Knitting at Holidays

As opposed to Holiday Knitting, of course--I'm knitting a hat for G's aftercare teacher and that is IT this year.

No, knitting at holidays. We're going up to my sister's this Thanksgiving, and I have to plan out what to take and work on. I hope to have my orange sweater done (holy cow did you realize it's NEXT WEEK? Good thing all I have to do is finish the V-neck, 3-needl3-bindoff the front to the back, sew the sleeves in, and sew the underarm/side seams!), so I'll bring that.

I also want to bring the grey FI sweater for my mom. I decided not to make it as a gift or even as a surprise. I want her to be involved, and to be able to say, after I do the waistband, 'Oh, that pattern doesn't appeal to me' so I can just rip back 4 rows and start over. It's also in a bulky yarn, so it should go quite quickly. It being a pullover (no steeks, no buttonbands, no buttonholds, no buttons) helps, too.

I also want to finish and bring (or vice versa) the FI tea cozy I've started. It is huge (as most folks found the pattern to be), but I'm hoping it'll felt right down to a good size. Or maybe she has a really big teapot.

Beyond that? Oh, I'm absolutely itching to start something new. (Whoah, big surprise, eh?) I'd love to start my Philosopher's Wool sweater, but I need to do more thinking on shape on that one. I was going to give it waist shaping, but then I realized that lots of folks in colder areas than this find their sweaters too hot to wear most places. This is due mostly to their method of weaving in the floats on every stitch. I could skip that, but I'm afraid that doing too much shaping will still cause it to have too much insulating properties. Also, I've heard the yarn changes after you wash it, so bummer! that I've already wound several colors into a ball, as now I have to re-skein it to prepare it for a bit of a bath.

In other fiber news, my beginning spinning class met for the first time last Sunday. It was great. I learned the long draw, over the fold. It is so much easier to learn this stuff firsthand than from a book or website. And so gratifying when you finally get. it. I had been worried that I would be too advanced for the class, having learned once (ha!) and spun off and on for over a year. The great news was that everyone else had at least spun on a spindle, so the learning curve was much easier all around. Yay! The teacher gave us Blue-faced Leicester to spin, which I'd been given a hank of before and found it harder than hell to spin (6" staple!), but spinning over the fold makes that long staple a benefit rather than a struggle. Our "homework" is to spin the rest of the 4 oz she had given us. Whee, homework that is fun!

Speaking of school, I went in on Monday and taught 10 third-graders, including my son, how to dye wool. The teacher allowed G to pick 9 others to dye with, and he chose all the boys! Agh, the pandemonium at times. But no one died or was strangled with wool, and they all seemed pleased with the colors going into the steamer. G said they rinsed and hung them yesterday and his was a very bright orange (should be, he used up almost all the orange dye liquid!). I had brought some backup Kool-aid packets, and mixed up second amounts of all colors, but they all got theirs dyed in the end, barely before the bell rang. Friday, the girls. We'll see how different. Wish I could find more colors of Kool-aid; the two huge stores in our city each have the same 5 flavors (including our behemoth $afe way).

Next, we'll knit!