Granny's party

I'm mostly recovered from my expedition over the weekend with the girls to North Carolina*, but it's amazing how exhausting vacation can be! We left on Thursday, sneaking out of IAH between feeder bands from Tropical Storm Erin, and made it safely to Richmond, VA without an further mishap. Despite having to sit on the plane for an hour at the gate and then for almost three hours in the air, the kids were fabulous. Having a bulkhead seat helped tremendously, but it was still a long time to be stuck in one place, particularly for Devil.

We met Nana in Richmond, threw the kids (neither of whom slept on the plane) into the car, and headed south. They were both asleep inside of ten minutes, and we had a very peaceful trip down to the lake. Things were very calm until Friday morning, when my cousin arrived with her two kids (7 and 3) and then later in the day, my two aunts arrived with another cousin and 2 more kids in tow (4 and 10 months). Devil was so enthralled by all the excitement that she basically forgot to eat. The rest of the weekend was a blur of playing in the lake, going for rides in the big motorboat (which Devil very proudly got to drive), and the ingestion of copious amounts of junk food.

On Saturday night we had Granny's birthday party, and I gave her the Branching Out scarf I've been working on. I'm not much in to making scarves, they get real boring real fast, but something about this one was different. Maybe it was the lace pattern, or the excitement of working with yarn I spun myself, but I really enjoyed making this scarf. I was originally planning on keeping it for myself, but decided that Granny would love it. And she did. Although she made sure to tell me to take it back when she goes.

She loved the colors (which are perfect for her), and was very impressed by the fact that I'd not only knit it, but also spun the yarn. That's the kind of appreciation for handknitted gifts you like to see!

Here's a close up. More details about the yarn and it's origins are here, but it was approximately worsted weight (varied between 11-13 wpi in three different skeins). I started off with two skeins, one thinner then the other. I weighed both skeins and the thinner one was also half the weight of the other. I wanted to avoided pooling and abrupt changes in the color sequences as well as minimizing any variability in the gauge due to thicker versus thinner spinning, so I used both balls at the same time, working 4 rows from the heavy/thicker ball and 2 rows from the lighter/thinner ball. I carried the non-working yarn up along the side, catching it up in the middle of the 4 row stretches so it didn't dangle off the edge. This worked out pretty well, but when I ran out of the thicker ball of yarn, the scarf wasn't quite long enough, so I had to spin up some more. Thankfully I had some fiber left!

Some pattern details:
Pattern: Branching Out from Knitty.com
Needles: US size 8
Yarn: BFL top handdyed from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, spun on a Golding spindle
Started: er...sometime in mid-July
Finished: ~August 10th or so
Gauge: Hunh? Who cares, it's lace...about 7 inches wide and on the short side for a scarf.

Trip back on Sunday was uneventful except for Boo showing disturbing signs of wanting to be _that_ baby. You know the one, who screams non-stop for the entire flight and will not be mollified. Thankfully we were right next to the engines at the very back of the plane, and she eventually conked out.

Note: I'll be on a brief hiatus for the next couple of weeks - we're heading off to the UK tomorrow for a wedding and some time out looking at fossils on the Jurassic Coast. But back after Labor Day, and I've got a review of a bunch of different types of spinning fibers in the works for you.

* except for the lovely case of pinkeye I've picked up from my oldest child, for which I spent two hours at the doctor's office this morning trying to get some antibiotics. Thanks Dev!