My First Handspun

It's the baby steps one is always most proud of. After one gets good at walking, one just takes it for granted.

Here is my first very own yarn.




I'm not sure it's even enough for a hat. My spinning guru recommended doing a 5x5 swatch, but I am sure there's not enough for a swatch and anything else.

Spinning lessons are incredibly cool. When I started knitting a couple of years ago, I was stubborn beyond reason about wanting to figure everything out myself. Each lesson - gleaned from books, the internet, trial and error - was hard-won, and a source of pride. For some reason, with spinning I feel just the opposite - I am really enjoying having someone show me how it's done. Of course, this is partly because I found a teacher whose emphasis is on the creativity of the process, on continually playing with the yarn, trying different variants, remembering not to be limited by the conservative or conventional.

By saying all that, I just might be able to convince people that the big chunks of undigested fiber that are visible in this yarn were left in as the result of a deliberate choice. Yup. I'm creative that way.



As far as knitting goes: since I have decided to try to finish my "Crossing the Chanel" cardigan/jacket for Rhinebeck, there may not be a lot of very photogenic knitting going on around here for a while. I truly love this sweater - I keep caressing the fabric as I go. But it is a slog. And I'm not sure the result, however well it may turn out, is going to be commensurate with the effort. Anything that progresses this slowly should end up as some magnificent Alice Starmore creation (by Margene) that reveals some of the work that went into it.

But I do have my second, improved Baby Surprise Jacket to show, though still unseamed and un-buttoned:



This one is a definite improvement on the first one (ugh, that neckline makes me cringe). I went down to size 4 needles, so it is more likely the baby may actually be able to wear it within the next 12 months, and since I had been through the pattern once I had figured out the slight trickiness about how to pick up the lower ten stitches on the RS rather than the WS of the jacket.

But by now I am heartily sick of these jackets. And I still like other people's better. (Oh, wait, that's Margene again. Hm, maybe it's just that I like Margene's knitting?)