I am well on my way to another new sweater, all things considered. I am working on the Jaina pattern, and honestly I chose a size that’s easily going to be a bit large, because really is there anything so wonderful as a large drapey warm sweater? I don’t think so. And, I have enough handspun yarn, I believe, for the larger size. I can tell you already I really want to wrap myself up into this now, even though it’s still a long way from being complete.

As of now, I have finished the waist shaping decreases and am almost done with the waste shaping increases, but this photo was taken over the weekend. You can see that I set in the pockets and began the waste shaping in this photo.

The colors are pretty wonderful, and I love the little cabled detail at the pocket cuff. I have begun knitting in my second out of 4 skeins of yarn. To be honest, 2 skeins are quite purple without much green, and two skeins lean significantly more toward blue with a lot of extra green. So, I am hoping that the first two skeins will bring me through both fronts of the cardigan, then if I need to join a skein that’s a little less matching, it’ll be at the back. Then the sleeves and collar shouldn’t be too much of a matching issue, I don’t think.

Malabrigo nube, despite being a bit hard to work with during the spinning process, sure makes a lovely soft bouncy yarn. I am always super pleased with my end result when I use it.

That’s all from here. Mr. Ink says he might take Miss Butterfly to a movie tonight, and I am really looking forward to the potential down time in a WARM HOUSE.

Miss Marja made herself a very amazing yarn recently. She’d started with a Classy Squid batt and created a gorgeous 3 ply yarn. Turns out it was her all time favorite yarn so she gave it to me to knit into a honey cowl.

I admit, I didn’t get to the knitting of it right away because the skein was so gorgeous that I ended up setting it on the dining room table and admiring it every time I walked by. However, on Friday we were discussing that yarn and I ended up yearning to head home and cast on a new project. So I did. Once I was home and had weekend chores started I cast that bad boy on and got started.

And I finished on Sunday. I used up all the yarn, and it really is an amazingly beautiful skein. It’s mostly shades of grey with these wonderful silky bits of greens, blue, pink, etc. Really truly gorgeous. Now all I have to do is get this to her place so she can enjoy it yet this year.

I am sitting at home listening to the sounds of our furnace hopefully being fixed. We got all the way up to 64F in the house yesterday when we collectively used our heads to decide all the things we could do to warm up the house beyond the space heater. I did laundry and ran the dishwasher. Cookies were made, and crepes were made on the grill. Tacos for lunch with the shells heated in the oven, and then chili on the stove and then thrown in the crock pot to warm all day until dinner. Steamy hot showers were taken and hair was blown dry despite the fact we never do that in real life. All shades were opened on the side of the house getting the most sun in order to heat up as much as possible. I’d say 56 to 64 wasn’t too bad, our efforts were not in vain.

But it’s 56 again this morning and we aren’t able to go to great lengths to heat the house today so we are hoping to get this resolved soon.

Here’s a bonus moment that happened Friday evening prior to the furnace situation. A lady and the tramp moment with a ramen noodle. These two goofballs are always up to something ridiculous and cute!

That’s it from here! Hope you all have a good week. Guess what? I’ve got a photo for tomorrow too, so I may be back in the habit of blogging again. Add to that the fact that it’s almost light enough for a morning photo and I should be over the worst of the winter slump.

I am going to complain for a moment. Complain that I am now on day 10 of this cold, and really, aren’t they only supposed to last 1 week? I am none too happy.

I have done a ton of reading over the weekend, and not terribly much knitting. I noticed for a brief moment this morning I could smell my hand lotion, so I want to say I am on the mend.

Here’s what I have knit. A progress report on the scarf I showed off in the last post.

It did come a long way over the past week, but I haven’t touched it through the weekend. It is fun, however, to randomize the colors and not know which one you’ll get to knit in next. The grey has been the least used color, but I think that’s ok as I have the least amount of it anyhow.

When I wasn’t reading, I spent a ton of time trying to decide what to knit my large load of 3 ply handspun purple combo spin into. It wanted to be a sweater, and I spent a ton of time figuring out what it wanted to be. I began knitting:

But then I loved the way the colors weren’t really stripey but more subtle washes of color, ripped it out, reevaluated, and began a different sweater. This sweater start that no longer exists will eventually become a Jaina sweater. That’s a sweater I’ve had in queue for just about ever, I’ve always loved it’s sweet relaxed look and subtle details. So, off I go on another long sweater journey. It seems to be the thing that’s holding my attention right now.

In Lizzie news, Mr. Ink put her bike cart together this weekend, and she went for her first ride with him. He kept it short because she was a bit concerned about this new development, but knowing her it won’t be any time at all before she’s jumping for joy at the idea of a ride.

This was a photo from Saturday. On Sunday the weather was well into the 50s. Then Monday ice, and Tuesday morning ice thunderstorm. So, it’s been interesting around here.

I guess that’s about it from here, otherwise this’ll never get posted! I can’t tell you the number of times I manage to try to get a post up and it ends up sitting in drafts right now.

I took the day off from work today. The grant that was due this week fell through completely, and my other large obligations were over yesterday late. I got home quite late, and exhausted. So today can be spent at home. Know what that means? Good natural light.

Here’s the handspun scarf I finished a week or so ago. It’s made out of my own handspun yarn which was spun from batts I created a few years back. I spun the batts into worsted weight 2 ply yarn, keeping each batt separate so I needed to be able to combine the colors in a manner that complimented the 4 together. This pattern, called Secret Beach, worked nicely for that. The pattern was easy to memorize and enjoyable, and so the bulk of this was done on work lunch breaks. I didn’t block it aggressively, just pushed it into position allowing the lace to open a bit, and I think it looks fairly nice and textured that way.

I also settled into a project. It’s one I’d already had on the needles as I’d cast on during a weekend where I was bored with knitting sweaters. But I quickly put it down again in order to finish up said sweaters. Then once the sweaters were done, I wanted little to do with it. It’s another Lamina pattern in scarf form, and I am using leftover yarn from my Find Your Fade shawl. I knew I’d have plenty left over for another project, and the high tencel yarns are just so shiny, pretty, and rich toned. The biggest problem is switching yarns so often, it’s hard to imagine my ends staying woven in properly. We shall see.

I started out by adding in all the colors once, but now I have set up my colors in an order, and am using a random number generator to choose the next color. There are yarns which I may run out of, so it’ll be interesting to see it going from many colors to only a few I think. No matter what, it’ll be pretty and shiny!

Despite my cold, we are not canceling our Valentine’s Day plans, as some friends managed to find a sitter, a rare treat for them, and we don’t want to now cancel on those plans. I think it’ll be a nice evening, and I’ll rest well this afternoon in anticipation of it. That’s all from here! Happy Valentine’s Day my friends!

Since I continuously don’t take photos of my finished 2018 sweaters, of which there are now two, I took quick sneak peek ones of them being worn. Yep, I am wearing them. I am also worn out, and don’t get home ’till late and the light is crap and there’s snow on the ground and every photo looks dumb.

So I took these in my office for sneak peeks.

I also finished a scarf out of handspun. So as of right now, I am quadruple the amount knit as was spun. Naturally, with three spinning projects in progress that won’t stay long but it’s nice for now.

I woke up Sunday with a cold, which was a bit frustrating. It’s amazing to me that I can go an entire year without getting sick at all from time to time, sometimes longer. But this year? Well, there must be a lot going around, as this is cold #2 this season. And it’s annoying. I had a grant due this week and I’ve got an awards ceremony to attend, so I’ve been at work even with the cold. But, the grant has fallen through so maybe I can get a sick day in tomorrow. Naturally, when one is already feeling a bit off her crafting game, one feels even more off when one is sick. So, I didn’t knit or spin last evening.

A nostepinne is a good tool for those days when you don’t want to knit or spin, but do want to play with yarn. I balled up two skeins of handspun on my nostepinne just to keep me occupied.

Bonus photobombing dog. I pulled out tons of other handspun as well, since I couldn’t get inspired about anything, and I spent a lot of time looking up patterns hoping I could make something work for the yarn I had pulled out. Hopefully inspiration will hit again soon, but this sustains for now.

For Valentine’s day, we aren’t really interested in celebrating, and we have a bunch of similarly minded friends so we are getting together for a game night, providing my cold does not get worse. All players know about the potential for cancellation so we are keeping it quite casual, but it would be nice to have the type of valentine’s day we had as kids, where friendships are celebrated. I like that concept so much.

Have a great week!