Category Archives: things I spin

knitting-adjacent crafts

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The end of this month is a pretty big blur, as I wrap up a lot of pretty big life stuff (including school!) and organize myself for two months off and the start of even more life stuff.

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I’ve gone back to spinning, which is always a nice, zen way to take study breaks. It calls for patient hands and focus, which is exactly what I need right now.

Along the theme of “not doing crafts I don’t love doing,” I let myself take a break on the Big Bag Of Shetland I’ve been spinning for approximately eternity. I plan to finish it, but I needed to let myself work on something else for a while, and 110g of electric, punch-in-the-face green and black merino/silk seemed like a nice fit.

I also did a very, very wee bit of patchwork.

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I have been a little obsessed with patchwork chevrons (and maybe sketched out an entire, bed-sized chevron quilt in mutliple colours), so I decided to make some small ones to get them out of my system. These are 3″ half-square triangles, machine sewn together and hand-quilted, with wool batting in the middle. I’m going to add buttons and elastic
loops to the short edges and use this as a French press cozy.

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This was also my first time making binding and stitching it on, which was easier than I thought it would be, but helpful to do on a small scale before trying it on a full quilt.

spinvember update

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My spinning mojo is back, you guys.

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Last time I updated you all on Spinvember/my big bag of wool, I was making really, really slow progress. Feeling like I could update the blog on my progress was helpful, but I just wasn’t feeling the process like I sometimes do. And then over the weekend, something clicked, and I started spinning more and more.

Last update, I was on my sixth bobbin of singles. Now, I have six bobbins of plied yarn, plus two more full of singles and another – my ninth – on the go.
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The big bag of fiber is starting to look manageable – almost empty, compared to the way it was when I started. I’m really enjoying this process, and I’m quite proud of the yarn that I’m turning out.

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That said, oh my god, I am absolutely pining to spin something that is not chocolate brown. I love this colour, and once I’m actually knitting with the yarn, I will be very, very happy that it’s brown. But I keep fantasizing about the yarn I want to spin after this: it’s going to be something electric green, or unicorn-pink, with crazy, eye-searing brightness and barberpoling everywhere.

can’t wait to tell my friends, they don’t have a stockinette blob this big

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Since my last entry, I’ve gone on vacation (awesome!) and spent a few days dealing with a pretty nasty cold (less awesome). This has been excellent for the knitting that I’ve got on the go, but considerably less helpful for my spinning.

Spintober is slowly moving along, but it looks like I may have to go into Spinvember to get this bag finished.

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This is bobbin 6, which. . .has a lot more on it than it did at my last check-in, but there’s still a substantial amount left to go.

On the other hand – I started a sweater. I wanted to make something for the indigodragonfly sweater KAL, and I fell in love with this sweater pattern.

Last time I blogged, I’d done so little that it didn’t seem worth mentioning. I figured progress would be slow, since it’s a sweater made out of fingering-weight yarn (Merino Sock, in “Also, I Can Kill You With My Brain”) on 3mm needles.

plain and simple

Two plane rides and a lot of tea and television later, it’s a little bigger.

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