November update

I feel like I've just awoken from a long nap or something. I guess that's what happens when you have a break in your crazy work schedule.

The weather is beautiful. The leaves are nearly all off the trees, and those that are on are beautiful shades of yellow, red and orange. Today is sunny and bright, a day for being outside. I wish I had a yard I could do some work in. (I know, I could just walk down to the park and skip the work part, but I've sworn that today will be used for much needed apartment-fixing projects, and a walk to the park doesn't count.)

I have been finishing but not blogging various knitting projects. I've also not really been photographing them, so you may be hearing about them here and there.

First up: socks.
I have never had much interest in knitting socks. I mean, you can buy a decent pair for less than $5. But people seem to love making them, so I thought I'd give it a try. Of course, I knew that a plain sock would drive me crazy, so I picked a complicated pattern (Spring Forward from Knitty), and I started them on my trip to Cape Cod in early September. They were a great road trip project, and later turned into a good subway project. Of course, pulling my sock-in-progress out of my backpack over and over resulted in a broken needle, and so I knit most of this pair with 4 #1s and 1 #0 needle ala EZ. You can't tell, there's so much going on. Anyway, the last sock was sitting around for a few weeks, waiting for me to graft the toe, and I finally did it last week. Grafting is no big deal; not sure why I have such an aversion to it.

Second: handspun.
I don't even know when I stopped writing about my handspun. I've been trying to get back into spinning, and realized at some point recently that I haven't been treadling the wheel fast enough, so my yarn is a bit underspun (and extra fluffy). I am trying harder to treadle faster, and wonder if my wheel might benefit from some oil to help me do that. Of course, the whole point of this style of wheel is that it's not supposed to require lubrication. We'll see.

Anyway: yarns I've spun since I last blogged my spinning:
Two different colors of wool from roving bought at the Hope Spinnery this summer.
54 yards of orange30 yards of brown/orange/redthen there's 82 yards of the Blue Faced Leicester that I dyed with goldenrod this summer. And lastly, 69 yards of Jacob Sheep wool bought at Rhinebeck. I'm not doing so well with the yardage here. Clearly I should be trying to spin a little thinner.

Maybe I should also be trying to find something to make with my handspun. I seem to just be accumulating it at this point...