Safe!

Wow, you all are such enablers! And that comes from someone who is frequently called an enabler herself, so I say it with love. :) I tried really really hard to bring enough knitting to keep myself sane but also not pack quadruple the amount of knitting I typically do in one week. For some reason being on vacation gives me the subconscious idea that I am Superwoman and can knit at close to the speed of light or something. So I tried to be restrained and pack only a few projects. I did not start a quick hat on the plane, but instead cast on for this pair of mittens, which I have been promising myself for about a month and knit those on the plane.



These are the Lotus Leaf Mittens from the latest issue of Twist Collective (yes, from the section with the adorable animal watercolors). The yarn is handspun from the November shipment of the Verb fiber club (Finn wool, colorway Equilibrium, 2 ounces each of pink and grey). I'd had my eye on this pattern since the winter issue went up, and the fiber was just a perfect match. I've had the yarn spun up for a week or two, but promised myself that I wouldn't start them until all my holiday knitting was finished. I cast on last Friday, right after finishing up my spinning project left over from Color. Remember the silk hankies?



I finished spinning the singles, then wound the whole mess into a center-pull ball and plied from both ends. I wanted to have the yarn done on Friday, so I didn't allow the singles to rest overnight like I usually do, and boy did that come back to bite me. About halfway through the plying, I tugged a little too hard on the yarn end coming from the center and got an enormous tangle that took about half an hour to get out. :P That was no fun! The color is a little off in that picture, the yarn isn't quite that pink. The skein is about half an ounce, 65 yards. I'm thinking maybe an iPod sleeve or cell phone cover... there isn't enough yardage to do much else! I mainly wanted to free up my Cascade spindle so I could work on this:



Yum! More Verb Wooly Wonders, this time Bluefaced Leicester in a colorway called Burnt Ember. It's the softest BFL and I can't stop petting it. In addition to all this I've got one other potential knitting project to keep me busy, and hopefully that will last me until I go home to the stash on the 29th. If you happen to be celebrating something during this time of year, hope it's happy or merry or at least a good time! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that I've got yarn waiting under the tree this year. :)