Planning

Here's the yarn I worked on over the weekend--it's the half pound of merino from the Sheepshed that I bought at Cummington. I'd spun a little bit before spinning group, worked diligently on it while I was there, and finished it up at home (totally ignoring Kevin's pleas for advice on what he should make for dinner in the process... oops). It's a 2-ply, and I think I have about 300 yards (I don't have a niddy-noddy, so I wind my finished yarn off the bobbin onto the legs of an upturned chair. Yardage calculations are kind of a pain to do in my head, because my chair legs measure 66 inches around rather than 60 or 72).

I'd been thinking about plying it with some laceweight silk, remember, but in the end, I decided not to, because when I'd spun it all into singles it seemed too light for the colors of the laceweight. (Shown together here, with the roving, back when they were clearly the same colors.) I didn't take a picture of the singles, and now that it's plied it looks darker again (but much browner), so you'll just have to believe me that the singles looked too light. I'm still pretty happy with my decision not to ply them together (although it would have been interesting to see what happened) because I've remembered that I had another idea for the laceweight... which I probably won't actually try for months, because I suddenly have a lot of knitting lined up.

I'm going to be making a second version of the cardigan I just designed for Schaefer Yarns (although designed is kind of an overstatement, since it's such a simple shape), which shouldn't take too long (this is the semi-solid brown blob in the background of the picture here). And I signed up for Mystery Stole 3 (blog and Yahoo group). Mystery knitting is like mystery quilting--you know the required materials in advance, but you don't know what the finished piece will look like. Then every week the designer gives the group a clue (actually, the next few steps of directions), till the piece is finished. I didn't participate in either of the previous mystery stoles, but I really like the wraps people made, as well as the designer's other patterns, so I expect I'll like this one too. Even though it's not a race, I'd like to keep up with the group (more or less), so that knitting will take some time.

And ongoing socks, of course. That reminds me--I took a picture of sock #1 from my current pair, but didn't post it right away. By now, sock #1 is finished and sock #2 looks like sock #1 when I took the picture. I'm thinking about writing up the pattern and posting it here--these are going to be my June socks for the sock-a-month KAL, so when I post a picture of the finished socks over there, maybe some people from that blog will come here and find the pattern.

Finally, I've started a short- or 3/4-sleeved sweater from the Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere I bought at Webs. It's going to be a top-down raglan cardi, with Something Interesting (yet to be determined) around the front and cuffs. So far, it's not that exciting, since I'm still doing the raglan increases. Snooze.