Things that are dull:

1. Endless stockinette in black fingering-weight cotton.

2. Blogging about endless stockinette in black fingering-weight cotton.

I’m slowly phylloing my way to a completed sweater, but ugh! So much stockinette! I’m really trying to finish this one before I leave for Baltimore on Friday. There is one sleeve remaining, then the sweater gets a bath and a date with our dryer. My fingers will be crossed the whole time as I hope and pray that my row gauge really does shrink from 9 sts/inch to 11, as my swatch said it would. I’ve been doubting this the entire time I’ve knit the sweater, but swatches don’t lie, right? A side affect of the change in row gauge is that I get to knit the sweater 20% more than my desired length, which adds to the fun of endless, black, soul-sucking stockinette.

I did get a ton of knitting done over the weekend in the car to and from Austin! Our goal was to hit the Texas wine trail for some wine tasting, which was surprisingly tasty. We also celebrated Staci’s milestone birthday, had a tasty gospel brunch with Sarah (praise jesus for migas!), and visited with an old friend of Rob’s. Fun!

I’m endlessly amused by Texas’ love for, well, Texas, so I had to snap a photo of this as we left our hotel:

Um, maybe I kind of sort of want a Texas wafflemaker now. We’ll see how much money I end up spending on yarn this weekend.

I’ve been spinning like crazy lately! Knitting: meh. Spinning: whee! I’ve been practicing making a smooshy two ply yarn, with varied results.

I love Krista’s yarns and fiber. I have two more braids of her fiber in the stash, and they’re the prettiest things around!

I became very used to spinning really thin yarn when I made the Funky Carolina sock yarn, so this is practice in spinning something thicker. I did pretty well with this - it’s worsted weightish. And pretty. That paw is Silver, making her entrance. I can’t take photos of yarn without the kittehs getting involved.

So when I spin, I have a 50/50 chance of producing crap. This is crap. The fiber is great, more Pigeonroof Studios, but the spinning is awful. I tried to spin the singles tightly so that it would look extra smooshy when I plied it, and the singles had little corkscrews in them. I figured the coils would go away when I plied it (when some twist is removed from the singles), but they did not. Yuck.

This is the February shipment of the Hello Yarn fiber club. BFL is like buttah. I heart it greatly.

I think I’ve mastered the art of two plies, and I’m ready to move on to something else. Maybe adding a ply? Spinning a soft single? I bought a Spin Off magazine last week, and it’s full of cool techniques!

There’s also been some knitting - I picked up the Phyllo Yoked Pullover again. I’m going to MDSW in a couple of weeks (yay!), and I thought I could maybe finish this in time to wear in the cool MD weather. When Blackie isn’t sleeping on it, of course. I’m about halfway finished with the waist increases and then I’ve got both sleeves to knit. Can our brave knitter conquer miles of stockinette in fingering weight yarn? Stay tuned!

Why hello! It’s been two weeks since we’ve hung out, mano-a-blogo. Mr. Roboto certainly enjoyed having the spotlight during that time, but I think it’s time to push him a little further down on the page, lest we inflate his ego even more. He would like you to know that he’s flying high these days, happy that he finally found his one true love.

In the meantime, I’ve been obsessing about things a bit.

This is the beginnings of the Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature. This is the fourth project that I’ve knit from the book, and it won’t be the last. I’m making this as a mini-knitalong with Lolly and Jody, and a couple of weeks ago Lolly went ahead and started hers. That spurred me to finally swatch, then I blinked and had a completed yoke. Whoa!

I’m very, very loosely following the pattern - I’m knitting the yoke according to the phyllo chart and the rest of the sweater is from my own numbers. I wanted to use a thinner yarn to shrink the yoke pattern vertically so that I could wear this sweater without having to layer a shirt underneath. I do live in Texas, after all, and layering season is quickly drawing to a close. The Rowan 4 ply Cotton is working perfectly so far. I extended the lace chart by one diamond, and the patterning is the perfect length. Perhaps the color isn’t the best color to show off the yoke pattern, but I want this sweater in black, so black it is.

I knit the fun part first (similar to my Tangled Yoke construction (you should click on that link if you like kittens. gah, they were so cute!)) and now I need to think and do math, which means that this sweater has already been cast aside for something else fun. Norah did some interesting shaping in the front of the sweater to make the front neckline fall lower than the back, which I’m going to try to mimic with short rows. Then it’s all stockinette till the cows come home.

Obsession number two comes in fabric form. I’ve been very good at my yarn diet. The only thing I’ve purchased so far this year was a wee bit of sock yarn. However! All that saved money has funded my brand new fiber stash. And my fabric stash. Not good.

I’ve been thinking, dreaming, pondering about blue and orange lately, hence the sudden expansion. We have a bluish-grey couch and a light greenish-blue chair, and I’ve been planning on making pillows for them forever. Have you noticed that all of the good fabrics contain brown? They do! This greenish-blue and orange combo will be perfect accents.

I’ve had diamonds on the mind lately, too, and I’m finally getting around to figuring out a patchworky pillowy pattern. You would not believe how difficult it is to line up diamonds until you cut them out for some coasters and then try to piece them together as you watch your machine devour all of the tiny little diamond shapes. Or maybe that’s just me. Drafting pattern pieces ahead of time is a much smarter way to go.

The scraps (ha! the pillows will only use wee amounts) might go to a baby quilt. Or maybe I’ll just line them up and take more photos of them.