Sometimes I Jest

 Hey there,

I haven't been in a heavy crafting mood in the last few days, so it seems as good a time as any to chat about what I've been working on through the heat wave.  Ok, so it's not an atypical summer here, it's just that the heat has been sustained for weeks without relief.  It's been hell trying to keep up my running and stay cool.  I suppose I'm still just getting used to California summers again.

So, I have a few finishes, a new WIP, some TDF spinning and some very fun news!

First off:

I finished my Lurid Socks!  (the cat helped!).  These are exciting!  I tried to get them to match, but they're more like sisters than twins.  I did my usual sock.  You would think it'd get boring, but you're talking to someone who is playing FFIX for the third time in two months, so it's well established that I don't get bored doing things I enjoy.

I started a new hat with some new yarn!

 

This yarn is scrumptious!  It's a new to me dyer, Cashmere and Coconuts, that I found on etsy. As the dyer's name would suggest, it's a cashmere blend with Merino and a touch of nylon.  It's extremely soft and not suitable, in my humble opinion, for socks.  So, I'm hatting!

The pattern is sockhead hat, which is an old standby pattern a lot of people use.  It's free, for one, and for two it has directions for all sorts of sizings.  This is a slightly thicker than normal fingering.  I would probably bump it up to sport if I'm honest, so I cast on 136 stitches instead of 144, and I'm following the adult medium sizing.  This makes a very slouchy beanie.

Here it is after a few inches of ribbing, there's 4" total to be done.

And here it is this morning, halfway through a row of course.  But I'm done with the ribbing and am well on my way through the stockinette portion.  I'm planning on the full 9" of plain knitting, followed by the crown decreasing.  I'm not sure if I want to keep this hat or give it away.  There comes a point in everyone's knitting career where you just realize you only have one head and you don't need infinite hats.   I know the obvious solution is to stop knitting hats, but where's the fun in that?

That is the extent of my knitting these days.  I'm fairly monogamous.  I do have my crochet sweater, which gets the odd row here and there.  I'm still waiting on the rolags from that etsy maker so I can spin up some more of one of the colors, and that's putting a slight damper on my enthusiasm for working on it.  I really don't want to run out of that yarn before I get more.

Here's how it sits today.  I have a babillion ends to weave in.  I should probably get on that.  Every row has two ends to weave in, so if I hold off till the end I'm going to have an endless chore in front of me.  I am only showing a small portion of the sweater, in reality, what I'm working on is quite wide-- the pattern has you do the front and backs in one piece to the armpit, and that's what I'm doing.

And speaking of etsy, one of the braids I ordered actually has arrived.  And for a little while last week I was spinning a lot.  The Tour de Fleece is still happening, I think till this weekend.

So, I've pretty much abandoned the purple merino alpaca that I intended to work on, in favor of the shiny BFL silk I showed you last time:

You can see the progression of 3 singles all spun up, then plied together.  The second, smaller, skein is the leftover 2-ply after I ran out of one of the plies.  There's approximately 88 grams and 276 yards in the larger 3-ply skein and 14 grams and 69 yards in the 2-ply.

Not bad at all.  I enjoy the color play and barber poling immensely.  I'm actually offering this up as a prize in the discord server I'm in.  We do bi-monthly drawings for people who share the things they finish.

After I finished this, I started on the new braid.  The braid is a BFL from Your Fibery Godmother on etsy.  It's so scrumptious, I've been enjoying spinning it a lot.

For this, I intend to do a chain ply.  I like chain plying a lot.  It maintains the color sequence, and I think that these colors deserve to sing.  I have a ways to go, I'm not powering through or rushing.  I'm just going with the flow a bit.

Let's see.  I feel like this is getting a little long-winded, so I'll be wrapping things up presently.  I have also done a little cross stitch, working on the crystal part of the final fantasy 9 logo:

I'm a little past this.  I have officially finished the first "page" of the pattern.  When I made the drawing into a pattern, I was limited by pixel size, so I had to cut it down to 6 parts.  I simply named them pages, and now it's a convoluted mess, since each "page" has been broken down for ease of printing into 6 pages.  It's not super confusing, since it's fairly easy to order everything, but for the purposes of explaining, it's a little weird.  That's cool.

On to the final bit of news!  This is huge!

I'm getting an e-spinner!  I'm excited about this!  An e-spinner, or electric spinner, is a newfangled type of spinning wheel.  Instead of treadles and mechanical movement to add twist to the yarn, there's just a motor.  The technology for e-spinners has come leaps and bounds even in the last few years. I never really wanted one till I heard about a newer company making quieter wheels that go fast and hold a lot of yarn.  It'll make plying that much easier since the wheel I'm looking at has bobbins that hold up to 8 ounces!  I'll be able to spin in any chair, reclining, or lounging without having to engage my feet!

That's amazing.  I'm super excited.  I'll be ordering mine in a few days and there will be pictures!

I did get to visit the house, for a frame walk-through.  Unfortunately there were no pictures.  I failed.  To be fair to me, it was a very long day of driving and it was hot and I was way too excited walking through the house imagining being there, that I didn't really think of taking pictures.  ooops.

Anyway, that is pretty much all there is to talk about this time.  There was a little bit of spindle spinning in between all of that.  I'm not crafting very monogamously, even if I am knitting monogamously.

I hope you can find a way to stay cool out there.  It has been not pleasant for awhile.  The kids start school next week, and I'm looking forward to it, even if they aren't.