Spring left

Spring, which was so present last week, has left. Flurries are whipping past my window, being sped on their route from South Dakota to Wisconsin on a crisp breeze, and the temperature may be above freezing some time later this week. Maybe.

All of which means I won't be putting my Spinnery Jacket away for the fall quite yet. It had some more tricks for me up its sleeve. As I was sewing up the final sleeve seam (using a lovely, hand forged silver yarn needle which continues to delight me), I noticed something in the instructions that I hadn't seen before. I wasn't supposed to pick up the bound off underarm stitches when I picked up stitches to knit the sleeve. Oops.

I evaluated the condition the sweater was in, pictured the condition it was supposed to be in, and decided that I really did want a half-gusset style sleeve, rather than a modified drop shoulder .. and kept sewing. It's all done now, save for finding and attaching buttons. I crocheted the button bands ... oh, about 6 times. The first two times looked a bit wavy, so I crocheted a gauge swatch, recalculated my rows / sc ratio, did a row or two, and checked my gauge. Frogged, recalculated, and tried again.

At the present time, the left front is set up to a 4:7 ratio, and the right front is at a 4:8 ratio. (stitches crocheted per rows). I may re-rip the left front some day, but right now, it's not bothering me. I'd rather wear the thing. And ... look what I found to do while I'm wearing it!!

Spin. My friend Denise has been nudging me to spin, and my stash-eradicating conscience has been suggesting to me that I spin my stash down, and to top it all off, another friend convinced me that I would be doing her a large favor if I would accept some fiber from her stuffed fiber closet, so there would be room for this year's fleeces ... and so I dusted off my wheel, gave it a nice coating of lemon oil, and started spinning.

No, I really don't know how to spin. I know enough to be a very little bit dangerous. I know to spin with my hair up, so that I don't get sucked into the orifice by my scalp. I can even get away with a short draw technique for long periods of time without having the spun yarn depart from the unspun yarn in a precipitous, unplanned manner. I know S from Z ... but not much else. Unfortunately, the only spinners around here are either on bicycles or waving something called a poi ... so I get to be self-taught (or, self-untaught.) This lovely chocolate colored fleece came from my husband's softball coach's wife's mother's token sheep ... used in training sheep dogs. I've had it about 15 years, so this part of it has aged enough to become mittens. I *think* they'll be twined knit, but perhaps not. First I have to get through the plying.

I finished a pair of ankle socks for dd, from Elann's sock yarn. The elastic doesn't help the ribbing have any sort of shape, but there's not much room for it to fall down, so it should be okay.

My travelling project is now Tofutsie socks for mom. The gauge is 8 spi on size 2 ... I'm getting 10 spi on the same, not unexpectedly. I like the stripe.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle