Easter holiday

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!

Spinning? What spinning?

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?

Fiber Friday: Oh. Oh my...

Some of the goodies that Adrian has sent to my mailbox in the past few months...

Pallid Rambouillet,

Parritch Targhee,

Loch kid mohair/nylon/merino.

I'll be in my bunk...

Have a sheep

Clearly I need to go to Australia, if this is the kind of public artwork floating around.

I wonder what kind of fleece that is strewn about? And why didn't Ironman swipe any for me?

My school colors

About half of the projects on my plate/in mind at the moment are secret, and as such can't be discussed. Makes for pretty boring blogging, not to mention that I've been abandoned by my husband for a week and am trying to wrangle two children on my own. However, there has been some knitting going on, mostly late at night with the companionship of Vampire Bill et al.

First thing I've been working on is the first installment of the Knit Love Club 2010 sock club. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I've been loving it.

The yarn is Alchemy Juniper, colorway "Rumplestiltskin" (club exclusive), and the pattern is by Socktopus/Knit Nation braintrust Alice. The yarn is lovely (if a bit splitty for doing k4tog/ssssk, but what wouldn't be?) and the exact color of roasted butternut squash. Really. See?

The pattern is fun to knit and looks way more complicated then it is. I've had to do some adjusting to make the leg a bit longer and make sure I don't run out of yarn, but I'm well into the foot now and I think I'll have plenty. Maybe even some leftovers for The Blanket.

Project #2 is the big spinning project. I try to do about an hour a night on this at least, and I've now filled five bobbins.

That's the good news. The bad news is that I still have this much fiber left to spin, and only three more bobbins available.

That bump on the left is 171 gr and the one on the right (much compacted) is a whopping 472 gr (half of what I started with). Ooof. I was considering trying to get the spinning done during the Olympics, but we're going out of town for seven days for half-term holiday, and the wheel is not invited to Tunis with us.

Instead, last night I started swatching for this for the Olympics. I have serious color choice issues in stranded knitting, so I'm going to knit this vest (which I've been lusting over for ever) instead. I did one swatch last night, and have ruled out three colors and one needle size so far, so we'll see what happens. There is much more swatching for another secret project in a yarn I've never used before, but I think I want to marry. And so on and so on. So apologies for the lack of new, shareable content, but it may be a couple of weeks before I get to anything more interesting then the socks, purple yarn making and random Fair Isle swatches.