One of my favorite past times is knitting. I will admit to not being very good but I am a little bit more than a beginner. My thing is that I like immediate gratification so I tend to lean toward the easier patterns and smaller projects like hats, scarves and big bulky knits for sweaters. The sooner I can see my results the happier I am. Maybe I have ADHD or something but I can get pretty bored with something very quickly if I have to do a stockinette stitch that goes on forever, like in the way of an adult sweater in worsted weight yarn on size 9US needles.
The last project I completed was about a year and a half ago. It was a boatneck sweater by Debbie Bliss for the baby I was expecting. It was a size 3-6 months, so it was small and knitted up fast. The challenging part was sewing the pieces together. I wasn't completely satisfied with it but it was cute.
Now that I am thinking about it, I think I did knit a couple of small scarves since then, but nothing to write home about.
A friend of mine has been knitting and spinning for a long time and one day she had come over with a small drop spindle and wool. I thought it was so cool! I wanted to do that too!
I was a student and single mom at the time so I didn't have the expendable income to blow on wool and a wooden drop spindle so it had to remain a yearning desire.
Jump forward several years and I decide to put a drop spindle, wool and a book on the subject onto my Amazon wishlist a few weeks before my birthday.
My friend and I always joked around about how no one ever gets you stuff from your wishlist. It was true. No one ever does. So when it was her birthday back in February, I was determined to get her something from her wishlist, and I did.
But I digress...
My friend comes over a couple of days before my birthday bearing gifts - even after I said no gifts. She hands me a cool bag from a local yarn store,
Village Yarn & Tea.Inside are several wrapped gifts and as I begin to unwrap them I realize that she had just given me things from my wishlist - a drop spindle, carded wool, and a book. As a bonus, she also put in some recycled sari silk yarn from Nepal. How cool is that? I was giddy like a child!
Another friend, the spinning friend, also came over and gave me yarn along with a pattern for a neck warmer. This was all I needed to get me back into knitting again after quite a long hiatus.
I am so thrilled to have my hobby back as well as a new one that compliment each other so perfectly. In between spinning wool, I knit my neck warmer. Which has cables, something I have never done so it is an especially fun challenge for me. Needless to say, I did end up having to frog the damn thing and start over! So I'm a bit rusty, I'm just warming up!
Thank you to my wonderful friends who know just the right things to enable me in my obsession of yarn and fiber.
Last night I transferred the white Merino from the drop spindle to a bamboo knitting needle to hold for plying. I cracked open the DragonFibers targhee wool and begun spinning. This is only the second batch of wool I have spun in my life and it is really different from the Merino. The targhee is more course and in some ways easier to spin because it doesn't pull apart as much as the Merino. I can maintain a constant size with it than the Merino too. The Merino is so soft and slick that I was constantly having to stop and redraft and well, lets be honest, it's going to be a bulky yarn due to all of the irregularities in size. I love that kind of bulky, big knit yarn so I am happy with it and it will look so cool plied with the DragonFiber.
