Milestones

After surviving my first hurricane (Earl, which swept by the coast of NC and the island on which I'm vacationing), I also survived the first section of the Shawl of Doom. It was nice to get through both of them together. The dreaded shawl gave me something to focus on instead of worrying what a hurricane would be like. Earl turned far from where I am, so the answer was... nothing to worry about.

Next up, section 2 of the shawl, about 60 rows of simple and identical stitches.

Rescue from the WIP bag

I generally like to limit the number of projects I have going at any one time to one pair of socks, one sweater, one "other" project, and one crochet project. Having such a limit means I've got one guaranteed portable project (the sock), one long term thing to work on (the sweater), some crochet, and one other slot for whatever. I'm more likely to get my projects done (and my needles back) if I feel like I can complete what I've gotten. Sometimes, however, I end up with more projects than I feel I can handle.

This is one of those times.

So while on vacation, I've finally decided to resurrect the First of All shawl from the WIP bag. Winter is coming, and the kind of winters we get in NC call for a light shawl. I'll finish this time. I promise!

Today I... (cont.)

- Made my charkha work



- Spilled bubbly water all over my Featherweight Cardigan

Today I...

- Finished building my charkha. Time to see if it works.

- Finished writing up the pattern for mittens to match the Cornwallis hat.

- Went to lunch with Durham Knits Jr.'s great-grandparents.

- Saved my blind and idiotic cat from strangling himself to death on a plastic bag.

(One of these things is not like the others....)

A little hat

I've been working on this design for a few weeks now, and I'm glad to have my prototype completed. I'm thinking of calling it Cornwallis.

The Dilemma of Pulleys

I feel like an idiot, walking into hardware store after hardware store and asking for a simple pulley wheel, only to discover the pulleys are a) too small and b) fused so as to make it impossible to remove wheel from casing. I need pulley wheels to build a homemade chakrha - an Indian spinning wheel run by hand and favored by Gandhi. There are various online plans for building such a wheel, and mine come from a 1996 Spin Off magazine article, which is now available for free online.

I'll try to take pictures as I go, to document the progress of my little wheel!

WIP: Handspun Citron

Right now I'm near to casting off a handspun Citron shawl from the online knitting magazine, Knitty. Citron is one of those viral knits - it seems like everyone is knitting it. At first, I wasn't too fond of the little shawl. It seemed too frilly for me. But then... I made the right yarn.

This.



The African Sunset colorway of Three Waters Farm BFL fiber, purchased from the yarn store where I work. I spun singles to keep the integrity of the colors and boy am I happy I did.

Because that is becoming this:



Yum.