Knitting and spinning

 It's October! My favourite month because of the lovely weather and my birthday :)

I haven't made much this last week, I haven't really felt like sewing much and knitting doesn't seem to get a look in either! I'm sort of stuck between projects with sewing and at a lull with knitting. One project is a bit of a hassle, one is too easy and therefore boring and another I've lost track of where I am in the pattern. I have a great longing to do knitting though, which is crazy! I did made this little coaster a week ago though. I searched for something interesting and this one caught my eye. Probably because it has fun surface stitching. I love it when crochet defies the rules that knitting so often follows. I love crocheting something that is 3D or you have to turn things around strangely. It often confuses me to despair, but there are always good diagrams or tutorials around to help. I'm going to make more of these. Not because I like coasters but because our landlady likes us to use place mats or something under our plates. So this is my cheerful solution!

I've been doing a lot of spinning in preparation for this lovely jumper:

It's from this book:

  

Really exciting and original projects in this book! The jumper is constructed by starting in the round at the cuff and knitting up the sleeve, then increases in a circular fashion to make front and backs. You knit two of these to make two shapes that look a bit like elephant heads, then you seam them together at the back. That's the only sewing up that you have to do! Brilliant!

The yarn I'm spinning is more of that lovely soft, lofty perendale fleece. I've spun four skeins up and plan to use up the rest of the fleece I have so I'll have enough. I'm waiting till I've spun all my wool before I dye it. That way I can be more sure that the colours similar enough to each other so I can knit continuously.

The yarn is pretty straight forward. Spun one way at a medium thickness and the plied the other way with a thinner strand, spun as I go. It's kind of kinked so will have a nice texture I think. Once this wool is all spun I think I'll do more with other fleece, spinning is so relaxing but at the same time, it's like the fleece is begging me to spin it up into yarn to be used!

We're off to see a Kakapo tonight! Exciting as I never thought I would get the chance to see one :) I'm also after some magic cards this evening, looking for legendary creatures to make a new EDH deck with. Then Saturday it's bottling beer and busking. Hoping that we'll do better then last time, last time we barely made 4 dollars each! It seems that people who go to the farmers market are a bit stingy, but we also had a fair amount of competition from other buskers.

N