Can't knit? Spin!

Knitting seems a bit stall-ish here. The mittens are slogging along, and I'm surprised every time I pick them up how little I'm enjoying them. I think part of it might be the steel needles -- they're slippery, and so I spend some energy just keeping the alpaca on them -- and part of it is that I'm contemplating learning the two-at-a-time-on-two-circs methods, so the stop/start of dpns is a bit of a drag. And some of it is that I knit woefully slowly when I remember to knit.

Then there's that sweater. A sweater I would actually happily wear most mornings in this house. It's a bit chilly. Got to the bottom, did the second round of color work, ribbed, bound off. . . tried it on.

And. That second round of color work doesn't do much for my shape or my mental image of myself in the sweater. Out it came. Now I'm back to round and round and round we go with stockinette. In brown. On metal tips. Feels perhaps slower than it really is, and I hesitate to believe that it's going to look any better on me. Sigh.

Tonight, I spun instead. Fun, fast, almost instant gratification (or else it feels that way; it's clearly not) and I finally finished the first half of the lovely Grafton Fibers orange:


Such a small-looking bobbin in front of a blanket of top. I'll cross the ply/single bridge in the months to come, since it will probably take that long for me to finish. I do know a couple of babies who deserve hats, though. . . Do the moms want hand-wash only hats? I do not know.

I also don't know what goes through my children's heads. As I noted, the house is, indeed, chilly. And homeschooling gives one some flexibility in education that isn't available in other settings, but still. . .

Happy Birthday

Yesterday somebody turned 16 at my house.

She's a treasure -- always something interesting to say, funny, sharp as a tack, and doing that lovely "growing up in front of you" thing so I get to enjoy it. Considerate, no?

Right now she's asleep nearby. I know there aren't many more years I'll be able to say that, so I'm enjoying it (even though I kind of wish I, too, was asleep). And tomorrow I'll watch her run and leap on the Frisbee field and think of how fortunate we all are to have her in our lives.