Recap

Cleaning

Last Saturday was spent helping my parents clean up their old house. Mostly junk hauling from the backyard and my dad's garage. In the midst of it, we found some interesting things.

An old Coast Guard radio.


My dad's old bag when he went out to repair copiers ages ago. It was in pretty decent shape. Pretty cool to stumble on old documents and time sheets.


We were guaranteed that this was the last round, so hopefully I won't have to bore you with anymore of this.

Knitting

In other news, I've pretty much finished the doily except for the crochet cast-off. I've never cast off live knit stitches by crocheting so I need to do some more research before I feel comfortable continuing.


I also picked up my bohus-inspired sweater the other day and finally joined the facing. It's plain stockinette now, but because the yarn is held double, it's still not something to do without paying at least a little attention.


Today is Thursday, so I also snuck in a few rows on the Clapotis. The meeting was a little shorter than normal and there's talk of canceling it more often. I've got mixed feelings though... it's not productive and wastes everyone's time, but, well, I wouldn't get to knit at work on Thursdays anymore. Hrm.

Spinning!

I plied a little bit off my second spindle. I was pulling from both ends of a center pull ball and it was a little awkward. I managed to get them super tangled and one strand broke. So, mini skein. Here's my first yarn with my first plied yarn.


The wool is, well, wool. It came with this very helpful and specific label.


It's actually rather funny how it all came about. I really blame it on a couple slow days at work. I needed something to break up the Java learning so I could let it all soak in. I popped over to the yarn harlot and stumbled on this post that linked to the joy of handspinning. (Kind of ironic that a post about abandoning fiber actually starts me spinning). I spent quite a long time reading and watching the videos.

I was so intrigued that I wanted to swing by the yarn store on the way home to grab a spindle and some fiber. My go-to local yarn store has a bunch of fiber and even wheels, so we braved Friday traffic in the u-district to stop by. They were closed! The sign on the door said it was flooding and they'd open again on Monday. I was devastated!

My lovely husband saved the day and agreed to swing by another yarn store so I could get a fiber fix. That's where I ended up with the mystery wool and the Louet spindle you've seen before. I had an enjoyable weekend, but I was craving some color and a lighter spindle for some finer yarn. And a spinning class. Let's not forget the spinning class. I snuck in a fiber order, but it still had to ship!

I won't go into details, but I was phone phobic about checking on the flooding, so we made two ill-fated trips to the store Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Sadly, they were still closed both times. I finally bit the bullet and called about the spinning class Tuesday. They were prompt in returning my call and signed me right up. The next two Sundays I get to learn how to spin on a wheel! Yay!

They finally reopened yesterday and we stopped by on the way to work. It was so hard to leave the fiber in the car and go into work! I couldn't resist on the way home and pulled out the spindle and spun some of this merino top in the car. Yummy!


I'm attempting to spin this from the fold. It seems to be going fine, but the joins seems a little awkward (and a bit often).

All that trouble to get to the yarn store and my Loopy Ewe order came yesterday too. So much beautiful fiber! I'm excited to start spinning it!