Finishing Fridays

Long time no post. The last few weeks haven't given me much knitting time. I started this blog to motivate me to shrink the stash. I started off with 67 projects, 14 of which were on the needles. The stats at this point are not looking promising. I have 75 projects in total, 13 in progress. Clearly the original plan was flawed. To deal with this and to compensate for my general avoidance of completing finishing work, I am instituting Finishing Fridays. This means that every Friday I have to do some sort of finishing: whether it's sewing buttons, weaving in ends, sewing seams or whatever else needs to get done.

This Friday's accomplishments:

The plying for grandma's shawl is finished. Here's a blurry closeup.

And the finished product (with a standard pair of scissors included for scale):

Many hours of spinning has left me with about 625 yards of two-ply, light worsted yarn. I've started to swatch for the shawl and so far it's knitting up beautifully. The thrill of knitting my handspun has yet to wear off.

I also knitted Calorimetry using the wool/silk I spun up last month. What a great project! A quick day of knitting and I ended up with this:

I love the way the colours in the yarn interacted with this pattern, moving from light on the edges to dark in the middle. Lots of people have posted about the finished product being too big. I opted not to modify the pattern and am very pleased with how it turned out. There is enough fabric to cover most of my head without being unnecessarily large. It is the perfect thing to help me through the cold snap we've been having the last week or so. Here is a closeup of one of the buttons I sewed on today to finish this project up.

Last but not least, I made the felted tote from One Skein. Another quick knit, made from Lamb's Pride Bulky in a colour called Wild Violet (a little darker than in this picture). I finally got around to weaving in the ends and doing the seaming. Next it's into the washer for a quick felt, hopefully I'll get that done when I go home next weekend.

Now it's off to stand in line at the Lululemon warehouse sale.

Marathon

If nothing else the last few days have been productive on the spinning front. I finished the singles for the shawl.

Now it's time to ply.

Small and Big

Instant gratification anyone? Feeling a little overwhelmed with the number of projects on the go and general life stress, I decided that finishing a lingering project would help turn things around. A few hours later and I had a funky knitted ring. A great way to use up those little bits of yarn I can't bear to throw out.

I've also been doing some spinning...

Lorna's Laces 10 oz Pencil Roving in Seaside and Tahoe that I picked up here while on summer vacation. Inspired by this, I decided that I wanted to make a handspun shawl for my grandma out of the purply-blue roving. Here's how the first bobbin is going so far. Wish me luck.