A Warm Wool Winter

Winter vacation is always a great time for getting some serious knitting done, and this year was no exception. I still have a week left of break, and it will be spent finishing a painting, working at the pre-school and hopefully some more knitting time!

Winter vacation was barely winter this year. The weather has been in the 40's and 50's the whole time and we have only had one fluke snow storm here in Kansas. The combination of the warm weather and the excessive fiber art that was going on in my house leads me to call this a very Warm Wool Winter.

The first thing I decided to conquer with my newly found free time was this amazing pair of socks.

Knitted using magic loop, one at a time, and Zitron Trekking 6ply (one of my new favorite sock yarns, yet very hard to find). The pattern is Soft Waves from the book Toe-up Two at a Time Socks, which I used to teach my self the toe up technique, something I had never tried before. I think it was a complete success!

While I was knitting on the socks, I was also finishing up my purple wool that I started way back this summer. I managed to finish this by the end of week one, and got it plyed and set on Christmas Day.

As a knitter, I couldn't just let the yarn sit in a plastic bag in my drawer. So I decided that there was actually enough to make something with and found the perfect pattern: Diagonal ribbed cowl. Knit on size 8 fixed circs, I had this thing done in less than 3 days.

Finishing this led me to need a new project to work on and so I decided to spin up the amazing 100% alpaca roving I purchased back in October. It was so soft, but really hard to draft because of this. The end result is something I am really proud of and one of the better yarns I ever spun.

The original roving was black, tan and white striped, so I didn't want to lose that pretty design in the final product and therefor I didn't pull apart pieces the way I usually do, and in turn I didn't produce as much yarn. I did produce enough to finish a hat though! The had is very soft and I absolutely love it! It's a little big, which means I should have cast on a few less stitches, but when you have thick and thin yarn (like all my handspun tends to be) it's hard to figure out the gauge, let alone knit a gauge swatch. That's one of my goals, to one day be able to figure out the gauge and 'weight' of the yarn that I have spun.

In between the cowl and the hat I was able to work on my Effortless Cardigan and it is slowly coming together. It still has quite a bit to go though.

With one week left, I plan to work on my ever growing collection of Relay for Life Dishcloths; hopefully I'll get 2 or 3 more done, so I can have a decent amount to sell this spring at farmer's market.

I hope all my readers are enjoying any time off and are keeping to any New Years resolutions. Until next time,

~Lisa