Pretty little skeins

Today was not as fiber centric as yesterday, but I did manage to get some photos of the fiber I plied up yesterday. First, here are three skeins of the fleece I was given by the guild:
The skein on top is Targhee spun longdraw from hand carded rolags. Next is Shetland spun worsted draw from hand carded rolags rolled to keep the fibers aligned (if that makes sense). I remembered the prep of this fleece but for some reason thought that it was Romney. Luckily I wrote about it earlier this month so I could go back and learn that it was actually Shetland. The last skein is the Romney prepped and spun woolen.

Once all of my samples are spun I'm going to have to knit them up into a scarf or something that can take advantage of all these little skeins. I may knit up a small sample of each just to get an even better sense of the wool characteristics.

Speaking of samples here are the small skeins of Romney I made from the top I bought when I bought my new spindle:
The one on top is the one I spun up on my spindle and the bottom one is the new one I spun up on my wheel. Part of my reason for buying these bits of Romney was I want to spin and knit myself a grey sweater and I wanted to see if either of these colours would work for me. While I really like both of them I don't think that either is quite the right grey for me. I will keep looking.

In the meantime I have finally cast on for the Christmas sweater after getting the needed measurements. The race is on.

No Christmas knitting today

I had a lovely day off today playing with fiber. I did some spinning and a bunch of plying (pictures to follow) on my wheel. Then I took a break and finished up my snap dragon mitts. Finally I did some prep work so that I will have more things to spin next time I sit down at my wheel.

I'm very pleased with how the mitts turned out. If I had had any extra yarn I would have made them a few rows longer but they will work just fine as is. I ended up ripping the one mitt back several rows and starting the ribbing sooner, but I was in luck and had slightly more yarn in the second ball, so I did have enough yarn for some ribbing on the thumbs.

Tomorrow is another day off for me and I have made plans to get the measurements I need to get the sweater started. Now that the mitts are done there should be no other knitting to interrupt my Christmas knitting. Now if only I can keep myself from spending all of my time spinning...

Almost ready

I didn't find much time to knit at work today, but after supper I managed to knit a few rows on my mitt and another gauge swatch for the Christmas sweater. I have now washed my gauge swatches and all that remains is to get the measurements for the sweater. With any luck I will have all of the measurements in the next day or two and I can really get started on this.

In the meantime I have my mitts and my spinning to keep me busy.

Reward for good behaviour

I think I was right about the universe hiding my mitt pattern so that I would get going on Christmas knitting. Tonight I picked up the yarn for the Christmas sweater I'm planning and there was the mitt pattern hiding underneath. I'm going to be good and make a sweater gauge swatch instead of working on my mitts tonight.
Since the swatch will need to be measured and washed and measured again, I guess I will just have to work on my mitts instead tomorrow.

M.I.A.

Not much to share tonight. I'm on the Thursday late shift and I had errands to run this morning, which means I didn't have much time to knit or spin. I did a few rows on the second mitt, but I seem to have lost the printed pattern for it sometime between when I went to bed last night and when I got up this morning. I think the universe is trying to make me work on my Christmas knitting.

Yarn

Another lousy photo, but it shows one of my fingerless mitts all but done. The problem is that I am knitting these with leftover yarn, which I carefully divided in two, and I've run out. Ideally I would knit a couple more rows of ribbing at the top of the mitt and a few rows of ribbing around the thumb hole.
My plan is now to knit the second mitt in the hopes of having a bit more yarn leftover on it. If I don't have slightly more yarn, or God forbid I have less, I will place the thumb hole a bit lower on the mitt and make up the hand length that way.
In other yarn news, my Knit Picks order was delivered today. I now have the yarn I need to knit my brother's Christmas present sweater. Now I need to get together with him to discuss fitting and other pertinent details. I won't show pictures of the yarn tonight, since I'm sure it will soon dominate my blog and you will be lucky to see anything but it.

Restart

Having finished the pair of socks, I needed something to take to knit night tonight. I would have taken my next Christmas knitting but I didn't have time to find the yarn and the needles, and print the pattern. So I picked up the fingerless mitts I've been making to match my orange hat. I found my 4 mm needles (or at least I found 4 of them) and my yarn and I was out the door.
I'm glad I switched from the 4.5 mm needle I was using on the first mitt (the one on the left.) The picture sucks, but the new mitt has better stitch definition and it also seems to have a better fit. Now I just need to finish the new mitt and rip out the old one and reknit it. I also need to not run out of yarn. Wish me luck (and remind me to get back to Christmas knitting).