Stop and Start

7 September, 2008 at 11:49 pm (knitting, spinning)

That’s all I seem to be doing with my knitting these days. I’m in a bit of a slump, I think, so I keep casting on for projects that seem like little instant gratification things, but end up putting them down when it turns out, they’re not. A hat, a pair of gloves, a sock, a toy, and a design project have all fallen by the wayside. I wonder if part of my problem is being able to knit so quickly—if gloves take three days, a pair of socks a week, and a sweater a fortnight, it’s not really instant gratification unless I can whip through it in a couple of hours. And there’s not much that I want to knit that can be finished in a couple of hours.

So I took a step back and worked on some spinning, instead.

This is a 50/50 angora/cormo blend sent to me by the charming and fabulous Carry of Autumn Breeze designs. She told me it wasn’t the greatest stuff and that the yarn would have “character,” to which I thought, dude, I’m not good enough at this spinning thing yet for any of my yarn not to have character. And honestly? This stuff feels wonderful to me, and spins pretty damn well too. I did discover (the hard way) that angora requires quite a lot of twist, more so than I’m used to putting into laceweight singles. Still, I’m almost done spinning what she’s sent, and once I do I’m going to wind it off, separate it into thirds, and ply it, for a nice happy 3-ply fingering, with hopefully enough for a small lace scarf or smokering.

As for the knitting, I quietly cast on for something not so small today.

Yes, my fall accessory obsession continues with yet another neckwarmer, this time the stunningly gorgeous Tapestry Cowl. I’m working it up in Decadent Fibers Marshmallow, leftover from a certain pair of mittens from last winter, which some of you may recognize. I weighed the cakes the other day to find out that I still had 60+ g of each colour left, still, and almost went for another pair of mittens before I remembered that me and other people’s mitten patterns don’t mix, courtesy of my strangely shaped hands. That’s okay though, because this cowl is going to be totally gorgeous and it will match the other mittens nicely.