Posted in: "Vine Yoke Cardigan"
Here's the progression of my spinning week:
Monday night,
By Thursday night,
As of right now (6:00 pm GMT on Friday):
This is all that's left.
I am ahead of schedule, and I'm finishing tomorrow if it kills me.
ETA: I forgot to put in this picture of where I was spinning today:
OK, started off with 4.5 oz of purple fiber for my Vine Yoke cardigan left on Monday afternoon.
Monday night: 3.8 oz (watched Fantastic Four, which was ok)
Tuesday night: 3.1 oz (watched FF sequel, which was rubbish)
So, at the rate of 0.7 oz/2 hours, I should be down to 2.4 oz or less tonight, and 1.7 oz tomorrow night. Friday night is off because Himself and I are going on a date for the second time in eight days (!) and will be at a wine tasting. So saturday night I'll be down to 1 oz to go, which means I should be able to bust out the last ounce on Sunday. And that would set me up for starting to ply the next weekend, but we'll be out of town for part of it, so I'll aim for starting to ply on Bank Holiday Monday (aka May 3rd). I'm hoping that the plying will go a bit faster then the spinning, because four months is already too long to spend on one spinning project. Seriously!
There are definitely lots of things growing around here at the moment. Camellias,
Magnolias,
Tulips,
Laptop bags,
Cherry blossoms,
Pitcher plants,
Handspun sweaters,
and children.
Given the last, I'm embarking on another craft for a few days - sewing new summer dresses for the girls.
You'll be glad to know, however, that there are some things that are shrinking around here, i.e. my massive ball of purple top.
I'm now down to only 4.5 ounces to go. And since I'm imposing a moratorium on knitting for the next few days (my wrist is acting up again), I'm hoping against hope that it will get finished this week. Then I'll take a week or so before embarking on Neverending Plying.
The girls have been on spring holiday since the end of March, and it has seriously cut in to my blogging time and/or blogging energy. In the past two weeks we've been to a farm, a castle, the swimming pool several times, a zoo and multiple playgrounds. Despite that, I've managed to get some spinning and knitting done.
Well, not done, but at least moving forward. Last night I watched Brokeback Mountain and wound off 8 full bobbins of singles in the Neverending Spinning Project of Doom (NSPoD).
I can't believe I even entertained the idea that I could spin up all these singles in the month of January. At the rate I'm going, I may be done (with the singles) by the end of May. And then there's two rounds of plying to be done. Heck, when it's time to start knitting wool sweaters again, I'll have all the yarn done!
Winding them off on to toilet paper cones does show off the gradiations of the dye job though. It looks pretty cool from the bottom.
I have been doing some knitting as well. The most recent issue of Knitty has a cool pattern by Amy King using handspun. I pulled out the yarn I spun during the move last year that I'd been holding on to for another Knitty pattern, and decided this one would work better.
After some swatching (holy biasing stockinette Batman!) and a trip back through the wheel to take out some plying twist and make the yarn less wire-like, and I've been working my way through the yoke.
I'm now about an inch into the body, and facing endless stockinette. The pattern calls for about 650 yds of yarn, and I've got about 1000 yds of this, so I'm thinking I might put sleeves on. Instead of binding off the cap sleeves, I put the stitches on waste yarn, so when I'm done with the body I can see how much yarn I have left and do some sleeve if I can.
So...a new wool sweater in progress and it was short-sleeve weather today. My timing, as ever, is impeccable!
Oh, you mean that spinning...
Now that I've finished off the Fair Isle Craziness, it's time to get back to spinning for the Handspun Cardigan Craziness. I've now filled up eight bobbins, wound off the first three bobbins onto Patented Singles Holders (TM),
and started back in again. Eight bobbins barely got me in to the second bump of fiber and I think this bump is bigger then the first one, so I'm going to predict twenty bobbins worth.
Crap. That's a lot of singles. Remind me why I thought this was a good idea again?