Mmmm, green

My shawl is at the "lap full of squishy goodness" stage. I'm halfway done. Normally I'd be climbing walls to be done already, but I'm actually taking my time stretching this out as long as possible because I'm enjoying the process so much. I don't remember the last time I was this excited about a piece of knitting. Kinda sad, really - but I'm making up for it now!

Landmarks

It seems to be the season for landmark points in life right now. Today I renewed my Young Person's Railcard for the last time, because tomorrow is my birthday and I'll no longer qualify. I don't mind getting older, but I'm definitely going to miss the cheap train fares! Baby L isn't a baby anymore. I went to visit yesterday, and while S and I were having a lovely evening of knitting and gossip, Baby L has figured out whole sentences and can have conversations. Strange how she's gone from being a noisy little lump to being a small person with opinions and a wicked sense of humour in such a short time.

And of course there are spinnerly landmarks. There's the obvious one - spinning yarn that you can knit with for the first time. That one was pretty exciting. But not nearly as exciting as the one I just got to - spinning yarn you'd actually WANT to knit with! Over the course of a couple of months, I turned this:



into this:



which I'm now turning into one of these.

It's real yarn. Finally. It squidges and is soft. It's evenly plied. It's sproingy. I love it. I love it so much that all of my other projects have been dropped like hotcakes so that I can devote myself to knitting it. I cast on two days ago and am a quarter of the way through my yarn. And since I took the day off for my birthday, I could conceivably finish it this weekend!

The Perennial Pepper

I thought these guys were supposed to be annuals, but no!

Two baby chilis, happily growing away on our frigid living room windowsill.

Wait for it...

...I knit another pair of Monkey socks. I know, shocking, isn't it? My sixth completed pair, and all but one mineminemine!

Colinette Jitterbug in the colourway 'Popsicle', although it reminds me of birds of paradise. I love the bright reds and oranges, and the green is perfectly loud and garish for such a grey and dismal time of year. I went with three repeats on the cuff, although I could easily have managed one more, if not two with the leftovers. Ah well, I can always make more sock yarn squares.

I also ripped out two projects this weekend. The bronze scarf and orange shrug are no more. I'm now down to four WIPs - the Franken-Mei socks, the sage green shawl, the blue Malabrigo Shetland Triangle and the sock yarn pillow. I'm feeling a pressing need to cast on for something new. Possibly a stripey hat, or maybe some mittens?

Busy signal

I can't come to the blog right now. I've figured out how to use my spindle at long last. I expect to resurface when I run out of undesignated fiber to spin, or for my birthday, whichever happens first.

Ta-ta for now!

Ravelympics Wrap-Up

In among all the other things I spent February doing, I participated in the Ravelympics. This year I decided to be somewhat more realistic than I have in previous years, and actually take my regular life into account when planning! I decided to make a pair of Fuzzy Feet slippers, originally published in Knitty.

Basically, you knit an enormous sock (worsted plus jumbo needles) and then full it to fit. The knitting went quite quickly when I was actually doing it - total time to knit was in the region of 6 hours, give or take. That gave me these:



Then came the fun part. I don't have a toploader, and even if I did, I don't have a zippered pillowcase to keep felting lint from destroying the drains on the washing machine. So, manual labour. I started the fulling process by back-and-forth plunging in icy and scalding waterbaths. This got me to the "omg-so-hairy" phase, but I needed more friction to make the fulling happen. So, into the bath with some Fairy liquid to crush grapes, or in this case squish slippers. An hour later,



I'm happy with my results, since this is my first fulling project. But it's a sort of good news/bad news situation. The bad - the lint resulting from the fulling process triggered an allergic reaction, so I'm never going to be able to wear these. The good - my spouse and I have the same size feet, so he now has a lovely pair of slippers!

Oops.

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry I have been neglecting you. Let me assure you, it's not you, it's me. I shall endeavour to do better, and for now, let me try to sum up the craziness of my life over the last month.

First, I've been spending a ton of time on my postgraduate studies. They are going well; I've handed in another paper, made good progress on my group project, and am really enjoying the module on Systems Analysis and Design. Clearly, a life of being an information geek is the right choice for me.

Second, I've been up to my eyeballs with the SCA. Specifically, I've been co-cratting a major event. Three days, 150 attendees, and so busy I did not touch yarn for the best part of a week. There, there, blog, it's ok, I'm better now.

There has been fiber in my life over the past four weeks, fear not. First of all, some lovely parcels! I received the final installment of the 2009 Tsock Club - The Abbey. It has gargoyles and flying buttresses. Isn't the yarn pretty?

What's that? Not yarn, you say? Why, blog, how observant of you! The Club's creators decided to try out something new with this shipment. Anyone who wanted to could swap their yarn out for superwash spinning fiber so that one might Tspin one's Tsocks. And for a small extra charge, the junkies yarn nuts out there could have both yarn and fiber. You can probably guess which option I went for.

Included in this shipment was a bar of handmade herbal soap, which smells divine, and a bag of herbal moth repellant. And since Jennifer is a sweetheart about such things, neither soap nor moth repellant contains lavender, to which I am allergic.

There's more yarn in my life, too. Dee and Tony did the impossible - they dyed the perfect red yarn. I may have broken the yarn diet, but my only regret is not buying more of the yarn while it was available. I also scored a skein of gorgeous lavender-and-pink cobweb-weight, 'cause I really needed more of that in my stash.

What's that? Where's the knitting? Oh, there's been knitting too, and spinning, but if I tell you about everything at once I'll have nothing to tempt you back with!

Hugs and kisses,

Your Knitting Fiend