Balancing Act

Until this past week, I hadn't touched my spinning in ages - at least since early January. Mostly, I'm just knitting. A lot. But last weekend my hands finally said enough, no more knitting straight for hours at a time. So I'm back to alternating - knit for a bit, spin for a while, knit for a while, comb/card fleece for a bit, etc.

ON MY NEEDLES:
The first of the Fleeglized Panda socks is done and the second sock started.


The Charlotte Bronte Shawl has seen some more progress, finally. I finished the first lace border with the beads. The second lace border is about three quarters done. I'm knitting it separately (so I don't have to lug the whole shawl around) and will sew it on the shawl. I chose not to put beads on the second lace border.

I'm up to the heel gusset on the second of Bob's socks. The toe shaping's a bit tricky, but otherwise they're coming along nicely.

The OD (Olive Drab) socks are also progressing nicely, as is the tan regulation cap. Both are for the a socks For Soldiers group.

And if that's not enough WIPs to work on, I cast on stranded colorwork socks and a sweater.


ON MY SPINDLES/WHEEL:

There are a number of open spinning projects on my Spindles and Wheel, but the three main projects are:

(1) During the Fall and into early December I worked on the Rambouillet/Montedale cross pre-washed fleece I purchased several years ago.  I hand combed the fleece then wheel spun it in a smoothed, attenuated long draw. This will be a 4ply cabled yarn (spun z, 2ply s, cabled z).

The spinning is finished. And I am more than halfway through plying the 2ply yarn.  In fact in early December I took the first bobbin of 2ply yarn and plied it back on itself for my first skein of cabled yarn. 

Unfortunately, I was distracted and in a hurry and made a total hash of it. To say it is overplied is a major understatement.  I gave it a nice hot bath and thwacked the ever-loving shit out of it but it's still a mess.  See:



This is a really nice yarn, very soft, so there's no way I'm chucking it.  I will have to untangle it (I messed up the skein ties too) and run it through again to take out some of the excess twist. I haven't done this before, so I think I will use my Navajo Spindle instead of my wheel - better control.

(2) I recently started spindle spinning (longdraw) some Oxford/Border Leicester crossbreed fleece that I prepped in November.  This fleece was hand combed then run through my drum carder. It turned into rather nice batts and spins easily.

(3) Also started spinning the second Annunaki at Tieman colorway bump I bought last year from Crown Mountain Farms in their going out of business sales. It is four ounces of BFL top which I am spindle spinning (worsted) and will chain ply.  

Fleece prep-wise, I'm sampling (combing, carding 2&3plying) a multicolored Perendale fleece, some black & white Jacob fleece, and some llama fleece.


Brought To Me By: Crafting accomplished with the following audio/video accompaniment:
  Audiobooks: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon;                      
  DVDs etc:   Rizzoli & Isles; Murder She Wrote; Veronica Mars;              
  Pod/VideoCasts:  The Knit Girllls; Round the Twist;  The Knitmore Girls; Two Tangled Skeins;