Relative productivity

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have to sit down and be quiet for a few days. It's not often that I have the luxury of not doing anything when I'm not feeling well, but since I'm on vacation I took the chance to nurse my cold and knit. My basement craft area is still not organized, but the Sienna Cardi is finished, except for the buttons.

I used Plymouth Encore, size 10 Bryspun straight needles (and splurged on an Addi bamboo circular for the collar), and it took me from November 19 to December 29 start to finish. If I had it to do over again, I'd do the next size up, and use real wool instead of a wool/acrylic mix.

Here's a closeup of the collar area. It's accomplished with a series of stepped bind-offs that form a kind of picot edge. It seemed like it would take forever to knit, but I really like the effect. I won't move this project to the done pile on the sidebar until I've put buttons on it.

So this morning, I stewed over my coffee thinking about what I wanted to work on next. The second Ombre Hombre sock? The Crayon sock on ebony needles? The Tasha shawl? I began by frogging the Pi Shawl and then turned my hand to finishing the Bison Gold roving. Here's what one spun ounce looks like.
It's mighty fine, as in, finely spun. I used a long draw technique, right off of the roving without any pre-drafting; the fiber is so light that pre-drafting wasn't necessary. After I'm finished talking to you, I'll pack up this spool and tote it over to the LYS to hopefully show to the Amazing A-- and see if she has any ideas of what to ply it with.

While the momentum was in a forward direction and while waiting for the above photos to load (it took over half an hour for three pix!) I went downstairs and fetched some fine merino top that I purchased for a song from one of the guild members about two years ago. It's so slick and beautiful that I never got a handle on successfully spinning it into anything. I'm a long-draw spinner, and fine stuff like this top really requires spinning from the fold in the "inch worm" technique (pulling a few fibers off of a perfect drafting triangle a little at a time) which I find maddening. In the intervening half hour, I've learned how to spin from the fold (kind of) while accomplishing a shorter long draw. This is giving me a semi-worsted yarn, which will ply into a DK weight when it's finished. There isn't enough of the top to make anything, really, but when I'm done I'll have learned something new and will have reduced the stash a little bit.

Some of the other blogsters are doing a "knit from your stash" pledge, but I don't feel moved to do it myself. My real workable stash is not that big, although if I don't buy any sock yarn for the next year I won't run out of sock projects before 2008 -- mostly because I'm the world's slowest knitter (and six balls will get me there). My spinning stash isn't out of control, either, especially since I have a new spinner friend (old friend who just learned to spin) and have earmarked at least one of my fleeces to be handed over to keep her going. About the only thing that will knock me off of the stash wagon would be a large quanitity of surpisingly inexpensive but fine white roving just begging to be dyed. Or, two thousand yards of worsted or aran weight tweed in a lovely heathery earthy green in one dye lot in a ninety percent off sale bin. Hey! One never knows.

Did you notice that the photos are in focus? I found the "shaky hand" function on our new camera and what a difference it makes!