That's Most Unusual

I, uh, feel weird posting again cause it's been a few weeks and I don't have very much at all craft-wise to show for it.

I know I said I'd spin.  And I did.  A little bit.

Well, now that looks like a lot a bit, but I have 3 more bobbins to fill and since this happened I have done fuck all on my wheel.  Shameful.

And in fact, my drive band snapped when I was nearly done with this braid (this is 4 ounces of polwarth for the uninitiated/ forgetful among us).  I was able to reaffix the ends together with a bit of fire and gumption, but looking at it, well, it's yellowing.  And it's nearly 8 years old.  So, I did the thing and ordered a new one.  This isn't so strange. Wheels, like some other tools, have parts that are good for the life of it as long as you take care of them-- the wheel itself and all the wood and metal bits.  And then there are the parts that wear out like the drive band and the footman ties and the leather bits.

All part of wheel upkeep and maintenance.

But like I said, I haven't even touched the wheel since I finished this bobbin.

I did finish a pair of socks though!

These are a lovely combination of yak and merino and nylon.  They are very soft.  The first one I knit was ... interesting.  I mentioned last time that I finally took a trip to my LYS.  It's about 20 minutes from here, and has a lovely selection of yarns and needles and things.

I got this:

Two skeins of self-striping yarn, a snail measuring tape and a 9" circular needle in my usual 2.0mm.

I decided to switch to it immediately and the knitting was.. well, it was painful.  The needles are simply too short for me. I already struggle with wrist issues due to, oh, a decade and a half of knitting constantly, and they didn't agree with me.  I went back to magic loop.

There was also an interesting side-effect to the experiment. I found was knitting a lot tighter with the teeny circs and I realized that my natural gauge has loosened.  In fact, when I wore my new white and pink socks from January, I noticed it especially.  My gauge for socks should be somewhere around 8-9 stitches per inch.. and they'd loosened to about 7.5-- absolutely unacceptable.  Besides being slightly too big around now, the pink and white socks were also gapey and going to get worn out sooner rather than later.

 The plan was to finish the purple ones and redo the feet of the pink and white ones.  I finished the purple ones on 1.75mm needles (or 00s), and the gauge is much firmer.  They fit nicely too.

Then I ripped out the first pink and white foot. Well, I started reknitting the heel flap and the difference in gauge was causing it to bunch unattractively, so I ripped all the way back to the ribbing.

And today I worked on it while going for a nice walk around my neighborhood.

Now you, wise you, who can do a little bit of mental maths has probably realized that I have two whole weeks worth of time where I've done no crafting, or so little that perhaps it adds up to half a sock of knitting, but that's my usual daily output.

What have I been up to?

Well, I replayed FF3 on my DS.  That one was a fun one to replay.  I actually got to the end of it, past the boss that is supposed to kill your characters, through the final dungeon you can't save before, and to the end.

And then I picked up a book or two (or 6, in fact).  I had a reading weekend.  Between Friday and today I've finished the Mistborn trilogy, read an entirely new trilogy, started a new series, and read a stand alone book. All absolutely fantastic.  And mostly because Zac's been on swings, so the useful times when I'd normally be watching shows and movies with him was spent in between the pages of various books.

Mistborn: OH, absolutely fantastically written fantasy books.  From the first book to the end of the third one (I am aware there's more in this universe, but it's not the same story) I was entranced.  Fantastic world-building, great characters. It had a lived-in feel to the characters and the world that was just exactly what I wanted to read.  The story in the third book is actually really dark and modestly hopeless.  It's nihilistic and things aren't looking good.  Things aren't looking good all the way up until the last little bit and, well, it doesn't end too badly.

The Iremonger Trilogy (I feel like if you follow me on facebook, which if you're reading this you probably do, you've already heard me gush about this charming little set of books)  That being said, this was a charming little set of books that I adored.  Right up my alley with the style of art and the way the story was told.  Fantastic books.

I ordered new books somewhere in there (the Iremonger books were already on the shelf from Zac reading them years ago), and one of them was The Invisible Library, the first of a series of fantasy books by Genevieve Cogman.  Again, absolutely aces.  This book took me away.  It's like a holodeck episode of TNG, complete with a Sherlock Holmes facsimile. I loved it so much that I went and ordered the rest of the series.

I also read The House in the Cerulean Sea.  This one was sweet.  It was almost cloyingly sweet by the end of it.  Like, I enjoyed the writing and the characters and everything, but by the end it just felt a little heavy-handed.  Also, it was a romance and I... wasn't really in the mood for that right now.  Maybe if the themes weren't so over-the-top I would have enjoyed the romance more, but as it was, I do recommend it for a certain audience.  One that would very much love a big hug in a massive gay blanket.  It's like that.

I DNF'ed The Priory of the Orange Tree-- I got about 50 pages in before I gave up.  It was just non-stop info dumping about the world and the political drama.  I like things to unfold, I like learning about things at a pace, and this was not that.  It was also BIG.  It was a very big book.  I am not intimidated by 800 page books, I'm not, but if they're printed on almost printer paper then I'm going to hurt my wrist just holding the book.

And that's all the reading I've done in the past 6 days.  good times.

Lastly, I did finish my crochet cardigan.  It fits Ok.  It's warm, it's lovely.  I really am starting to think more and more that I'm a process knitter.  Who cares about a thing after it's made?  XD

I intended this to be a cropped sort of thing, not super cropped, just like 14 inches instead of 16... welp, it grew a lot upon hitting water.  And the sleeves too, I hoped for a 3/4 sleeve and they go all the way to my wrist.  oops.

Glad I wasn't aiming for a full-length sweater.

As for the next few weeks, I'm not sure.  I want to continue on the sock stuff, maybe take them for a walk or two or three with me.  That's most pleasant, taking a walk with your knitting.  I want to keep reading, though maybe not a book a day.

And I do want to get back into spinning.  We'll see, and as usual I'll check in in a few weeks.

Cheers!