If there has ever been a time for me to go to a "Spinners Anonymous"meeting, it would be now. Obsessed? Overcome? Infatuated? I can only say that I am a spinner; judge away.
You may recall that my biggest knitting goal for the year is to steek, as in, steek a sweater. So I've begun the process of spinning enough wool to make a sweater that I can steek. (More about that later.)
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| Squishy Wool |
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| Smitty and the Skeins |
This is the softest, cushiest yarn I've probably ever spun. The crimp is super fine, short locks and a little angora blended in to make really round, squeezable, Charmin-tissue-like yarn. What did that guy say in the commercial? So squeezably soft, its irresistible!
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| Mr. Whipple |
KNITTING
Argyle-mania! This is the first of two rounds in the pattern I'm using for an argyle golf-club cover. In LSU school colors. The needles have progressed from 5's to 7's to 9's. Clearly I'm on a roll (no pun intended, Mr. Whipple).
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| Argyle Golf Club Cover |
And before I get too lost in little projects, I'm determined to keep my learning curve steep. I'm going for another try at the "Beginner's Triangle Shawl" from Meg Swansen's book Gathering of Lace.
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| Take two - Beginner's Triangle |
Acrylic yarn (don't say it) on size 7 wooden needles. A little too much drag, but I'll switch to circular needles soon enough, once I get the hang of the pattern. I tried this before and got really hung up with the pattern. Now I know why. The purl row (or wrong side row) is included in the chart, and it's worked backwards! What the??
Well, I can't argue with an expert. It is the Beginner's shawl project for a reason.
The purl/wrong-side row is in the chart for the sake of the beginner, but it just threw me off.
Threw me for a loop.
Yanked my chain.
You get the idea.
Now I've got it, and I hope to make this a small little shawlette as a sort of draft for a future project: A prayer shawl.
Now to explain about the steek, mentioned before. I got the Craftsy class on knitting an Icelandic sweater, and it will eventually be steeked, but the yarn must be wool. I have a lot of wool. A heck of a lot of wool. But none of it is the same gauge, color and/or breed. I need pretty much 1,200 yards of the same thing. That's a lot. So I'm going to be spinning for the next few weeks until I feel like I've got enough yarn to knit a sweater. I cannot wait. I hope to start the sweater September 1st. Be sure to check back by then!!
PERSONAL
I had a fun lunch with my baby girl today. She bought my lunch and we took it to a local city park and ate at a picnic table, under the trees, by a creek. Lovely! Until some kind of acorn-war started in the branches above our table. I never saw it coming until my daughter (who is 25) gasped and shrieked, thinking some kind of critter had landed on her. It was just an acorn, but one after another landed on us and our lunch until one acorn literally bounced off her salad container and into her little salad dressing cup. It could never happen again in a million years, and we will remember this lunch for a long time. I only wish I'd taken a picture!