My singles that I started during the Tour de Fleece are all done and wound off the bobbins into some messy looking yarn cakes, waiting for me to ply. The cakes look awful here, there’s thick and thin spots, slubs and nubs. This roving was not easy to spin. It was my hand carded mix of Romney, Merino, Angora and Cashmere, the Cashmere didn’t card very good and tended to stay in clumps and that is where the slubs and bumps came from. Some of the Romney wouldn’t draft easily so there are some uneven spots, but if you look at the yarn in person, it looks a lot better than in the pictures. I only have two bobbins so my plan was to fill them both with singles and use my ball winder to wind off the singles for storage and then ply from the center pull balls. I numbered each cake of singles as I wound them so I can ply my first and sixth cake, the second and fifth, and so on which will help me get a more even yarn since my later spun singles are thinner than the first singles. I had planned on starting to ply today but haven’t been sleeping good (again) and I’m just too tired to do anything that requires more than half-assed concentration.
I meant, again, to take a picture of my blanket progress but I’m a little peeved with it today, I ran out of yarn. I’m making the Knitted Garter Stitch Blanket by Elizabeth Zimmermann, from The Opinionated Knitter, and I’m using some Lion Brand Homespun from an old sweater I frogged. I’m almost done with the whole blanket, I’m maybe one skein of yarn short, so I’m planning a run to the craft store this weekend to try to find a matching skein. I hate this yarn but it does make a nice cozy blanket and it’s cheap.
I’m already planning my next project. I’ve frogged the Peace Fleece vest that I started a few months ago (it looks good, but the fit is crap) and I’m thinking about the Shawl Collar Vest from Handknitting with Meg Swansen. The vest really isn’t my style but I think my mom will like it and I think I would enjoy knitting it. The vest is knit in the round and the front and arm holes are steeked, which I’ve never done before and really want to try, plus it looks like a fast project that will be easy to work on while I wait for KnitPicks to send me my next pattern.
That’s it for me for the week. I have a dentist appointment Monday, I have an awful toothache and I don’t know what all is going to need done so I may not be able to blog much next week. I hate going to the dentist more than anything and I’m really dreading this.
