I’ve gotten off my [redacted] and done some work documenting what I’ve been working on.

Okay. So. This weekend was exhausting, as all good vacations are, but I got a lot accomplished. Firstly, because baobh is good at working on fiber-related things, she rubbed off a bit and I was good about working on fiber-related things. There was this pair of socks I’ve been working on off and on for about a year. Sometimes it was because I had another project that took precedence, but mostly it was because they frustrated me. I started them three times, and they were never the right size. I took a stab at them again over the weekend. This time, success!

And some detail:

I’m sure they’ll be better when blocked, but we’ll get there in good time. It’s the interlocking leaves pattern from Knitty a while back, and it moves like lightning. I find that the more challenging a pattern, the faster it goes; I get so bored with the simple stuff that I never finish. This is what happened with the Socks of Eternity. In the beginning, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I got a lot done. However, I moved past that level of skill very quickly and am finding it difficult to motivate myself. Anyway.

Another thing that came out of the weekend was an increase in my confidence with drop spindle spinning. Before, although I have a lovely spindle to work with, I had been spinning to get started, parking the spindle, drafting the fiber as the tension spun out, spinning a bit  more, parking, drafting, spinning, etc. This is okay, but very time-consuming. It is also harder to get a consistent product with this method. I don’t know why I never managed to move past this, but I spun a third of a chunk (bump? hank? what do you call that?) of roving using this method, and it exhausted me.

This past weekend, I found a spindle and fell in love with it, mostly because for the first time ever I spun without parking. It was like I had learned to walk or speak another language spontaneously. I could’ve believed I had developed mutant superpowers right then (I’m still holding out hope). So I bought it. I spun a bit with it over the weekend, and was able to make a decent product with average roving (before I’d only ever been able to work with really nice roving).

And then came Tuesday. I sat down for an X-Men marathon (curse you, Wolverine, and your distracting self) and by the end of the day somehow had managed to spin up more than I had in the entire previous four months of spinning. All in the proper way, only parking a couple of times to splice in roving when I dropped the spindle by mistake. The best part? This wasn’t even with the magic spindle! This was with my old spindle! I must have learned something. For visual reference, here’s what I’d spun before:

Not bad for a first try, but lumpy and not a lot to look at. Here’s what I’ve got now:

Still lumpy, but look at all that yarn! And if you’ll notice, the portion in the middle is pretty even! (The roving colorway is Mango Berry, and I’ve misplaced its label at the moment, so I can’t tell you who it’s from).

I have one little bit left still, and I’ll spin it up this weekend. Then it’s on to learning how to Navajo ply, and to figure out what to do with such a small quantity of yarn. An iPod cozy seems appropriate. It’s not enough for much else, I fear.