Easter holiday

The girls have been on spring holiday since the end of March, and it has seriously cut in to my blogging time and/or blogging energy. In the past two weeks we've been to a farm, a castle, the swimming pool several times, a zoo and multiple playgrounds. Despite that, I've managed to get some spinning and knitting done.

Well, not done, but at least moving forward. Last night I watched Brokeback Mountain and wound off 8 full bobbins of singles in the Neverending Spinning Project of Doom (NSPoD).

I can't believe I even entertained the idea that I could spin up all these singles in the month of January. At the rate I'm going, I may be done (with the singles) by the end of May. And then there's two rounds of plying to be done. Heck, when it's time to start knitting wool sweaters again, I'll have all the yarn done!

Winding them off on to toilet paper cones does show off the gradiations of the dye job though. It looks pretty cool from the bottom.

I have been doing some knitting as well. The most recent issue of Knitty has a cool pattern by Amy King using handspun. I pulled out the yarn I spun during the move last year that I'd been holding on to for another Knitty pattern, and decided this one would work better.

After some swatching (holy biasing stockinette Batman!) and a trip back through the wheel to take out some plying twist and make the yarn less wire-like, and I've been working my way through the yoke.

I'm now about an inch into the body, and facing endless stockinette. The pattern calls for about 650 yds of yarn, and I've got about 1000 yds of this, so I'm thinking I might put sleeves on. Instead of binding off the cap sleeves, I put the stitches on waste yarn, so when I'm done with the body I can see how much yarn I have left and do some sleeve if I can.

So...a new wool sweater in progress and it was short-sleeve weather today. My timing, as ever, is impeccable!