an ent knits

Last week, my dad and I went on a walk along the forest-lined bike path near my grandma’s house. There weren’t a lot of flowers right along the path, but there were at least a dozen or so really impressive spiderwebs, several of them funnels. This one was particularly well lit.

This butterfly joined us in the blackberry patch at that orchard:

…and then someone on Rav pointed out that my most recent batch of batts looked a lot like it.

I wasn’t aiming for a particular color with them, just thinking that I had some bits and pieces that would look good together, but it is remarkably similar. I’m pleased with them.

Oh, and it’s not really an eye-candy shot, but I promised a sweater update:

I’m now a few rows further along, but I haven’t hit the any-time-now color shift. Well, okay, it should be in about three more rows, since it’s in the yarn that’s on break right now. I’m knitting two rows with one yarn, then two rows with another, carrying the yarn up the side, but also switching balls of yarn every couple of inches. Current plan is to knit up to the bottom of the armscyes and then get the sleeves to the same point, so any major mods to the sleeve cap shaping will match the armscyes. (And so I can put off deciding exactly how I want to deal with that, and also so I can have the sleeves use some of the yarns I’ve been using for the bottom of the body.)

In other knitting-y news, I’m working on (choosing and pricing) a batch of stuff (some yarn, some fiber) for a destash.  When it’s ready, I’ll mention it here.

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at the orchard yesterday, originally uploaded by enting.

One of this past week’s excursions was to a local orchard, where we picked blackberries, bought peaches and apples, and said hello to the goats. Knitting update to follow.

This week hasn’t been especially bloggably interesting, and it’s been hot enough that I haven’t taken my camera outside–all of my garden time has been raspberry picking.  I did make a third batch of jam…

I have, however, continued spinning.  One of the projects I thought I’d get to during the Tour (really, a project I devised while digging for other (specific) things for TdF spinning) is another mixed lot of handpainted tops to spin together for a sweater lot.  The basic set looks like this:

though I’ve added another one, a blue-green-grey targhee.  I split each braid into ~1 oz pieces, spread them out, and paired up the various bits, making sure to keep each pair unique.  (I’m spinning 2-ply yarns, plying any leftovers back with themselves until I start having duplicates of the leftovers.)

And I thought that, since I was starting to spin for another sweater, I ought to start knitting the one I spun for last fall. This batch of yarns

is on its way to becoming a Bernhardt. I had a little trouble getting started, since my gauge is a bit different and the pattern phrases things in ways that are not entirely intuitive to me, but I’m about half an inch into the hem ribbing and really enjoying it.

With any luck, I’ll have a lot more done by next week–I’ll have upwards of 12 hours in the car over the next couple of days, so plenty of knitting time.