A New Spindle

My knitting, lately, has been entirely uninspiring. I don’t really like any of the projects I’m working on. First, there’s the Komi sweater. It’s gone. I was about half-way through the body, and finally realized that I had been in denial about the size. If I really stretched it, I could make it look like the measurement around my chest would be 38 inches. But, in reality, it was a 34-inch sweater. That’s some serious negative ease for a sweater that should be loose. I’ve started over, but there isn’t much to see.

Then there’s the Faroese double-knit hat. It’s inching along, but the pattern on the main part of the hat is so boring that I have a hard time making myself work on it. It doesn’t look much different than it did last time I posted about it.

There’s also the socks I started during the Olympics. One and a quarter are done, but I’m having trouble finishing. Plain stockinette is not my favorite knitting.

There might be some swatching in the near future. I have ideas for two new sweaters. I might get a good project out of one of them, or I might get something else to take up a perfectly good pair of needles.

Spinning, on the other hand, has been much more fun. And a new spindle has recently joined my arsenal.


The whorl is jasper, and the shaft is hicory. Cathy can tell you if some if its siblings are still available.

It’s a tiny 0.4 oz spindle that I’m using to try to spin laceweight. The spinning is going OK (I’m having a little trouble drafting, but I’m getting better), but the plying is a disaster. I just can’t see what I’m doing! I think I need to get a magnifying glass or something. Here are a couple of samples I spun. Neither one is perfectly balanced or even. The top one is camel and the bottom one is merino. Hopefully I’ll have a decent skein of yarn (with a less blurry picture) to show you soon.