my Tour de Fleece

Well, as I thought it might happen, I finished spinning my Shetland this weekend. While this is good, it also means that I have completed the Tour de Fleece early. I'm not sure what to do next-- start spinning something else?? (Not a bad idea, really.)
Other than finishing early, I'm rather pleased with this yarn. It softened considerably when I washed it, and it's really light and fluffy. The color reminds me of a melted popsicle.

For those who don't remember, Tomo and I dyed it with Kool Aid back in early May. There are only 2 ounces, and it spun up easily and quickly. I wish there was enough of it for mittens, but I only got about 100 yards of it. Another neck warmer? There must be some other perfect thing to use this for.

In other knitting news, I'm getting antsy to cast on a new project. I have tons of large (but not large enough) skeins of wool from Denmark, and I've been eying one of them for a while. This is Gotland Merino 8/2, by Old Mill, an Estonian yarn company. It's a blend of 75% Gotland (which is a Danish sheep, I learned), and 25% Merino.

According to the label, there are 225 grams of it. This yarn (and all of the yarn I bought there) was sold by weight, and no two skeins weighed the same. According to Ravelry, 225 grams of this yarn should give me 437 yards. In some fit of hopefulness, I decided that I had about twice that, and was brought back to reality when I balled and measured it on Sunday night at my knitting group. (The good news is that I have closer to 485 yards.)

In the meantime I'd become obsessed with making a short sleeved sweater from it, something I can wear over a long sleeved t-shirt in the fall, and I still want to make that work. I'm so set on it (plus I can't find the right pattern) that I've decided to design my own sweater. It's about time that I design something. I've been wanting to since last fall. And so yesterday, between visits to the eye doctor and the dentist, I studied Sweater Design in Plain English by Maggie Ringhetti, and swatched lace patterns from my mother's worn copy of The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker.
I'm learning a lot from that little swatch, which i haven't yet washed. What's most interesting to me is that this yarn, which is supposedly fingering weight, already seems to be blooming. (The swatch is on #6 needles, which I thought would knit a looser fabric than it is.) I expect that when I wash this the whole nature of the swatch will change. Stay tuned for Eliza's experiments in knit wear design!