The Long Draw

I've decided it's time to learn how to spin.

"What?" I hear you say. "Isn't that handspun in your last post?" Well, yes, it is. And I spun it, which means I know how to spin already.

What I mean is, I'd like to know that such-and-such a fiber would be best spun such-and-such a way, to be able to spin multiple thicknesses of yarn on purpose (as opposed to varying degrees of thin), to spin fluffy yarns or tight sock yarns as I choose, and to spin stuff like this for fun:

Sparkles! Flowers! So cheerful! 

Puffy! The orange reminds me of a certain favorite Sister of the Art for some reason...

Basically, I want to be the boss of my spinning.

Now that my desires have been established, let me take you back to the very early days of my current knitting career. I learned to knit English style, with the working yarn in my right hand. In its infinite wisdom, the Internet informed me that this was not, in fact, the only way to knit! I found a video, watched it a mazillion times, cursed a lot, and learned to knit Continental, with the working yarn in my left hand. It was, to say the least, an interesting experience to take something my muscles already knew how to do and try to change it.

Learning to spin long draw is much like that experience. Here is my first attempt, rudely chain-plied and completely unstable, unstructured and not really good for anything:

48 yards!

Still, it's finished, and I learned something. For the next attempt I dug into my Copperpot Woolies bag and pulled out 5.1 oz of the Prairie Lady colorway. I don't really know why I bought this one, although I suspect the wool fumes may have something to do with it. The colors aren't my favorite (what gave it away?), so it was first in line to become Long Draw Experiment #2:

132 yds., sport-to-bulky weight

This one worked out better, although I still have some serious kinks to work out with the next experiment, which will happen when I come back from Portland next week.

In the mean time, I've revived a project I started back when I was still living in San Jose. I haven't done a lot of spinning since then so I have no idea why it's easier this time around, but it is. When I started spinning this Falkland from Pigeon Roof Studios, it immediately spun very fine. I've never really encountered a yarn that "wanted" to spin at a certain weight, but this one definitely does. With a very little fluffing and pre-drafting - which might account for it being easier to spin now - it wound onto the bobbin at a very satisfactory rate.

I don't have any illusions that this yarn will be finished before October; I got 2 braids as a gift from my friend Colleen that weight in at 232 grams, of which I've spun... 32 grams. It'll make a lovely addition to my spun yarn total by the end of the year, though!

Fiber Surprise!

On Monday I delved into my Box of Surprise Spinning and pulled out one of the Big Bags. What can I say? After a weekend of completed spinning projects, I was feeling cocky.

Remember me from Monday? I knew you would.

Even though I packed the bags myself, and even though I thought I had an idea of what could be in it, I still jumped up and down a little and squealed "Ooooooo! Yay!" when I opened it.

It feels like sheepy clouds.

I should hide things from myself more often if I'm that easily delighted, is what I'm saying.

UFO Files: Be-Bop-a-Lula Yarn

I woke up this morning convinced that my calves would be abominably sore; after all, I plied roughly 8.5 ounces of yarn last night!

Proto-yarn! 

I actually laid in bed and stretched experimentally for a few minutes before I realized that roller derby had given me a gift in the form of Calves of Doom (not to be confused with the Ass of Doom or the Thighs of Doom, which generally follow the Calves in short order. Oh, derby.).

When I was preparing to go to Coal City last summer I weighed out a bump of Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino fiber from my (extensive) collection. I wanted a 3-ply, so I divided it into 3 smaller bumps by weight and took it with me to Illinois, where I got through about 2 2/3 bobbins before I came back to sunny California.

The singles have sat in my Loet Victoria bag ever since, waiting patiently for their revival.

After finishing the Bright Fig yarn on Friday, I pulled out the Vic and finished up the singles on Saturday, then spent the bulk of yesterday plying on the Schact while watching the last few episodes of The Tudors on Netflix.

Bobbin #1: 3-ply marl

I wound the yarn off the bobbins this morning, soaked it, and dried it on a rack outside my back door.

Ooo, kinky. 

One skein is a traditional 3-ply, as I had planned, and the second is a chain-ply. They are both bouncy and cheerful and the pictures don't really do justice to how green the yarn is. I was worried that it would be over-plied and kink up all over the place like the picture above, but after a soak and dry, it's perfectly balanced! Hurrah!

3-ply, 510 yds.

Chain-ply, 450 yds.

I'm not a huge fan of the marled look of the first skein - although it's growing on me in all the delight of LOOKIT WHAT I MADE!! - so I tried the chain-ply to see if I would like it better. I'm not certain that I do, but if looking through pictures of handspun on Ravelry has taught me anything, it's that going from fiber to yarn to finished garment can completely surprise me. Perhaps I'll knit dueling baby sweaters and see which one comes out the victor!

Next up: learning to spin long-draw with some ancient Copperpot Woolies bats from The Stash! But first, what mystery fiber does this bag contain?

Something AWESOME, I have no doubt!

In Which I Make Yarn

I always have a nagging suspicion that making my own yarn is ridiculous, especially given how much commercially-spun yarn I already have. On the surface, it's a no-win situation: the fiber costs just as much as yarn that's already made, it takes for-ev-er to create, and in the end I'm left with yet another material as opposed to a finished product.

But spinning is more than that, somehow. It is meditative in a way that knitting often is not. That isn't to say that knitting is not meditative; it's just a different kind of meditation. One that recently has involved a disproportionate amount of swearing, in fact. Not being able to count tends to hinder proper knitting.

The meditation of spinning comes in the rhythm of treadling and the quiet whirr of the wheel; on my cherry wood Schact it sounds like rain and sometimes I can almost smell wet earth.

For a long time I've neglected my spinning for one reason or another. Some of those reasons are pretty small - as in less than 10 feet - but they make a difference and I'm suddenly interested again. For this project I wanted to try lining up the plies of a 2-ply to make a self-striping yarn. It's more difficult than it looks because unless your spinning is perfectly even, there's bound to be some differences in thickness.

Clearly my spinning is not even.

In retrospect I probably should have done a simple, straight-up spinning project first to remind my muscles how this whole process works and to iron out my singles. That pile of wasted singles definitely took some of the meditation out of plying, even if I did have a disc of Fringe season 1 to keep me from shrieking obscenities at no one but myself.

All in all, however, I'm pretty chuffed with the finished yarn:

Girl on the Rocks 100% merino in "Bright Fig." 716 yards, 2-ply, 101g. 

I'm looking forward to winding it into a yarn cake and showing you all how cool it looks. Now I just need to find a pattern...

It's Time to Re-assess

It is amazing what effect a small change can have on my crafting. For example, I recently moved my spinning wheel from one side of the sofa to the other:

Not pictured: spinning wheel.

Now it lives between my computer desk and the sofa, and I use it much more often! The sticking point was that my sofa is too low to comfortably spin from it, so I have to use my desk chair. When the wheel is within a 3-foot scooting radius, it gets more use. Geometry at work! 

Before I went to Disneyland I managed to finish the first half of the Bright Fig roving:

The yarn will be so pretty!

And since then I'm about 1/3 through with the second bobbin. I'm trying to spin it evenly so that the 2 plies will match up through most of the yarn, but we'll see. 

Since I've been on a Shetland Shawls kick it feels like my 11-Mile Quest has slowed down considerably. Lace knitting takes longer than sock knitting (but apparently not as long as sweater knitting ::coughSalinacough::), so I'm trying to find projects that are half-finished - like the Great Bebeh Project (a KP Shine Moderne Baby Blanket) - that are somewhat mindless. I'm also thinking about overdyeing a bunch of my sock remnants to make a log cabin blanket of some sort, but I haven't come to any conclusions on that yet. I am nearly finished spinning the third bobbin of singles for the Be-Bop-a-Lula that I was working on in Coal City last summer, so once the Bright Fig is finished I'll be pulling that out and finishing it up. 

My tentative goal is to be at 7 miles by the beginning of October. That's roughly 4 miles worth of knitting/spinning, which is *ahem* more than I've accomplished in the last eight months, so it'll be a challenge indeed! 

Chipping Away

Despite not participating in the annual Tour de Fleece this year, I have been reading many blog and forum posts about the progress of other people's Tour de Fleece goals, and it's been causing me to give my poor neglected Matchless the side eye.

Those of you with long memories for my personal spinning goals will remember my leap onto Spindlicity's Stashdown 2011 bandwagon. (For those of you who don't, here is a link. I won't judge you if you click it.) I must have done something wrong since it took me less than a month to tumble off of that particular vehicle, and the Matchless has sat in a corner of my living room with 1/2 of January's project on it for 7 months. I admit that every time I considered the Tour de Fleece I made myself look at that bobbin full of singles and cringed a little inside.

But on Wednesday I decided to (literally) dust off my wheel, give it a coat of lemon oil, and do some spinning. Halfway through the second bobbin of singles I remembered that my derby friend Bite Size had a birthday this weekend, and I decided to give the finished yarn to her. This is not as random as it seems; she is an avid crocheter. Yesterday I plied and this morning after derby practice I skeined, soaked, and set the final project out to dry:

Copperpot Woolies "Chantilly Lace," 220 yards.

It came out squishy and soft and more the purple-ish of the first picture. She was THRILLED and couldn't believe that I'd made it myself, which I found a little hilarious considering that she's an artist! But I'm pleased as punch that this yarn went to someone who will make something out of it relatively soon; I tend to hoard my handspun much like I hoard my yarn and fiber, despite knowing in my head that even if I ruin it, there is always more wool in the world.

But don't cheer too loudly for my stashdown progress yet; back in April I fell down and ordered some Polwarth from Fat Cat Knits, but I made a deal with myself that I couldn't open the package until the current project was off of my bobbins. Well, that day is today, so I opened it! (See? Sometimes I have self-control. Just don't get used to it.)

It was worth the wait.

"Curry," 4 oz.

"Magnolia," 6 oz.

I fell in love with the Magnolia colorway after perusing thing4string's truly amazing Flickr stream. That woman is not only an excellent spinner, but she's also prolific! I wonder if those two things go hand-in-hand? Hmmm.....
Although I'm certain that I've missed the Stashdown 2011 bandwagon entirely by this time, I did go and pull out another brown paper bag with a mystery fiber in it. Inside was a pleasant, cheerful surprise:

Girl on the Rocks "Bright Fig" merino,  4.3 oz

I bought this at Color: A Fiber Festival back in 2008(!!!). I wonder how long it'll take me to spin it up? Maybe I should go start now. After all, between the Chantilly Lace (5.5 oz) and this, I'd be very close to net zero fiber input for 2011, which I'm fairly certain hasn't happened since I discovered spinning back in 2007.

That's what I call Progress.

And Begin Again!

It's January third already. Why is it that the years you anticipate always seem to whizz by? Amazing. Nevertheless, while I tend to hate the build-up to the new year, I definitely like the sense of putting off whatever negative things may have happened last year (a family full of cancer, anyone?) and looking forward to what the new year will bring. I feel like the last couple of months have set me up nicely for a fresh start as well as completing some goals, some of which are even from my neglected and in need of editing 101 in 1001 list! (I cooked 5 new-to-me recipes in the last month! There will be brief write-ups.)

I started this year at the apartment of my friend Suzanne and her new boyfriend, accompanied by my dear friends Scott and Michael. We drank champagne and ate scallops wrapped in bacon over pasta with homemade alfredo sauce. It was a good New Year's. Then Scott and I went down to his parents' house in San Jose and hung out for the rest of the weekend. Since we've both moved away from the Bay Area (some of us farther than others, SCOTT), we spend a lot of time hanging out over video games online but not a lot of time face-to-face, or in the case of this weekend, face-to-Dr. Who. It was lovely. 

Now I'm back home and today has been a very puttery sort of day. In about 10 minutes, the pile of boxes in the front of my living room went from this: 

The pile of to-be-unpacked boxes is only slightly larger than this. Progress!

to this:

Clearly I need more DVDs. And books. Or fewer...

I obviously found the cord to my Canon, so there are pictures of the last knits of 2010:

Primavera Socks, Creatively Dyed Calypso Sock Yarn, "Gris."

Basic Mitts, same yarn as above

Basic Mitts, Fannie's Farmhouse Sock Yarn, "Victoria"

These are made from the leftover yarn from Crazy Sarah's 2009 birthday socks, which were nearly finished at the Great Alameda Pub Crawl of 2010 and finally made it to her at the Sacred Family Skate Night this year. I apparently never photographed or blogged them, so just imagine this same yarn, but socks.

And also the first finish of 2011: 

Basic Socks, 316 yds.

These are my standard k3p1 rib with a 9" cuff. I bought six (6!) skeins of this Paton's Stretch Sock in a haze of I-don't-know-what during a trip to Michael's over Thanksgiving. I figured that I'd get 3 pairs of socks, but it's looking more like five (5!). Or perhaps a three pairs for me and one for an as-yet-undetermined male. I'd say THB, but he's on Knitwear Probation. Good thing I have other brothers!

I also started a new scarf: 

Is it my imagination or does this yarn smell faintly of graphite and wood shavings?

I am in love with this yarn; no wonder Madeline Tosh is so popular right now! My only gripe is that it has only one knitting life; don't think you're going to be able to unravel it and try another project, or rip back several rows with impunity. Beauty comes with a price, mis petits amis, and this is definitely beautiful. I think my favorite thing about it is the way the dye job makes it look even more three-dimensional than it really is. Mmm. Pattern: Aria Delicato from Knitspot.

In my last post, I promised to show you the pictures of my neatly arranged stash closet and the overflow pile in front of it, and since starting the new year with broken promises is not really on the agenda, here you go: 

It's tidy! And organized! But there's more:

More. Sigh.

Yipes. There was also a list of things I wanted to do before the new year, and I got all of it done except cleaning the cherry Schact. Darcy "helped" me organize yarn: 

I forgot I had all that CashSoft Aran. And Crystal Palace Creme. /facepalm

I managed not only to get that pile of boxes down to only the two big ones at the bottom, to pick out my Stashdown 2011 projects, but also put them all in paper bags to maintain an element of surprise! 

These bags make up the second big box. The other one is full of yarn, of course.

The fiber ranges in weight from 2oz of 50/50 merino/yak from A Verb for Keeping Warm to 25.5oz (!!) of superwash merino from Crown Mountain Farms, which will be this year's Tour de Fleece project. I tried to choose a range of dyers, colors, and blends. I'm somewhat inspired to try this 12-month thing with sock yarn too, but I haven't decided yet. At least the sock yarn stash is already organized and doesn't require (much) tossing!

And lastly, I've made an important executive decision. This year's quest will go to ELEVEN. It  seems only right. If you wanna play, grab the button!

Or a smaller version for sidebars, etc.:

Falling Behind

I was going to have knitting pictures for you to ogle, but I forgot to take them until after it was dark. Daylight saving is, in case you didn't know, o-v-e-r, so it gets darker... earlier. Weird, right? You'd think they would want to save daylight in the winter, when it's dark all the time. But no. Yet another thing to change when I'm in charge of everything; damn that list is getting long!

Sooooo I'm nearly to the end of the center square of the Hap Shawl. When it's piled up it looks pretty much the same as it does here, with just more fabric. Once the center is off the needles, I'll stretch it out and show you that it does, in fact, make a square! It's rull exciting in my knitting life, guys!

Let's see, what else. OH! I signed the lease on my new apartment today! Wahhooooo!! No more crazy, soap-using, brother-emailing, passive-aggressive crazy (did I mention crazy?) person for a roommate. Unless you count me, which maybe you should because I use soap, email my brother, and am occasionally passive-aggressive. One of these things I am working on and the others I consider positive parts of my persona; I'll let you decide which is which. Anywhoodle, I talked my landlord into letting me paint my room, so that's going to happen on Friday and I will take pictures of Nadia and I smeared in paint and rocking out to 80's music according to the Universal Law of Painting. What kind of music did people listen to while painting before the 80s, I wonder? I have an amusing mental image of Elizabeth Bennet painting the west sitting room while Mary warbles away on the pianoforte.

And I promised spinning information, so here it is! You may have noticed a severe dearth of spinning on this blog with the minor exception of over the summer while I was in BFE Illinois. Well, since I'm shifting house, I'm going to take the opportunity to put my wheel where I will use it. And to help me remember that spinning is good for the soul, I'm taking part in the Spindlicity Stashdown 2011. This is only partly inspired by the veritable mountain of spinning fiber in my possession, and more by my desire to actually SPIN sometimes instead of just acquiring fiber. Since the original post, the author (Janel? I have no idea) has decided it's going to be a 12-month thing and will begin after the holidays are over. I, on the other hand, have A Very Little of the Be-Bop-a-Lula left to spin up and ply, so I'm going to make that my warm-up project for December.

Here's a button if you'd like to play along!

And there you have it. My contribution for today. I will leave you with a little tidbit i learned today while watching the Du Maurier/Hitchcock special feature on the Rebecca DVD: Daphne du Maurier's father was great friends with J. M. Barrie, and played the very first Captain Hook on stage. He was also the person who began the tradition of having the good Captain and Mr. Darling played by the same actor. Daphne grew up with the children who inspired Peter Pan. Now why wasn't that wrapped into Finding Neverland?!?

Tour de Fleece, Day the Last

Well, darling Readers, the day has come. The final day of the Tour de France, of which I have managed to watch not a single moment, and with it the final day of my third year participating in the Tour de Fleece.

You may recall that my goal was to spin every day of the Tour. It wasn’t a supremely difficult goal, and I didn’t have to stretch myself a huge amount to get it done. But I did have to get up out of bed a few times and plug myself into my iPod for half an hour at the wheel to be able to say I spun that day; if you know me and how much I love my bed, then you understand that this Tour wasn’t ALL fun and games. I didn’t really play along in any of the challenge days, and my two days of rest didn’t coincide with the Tour itself, but I did manage to spin every day save two, and I did manage to finish two of my three bobbins of CMF Be-Bop-a-Lula in addition to finishing the Whammy Kiss yarn:

Look upon my achievements and tremble!  I would have finished Bobbin #2 last night, but for the third time in his life Darcy decided he wanted to sit on my lap, and it quickly became clear that while some spinners are able to operate a wheel while their laps are full of cat, I am not one of them. Whether or not my inability to do so is related to the fact that my cat is Decidedly Not Small, I am uncertain. But since he was a kitten, Darcy hasn’t been much of a cuddler, so I’ll drop what I’m doing to encourage kitty lap time whenever it presents itself.

In the last 23 days, I’ve also done a great big whack of knitting. So much knitting, in fact, that I’m taking at least the morning and afternoon off today to let my wrist rest! It’s crackling in a you’d-better-stop way, but not a you’re-in-trouble way, so I suppose I’ll listen. I did block the Ishbel, though, so here it is!

Next Wednesday my dad arrives with my youngest brother (age 10). I’m not sure what effect their presence will have on my knitting, spinning, and reading time; but I’m fairly sure it won’t increase it by any great magnitude. My dad seems to think that knitting, while a pretty and ladylike activity, is akin to doing nothing - a sentiment that drives me batty every time we go head to head over it. I think it’s because I refuse to allow him to control what I knit and for whom, but that might just be my residual teenaged angst showing through.

I plan to spend this week plowing through the projects I want to finish before I leave Coal City. To that end, here they are listed in all their glory:

1) CMF Be-Bop-a-Lula yarn
2) Cheraphim
3) Knee high socks
4) Girasole

Three of those four things are within my immediate control, and if I can ever get THB on the phone to send me the final skein for the Cheraphim, I just might do it!

Tour de Fleece, Day ...

What day is it? I have no idea. I don’t even know when the Tour ends, so maybe I’ll just continue to spin a little every day until I go home.

So far I’ve reached my goal of spinning every day but rest days. What dates the actual rest days are, I have no idea, but I’ve only missed 2 days through the whole Tour, so I’m calling it a success so far. I’m over 1/2 way through the second bobbin of CMF Be-Bop-a-Lula, and have reached that interminable part of the spinning project where the bobbin keeps getting more full but the fiber next to me stays the same size.

On Wednesday, I went to a Cubs game!  My friend from back in the Ashland days, Brandon, lives out here and got tickets from his boss, who couldn’t go, so B invited me and we spent a lovely afternoon at Wrigley Field. Our seats were even in the shade, so I didn’t get a sunburn! Although it did mean that the contrast washed out my pictures of the game. Ahh, well - one picture of a baseball game looks much like another.

I love baseball games, and Cubs games most of all. No one except Cubs fans sell out games when the team is as loser-ish as this one, and we as a body expect the loss, so we go because we love the game and the atmosphere - especially when the game is exciting. And boy, was this game exciting! We picked up a single run in the first few innings, and held on to the lead until somewhere around the 7th or 8th inning. At that point, B and I started to look at each other and say, “we could be here for awhile...”

And we were. There was a heart-wrenching moment in the eleventh inning where the bases were loaded and Fukudome was at bat - something that would strike fear into any pitcher - and the whole crowd was on its feet, waiting. But the mighty Casey struck out, and the game went on:

Everyone was tired, and even the hawkers with their beers and hot dogs had gone home. In the top of the inning, the Astros scored three runs, and people began to pour out of the stadium; I suppose three extra innings of hope can wear on even the most dogged Cubs fan. And then, someone hit a home run - I don’t know who - that brought us two runs and elicited a cry of “are you fucking KIDDING ME??” from somewhere in the vicinity of my seat.

Early in the game, Brandon told me that if we lost, it was because I wasn’t clapping enough. This is a joke, you see, because at a baseball game I tend to buy completely in. I’ll drink terrible beer at exorbitant prices, boo at the umpires, and clap with every stupid calliope song that plays across the loudspeaker. B made fun of me and said that I just wanted to clap, which may be true.

THB told me that if we lost, it was because I was at the game, since I’ve never been to a Cubs game that the Cubs have won. When I called him at work he told me to GTFO before I jinxed the team.

I should have left, still clapping.

Except I didn’t, because baseball is baseball, but Cubs games are a delight.

And after the game, we headed to the Goose Island Pub for a much-needed beer, some garlic fries, and great conversation with other Cubs fans.

I also, of course, tortured THB with the above picture, as a good sister should.

***************

Of knitting, there has been a lot. I finished Grandma’s Overspun Ishbel:

Handspun SW Merino, “Whammy Kiss”

320 yards

which is currently soaking and will be blocked in a few minutes. Then I wavered between starting a giant green Galveston (Rav link) out of the Forest Heather Shadow yarn I bought earlier this summer, or the Zephyr Girasole I planned when I was still in CA. The Girasole won out because there is a slight possibility that I can finish it before I go home. I’m about halfway through the sunflower pattern, and it’s looking a lot like the sea urchin that its similarly colored, fuzzier predecessor resembled. This one, I am hoping, won’t shed as much and so will actually be wearable. But I’m not holding my breath.

Then yesterday Grandma’s Knit Picks order came in: two balls of heathered red sock yarn and a set of 24” size 1.5’s. When I placed the order I tried very hard to resist the urge to earn the “free” shipping and buy $50 worth of stuff, thus earning me the title of “the Heroically Resistant.” I managed to avoid the temptation - mostly, so no title for me. Two balls of Felici in Green Veggies managed to slip into my cart (I swear without me knowing!) and since the arrival of Grandma’s needles liberated my own, I promptly started the top-down knee-high pattern I’ve been turning over in my head.

I didn’t realize it until I stopped knitting to start my Tour spinning last night, but I might have a thing going for green.

The Cheraphim is still at a stand-still. I will indeed run out of yarn, so I’m waiting for THB to send me the last ball of Knittery yarn to finish it up. Given that I called him during “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” it might have to wait until I get back home and can dig it out myself.

A Failure to Comply

I’ve been doing well at saving both calories and money, but occasionally I splurge on both. These weeks in Illinois have done something to help me get out of the rut I was in while in California; I’m outside more often, eating more healthy food (and less of it, thank goodness!), and knitting/spinning regularly. I had been running - that dreaded R-word! - but I’ve fallen back on my old method of starving* my body into submission rather than having to exercise.

You may recall a few days ago when I received some ungodly number of yards of lace-weight yarn - some 4.75 miles, to be honest. I do prefer knitting with the lighter yarns, but their yardage does add up something scandalous! I didn’t think that the yardage would toss me right over the 12-Mile Barrier I made for myself, though. Frankly, I didn’t really think at all, more’s the pity, and now I’m faced with the prospect of not only completely ignoring Stash Equilibrium, but also not completing the 12-Mile Quest this year - especially given that I may (or may not) have ordered more yarn from The Loopy Ewe today (I did). I can only plead an excess of sun, and maybe a lack of food. Sure, that’s it.

I toyed with the idea of counting every pound as a free mile on my Quest total, then on my incoming total. Then I thought that maybe for every mile I run, I could give myself 100 yards of slack, to be assigned as necessary. But then I realized that if I did any of these things and succeeded in my quest, I wouldn’t feel like I’d won fair and square using the rules that I just made up. It’s supposed to be a challenge. It’s supposed to be well-nigh unpossible. I’m supposed to fail a few times - maybe a lot of times - before I succeed. Such is the nature of a Quest. And there you have it.

But there has been progress on various things! Today was a little more overcast, so I re-shot THB’s Last Chance Socks:

The yardage is still unknown, but just think how much fun it will be to weigh everything and get yardage totals when I get home! (Do you understand how quiet it is around here yet? Calculating yardage has moved from “satisfying” to “fun.”)

I’ve also been spinning - it is the Tour de Fleece, after all. I missed a day due to I can’t remember what - it couldn’t have been fatigue! - so I’ll spin tomorrow in order to make up for it. Last night I spun while watching an episode of House and thought to myself that I would probably get a lot more yarn made if I spun for more than 42 minutes/night, but like Scarlett O’Hara, I will think about it tomorrow. Back to the subject at hand! There is definitely progress on Bobbin #1:

See? I told you. It’s note even one of those infintesimal flip-back-and-forth progresses, known only to spinners. That bobbin is definitely chubbier around the middle.
And since I finished THB’s socks, I’ve made progress on yet more socks - this time for me, and thus blessedly smaller:

 

  

The yarn is from Enchanted Knoll Farm; it’s their Superwash Sock Yarn in “Cornucopia,” and it was in my welcome package from The Loopy Ewe. It’s also very similar in feel to the Lorna’s Laces I am so fond of, which is a huge plus. I’m trying a variation on my standard plain sock - this one is longer and involves decreases in the leg to account for calves - and I like it very much. I’ve also carefully written down the pattern so I can test it a few more times before I write it up. This one might be the one, friends. I’m sure you’re awash with antici-

pation.

My obsession with socks that take up the fewest number of yards possible has subsided, I think. I’m moving on to new and different ways to make sure that I eke every possible stitch out of my sock yarn without resorting to a sock swatch blanket. I know other people have them, and they’ve worked out well, but I am about 120% sure I would never, EVER finish one, so I’m looking for other alternatives. Striped socks have gripped my imagination at the moment, so we’ll see how far that takes us. The royal us, you understand.






*No, not actually starving. I’m at my Spanish grandmother’s house, where if you’re not chewing, you’re sick. It’s a challenge just to diet, much less starve!