Taking a Quick Breath

Wow! I am so busy this week that I barely have time to breathe. I'm trying to catch up on stuff that piled up during my vacation while dealing with twice the workload because my assistant is out and family emergencies have kept people in our New York office out too. As if that wasn't enough I've had spinning class on Monday and today and... I had an appointment that made me late to work yesterday. All this while doing battle with a nasty headcold. On the positive side, most of my work is done by email so very few people in my office even know that I've got laryngitis.
I'll catch up on all of my blog reading and vacation reporting at some point. For now here's a little proof of knitting. This is a slipper I made over the vacation. Naturally it's part of a set. It looks pretty cute in it's pre-felted state. I just hope that it's as cute after felting.
I used the Fiber Trends family slippers pattern and it was super easy. The only problem I had was with the size selection. Totally my fault. The first version I knit got ripped out because pre-felting it was just right so there was no chance that the post-felting version would fit for more than a day - if at all.
The biggest surprise to me with this project has been the yarn. I used KP Wool of the Andes in heathered colors. The red is a color called Firecracker. I'm not sure if it comes through in the pictures but the depth that the heathering gives this yarn is just wonderful. To me it almost glows. It was soft too. There was nothing about knitting with this yarn that was unpleasant. I can't wait to see it felted.
In Monday night's spinning class I learned other drafting techniques. We spun from the fold which I enjoyed. I'd actually done that once before but not well. It's so much better when you have a good teacher rather than just your own guesswork. We also learned the long draw and this one is going to take a bit more practice before I'm even competent with it. I look forward to playing with it though. Tonight we're going to explore plying. Sylvia says that we're going to do 2, 3, 4 and 6 plys! I think my brain may explode.