Some Retail Therapy and Spring Break

Woah, the week really got away from me! I've been looking forward to my spring break because I can get ahead with my work and have at least two days of nonstop knitting. I may even get to actually read a physical book, instead of listening to audiobooks! Let's move on to the knitting content: on the knitting front, I finished the Fiddlehead mittens.



They are gorgeous, and the irony is not lost on me. I finally got around to the thumb of the lining of the second mitten late Thursday night. That's right, I finished the warmest pair of mittens ever on the first day of spring. I don't care, I wore them on the first day of spring. It's the coast, we still get some decent fog (please don't burst my bubble! :) I love these mittens so much). There are more photos on my Flickr page.



Last week I finished spinning the Bitter Orange singles on the 10.5:1 ratio whorl, let them rest for a day on the bobbins, then did a 2-ply on the 9:1 ratio. I'm pretty pleased with this yarn, it's a passable sock weight. I got somewhere around 260 yards out of 4.3 ounces of fiber, so it's probably not enough for an entire pair of socks on its own. The extra-exciting news is that I nabbed a second portion of the same fiber from the Pigeonroof Studios etsy shop, so once I spin that up I'll actually have yarn with appropriate weight and yardage for a pair of socks!

I also bought some superwash merino in another color, Calla. Then on Saturday I bought some balls of fiber from Knitterly in Petaluma. I think they're BFL, they feel very similar to my indigo-dyed stuff.



There's roughly 2 ounces of 5 colors each. I'm planning on making a pair of slow-color transition socks, with the toes the darkest rose color and progressing up the foot and leg ending with the white. These are very lightly heathered, my photos don't really do the colors justice.

Anyway, now that I've finished the mittens, I'm in a state of finish-it-up-itis (according to the Yarn Harlot, a much rarer condition than start-itis). I try to counteract start-itis with finish-it-up-itis, by telling myself that finished objects will give me a deep satisfaction just as fulfilling as a new exciting project. So I also picked up a copy of Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together to take the edge off. (The link is to Amazon because it's easy and has a nice photo. Support your local independent bookstore, kids.) It was hilarious, because I had two friends (neither of whom are knitters) ask about my current blanket-in-progress when I mentioned I was lusting after the Olive's afghan in Knitalong. I have been working on my current blanket for about a year, and I'm about halfway done with the knitting part. Let's not get started on how much seaming will be involved at the end. Let's just not go there.

Now I'm off for two days in sunny Santa Barbara (the significant other is on a business trip), and I'm taking JUST ONE project! I'm trying to see how much I can get done on the Tangled Yoke cardigan before the end of the week. Taking one project is a big jump for me. I'm usually paranoid to the point where packing is difficult because I'm trying to cram three months' worth of knitting into my luggage for a four-day trip. This time, I have one tote bag that is nice, light, and reasonable. Besides, it's not like I won't get any souvenir yarn, right? ;)