Clearing the decks

Wailey, wailey! My holiday is nearly over and, as usual, I don't seem to have got all the things I planned done. Nevermind. I have enjoyed the things I have done, so it's all good.

Spent yesterday evening plying up the yarn I have been spinning. It's Corriedale from My Heart Exposed. Helen called the fibre 'The Magic of Rhubarb' and 'Seasons of Change', which I love. I've spun them together, fractally, to make a larger amount of yarn. I'm very pleased with the finished yarn, which I'm calling Mellow Fruitfulness. There's about 290grams here. (Helen is always very generous with her weights.)



It's a dk weight yarn. Some bits are still thicker than others (hey, I'm still a beginner!) but it should balance out overall.

I can't really express how much I love spinning. It's something I always wanted to learn to do, from being a child. I've always been drawn to making things, particularly from scratch. I really love the scope to play with colour that spinning affords. And I'm enjoying challenging some people's preconceptions that anything handspun has to by lumpy and oatmealy. (See high visibility cowl from yesterday's post).

On the knitting front, I'm trying to resist starting any more projects until I have cleared some of the four that are on the go at the moment:

1. Turmeric sweater. This is in very fine yarn and I've restarted it four times now for one reason or another. Hopefully, now I've got guage and it's starting to look a bit more like it should, I'll crack on with it. My hands are still struggling a bit with the 2.75mm circulars it's done on and my brain is struggling with the madness of knitting a sweater in such a small guage, to be honest.

2. Fiddlehead Mittens. In Rowan 4ply and Mini Mochi. These have been on my 'want to do' list for years. I really have to be concentrating and to be in good light to work on these.

3. Vitamin D cardigan. (Rav link). I'm furthest on with this and the yarn isn't too fine, so I think this is what I will tackle first.


I'm making this in King Cole baby alpaca, which is lovely. I love the colour. It's called Plum, but is really more a gunmetal grey. I love grey, but am wary of adding too much grey and black into my wardrobe after a couple of years of trying to move towards brighter things.




4. Plain vanilla, toe-up (because I can do these now!) socks for J. This is my hospital and appointment project for when it looks wierd to be sitting playing Angry Birds at my age. I can't believe I just wrote that knitting socks seems less wierd than playing Angry Birds on my phone...