I weighed what I have of the second ply on the spindle yesterday, and was nicely surprised to see I have about 7 grams already spun! My spindle weighs 45 grams, which is a nice weight for me to do fairly fine yarns. I once spun some silk top into what a friend called 'frog's hair'.

Heck, at this rate, I might be able to start plying this weekend! That'd be awesome. Funny how things get done when you actually put time into them ;)

I've wound off the first ply, about 15 g worth, and now have a fair bit of the second ply spun up, probably about 3-4 gram worth so far. Got a fair bit done this morning while it was still cool. It's been very warm this past week, so not a lot done.

I'm tired as heck, and about to head to mom's for my younger brother's birthday gathering. I'm taking the burgers. Might do more spinning later on, and kill some time before I go to mom's with some spinning.

Okay, I dug out the rest of this merino/silk from my stash, and my new goal for the Tour de Fleece is to spin the rest of this up. I just weighed it, there's 2.1 oz or 61 g left. I think that's reasonable for me to get done.

Here's a couple pictures. First is of the roving, of course. This is just the largest bit of it, not all 2.1 oz. I've already separated some of it out to be drafted. It's called Rose, I believe, from Ashland Bay Company, and it is a nice blend of grey and pink mostly, with bits of white, black and a dark rose throughout. I find that spinning it as fine as I do makes it hard to see the variations, but once it's plied up, you can still see a bit of the changing of thet colors, which I like. :)

This second picture is of the singles on my spindle. This is my first spindle I've owned, given to me at a class I took about 3 years ago. Well, actually, I did a tiny bit of spinning prior to that, but this is the first decent spindle I've owned. I've since made several more from dowels and toy wheels, they're somewhere in my bins with yarn on them. I really should dig those out sometime as well. Maybe if (hah!) I get this spinning done before the end of the Tour....

Okay, so I got started a little late. I simply forgot over the weekend, and didn't have time yesterday.

But tonight after both jobs, I managed to get about 10-15 yards spun of the merino/silk. My boyfriend, Conn, also works in the same room as me here at the apartment, and with the fans going, part of my drafted roving got blown over almost into his lap, and I pulled it back right away, as he was on a call (he does tech support), but his next time on mute, he's like, ooh, you got the fluffy soft stuff. He likes petting the fiber too.

Ended up breaking the yarn once, but I got it back together with no wastage, yay! I hate it when I end up having to take out a length of partially-spun yarn because it just isn't working back together properly.

Some of the yarn ended up a bit thinner than I wanted, but ah well, it's part of the character, eh?

Here's hoping I can get into more of a pattern of spinning as the days go on. I'll try for pictures tomorrow.

Summer of Socks and Tour de Fleece

Well, I got myself signed up for both of these challenges, though I'm not sure I have the time to really put into them.

The Summer of Socks, I'm not aiming for anything in particular, except maybe to finish the kilt hose I'm working on for my friend. I'm going to have to frog the one I had restarted, as I think a 2 mm needle would be much better than the 2.5 mm that I had been using. I find the fabric just a touch thin for a man's socks.

In the Tour de Fleece that I just signed up for a day or two ago, my goal is to do at least 15 minutes of spinning a day on the Ashland Bay merino/silk that I bought about 2 years ago and is the oldest in my fiber stash. I am spinning laceweight (I can't seem to get heavier than fingering for the life of me), and will be knitting Branching Out on Knitty. I have spun a 2-ply, about 225 yards, and have that much knitted already (yes, I know, bad me), and want to get at least that much more spun up so I can get a decent scarf length.

Hope to have pictures up at some point, but am typing this as a way to procrastinate on work. Been working a part time on top of my full time since May, so this blog sadly has hit the bottom of my long pile of things to do, as have most of my hobbies except chainmaille, as I'm trying to get a very large maille project done for labor day, and it's going to be a very close race.

So there's the brief update :)

Challah cover, finally!

Well, it's not tomorrow, but I did get a picture of it. It's finished blocking, I just haven't unpinned it yet. Now to figure what to back it with, but I will wait on that until next Thursday when I get paid and can go buy either some fabric, or a second-hand shirt I can tear up, to back it with. I'd like to get a blue similar to the foam squares I'm using, since it's a Jewish piece.

Size 30 crochet thread, 1.25 mm hook. The border pattern I got from online, and I charted the letters myself from a alefbet I found online as well.

Finished object dance.

Yay, the challah cover (crochet part) is done! I'll have pictures tomorrow night when I get it ironed and blocked. I'm going to back it in blue silk, as soon as I find some.

Bedtime now, just wanted to update. Oh, and I've started a chainmaille project for Conn, my boyfriend, for his birthday gift. Good thing it's in July, I'll need the time! Again, pictures tomorrow.

Latest crochet project.

This is the latest (and only) progress shot of a challah cover I'm making for a friend's wedding gift. It's in size 10 thread, using a 1.25 mm hook. It's 138 rows long. I'm redoing about 4 rows that I realized I screwed up earlier.

Long time no see

Well, shortish post. Knew it had been a while, but still, 6 months is pushing it.

I'm going to try and get more active (again) on this blog. I think to help with that, rather than just knitting, I'm going to expand it to include all of my hobbies. That includes chainmaille (maille), cross stitching, knitting, crochet, hardanger, embroidery, etc, etc.