Friday, September 4, 2009

I <3 Weekends

Hallelujah, a long weekend. I'm hoping the extra day will give me some time to catch up on my life. I think I need to commit to cleaning house at some point this weekend, because the state of the house got really bad while I was working all that overtime, and I haven't really even made an effort to catch up to it.

I'd also like to get some spinning in. I saw the last time what happens to my spinning ability when I leave the wheel for extended periods, so I think it's time to get back to it. Right now, I have the last of the meriboo and one of the Spunky Eclectic fiber club mailings in process on the wheel. I'd like to spin through all of this so I can do something new. I have a short attention span, I get a new club mailing every month, and there's a bunch of stuff I really want to do. There is especially a merino/bamboo blend in a colorway she called Beach that is amazing and I really really want to spin it. There's white mixed all through the dyed areas so it has a very watercolor look to it and I CAN'T WAIT. I may already have half of it predrafted in a box awaiting me, but I admit nothing. Anyway, I need to free up some bobbins so that I can get to it, and I need to spin the rest of the fiber that's been hanging over the back of one of my dining room chairs. So, really, spinning this weekend will happen in the name of housecleaning so that I can clear off that chair. At some point, I am going to have to do something with all this handspun. I don't really have very much of any one thing, but I'm thinking I will take a bag of it to my LYS and pick out some bulky yarns that coordinate, and make some scarves or something. Ideally, I'd like to do a scarf that had several handspun panels in it - like, start it out with handspun, knit till it runs out, *knit with a commercial yarn for a while, switch to a different handspun, knit till it runs out, repeat from *. But I'd like the handspun bits to actually relate to each other a bit, and I'm not sure how much of what I have, would.

I've knit the first half of my Pfeiffer Falls scarf and I'm about ready to put it on a holder (really, all I have to do is take the needle tips off and put some cable caps on it, but I may actually have to use a holder because I'm not sure I have another 24" cable free, which is kind of scary) and knit the other half. I'm not sure whether I should seam it, then block it and pick up the stitches, or wait for the blocking until the whole thing is done. It seems like it might be difficult to block both the hood and the scarf at the same time, but I don't know. Wouldn't I have to reblock the scarf anyway though since it will have to go in the soak along with the hood? I am inexperienced in the ways of blocking complex shapes. I'll have to google. Even though progress is good, I'm still a little worried about being able to finish in time for the trip. But, the only way to know is to keep knitting.