Over the weekend, friends of ours had a make-stuff party. A few weeks ago we got the invite: Come over to our house and make stuff! It would not be exaggerating to say that stuff-making is one of my favorite activities, so, obviously, we were totally pumped.
I think I did more crafting this weekend than I usually get done in two weeks. I took over a ton of stuff, figuring I’d work on whatever seemed the most fun. Once we were there and settled, I pulled out some felt and thread, thinking that I’d embroider some ornaments.
Turns out that I hate embroidery. I used to be okay at it, but I kind of suck at making all the stithes and stuff line up. After fussing with it for about an hour, I gave up. I just don’t care that much about embroidering.
After the failed embroidery, I moved on to my waterfall socks! They’re getting there, slowly but surely. So far, they’re about halfway up my foot, and I love them. I’m finding them a weirdly slow knit, but they’re so pretty that I don’t mind.
Though, with that said, I’m having some knitting conflict lately. Part of it is that I feel I should be giving people knitted things for Christmas, and part of it is just that I have such great yarn right now that I want to knit constantly! (Mostly for myself, though. I’m not doing so great on the other-people front.)
I have this, which was a gift from a friend. I’m still learning how to work with variegated yarns, so I’m not sure what I want to do with this, but I love the colors, and the yarn itself is unbelievably smooshy and soft. It didn’t come with a label, so I don’t know what it is, but it feels amazing. If you have suggestions for how to best display the colors, please let me know–I want it to be awesome.
This is Poems sock yarn by Wisdom Yarns. Last winter, I had great success with the Poems worsted–Maura got a hat, my mother-in-law got a shawl. I’ve wanted to try their sock yarn for a while, and when my local yarn store had a 25% off sale the day after Thanksgiving, I couldn’t resist buying this. It’s not anything like the sort of yarns I generally pick for myself, but I can’t wait to see how it knits up.
Last on the yarn front, we have this, which a friend recently sent me. It’s from the fleece of another friend’s alpaca, and it’s super, super sort. It’s off-white, maybe fingerling weight, 100% aplaca, about 270 yards. I’m thinking maybe fingerless gloves in pretty ribbing. Alpaca has so little memory that I don’t want to do anything too complicated, but it seems like gloves should be okay.
I did some spinning this weekend, too, which was nice. I usually use my wheel, but didn’t feel like taking the whole wheel to someone else’s house, so drop spindling it was. I’ve seen some very attractive, easy-looking DIY spindle tutorials lately, and am thinking that I might make a few in different weights. The current project is of roving that I dyed–and, as you can tell in the lower left of the picture, roving that the cats “helped” me dry. It’s a little beat up, but still enjoyable to spin.
The yarn will probably be fingerling/dk weight when it’s done, and maybe then I’ll turn it into something cosy for Maura. Right after I finish all those socks I was talking about.