Now That's What I Call Fast

On Friday morning I spun the last skein of yarn I needed to knit a short sleeved sweater. On Friday afternoon the yarn for the sweater went through the dye bath. At supper time the yarn was still finishing drying on the fence outside. This evening I snipped the last yarns after weaving in the ends. The sweater is finished. Now lest you think that I did nothing but knit all weekend I must say I actually had quite a busy weekend and knitting took up only a little of my time. On Saturday there was the awards ceremony at the fair, followed by serving as reader at Mass, followed by a trip to the grocery store. I didn't actually get to knit until after supper, although I think I did knit for a few minutes Saturday morning. On Sunday I spent the day in Burlington at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival and the UVM library. I did no knitting until after dinner again. Yesterday I did knit a bit in the morning, but not in the afternoon. Again my knitting mostly waited until evening. Today I knit some in the morning after dropping my grandniece off at school, but didn't knit again until late afternoon. This just happens to be a really quick pattern when you use bulky yarn and big needles. It was actually as quick as the last pair of socks I knitted.

What was also amazing was how close I actually was to running out of yarn. I have a small ball left (enough to mend holes, if necessary, down the road, but not enough to do anything else with). I guesstimated pretty well this time. The last sweater I made I came even closer. I was sure this time that I had overestimated, but once again not really. It makes me a little nervous about that bag of yarn I've spun for my son's sweater. I think I'd better spin one more skein worth before putting it into the dye pot. I really don't want to run out.

When I pulled the skeins out of the dye pot I was a little disappointed because there wasn't nearly as much pink in the yarn as I'd hoped for. However, in the actual sweater the pink shows up very nicely. There's a lot of serendipity about space dyed yarns anyway and my methods tend to make it even more serendipitous. It's always amazing to me that my space dyed yarns are not all that attractive as hanks, look pretty good as balls, and are downright pretty once knit up into a garment.

Anyway I now have my very first 100% Dorset wool sweater in variegated pinks, blues, and purples. I also have more dyes (acquired at the sheep and wool fest) in order to do more dyeing of even more variegated yarns.

Next project on my page is a nice long letter to my niece.

Oh, and the babysitting is going... better some days than others. This child has a VERY short attention span and only likes to be read to in very, very short sessions. The most successful stuff we've done has involved cooking. We've made cookies twice already (to the delight of my dessert deprived family), cake once, and she helped punch down the bread yesterday. She tried knitting, but got frustrated and fidgety. She tried spinning, but decided it was too hard to make yarn (I can sympathize because when I started it seemed pretty hard to me as well). She'd prefer watching television, but the programs she wants to watch are ones I won't allow and the programs I will allow she doesn't like. A child who doesn't like Winnie the Pooh can this really be? Well I guess if your parents have let you watch Drake and Josh on a regular basis Winnie the Pooh may seem like baby stuff. So the adventure continues. Hopefully I'll find something that peaks her interest for more than 3 minutes.

Tomorrow we're going to make banana chocolate chip muffins...