I don’t know why but all day today and yesterday I have felt fantastic.  I have lots of energy, I’ve been sleeping good and I just want to constantly make stuff.

So, I pulled out a little fiber that I had sitting around in a tote bag and spun it up.  This is superwash wool that I dyed a few years ago, there wasn’t much of it, a thin strip of roving about five feet long and less than an ounce.  Actually, it’s so light that my scale can’t even weigh it.  I’ve been trying to spin a nice, consistent lace weight yarn for years and it’s just never happened.  I’ve had people tell me that you can’t spin lace weight on a Babe wheel with a 5:1 ratio, that you need a smaller bobbin or a scotch tension wheel but I’ve seen other people do  it, I just never could.  I pulled out my copy of “The Intentional Spinner” and read the section about spinning lace weight yesterday and it just clicked, I finally got it.  I just spun the whole bit of roving on one bobbin, taking it nice and slow and really trying to spin as thin as I could.  When I was done I checked the wpi of my singles and it was around 60.  I Andean plied the singles and the plied yarn is around 32wpi, depending on where you check it, there’s some thick and thin spots.  So, this is officially the thinnest yarn I’ve spun and most of it is about the same the same thickness as my little bit of Helen’s Lace that I have leftover from Citron.  Yippee!

I also got the urge to weave so I dug out some very old Sugar ‘n Cream yarn and warped up the loom.  I remembered seeing the article on Weavezine about pile loop wash cloths so I thought I would try that out.  I warped enough for two but after the first I decided to try something different and went with a pick up pattern.  I haven’t finished the cloths off yet, obviously, I’ll do that tomorrow, but they look great so far.  I may weave up some little kitchen towels for my mom later on, too.

I cast off Citron this morning and blocked it today while the air is dry (it’s supposed to rain tomorrow).  This is really, really small.  I guess I didn’t realize how small it would be when I read the pattern.  It’s about 35” across the top and 14” deep even though I ran out of yarn before the bottom ruffle and had to bind off early.  This yarn is almost too loose and slippery to hold the texture of the ruffles and it probably would have worked out better if I had gone down a needle size.  It is pretty even if it’s too small to be usable.

The details:

• Pattern:  Citron from the Winter 2009 Knitty
• Yarn:  Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace, I don’t know the name of the colorway, used about 50g
• Needles:  US4/3.5mm
• Mods:  I knit mine shorter, I left off the bottom ruffle since I ran out of yarn

So that’s that.  Tomorrow I’ll show my wips.