A Good Yarn

During this period of "making up", I don't have much to write about, and absolutely nothing to take pictures of, as making up is decidedly unexciting. I have been, however, working a bit on my spinning when I'm bored to tears from all the sewing, and I'm coming up with stuff that looks suspiciously like yarn. The picture here is my bobbin containing my very first "keepable" efforts. Once I get all this making up done, I'm going to try to get a couple of bobbins full, and then ply it up and see what I come up with. Should be interesting. After that, if I happen to get some Koolaid in the mail, I'm going to try my hand at dying it.

I'm not "falling" for spinning, as many people do. I do like it, but I don't feel compelled to do it like I do knitting. Perhaps it's because it's still such "work" for me. As I get better at it, I'm pretty sure it will be a relaxing pasttime, and far more suited to TV veiwing than knitting is. I have a feeling it might become just as addictive as knitting has.

I'm still busy making up the alpaca jacket. Aside from it being in no less then 8 peices, it requires you doing most every seam in mattress stitch. Fact is, the pattern says to make it all up in mattress stitch, but of course you cant do that with the shoulder seams, and the sleeves I've sewn in with a mixture of mattress stitch and fake grafting, which was tricky, but they look good. I'm currently working on the shawl collar which is knit in two peices. I'm sewing it together right now, and then I will only like sewing it to the jacket and I'm done. Unfortunately, that's the longest seam yet, and I'm running out of "time off". I can still get a bit of work done on work days, but it will go much slower then.

I have Sunday night off, but I have a workmate and her family coming out to the boat on Sunday, which will tie up the morning and the afternoon, and I have to be in town early on Monday for a manual handling "class" that is required yearly at work. Afterwards, I will shop and then go to a meeting that night before going to work. All of this is fine and dandy for some "on the road" knitting. Trouble is, I have almost NO "on the road" knitting on the sticks right now, with the exception of the almost finished alpaca jacket belt..

There is NO doubt I will finish up the belt tonight, as I'm going to a meeting this evening and then on to work afterwards, which all together will mean I have a good 3 hours knitting time minimum, and I only need another 1/2 hour to an hour to finish the belt. So, my mission this afternoon is to find something easy peasy to start on tonight.

My yarn falls into three categories. 1.)Stuff I know what I'm going to do with. 2.) Stuff I just liked and have no clue what I'm going to do with. 3.) Stuff that I had a vague idea about what I would do with but subject to my whims.

Out of the first category, I have the yarn for 3 jumpers and one cardigan. One of the jumpers I have been aching to make from the time I saw the pattern about a year ago. That is likely what I will throw on my needles tonight. On the plus side, this jumper is knit in one peice, which means it won't need much making up once complete. On the minus side, I really love this jumper and I'm afraid if I start it, I'll ignore all the finishing work I need to do around here. My alternative is to finish the sleeve on the Crave jumper and add one more thing to my making up pile. That's what I SHOULD do, but the more I think about it, the less appealing it sounds.