Back in the Saddle...

As planned I got back to spinning. After so much time away I was a little apprehensive about how successful I'd be. I anticipated a few false starts and frustration but I was pleasantly surprised. What you see here is the continuation of the yarn I was spinning for my Hanami stole. When I started tonight, this bobbin was already partially full but I added quite a bit and I'm happy with it. It looks like it's a good match to the stuff I spun earlier this summer and it's fairly consistent. I am so relieved!

This is the other project that I started last weekend. It's a kit that I got at Stitches East. It's called A-line Dress for a Little Princess and, yes, I do have a particular princess in mind.

This was a total impulse buy. Felicia and I were walking past the booth (I forget the vendor) and they had a bunch of these cute little dresses hanging up and they were irresistable. The yarn in the kit I bought is cotton and fun fur but I don't know any more than that (no details or ball bands in the kit). I've gotta say that this is the first time I've bought a knit kit and it's been a mixed experience. As I mentioned, there are no details given about the yarn. I'm sure it's cotton and the fun fur looks familiar but I wish I had a few hints about what it is.
My wish for a little info on the yarn is a minor complaint compared to my issues with the pattern itself. It's a little, ummm.... vague. For example, I had to cast on twice because the instructions for the first row tell you to knit 1, add 1, knit #, add 1 etc. My usual method for adding stitches is to kfb except where it says something like add or, in the case of my Dragon socks, make 1. In those cases you would pick up the bar between stitches and create a new one. Right? Wrong! For this little number you are supposed to interpret the add as a kfb as I found out when I reached the end of the first round and found 8 extra stitches. Would it kill them to be a little more explicit. It's actually quicker and takes less keyboard strokes to write "kfb" than "add 1". I'm just sayin'. Even a note to tell us how to interpret the "add" would be nice.

By the way, I haven't been much odf a cheerleader lately for Sock Madness but, believe it or not, the patterns for SM2 are due one week from today. I can't believe that we're already approaching November 1. I guess that's what happens when you loose a month or so to the soap opera that has become your life. Thankfully, the Dragon socks seem to have gotten my sock mojo going again for I'm (kind of) ready to dive into the test knitting.