I’m taking bets
… on whether or not I will be able to fit the rest of these singles
onto my already rather full spindle.
… on whether or not I will be able to knit a whole ‘nother sock
out of the yarn I have left. (I have more of this roving, so it’s not life and death if I can’t.)
… on whether or not I will be able to resist falling for the charms of two six week old foster kittens.
(The video isn’t showing up for me, and I’m not sure if it’s my flashblocker or something else. Click here if you can’t see it the embedded way.)
I have good news!
And I can’t tell you what it is. All will be revealed in time.
Clue #2 for the mystery shawl along was revealed yesterday, with more choices. Boo. I decided pretty quickly on this one, though, and got through about ten rows of it… and now I’m not sure I like the flow of it.
Yay? Nay? Wait a few days and see what other people are doing? I think C might be a better choice…
In completely unrelated news, my mum has asked me to sell some of her jewelry pieces and extraneous supplies on Etsy, so I turned my buyer’s account into a shop. It’s not particularly pretty yet, I’ll make it so once more stuff is in there. And I might knit up and sell a few things myself, after a while. Maybe some of the non-knitters would go for a Simon Tam or two. Anyway, the shop is here if you’d like to admire my close-up photography skills (or lack thereof). Or, you know, buy things. There will be more up later–I keep agonizing over picture choices.
Today’s Caturday includes a game! Find the kittens.
(I’d tell you that the rest of my room isn’t that messy but that would be an outright lie. I’ve really got to clean, one of these days…)
This just in!
Real, live, actual, honest to goodness knitting content! Please, please, applause is not necessary.
First up we have the first clue from the Mystery Anniversary Shawl along.
It took me about two hours to knit this up–after I spent three days agonizing over chart choice. Clue #1 was presented with the option of four different charts, all very subtly different. I am not good with choices. Very not good. I agonized and looked at what other people were knitting up and agonized some more and asked all sorts of people “A, B, C, or D?” to which I mostly just got confused looks, then eventually gave up, used a random number generator, and ended up with A. And guess what? I like it quite a bit. And I’m really hoping that there aren’t choices involved in future clues.
Since I whipped through that so quickly, I needed something else (because heaven forfend* that I work on my dozens of UFOs). Turns out, I cannot resist the call of the handspun sock yarn.
Yum.
*Firefox does not recognize the word ‘forfend.’ This upsets me nearly as much as it not recognizing the word ‘doughnut’ while accepting ‘donut.’
Handspun Tuesday!
I meant to have handspun Monday, but there was a cat attack on my yarn and tangling issues that took until now to sort out.
The cats can eat me, though, because I’ve got 200ish yds of sock yarn made entirely by me.
Spindle spun and navajo plied from 2.5 oz of handpainted BFL, 15-16wpi. A little scratchy, but very squishy and pretty darn even, if I do say so myself.
(And before I forget: this here blog was featured in the very first issue of the Teens Knit and Crochet Magazine! Hello to everyone who has made their way here from the article. I promise I will get back to actual knitting content eventually.)
Get your ply on
SO glad I went for the Navajo ply. So, so glad.
I have the first roll of singles nearly all plied, so maybe I’ll have finished yarn by next week? I can hope, anyway.
But wait, what’s this?
Knitting content!? It is! I think fiddly toys might be the cure for my knitting malaise. This guy took me maybe six hours; I used this pattern kinda, but made a lot of mods obviously. I used fingering weight yarn and US0/2mm needles to get a tiny frog, worked the whole thing in the round (with a magic cast on and a grafted shut mouth), duplicate stitched the eyes, and basically winged the legs. Paperclips are helping to keep the frog standing, and I worked a picot bind off to make the toes (I need to spray-block those, though–they keep curling!). His Rav link is thisaway in case you want to, you know, make my day by favoriting him.
Here’s a picture of him on my keyboard, for scale:
Heat wave
Temperatures here in lovely New Jersey have been pushing triple digits for the past four days, which is my excuse for getting nothing done. Also, I’m waiting on several packages that appear to have been delayed, so my work is delayed until they show up.
But I did manage some spinning!
This is actually the sample of fiber that came along with my spindle–I spun it up before starting the BFL but was lazy about getting pictures. It’s about a light worsted, two-ply, low twist. Maybe ten yards? But I like it.
And work continues on my BFL singles. This picture is all off, color-wise. I’ll get better ones tomorrow.
I think I might start plying once I finish this batch, because I’m anxious to see how it turns out. I also discovered a really awesome video for something called ply on the fly today, and I’m hoping to try that at some point. Looks fun!
And as I type this, it has just started pouring rain. With any luck it’ll be down to normal temperatures by tomorrow.
Knitting? What’s that?
I kept telling myself that I couldn’t blog this week until I got some knitting done.
Hasn’t happened.
This spinning thing, I tell you, is just so fascinating.
This is the BFL from Freckleface Fibers. I’m going to try to navajo ply it once I have all the singles worked up. Should be interesting.
I’m hoping that by Sunday I’ll have some interesting things to report, but until then, have some early Caturday.
New toy!
I started spinning on this literally two seconds after I ripped the box open.
How gorgeous is that!? And it spins like a dream. In fact, I’m going to go spin some more right now…
Jeshknits 