Saving up

Blech. I get a mid-week update in, then neglect the blog the whole weekend. In my defense, we were pretty busy. I realized that I only have about five weeks before the Germany trip, and my brain started reminding me of all those little things I've been putting off since Christmas break. Things like getting a haircut, giving the car an oil change, getting my teeth cleaned, all that stuff. Stuff that I don't want to have to think about over the two weeks between when I return from Germany and the start of the fall semester. Blech indeed.

So, in the interests of being positive, I've decided to spin the situation this way: I was NOT neglecting the blog, I was just saving up blog fodder so you could have a bajillion pictures! Prepare yourself for the ever-useful numbered list format.

1. I bought new yarn:



Sundara Sock, Evergreen over Lime

This yarn is gorgeous. Before the whole Germany thing came along, I was considering joining her Seasons yarn club. But then I decided that I didn't want to have my first two club shipments wait for me at the post office, marinating for weeks until my return. She makes beautiful colors, and I still wanted to try out her sock yarn, so I went with one skein. (I actually tried to get three skeins, but two were out of stock by the time I emailed her. What? They were pretty! How can you resist a color called "Pale Sky over Sugared Violet"?)

2. I got back on the mitered square wagon:



Square #16

This marks the semi-official halfway point in my knitting of these squares. I have the rest of the squares photographed (sorry they are not neatly blocked yet) and the pictures are in my project page on Ravelry. This is the mitered square blanket pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting. I think I will wait and do an entire post about the squares, because it's been such a strange project.

3. I spun up singles for those slow-transition rose colored socks. I promised you tutorial-style craziness. That will have to wait until I get to the second bobbin. It's hard to take pictures of your spinning-in-progress when it's mostly happening at night. I will say that I was worried I wouldn't be able to fit all five colors on the bobbin (which has an official capacity of 4 ounces), but I did!



Check out that stuffed bobbin!

4. I got up to the cables on my Tangled Yoke cardigan:



There was a moment of crisis when I had to rip back a few rows to fix miscrossed cables, but all is better now. I haven' touched it in a few days, but this cardigan was my constant companion last weekend. I luff it (with two f's) so much, this is going to be the perfect San Francisco summer cardigan once it's done. Light color, not too heavy, not too warm, but warm enough to cut the fog.

Lastly, I am attending the new Color fiber festival tomorrow in Berkeley. I am crazy excited, because I get to squish more roving in person from some of my favorite local dyers A Verb For Keeping Warm and Pigeonroof Studios. I signed up for all three of the fiber tastings, because I'm still a little nervous about spinning my merino/tencel batt that I got at Stitches. The only issue is that I'm still deciding whether to take BART over there and just bring drop spindles, or if I should drive so I can take my wheel. At first I wasn't even considering bringing the wheel, but then quite a few people on the Ravelry forums mentioned they would bring theirs so... now I want to be like all the cool kids. I will probably spend more money than I should tomorrow... but I will also be learning a lot more about spinning! Yay! All right, I'm off to get some real work done so I can play tomorrow without any worries.