It's spring again

And this week is Spring Break. Break is a time for cleaning, organizing, sorting through rooms ... and that's what I've been up to.

Monday was the Daughter Day. Dd and I spent some time sorting through her clothing, then some more time searching through the clutter in the rest of her room for more clothing. We found a pair of socks that doesn't belong to anyone in the house, several things I've been missing for a while, and ended up with 3 paper sacks of clothing to donate, and 3 buckets of trash. Mission accomplished.

Tuesday was the Son Day. He started off the day in a pair of size 8 shorts, and ended up in a pair of size 16 shorts. That was *not* supposed to happen. He's set for the summer AND winter, having received 3 trash bags of boys clothing from Freecycle. He is, as he puts it, too shy to throw things away, but we're working on learning that skill anyways. Even a pack-rat need not save empty packets of apple cider mix.

Wednesday was the Craft Room Day. I am looking for good reasons to keep my fabric stash, and hoping not to find any, for I am not a sewer at heart. I can sew when the mood takes me, but I'd rather knit. I have put away ALL my yarn, and needles, and gotten all the ironing done. The mending is in a pile on the sewing machine.

While I was bustling about, I came across a single mitten I had been (and will be) keeping. It's a twisted-knit mitten, roughly akin to the one on page 106 of Twined Knitting. I used Harrisville Designs Shetland Wool, small needles (US 1 or 2, I'd guess), and got 30 sts/3". It's a lovely gauge swatch, and scratchy as all get out. I wonder if I knew about blocking when I made it?

This was a good week for Stash Projects. First, I finished the hand-spun, hand-knit, blindly-follow-the-pattern two-end mittens. The blocked gauge was 8 sts & 8 rows per inch. They will get much wear next winter.





I finished the Tofutsies socks. Then I knit up a pair of half-mitts from a pattern at Knitty for the Loopy Ewe Quarterly Challenge. I've never been a customer of theirs, but I saw a post on Wendy's blog and decided that would be a good stash project. Of course, one pair of mitts isn't much to mail off, so I knit a hat too. And then I found two more hats in my Homeless Completed Projects pile, so I'll have a respectable amount to send off to them.

Lastly, and leastly of the pictures, here is a Final Picture of a sweater I made for DS. It's about 4 years old, and he decided it was getting a bit Too Small. The design is his - his second choice, actually. The first design he submitted for construction was a rippling American flag. I offered to teach him Intarsia, as I avoid it whenever possible. He declined, and came up with this version.

I wonder where it will end up?

But what I really wonder is ... what will I cast on tonight? Socks? Or???