little yarn, and they’re pretty cute (at least I think so).

If you have some spare yarn and a little time on your hands, I’d encourage you to knit a hat or headband for one of the great charities out there that are trying to make cancer patients a little more comfortable. If you don’t know of an organization in your area that accepts donations like this, check out Headhuggers.org. You can either submit a cap directly to them or to a group on the list that they maintain.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been working on these squares to send to my local ‘Warm Up America’ project. In case you haven’t heard about it, this is a great charity whose purpose is to create handmade items for those in need. Here’s how it works:

Volunteers donate their time to crochet and knit a 7″ X 9″ rectangle (or more). Sections are either joined by individuals or groups in a community and donated locally or sent to Foundation headquarters for joining and distribution.

–From the Warm Up America web site

My plan is to knit these rectangles until my current skein of yarn runs out, then send them off for assembly. I’m guessing I’ll have about 8-10 rectangles total, which should be a decent contribution towards a nice afghan for somebody this winter. And, as a bonus, it’ll use up some stash that probably would have just sat in my yarn drawer for a long while if this project hadn’t come up.

If you’d like to get involved, please visit the Warm Up America web site for more information.

I don’t know about you, but I hate to just throw these small bits away. So, I’ve thought of a couple of things you can use them for:

• Leave them out for the birds for nesting material - I’ve had mixed success with this - the birds seem rather picky about the fibers they like.
• Card it in with other types of fiber to create an interesting batt
• If it’s an animal fiber, particularly wool, use it for needle felting

The last idea - needle felting - is my personal favorite, even though I don’t do as much of it as I’d like. If you’ve never done needle felting before, you might want to give it a try - it’s actually quite fun! All you really need is wool or alpaca or another animal fiber, a needle felting needle, and a surface to work on so you don’t accidentally stab yourself. You can use needle felting to create an embellishment on a knitted or crocheted object or you can create an entire new object with needle felting - like some of the wonderful creations at Glass Dragon Bears Etc.’s Etsy store.

If you’d like to learn more about needle felting, here are a couple of sites to visit:

• All Buttoned Up has an excellent written tutorial on needle felting
• Fiber Arts Video has posted a few videos that demonstrate how to do needle felting

If you’re looking for supplies for needle felting, one good source is Paradise Fibers. They have:

• Felting tools,
• Roving/Fiber, and
• Books and videos on needle felting to help speed up your learning curve

What other uses have you found for leftover fiber?

Overall, I’m please with the way the sweater came out, but if I were to make it again, I’d make a couple of changes:

• Alter the pattern to knit the body all together either in the round with steeks at the front to cut later or just back and forth to the armscye. Anything to avoid having to do so much seaming.
• Make it slightly shorter, both in the body, and in the arms - maybe by 1 1/2 inches or so.
• Use a slightly different stitch pattern - moss stitch gets kind of monotonous after a while!

Hope your Ravelympics projects have gone smoothly!

This is the Nanner Socks pattern that WendyKnits created especially for her knitting friends on Plurk (which is a social network, somewhat similar to Twitter, for those of you that haven’t checked it out yet).

This is a really nice pattern that is not too difficult to knit. It’s a toe-up pattern with a fairly easy to memorize pattern repeat. I finished it off with a sewn bind-off, which for me, turns out a bit stretchier than a regular knitted bind off.

I used Crystal Palace’s Panda Silk yarn in the 4005 colorway for these socks. This is my first time trying the Panda Silk yarn and I really liked it. The yarn is 52% bamboo, 43% machine washable Merino wool, and 5% combed silk. It’s quite soft, and the bamboo content makes the socks feel very cool - perfect for summer weight socks. I’ll definitely be using this yarn again.

Now that this project is done, I’ll be working on finishing my Minimalist Cardigan.

Hope you are enjoying the Olympics - and the Ravelympics - as much as I am!

Similar to the Tour de Fleece, the Ravelympics begins with the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympic games and ends after 17 days with the closing ceremonies. The basic idea of the Ravelympics is for you to choose a project to complete, start to finish, during the Olympic Games. There is one exception to this basic ‘rule’ - the WIP Wrestling event, in which the participants declare the WIPs (for those that aren’t fully initiated into knitting lingo, that’s works in progress - projects that you started some time ago but haven’t finished) that they will complete. There are many other events you can choose to participate in, including two that will be of particular interest to spinners:

• Fleece to Finished Fencing - in which the participants will start with a fleece and end up with a finished knitted or crocheted object
• Handspun Heptathlon - in which participants will either spin a certain quantity of fiber or will knit or crochet something with handspun yarn

I’ve decided to sit out the spinning events and concentrate on my knitting instead. I’ve entered the WIP wrestling event and intend to finish both a pair of socks and a cardigan that I’ve been working on.

If you’d like to enter the Ravelympics, go to the Ravelympics Overview page on Ravelry (login required) to learn more. Hope to see you on the Ravelympics discussion boards!

The good news is though that I did manage to spin every day of the Tour - from July 5 through today, which was a fairly major accomplishment for me, since I generally only spin a couple of times a week. So, although I didn’t meet my goal, I did get a lot more done than I otherwise would have.

In addition to what you see above, I’ve also spun about 2 3/4 bobbins of singles. I plan to finish up the one that’s 3/4 full tonight, and perhaps Navajo ply at least one of the finished bobbins.

I still have quite a bit of fiber left. I’ve carded a few more batts and pulled them into roving so they’ll be ready to spin in the coming days. I also have quite a bit of fiber I have yet to card. Eventually I will have enough for that sweater - maybe just in time for the fall knitting season.

How’s your Tour de Fleece spinning going?

My goal for the Tour De Fleece is to spin about 1 1/2 pounds of fiber, which should be enough for a sweater. I’ve got 3 rovings that I’m planning to card together for spinning: Teeswater/Cotswold Cross, Bond, and Cormo, which I previously talked about in this post about the fiber I’d picked up at Estes.

I test carded a little of these fibers together a couple of days ago to see if I’d like the results. Here’s what the carded batt looks like:

There are a few neps in it which should be pretty easy to pick out, but I think if I try using less fiber in my drum carder at a time, I’ll end up with fewer of them. If I can correct that small problem, I think I’m going to be happy with the results.

So who else is participating in the Tour De Fleece? What are you planning to spin?