Round and round

I didn't knit most of the time that I was sick, just because all I wanted to do was sleep. I finally picked up some knitting Friday night, but I found that sitting up to knit made me kind of dizzy. I eventually found a compromise pose somewhere between sitting up and lying down that made the vertigo bearable, and I knit. I picked out the part of the Orchid Mitt I had messed up (again) and was able to finish the whole mitt (I may have knit the thumb on Saturday, I'm not sure). With this encouragement, I was also able to motor through the second mitt, and last night I finished it up. They're finally done and I don't have to worry about them anymore.

Overall happiness with the project...meh. I should have used a different yarn, one with a little more bounce. I have HUUUGE ladder stitches down the sides, which is a problem I really haven't had before. I'm not sure what the problem was. I'm hoping that in the soaking and blocking that maybe things will even out a little bit, but I can't block these much because there isn't much give in them to begin with, and I don't want to stretch them out huge. I hope they fit the recipient.

And, just like that, I'm down to three WIPS. I definitely had some startitis going on at the beginning of this year, but I've managed to finish all of those things off and so now I'm down to 1 pair of socks, 1 lace shawl (that has languished for months, but we'll ignore that for now), and the hemlock blanket on my active project list. (I do have a few more wips that are 'hibernating' but those really don't bother me the way active projects do).

Three projects feels very reasonable to me, so I no longer have this "I have got to finish some of these off before I start something else" feeling. I hope to get going on my phyllo sweater tonight.

I'm going to attempt to go on a yarn diet until MD Sheep and Wool; between Christmas and my other recent purchases I have really got more than enough yarn to keep me going for a while and I really need to put the breaks on the money output. I did make one more big expenditure this month, and that was on a spinning class being offered by Nature's Yarns. It turns out...I am the only student! Yesterday was my first class and I learned several things I had not gotten out of the book, so I am looking forward to next week. I have spinning homework to do before then, so that's also on the agenda for tonight. Teach gave me several different preps to try spinning, and I am to try each of these and also to fill two bobbins before class next week so that we can cover plying.

I also had the chance to talk to her about staining my wheel, and she pretty much said there is nothing special I need to know, just to go for it, so I'm going to have to set aside a weekend for that. I still have hopes of getting a certain someone to paint something pretty on the flywheel, maybe in exchange for some of my, ahem, highly textured handspun.

We discussed whether I needed to take the wheel apart to stain it and Teach thought I could do it without taking it apart, there would just be some areas I wouldn't be able to get to as easily, but those parts would be largely covered by the wheel anyway. This is a relief, as I had so much trouble getting the wheel onto the thing that taking it off was kind of a terrifying prospect.

So, plans plans - spin my homework, start my sweater, finish Moonlight Sonata so that I can start Swan Lake, now that I have both yarn and beads in hand. I don't think I want to have both on the needles at once; I try not to have more than one of the same type of project going at the same time. I like to have multiple projects that are suitable for different types of knitting time. I have the hemlock ring for TV knitting, the sock for travel knitting, moonlight sonata for times when I can focus, and the sweater is several different kinds of knitting depending on where in the process I am, so I can move it around as needed. I really think that after all the lace knitting I have done and all the scarf knitting I have been doing...the sweater will move kind of fast.