What to do?

 Why hello there!

Crafting has been a bit hit or miss in the last few weeks.  I did finish the fire gradient second skein within a few days of finishing the first:

They are gorgeous, and soft and I am excited to knit with them.  But I asked Husband which skein of yarn I should knit socks out of next and he chose:

 

this one.  Which is new, and I got it in a monthly prize draw on LSG.  Makes him think of summer I suppose.  It's Dye House yarns in the pixie dusk colorway.

But I had to have a listless week full of jumping from one activity to another before I settled on socks.

I brought out the cross stitch again:

Finished page 11, and right now I've done about fifty stitches from page 12.  But, I did say listless.  So, there was some drop spindling:

This is that Christmas 3-ply I wanted to make speckled yarn out of.  Eventually. I know it's only July, but I have doubts about it being done by *this* Christmas.  and you know what?  That's perfectly fine!  I am not put out.  I have plenty of yarn, and I haven't been putting drop spindling very high in my *want to do* pile.  I do have a new spin on my wheel since I finished the fire spin, but alas, I'm not very far. and I think I've hopped off the tour a week and a half early.  If I am desperate to get done with this spin, I can always spin the other two singles on my wheel.  I was already planning on plying with my wheel.

Here's the gradient I started on my wheel.  Started being the operative word, I have a ways to go:

 I kind of wasn't feeling it?  there was something odd in texture about the first part of the top, it felt a bit scratchy.  This improved further into the fiber, but I lost my spin mojo fairly quickly here.

 Sometime in the last few weeks, I spent a few hours working on the old Stephen West shawl:

 

It's rather tedious, to be honest.  I'm enjoying the color change, and it might go well with reading (spoilers!), but every time you change to a different color, there's a whole row of a counting.  Something you may not know about me is how badly I count when it matters.  XD  I probably would have done more on this shawl in this session if I hadn't miscounted and knit 18 instead of 17 in the first segment of the light pink row there.  I had to tink (that is, knit backward, unknit) back an entire row, and we're already in the almost 200 stitches section of the shawl.  My personal nightmare.

So, next come socks!  I Actually did cast on to socks recently.  And a funny thing happened a few days ago, I found my reading mojo!  I went to the local library to finally get a card.  Zac wanted a book on plants so he could learn about some of the local flora.  And I checked out the first Percy Jackson book.  I've never read them, so no spoilers.  I'm really excited about them.  And I'm excited about knitting socks while I do.

I know some of your heads just tilted, and still more of your eyes just rolled.  Yes, I read while knitting.  I learned how to do so a few years ago, ended up knitting about 5 pairs of vanilla socks in a row, and the back of a cabled sweater (the back didn't have cables on).  I read Several series and books that year.  And finally I realized that I needed to get back to the creative knitting in my life, so reading got relegated back to 'right before bed' for awhile.

Well, just the opposite is going on now. I need some boring knitting and some exciting new reads!

The bottom picture shows my set up.  This is a handy book holder.  So, every page I do have to deal with turning the page, but it's not such a big deal.  I also have my kindle for reading e-books which is much less annoying, but I'm feeling the physical books these days, so I'll stick with it!

Now, I can't turn the heel or pick up stitches while I read, but the sock right now is smooth sailing till I get to the toe.  Perfect for reading!

Also, bonus! My gray sweater is finally past the cabled body part, and I'm smack dab in the middle of the bottom rib.  The next step are the sleeves, which again, are perfect for knitting while reading if I finish the socks and want to make progress on some of my languishing knits.

I hope this wasn't too scattered.  It took me awhile to find my footing these past few weeks. For now, I'm happy to have my mostly vanilla knitting and my books.  I'll hopefully come back to cross stitch in a few weeks.  I'm glad to have so many options for crafting.

If you participated in the Tour de Fleece, I hope you had fun and I hope that you met your goals!  I.. think I technically did.  Instead of 30 minutes a day each day for the duration of the tour, I simply squished all that time into the first week! XD

Cheers!