Sorry

I know, I know. I am not keeping up. Things have been frantic. I promise to try harder.

Knitting:

1. Nain sock #2 has  the gusset picked up. The remaining yarn looks to be too little but the scales tell me that all is well
2. The RED! shawl thing is taxing my patience to the limit. It is so simple in theory and yet so very difficult for me to produce an accurate row, somehow. It lags. Only one row done since last we talked.
3. The Super Secret Sock knitting is not yet begun
4. The hap shawl has not progressed
5. nor has the Rock Island shawl
6. The UFO pile is not being reduced
7. I’m on Romi’s list of test knitters for eBook 2 (The Muses)

Spinning:

1. The Zwartbles fleece is still with me and shall be  for many moons to come
2. I have a new fleece (Corriedale/Romney) to add to the six under the table and the stray Hebridean fleece that won’t fit. So that’s now two fleeces that won’t fit, one in progress in the large skip, and six under the table… and shearing us upon us once more.
3. Spinning was at Sarah’s yesterday. I had one of those days when I just could not spin. Nothing worked.
4. Perhaps I need a change from the black fleece, to refresh my spirits and my skills. Corriedale/Romney perhaps?

Weaving:

1. The YoYo scarf was cut from the loom last week. It is enormous. It worked very well and looks handsome. I need to wash and block it.
2. I immediately warped up so that I would have a handspun project on the loom for last weekend’s Open Studio. I made a wall piece that I rather like. It is cut from the loom and I need to warp up again for our next Open Studio.

I took photos of the weaving for the blog but they didn’t work out very well. I’ll blog the project once I can use a camera again.

Open Studios:

1. On Saturday we were inundated by spinners. The day was fine, with little breeze, so we spun outside. All six of  us, plus Gill (who was bronchial and not spinning). We had NO visitors.
2. On Sunday I opened up at 11am and sat at my weaving. Sarah came at 1pm and we resigned ourselves to a quiet afternoon spinning together.
3. We didn’t get it. Sunday saw lots of visitors – locals, neighbours from Eday, folks from Scotland, and even a young German gentleman (who took to spinning like a duck to water.)
4. Plans need redrawing for next time.

Dyeing:

• Still on the drawing board – though yesterday saw a developing plan to dig out the indigo kit.

Overall, I am having a good time but productivity remains very low for reasons I do not quite  understand. I thoroughly enjoyed my organic creative weaving experience and my fingers are itching to go again. It makes it difficult to concentrate and apply myself to the sockage.

Plans:

I need to complete the Nain sock and free the needles, then do the Super Secret Sock. I am aiming to complete those by the end of next week. After that, I’d like to get the June KAL sock done for Silk Road Socks.

That’s a lot of sockage, and not very much time – especially as I am going to town in company tomorrow and none of the socks are really suitable for concurrent chatting. I might just do a few blanket squares.

The next project up after the three sock projects will be the completion of the RED! shawl thing. I want that off my back… or onto it, whichever way you care to view that.

All this means that I have no time to prepare anything for the annual Industrial Show this year and will have very little to show. I shall scrape the bottom of my box to see what I have already made that could go in, because I think it is important to support the event and to put on a good show of entries, but at this rate I shan’t even have a pair of skeins to enter!

July will see me prioritising spinning, I think. We asked for a skeins class and really must support it – there are plenty of knitters on the island to fill the knitting classes, without my assistance – so I shall focus on skeins and try to make something from handspun that could be entered in the appropriate class.

And I really must get out and about with my camera…

Oh – great news: we are to have an art class this Autumn, and maybe also a photography class. I am planning to do both, if they run. This excites me greatly and I cannot stop grinning at the prospect of finally learning to paint!