Baby knits, spinning away, and dirty fleece

Wow, how time can run away with you! Well, it can me. This past weekend was a blur of spinning and spending time with friends and family.  I'm in the zone when it comes to my spinning lately.  The summer tour spinning goal of spinning 10 minutes a day every day jump started my spinning mojo and now I crave spinning every day.  There were many days in the last month I spent way more than 10 minutes of spinning, especially this Saturday when I think I probably spun for several hours.

Before I go into details about my spinning, let's start with the cutest called BABY KNITTING!  I cast on the first cardigan for CGR aka my baby last week using the pattern  Maile Sweater by Nikki Van De Car and some sock yarn from NHknittingmama.com.  The knitting went fast until I got to the sleeves but I finally joined them tonight and so hopefully it will go quickly and be done by Friday before we head to Ohio.  So far it's looking great though!

CGR's baby cardigan

While I was spinning the brown merino that was pictured in the last post, I realized that I wanted to do a cable ply.  Which means, I'm going to ply two singles together and then ply those two together to end up with the four singles being plied.  Yes, that is very informative I know.  I'll go into more detail as the process goes, but after asking some people on twitter I realized that I would need to add some extra twist to the singles so when I ply them twice they still have some twist.  That meant that I had to go back to add extra twist, so I ran both the brown merino singles back through the wheel this weekend.  I have more room on both the bobbins so I may spin more of the brown onto these singles before I ply them together.

I was also able to finish spinning up the Cormo single I was working on and have moved on to the Corriedale roving.  Here is a picture of the Cormo before I run it back through the wheel to add more twist.

Cormo on the wheel.

This weekend I also spent some time cleaning some of the Black Corriedale fleece I bought at last year's SAFF.  I love this fleece and it's coated so it's mostly very clean!!  I was able to clean 13 oz in 2 hours.  That made me very happy!  With what I had already cleaned, I'm up to a little over 1 lb of clean locks from this fleece.  I have about 3 lbs left.  Once I'm done cleaning it, which I hope will be before the baby comes...even before the Florida Fiber In would be great too, I plan to use this for a cardigan.  Here is a picture of the drying locks.  The tips look a lot more bleached in this picture than they really are but you get the point.  These lock are like jackjack...hard to take pictures of.

Clean Corriedale locks

So, that is a recap of my crafting life.  I feel very productive when it comes to crafting lately.  I'm in the zone!  This weekend, I will be away from my wheel but I plan to bring knitting.  Since we are not checking luggage, I'll probably cast on a pair of gloves for a Christmas gift and take that along.  That is one of the reason why I want to finish the cardigan before the weekend...so I don't feel the need to take it with me.  I might also bring a baby hat since it's a simple knit.  You can't over pack the number of knitting projects for travel.  I will be away from my stash.

Other than crafting, I was able to organize the baby's room closet and you can now see the floor!  There is lots to do but I have time...or at least I'll keep saying that until I don't have anymore time.

Hope you have a great week and a great Labor Day weekend.  I will hopefully get lots of pictures to share from our Labor Day weekend in Ohio with Special K's family!  I'm looking forward to seeing all of them!

Happy Knitting, Spinning, and Travel!