This year's vacation I've mostly spent home, knitting, spinning, playing WoW, relaxing, and cuddling with Sona. Except for the week my Mum visited, then it was a lot more going out, fika, shopping, and spending time with Mum instead. The weather had been scorching sunny for the whole July and instantly turned to rain for the week Mum was over.
It's been alternately rainy and sunny since. The sun is lower, the days are shorter, and the nights are colder. Autumn is just around the corner, and it's time to start knitting socks again soon. My tiny flat is cosy, and I love it. I have yet to tire looking out my window and seeing something lovely. It still amazes me how lucky I got with this flat.
I've been knitting on this scarf for a while. It gets put aside for other projects that catch my fancy, and then picked up again as an intermission. This time I'm determined to finish it before beginning anything big.
I was thinking of Mum as I was spinning this yarn, and thinking of her again as I was knitting the scarf. I gave it to her when she was over. I added a bit of simple lace to one side just to spice things up a bit.
This is hand painted Jacob top from Lanitium ex Machina in Harlequin colourway. I love her colourways and fibres. This top is practically drafting itself, it is a real pleasure to spin it. I split it into three for 3-ply, and each 1/3rd half again to make the colour runs shorter. So far I've finished two of the 1/6ths, four more to go.
I've decided to make the yarn in two halves, instead of one long one. Which means not joining another 1/6th to the one just spun, but spinning each separately and plying them separately as well. That way I'll get two 3-ply balls about 50g each, with sort of matching colour runs along both lengths. Good for socks, or mitts, or anything knit in pairs. Or two halves of a scarf, or whatever else would look nice with a little bit of symmetry.
Once the Harlequin is spun, this Teeswater top from WishFox Dyeworks is next. I love and adore that there is black in there! It's not very common to find hand painted fibre with black, and I snapped it up as soon as I saw it. The initial idea is to split the top in half, then spin it as fine as I can manage, and chain ply each half. That should make a nice self striping yarn, which is destined to become winter mitts for me. I may have to shorten the pink colour run. Maybe. I'm not very fond of pink, and it looks to be a fairly long one. We'll see. I may change my mind entirely about this.