The Kauni shipped as fast as it possibly could, I am very impressed. I am now officially getting nervous about this upcoming project. I have chosen something that will be a real stretch for me. A challenge. Colorwork, I am not good at it. Takes mounds of concentration. Steaking?!?! What am I thinking? But seriously, looking at this yarn, how could I resist?

I am going to take this water garden fair isle and use the kauni to make it. It will change the look completely, but I think it will work. The idea is that instead of using 5 different colors, I will just use 2 different strands of Kauni, letting the long repeats of the yarn work the various colors for me. To accomplish that, I had to do this:

One ball has the rainbow colors repeating in the correct sequence, the other has the colors repeating backwards.

This will be exciting!

I completed the clap in less than a week.  That was a record.  I thought it would be one of those projects that would languish, but I had such incentive to get it done, as there will be a few exciting and NEW things seen here in the next couple of weeks.  I wanted the clap to be done before those new things arrived.

You will also be seeing some spinning next.  I basically refused to leave the house this weekend.  I did not even see J, refused to go out, just dedicated my time to knitting.  I did spend time on the phone with J, probably talking twice a day which was great because it kept me in one spot and knitting while I was on the phone.  I had high hopes of finishing the clap last evening, but gave up in exhaustion and pain around 10 PM.  I got up at 6 this morning to give myself an hour to work on it, and it was done within a half hour.  Now I have knitters elbow, my elbow and arm are quite sore, so I am going to take a little knitting break and work on some spinning that has languished on the wheel longer than I wanted it to.  I have 8 oz. of superwash merino from Sakina Needles spun into singles and I am beginning to ply it.  It is looking good thus far!

So much of my spinning has been an attempt to get finer and finer yarns, in the next couple weeks I am going to change that up with a pound of coopworth roving that came with my wheel purchase.  I want it to become worsted weight in order to make a sweater.  It will be bohus style with colorwork around the neckline and the rest will be the natural medium gray of the coopworth roving. If I do not have enough to finish out the sleeves of the sweater, I will make some colorwork around the wrists in order to complete the project.  So basically my first sweater knit for myself will also be my first ever handspun sweater.  But wait!  There’s more!

I purchased 2 pounds of merino roving (has yet to arrive, but maybe by the end of this week) to try my hand at dying fiber.  The first attempt will be semi solids to use around the neckline of the bohus style sweater.  I am hoping to do that when Mom is out here this weekend.  Simple koolaid dying will accomplish this.  Then at a future time, J and I plan to mess around with multicolor roving dying.  This is something that I suspect he will really enjoy, and a way for us to do something together which involves my favorite things!  I don’t think that either of us will be particularly interested in using chemical dyes but I would enjoy exploring more of the natural dyes.

And finally after more than 6 months of lusting over it, I ordered some Kauni yarn.  I had anticipated that it would take quite awhile to arrive, since I had preordered it and knew that it would be coming in from Europe, but apparently they had enough stock to send me some right away.  I was very surprised.  I will be making a pull over with the Kauni, another sweater for me.  Some say that you have to inspect the Kauni quite a bit to make sure the color changes are gradual rather than a knot in the middle of a skein, which frustrates people.  I suspect going through it will be half the fun even before I begin to knit with it.  Separating them out, making the colors run in opposite directions, all that sounds fun to me!  Apparently it is less about the knitting and more about the yarn!