Impatient to finish

Folks, I got bit by the sweater bug this week. It was cold and snowy last weekend, and I really felt the need for a new sweater. And then I remembered the 2 sweaters I already have in progress... so I bought more sweater yarn, but I didn't cast anything new on. I started the sleeves on the stripy sweater, but it's going slower than I wanted it to. Because I'm impatient, and clearly starting a new sweater would be faster than finishing the sleeves on my current sweater, right?

Sleeves aren't any fun, as anyone knows. They're long, don't have much shaping, and take FOREVER.  So instead of working on sleeves, I'm finishing the Zombie viXen fingerless gloves.

They look nice, right? I gave them a bath in vinegar so that the dye which has been staining my fingers throughout the whole process. But they are done at last and they look lovely!

Also, I did a little bit of spinning this afternoon. Plying of the lovely 8 oz of fiber that I was working on last week. I turned 2 braids of this:

Into 4 little skeins of this:

I'm beginning to think that I need to purchase a larger flyer and a huge bobbin for plying because I really would prefer larger skeins as an end product...

For my next act, I'm still going to avoid the sleeves! I'm going to spin the last braid from Wool Fest last year...

Wish me luck!

Sleeves are the devil

I hate sleeves. They're worse than second sock syndrome, for me. A sock is a finite object, and kinda small, and there's not usually very many pattern repeats needed to make the socks match in size. Sleeves, on the other hand, are pretty much infinite. They feel like they go on forever, anyway. Especially since I have excessively long arms. 

That's the amount of sleeve I've gotten done in the last 3 days. Admittedly, I haven't really made that much of an effort. But you'd think it would be going faster. Especially since I'm doing them one at a time. 

Originally, I had planned to do them two at a time, so that they would definitely be the same length, and I wouldn't have to power through the second one. Unfortunately, it turns out that it's much harder to make sleeves two at a time when they are attached to the sweater, not waiting to be seamed. 

On the bright side, it allows me to use the fancy square double points that I got for the colorwork sweater again. I really dig these needles. They're really pretty, and they're wood, so my stitches don't slide off so easily (let's not talk about how often I try to extricate the fifth needle from the rest of the knitting and it turns out I've pulled out the wrong needle.), and I find the shape just fascinating. It's great. You should try them, they're from Knitter's Pride, so they're not terribly expensive. Definitely super bueno.

Also super bueno: finishing the body of the sweater while getting a pedicure! The guy who was doing the pedicure kept staring at me. He was real cute about it. He and one of the nail ladies were very impressed with how quickly I was knitting, and by the seeming complexity and size of the project.

He also did a very nice job on my toes. I always like to have nice looking toes when it's sandal weather. I can't keep a manicure looking nice, but my toes don't get a whole lot of action, so I like to have those done. Plus, who doesn't love a free leg massage?

In addition to the lovely sweater, and the equally lovely toes, I have some lovely spinning to share with you. It's the alpaca that I started last week. The spinning is still not as simple as I might like it to be, but it's going better. I hope it looks nice when it's plied. We shall see.