I slipped off the blogging schedule very soon after establishing it. I have some excuses, but they are truly excuses.
- I have not finished the damn button band on the baby cardigan.
When I stop on a project it is always because of a change in the process. I have to just get a grip and do this or the baby will outgrow the sweater before she gets it. Avoidance, however, creates more avoidance.
- I killed the keyboard on my laptop.
I was drinking peppermint tea while at my laptop, reached for two different things while not paying attention and drowned the keyboard. So I put together a Frankenputer, with an external USB keyboard. That worked well for a day or two, and then other functions on the computer began to die. I grumbled for a few days, then bought myself a new laptop. I actually like it very much but all this distracted me from the buttonband and from blogging. Yup, that's what didi it.
- I had a recurrence of a trigger finger on my left hand.
Having my fingers curled toward my palm did lead to a delay in typing, knitting and spinning. Getting an injection into the palm of my hand to release the trigger finger left me whimpering all that weekend, though now the finger is almost back to normal.
- I procrastinate on everything.
I did however get some procrastination knitting done. Procastination knitting is when you knit something to avoid knitting something else. As usual, for me, the procrastination knitting is a sock. Not, of course, from the shoebag full of sock yarn stash. Not from either of the two new skeins of sock wool I bought at the Kid n Ewe festival. Instead, I started knitting a skein of yarn I found at Michaels. Turns out they carry the Patons Kroy sock yarn and had a very nice version they call FX. The sock is knitting up extremely quickly and so far fits very well.
One of othe reasons socks are good procrastination knitting for me is that I start with a generic sock, and thus no thinking or planning is required. I did my favorite super-easy turkish cast on, which I now can do using only one circular needle, knit really quickly to the point where I start my increases, and then did the Fleegle heel. I love Fleegle's heel, which does short rows without any wrapping or picking up. The sock is now past the ankle and I have chosen a simple pattern stitch for the calf. I am left though with a mystery that happens whenever I do the Fleegle heel -- even though I think I have used up all the increased stitches, I obviously don't and always end up with more stitches at the ankle than I had at the foot. Not a problem, since I keep trying on the sock and it fits, but one of these days when my brain is functioning at full speed I will have to sit down and figure out how it is that I do not work off all the increased stitches. Anyway, then I found a stitch I liked for the calf, and I am still picking it up and working a few rows at a time. But mostly I have been spinning.
For some reason I am running into beginner problems with the yarn I showed off in my last post, so I gave up in some frustration a couple of times. Somehow I wasn't getting enough twist into it (after all this time successfully spinning this stuff) and so the yarn kept drifting apart. It's funny that I am having trouble with basic wool spinning on the wheel, since the silk spinning on the drop spindle is going very well.
I finished one ounce of it, and spinning it on a Turkish spindle, on which you wind the yarn around the arms, means when it is done you have a nice center-pull ball of yarn.
So I put away the other ounce I have of this stuff, and started spinning an ounce's worth of this:
This is a batt of alpaca, silk and bamboo. Spinning it is a joy in a tactile sense -- it just feels amazing. The change in fiber sometimes causes a bit of a bump or knot in the yarn I am spinning, but in general it is going well. See:
The goal is to ply together the silk from the first picture with this yarn. I think it is going to be gorgeous.
I tried to postpone blogging so that I would be compelled to finish the buttonband, but that sort of negative pressure never works for me. So I am blogging even though the sweater is not complete.
I know nothing about spinning but that batt looks fabulous!
Posted by: Allison | January 19, 2012 at 10:47 AM