an ent knits

Nothing new to see here. I did actually do a bit of spinning this evening, but that’s been essentially all of my fibery activity since last week. Instead, I have been packing. Cleaning and packing and cleaning and packing, and planning where my furniture will go in my new apartment. And, of course, work… I hope to be back to knitting sometime next week.

I posted in early February about what I had on needles and goals for starting and finishing various things.

Somehow, not very many of those goals have been met. Um…okay, none of them. But I’m going to post about goals again, so I can organize my thoughts someplace where I’ll be able to find them again.

Things I’ve finished recently:
kind of a lot of spinning, at least compared to my spindle-only productivity
four Dulaan hats
corriedale wristwarmers

Things I’m currently working on:
green Grafton batt
sunset-y silk cap
(no knitting since the wristwarmers)

Things I’m planning to resume soon:
mountain peaks shawl
jaywalkers (they’ve been in my bag all week, but I haven’t actually worked on them)
redwood bfl
sunflower merino

On needles but not priorities:
baby bobbi bear (although I really ought to finish it soon)
felted totebag
autumn sunset shawl
mom’s wristwarmers

Things I want to start soon:
top-down cardi from CosmicPluto‘s basic pattern
diamond fantasy shawl with handspun (redwood bfl & copper corriedale)
shadow neuron scarf

Things to be put off for a while:
The mohair-blend feather & fan triangle shawl probably ought to wait for autumn. All sweaters that aren’t relatively plain cardigans are going to wait until I’ve finished one that is. The peacock feathers shawl and the lotus blossom shawl are going to need to wait until I finish at least one of the three lace shawls listed above.

That’ll keep me busy a while. Especially with moving and unpacking and labwork and such. Oy. Moving really makes me want to shake my packrat tendencies… (No worries, though, the wool is not at risk. Sorry. It’s lightweight and not breakable.)

So I took some pseudo-action shots of the wristwarmers. Hey, I was wearing them anyway…reading doesn’t exactly produce a lot of extra body heat.

In other random news, I was awakened last week to a ptoioioing sound. Mel was sitting on my spinning chair, plucking Amy’s (elasticky) drive band like a musical instrument. It’s easily solved by moving the chair away when I’m not spinning, but has this happened to any of the rest of you?

I finished the wristwarmers! I finished the wristwarmers! I know, I know, they aren’t obviously wristwarmers in that photo, but it’s hard to take a picture of both of one’s hands in what sunlight comes in through one’s front window (even as nice a front window as mine), especially when one has lent out one’s tripod. But I’m really excited about having wristwarmers, especially since they’re knit from my handspun.

I specifically made them so they wouldn’t reach past the knuckles at the bases of my fingers so they should be wearable under lab gloves, since they’re for wearing in lab. Even if I decide not to layer them under our purple nitrile gloves, though, they’ll be great for sitting at the microscope for hours.

I also have a picture of some freshly-twist-set yarn:

Mel seems interested, but I’m not sure whether it’s the yarn or the cardboard

This is the wool-mohair that I bought from Three Waters Farm last summer after I started spinning this stuff. This skein (about 50 yards) is what was on the spindle when I went to Maryland–I spent a while plying it, early Sunday morning, while listening to birdsong. I know it’s a bit underplied, since I was eager to free my spindle, but now the spindle is occupied by that silk cap. I’ll fix it later…

And one more picture, of some beautiful flowers I saw on a walk around my neighborhood last week:

I love springtime.

There was one other exciting thing about this last week–ducklings in the pond in the middle of the medical campus!

Aren’t they adorable?

Most of my energy this week has gone into work and packing (and watching season 6 of West Wing…), but I have done a little bit of spinning and knitting.

This is some of the silk cap that I bought at MDSW. I did some spindle spinning last Sunday morning at the campsite, and it reminded me that spindling is fun, too. So I’ve been spinning this silk–sorry, Steph, but the Grafton batt is first up for the wheel–and it’s really impressive. Aside from it being pretty and shiny, it’s just amazing to see some of the “yarn” I’m winding onto my spindle looking like my hair except that it’s purple and shinier. (I’ve decided not to care about evenness for this; it’ll range from thread to fingering with some slubs and neppy bits, and I’ll use it for something lacy. I think.)

This is a better picture of the whole silk cap than I showed last week.

While I’m on the subject of things I could’ve shown you last week, here’s my favorite picture of our campfire from Maryland.

And…this afternoon, I went to a concert at the Kimmel Center (ahh, Beethoven), where I had plenty of time to knit. This is the second corriedale wristwarmer.

One more thing, while I’m posting. I found this handwriting meme on Miriam‘s blog, and thought it looked interesting. So here we have a pangram and my first name, in my handwriting. I’ll just have to be careful if I ever want to send an anonymous package again…

Here’s hoping my dozen or so boxes and crates of books will waltz to my new apartment.

I needed that. Not just the still-incredible and -overwhelming amount of fiber and number of people at Maryland Sheep & Wool, but the relaxation of a weekend away from work, away from the shambles that is my apartment, and away from the noise of the city. It was amazing to wake up and hear more birdsong than anything else, and to fall asleep to crickets and spring peepers. I need to get out of the city more.

Of course, I wasn’t just camping… It was lovely to see a whole bunch of people I don’t often see, and spend lots of time with a few people I do often see, and all in the presence of many, many fibery animals and lots of fiber.

And I had to buy some…

This is plain white cormo top, copper-colored corriedale to match the redwood bfl, a show-logo t-shirt, a gorgeous silk cap, dark red and grey ramboullet, grey-green & orange wool-mohair, wool (from a sheep named Sandalwood, I think) and alpaca in various lovely shades of brown, a green Grafton Fibers pouf, a wraps-per-inch tool from Woodchuck Products, two skeins of Tess’s sock yarn (chocolatey brown & mahoganyish brown), a skein of Spirit Trails sock yarn in flame colors, and some merino-mohair in olive & brown & red & gold, also from Spirit Trails. You’ll get more details as I start to use them.

Here’s a better pic of the wpi tool (click for detail):

And I was ordered to take some pictures of the animals, so I figured I’d post a few of them here as well.

I’m yawning incredibly now…this whole ‘getting up well before seven a.m.’ thing means getting tired a lot earlier. Funny, that.

I made a special effort to get these pictures uploaded last night, so I want to post them this morning. The catch is that I have to be at work before 8 (very early for me), so there’s not much time to write about them.

Okay, picture #1 is a closeup of the giant (200-yd!) skein of Redwood bfl. Very soft, a little more pink than utterly perfect but lovely nonetheless. I love it. (I’m also very pleased that it’s less pink and more brownish and orangey now that it’s plied.)

Picture #2 is the ounce of Delphinium corriedale from the Boogie sampler; it’ll eventually be the other wristwarmer. (Along with the Pine corriedale.)

And just in case I don’t get a chance to post again before Maryland (whee!), say hi if you see someone walking around with a frog or a ladybug (finger puppet) in her hair. It’ll almost certainly be me. (And, if it isn’t, please make said person introduce herself to me.)