I can't believe it's February already, so I guess you get the last 3 weeks of January crammed into one post. Not that there's all that much to tell really.
So far the "no goals" thing is going well, although as I mentioned before, you'd be surprised how hard it is NOT to set goals. It's made me realize how often I set little goals and make bargains with myself..."if I do X, then I can do Y".
On the knitting & spinning front, I've enjoyed just working on whatever I feel like in the moment. It means that I didn't finish a lot in January and I have a lot of works in progress (WIPS), but that's o.k. The flip side is it means that I'm actually enjoying working on whatever I'm working on at that moment, and not feeling like I just "need" to work on it because I haven't in a while, or I have to finish it for a deadline, or some other reason.
I did finish knitting this pair of socks for me. I also did a little weaving and wove a scarf. My edges are still really bad and uneven, but I haven't practiced much. I'm taking a couple of weaving classes at
Carolina Fiber Frolic in March, so hopefully I'll get better.
I've cast on a couple of new things, and I won't show you all of them, but one item is a reknit of the
Water for the Elephants socks in the exact same yarn & colors as I knit them before. I wrote
here about the laundry tragedy that killed my last pair, so I won't repeat it now, but fortunately I have more of the same yarn, so they can be recreated! Ann, one of the
Carolina Fiber Girls recently started knitting herself a pair, and it inspired me to get started remaking mine. So far I have a little of one leg done.
In spinning news, I finished my Sweets Off the Wheel group "Squatch" SAL. This was 3 different colorways of 2 ounces each of fiber from Three Waters Farm. I ended up just spinning all 3 into singles and then plying the together as a 3 ply. I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, although I had no idea what to expect.
I also practiced my woolen spinning a little with some mystery fiber from last year's Carolina Fiber Frolic. I plied some of it with some other random fiber I had on hand, and then when I ran out of that, I just chain plied the rest. The result is just evidence that I should probably practice my woolen spinning more. Or maybe not, I can't decide. I really like the smoothness of worsted spun yarn, so that's kind of my preference. On the other hand, woolen spun is much lighter, so would make a lighter sweater, etc.
I have no idea what I'll do with either of these. They're only 87 yards combined. I'm thinking about knitting them up into some squares and then felting them for coasters, although the blue/green I added to the one has some silk in it, but I think I don't think it's enough to keep it from felting enough to be dense.
That's about all my crafting since my last post. I spent the weekend sick, and didn't knit a stitch or spin at all. I still didn't feel 100% this morning, so I took the day off in the hopes that a little more rest, Vitamin C and ibuprofen would get rid of the last of the icks. I felt a lot better by this afternoon so I did one productive thing and washed the pile of handspun that has been accumulating since sometime in October. It's a crappy picture, but you can see I'm not kidding when I say PILE of handspun.
I feel like I should have some sort of ending statement here, but I don't, so until next time....
