So many hobbies!

I want my two dollars!*

I finally broke down and bought white miso paste to make my miso soup.  To make it more traditional, I also bought kelp to add to the soup.  It tasted fine but I think the yellow miso would have been much more flavorful.  I'm still searching for yellow miso.  Here's a shot of my mostly-yummy soup:

I also added shiitake mushrooms and tofu, just like in Japanese restaurants.  There were little bits of miso floating around so I don't think I disolved/mashed the miso quite enough. 

Sunday I exchanged gifts with my parents and opened the combined gift from both my sister and my grandparents.  When I blogged that I wanted one of these for Christmas, I honestly didn't believe I'd get one.  You know, it's like when you were 16 and you added a car to the Christmas list you gave your mom.  You didn't actually think you'd get a car.  Same thing here except this time it actually worked.  Behold:

The Stauch Petite.  Isn't it beautiful?!  I've even made my first bat, modeled here by the handsome Galen:

More carding will have to wait until after Christmas however.  Bummer.  I have a house to clean and a bit more baking to do before Friday.

I've been toying with the idea of finishing as many works-in-progress as possible.  I've got about 3 quilt tops to finish (the actual quilting will have to wait), some yarn to dye, and 4 or 5 bats to spin.  I guess you can say I'll be doing a Finish-a-thon.  Start the new year with the old year's projects done.  Join me?

 

*This will make sense if you've seen the movie "Better Off Dead."  It's hilarious.  Plus, it's an inside joke for my sister.

I want a drum carder for Christmas!

I was a carding fool this weekend!  I made art bats, which were a total blast:

I dyed BFL, Merino/silk, Merino/mohair, Merino/bamboo and superwash Merino in three dye pots:  red, blue and black.  Different pots getting different combinations of wool.  I found that the Superwash Merino took the dye the best of all of them, giving me jet-black roving.  The BFL and Merino/mohair came out gray-black. 

The colored bits are sari silk.  This bat had a base of black BFL, with some red Merino/silk and what I think is straight bamboo (although I have no idea where I got it).

I made two bats similar to this one.  The other one produced this yarn:

The sparkly bits in both the bat and the yarn is ultraviolet Angelina fiber.

Eventually, I got tired of making bats out of my limited supply of stuff and turned to my stash for inspiration.  I pulled out some washed locks of brown Polwarth and brown Merino and decided to combine them and card them up.  While I was carding, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with about a pound of brown wool.  It was beautiful and soft but it wasn't inspiring me.  While rooting around in my stash, I found some Firestarr that had been in my stash for so long I'd forgotten I had it.  The lightbulb went on.  After quite a few hours of carding, splitting, carding again, splitting, carding, adding Firestar, carding, adding more Firestar, splitting and carding yet again, I ended up with 10 gorgeous, sparkly bats:

The one on top is smaller than the others and I added a bit too much Firestar.  Eventually, I'll spin up all this bounty and probably knit a shawl.  Or maybe a vest.  (The sparkle isn't really this obvious but I had to use the flash so the picture would come out.  Oh, and I've already straightened that picture.)  Using just had cards, it would have taken me at least 5 times longer to get all that wool carded and blended.  Darn, I have more brown locks (Corriedale, I think) in the basement that I could have carded.  It's a good thing that at our next Guild meeting I plan on renting one of the drum carders my Guild owns.  I kind of doubt I'll be getting a drum carder for Christmas so renting is the next best option.  I have about a third of a fleece of beautiful Cormo that needs carding.  Guess what I'll be doing over the holidays?