Frolicking through the Stash

I am happy to report that I am at the halfway point of the Baby Surprise Jacket. This is one of the most fantastic patterns ever. Its by the infamous Elizabeth Zimmerman. This is now the third one I've knit since I took a class on the technique last May and ever since when I hear that someone is expecting a baby I squeal with glee that I have an excuse to make another one!



I am very happy with the results. Previously I had done this in self striping sock yarn, it looked quite pretty, but it did this weird thing on one side where the stripes looked like the wrong side and the other side looked right ... kinda drove me crazy. However, I decided that either I am doing it in one color, because I am not weaving in all those ends, or I thought a softer transitioning striping yarn may work. I choose Kroy Socks FX, which is a 4-ply yarn that changes color gradually, each ply being a different color throughout. It worked out great.

I picked up the spindle last night. I was working from some hand dyed roving that is quite nice, and making a disgusting, icky mess out of it. So I thought perhaps I should trudge through this sample collection I got when I purchased my spindle. Hopefully, by the time I get through this I am spinning better and can stop making a mess out of my nice rovings.



At this point I have only spun for a total of about 5 hours, 3 of those were in a class in September. That being said, I am a very inexperienced spinner and working on my technique. I figure since these rovings are so small ... all eight total 2 oz. its a good thing to practice with.



I collected up all of my cross stitch stash over this past year (found it in all kinds of places and various plastic storage totes from when we moved 2 years ago) and put it all together. Its hiding in the closet, but there's some really good stuff in there! Some of the kits are quite extensive and complicated, and some are little easy to stitch in a week types. I have a hummingbird one that is almost done, that I started eons ago and I would like to finish that before I go diving in here.

In my last post I mentioned the self imposed sock club and supplementing shawlette and scarf patterns with socks for some of them. I went through my stash today while I was dusting the shelves and generally cleaning the room ... ok so it probably would take a whole 15 minutes to clean the room, what I really did was fondle yarn for 2 hours and clean for 15 minutes of that.

Traveling Woman
Yarn: Yummy


Dane Shawl
Yarn: Knit Picks Bare - Dyed by Me

Pimpelliese
Yarn: Lang Jawoll Magic
I made one of these for the scarf exchange for the Knitter's Guild this past Fall. I got one in return, but the exchange was based on the Baktus pattern, which has a multitude of varieties to the basic technique. In the exchange, I got a plain one. Its beautiful and wear it a lot, but I really liked this particular pattern and want one for myself.

The other pattern I've got in this line up is Haruni I'm pretty sure its in the colorway pictured for the pattern. No picture here, I didn't print out the pattern yet, its 15 pages, so I'm going to print out only what pages I need when I am ready to start it.