Greetings

It's been a while since I last wrote, I know. I haven't been getting much done. I've been trying to correct my inability to get my homework done before the last minute. Which hasn't left much time for crafting, since I have a fairly long paper due this month, and it's not done... yeah, working on that.

Anyway, this last weekend I had some fun. I went to Golden to see Caitlin, who has been taking a technical spinning class. I brought my fancy wheel (Caitlin says we're supposed to name our wheels, so I'm calling her Tanya), and Caitlin gave me some samples of stuff that she had tried, and showed me the different techniques she had learned. I'm glad she took the class, I'd wanted to learn more about wheel spinning for a while now. It's pretty cool.

I also finished a pair of mitts. They're pretty wonderful, and I needed another set of dark, semi-plain mitts. Let's go with that as an excuse. 

I don't wanna hear it, Caitlin.

Mockery

I've been very lazy in terms of posting for the last while. It's not because I haven't been knitting, because I have. It's mostly just because I haven't been knitting anything very interesting. There's only so many pictures you can take of 5 and a half inches of ribbing before people suspect you of not making much progress. Believe me, progress was made. It's just that such a quantity of 2x2 ribbing is a little mind-numbing.

Plus, I've been not very motivated with the knitting this week. Probably because I made myself a deal: I would make some serious progress on the Runcorn and then I could cast on a new shawl. So, obviously, instead of focusing on the Runcorn, I worked on a pair of fingerless mitts. Or read. Or something that didn't involve 5 and a half inches of ribbing. You know how it is.

Anyway, I have made some progress on the Runcorn sleeves. Not as much as Caitlin, who has been forging ahead in a single minded manner, likely encouraged by the fact that she requires a fun hand-knit sweater to wear during her dog's many potty trips.

Looking at it right now, it doesn't look like much. But it felt like a lot at the time. And after I post this, I swear I'll go back to working on it, so I can have a completed sweater some time before the Apocalypse.

Something that I have accomplished this week, however, has been the 11th pair of fingerless mittens this year. I know that you are probably shaking your head and thinking "Why on earth would any single person require 11 pairs of fingerless gloves?" And I have to admit that I probably don't need that many pairs. I can hear the mockery from my mother and from Caitlin right now. But I do like to make fingerless mitts. And I maintain that if I had knitted 11 pairs of socks this year, no one would think I was (as) crazy. But fgs are really a very good kind of project (except for the fact that there are 2 of them. That is sometimes a problem); they're small, so you can take them places, they come in all varieties, so you can work on them during all kinds of knitting moods, and they keep your hands warm in the winter. You can even wear them indoors! I often do this, and people exclaim over my warm hands all winter long. Little do they realize that the source of my internal heat stems from my obsession with little bitty gloves.

Anyway, these are my 11 pairs of fingerless gloves in 2011:

Pretty awesome, right? I won't tell you how frustrating it was for me to try to make Picasa let me make a collage with pictures in different albums. It's really not necessary to dwell on it.


Anyway, please keep the glove-related mockery to yourselves. They make me happy!

Quickie

I just wanted to share with all 3 of you that I have finished a pair of fingerless gloves (fgs, for future reference). They're a lot prettier when they're on, but I like them, cuz they sparkle. They shouldn't have taken so long to make, but I had some starting issues. Turns out, items fit a lot better/look a lot better if you use the correct needle size. Lesson learned, next time I will double check my needles when I think the fabric looks a bit strange.