Still Not Finished

Remember how I said that I had a whole bunch of stuff to finish before I took my girls to camp? I'm a little embarrased to admit that some of the stuff on the list is STILL not finished. Case in point...
Here is the Shawl for DQ. Yes, it is still in the UFO pile and not yet in my darling daughters posession. I cannot tell you how much I just want to finish this. Thankfully the end is finally in sight. I've completed 12 repeats and I'm mid way through the edging now. I full expect to be able to block it tonight and mail it off to DQ by Thursday. She'll have it in plenty of time to wear it to banquet. Yay! That ought to make her really happy.
After I finish this I'll need to finish off a few baby gifts and my Sockapalooza socks. They're both in a pretty good place but I really don't feel nearly as inspired by them as I should.
I think that one of my biggest knitting problems is that what I want to do most right now is spin. This is all the proof you need of how badly I want to get back to my wheel. This is a bit of BFL that I dyed up over the weekend. It ought to be the last little bit for my Hanami Stole. Now that is some knitting that i cannot wait to sink my teeth into. I'm so excited that I've started toting around the first skein of yarn for it so that I can check out any beads I find to see if they could be "the ones". After all of the work that is going into this stole I really want it to be just right.

Unbalanced

Not the yarn - me! I am unbalanced lately. When I'm in a spinning mode I forget my knitting and vice versa. Lately the spinning has been winning. Yesterday, as I wrote my post, the realization hit me that my daughters go to camp really soon and the knitty goodness that I hope to send with them is no where near ready. That said, Charlotte and I will need to spend a little quality time apart.

This yarn is for my Spun Stitches project - Hanami. It's best described as a family of yarns. Each one relates to the next but is very individual and, I think, would stand well on it's own. The color you see is pretty close but what's missing is the sheen and the softness. I love this yarn something fierce but it's not finished yet. This is about 600 yards of yarn and I need at least 880 so I still have a bit of spinning to do.

I mentioned my new skeinwinder in passing the other day. Here is a picture of it next to my wheel. It's a Fricke 2 yard floor standing skein winder and it was my gift from my dear husband on our recent anniversary (13 years!). It is making me so happy because winding the yarn off onto the niddy noddy and then having to try to figure out the yarndage was the one part of spinning that I really wasn't enjoying. With my new toy it's so much easier and faster.

I did a little online research before I chose the Fricke and I'm very pleased with it. There is one small gripe though. Some of the pegs that the yarn wraps around are not quite smooth so I'll need to take a little sandpaper to it. It wouldn't be good for the yarn if it gets caught on the pegs.

Summer Nights

I just love the summer when it stays light so late into the evening. On some evenings, like tonight, we can squeeze in a little time at the pool to end the day. It was wonderful! My brother had a late flight home so he came too. I have to say that this was the best visit I had with him in a long time. It was quiet and low key and without many distractions. We had time to talk and laugh and relax. I just can't say enough and the best part is that I'll get to see him again on Thursday when I go up to visit my new firm's NY office for the day. Woo hoo!

As much as I enjoy the summer and all of the time spent by the pool it does seem to generate a huge amount of laundry. I wash towels and bathing suits just about every night just to keep up. Not that I'm complainin' or anything. Just an observation.

By the way, the plying continues and now I nearly have 2 completed skeins. On the positive side, I've been able to use my new Fricke skein winder to take the yarn off the bobbin and, thanks to the counter, I have a pretty accurate indication of the yardage in the skeins so far. On the negative side, it seems unlikely that the finished yarn will be enough for the shawl I have in mind. I'll just have to break out the dye pot this weekend.

Cautious Optimism

I thank you for all of your good wishes on my first day at the new job.

As first days go - this was a really good one. I arrived to find a really warm welcome. I don't want to speak to soon but I'm cautiously optimistic about this new job. All of the signs say that this is a good situation.

I was reminded of a few very important things today. It was silly of me to have worn new shoes today. I know better than to wear new shoes to anything important without breaking them in first. They looked really cute but, after a day full of meet and greet I am paying the price for my folly. Speaking of folly, what was I thinking blowing my hair out straight today? I did sit and listen to the weather report this morning but apparently it didn't really sink in at all. The humidity did a number on my carefully considered 'do the moment I stepped out of my front door. Thankfully, these were relatively minor concerns and didn't really mar the day much.

More good news! After quite a hiatus I finally have a little spinning news to report. When I wind this off the bobbin it will make up the second skein for my Hanami Stole. The first was a gently varigated blue plyed against itself. I'll show it to you when it's dry.

I'm still not sure if I'll have enough yarn for the project but, I think that if I need to, I can come up with a solution. I'll keep you posted.

Isn't it amazing how far behind you can get on your email and blog reading in just a few days? I hope to catch up soon.

Just One More Day

Tomorrow is my last day at the SSJFH and, although it would be nice to think that I'll cut out early, I suspect that I'll wind up working till the very last minute. It's just the way I am. I like to leave a place knowing that I left everything in good shape. In this case it's a little odd because my soon to be x-boss seems totally uninterested in the status of things and I have a strong feeling that she intends to let all of the bills etc build up until the next victim person takes over the job and then she'll dump it on them and let them muddle through and catch up. I'm certain that any problems that arise will be blamed on me. It sucks but there is nothing at all that I can do about it and, in the end, it's really not my problem at all.

While I have been very busy at work, I've also had time for other, very important things like... Ravelry! I got my invite about 2 weeks ago and I'm still busy exploring and populating my notebook. This is such a great idea. It's so nice to have a way to organize stuff and get ideas about what to do with the stash.

It's been quite a while since Charlotte and I spent any quality time. I've been so busy with all of the end of school year activities that the closest I've gotten to spinning lately is to look over at Charlotte while doing other things and promise myself that "soon" I'd get back to it. Last night, I finally made good on the promise and finished spinning the Blue Faced Leicester. See it all lined up there?

When I started spinning this up, my only intent was to see how BFL would feel on the wheel. As I spun it, I was enjoying the colors and fel so much that I went back to the dye pot again with the idea that I'd ply the 2 batches together to create a family of related yarn for a shawl. I just didn't know what the shawl would be.

Recently I re-discovered a pattern that I've wanted to knit. Have you seen Hanami? I think it'll be perfect for the yarn family I have in mind except for one thing... I need to add one more color to the family. I went to the dye pot again last night for one more small batch of pretty BFL. Can you guess what color it is?

My idea is to knit Hanami mostly according to the pattern except that I'll start with the darkest yarn and gradually get lighter. I think that the graduated color will complement the asymmetry of the design. Of course, my handspu is not exactly laceweight either but I don't think that'll be a bad thing. Actually, it's a good thing because I don't care for knitting laceweight yarn much. Besides, in a stole I think I can play a little more with the weight of the yarn withough having a horriffically adverse affect on the outcome. What do you think? Am I on the right track or horribly delusional?