2 weeks

It has been two weeks since my mom left us after her longChristmas visit and flew back to Germany. While I so much enjoy having her around, I do not get a lot done during that time.

It is typical for me, that I get into this crazy clean up mode, not just for cleaning up but also to distract me because I miss her!

After putting away all the Christmas stuff I wanted to finish. Yep. FINISH. Something unfinished, UFO-ish. And I found this:

Would you believe it... front and back done, sewed together, neckline finished, one sleeve half done. What in the world happened here for me to abandon this, I have no clue. It took me just 2 days to finish the sleeves even though I had to do some unraveling and re-knitting to make the half done sleeve a bit wider. It also took me two tries to get the cap sleeve right and to make it a perfect fit. The biggest nuisance was that it was too short! you do not want a wool sweater to end at waist length, especially when you have plenty of yarn! 

So I opened the side seams up to where you see my pinky, took out one row of stitches, which gives you live stitches so you can knit the other way and add onto the lower part of the sweater.

And voila - "Wintersun" is finished! I wore it for the first time yesterday when our temperatures dropped and you needed wool. Perfect!

At the Taos Wool Festival last October I had purchased some black alpaca roving that I wanted to spin up with a very dark hand dyed mohair from Kai Ranch in Texas. I normally go for bright colors, so this was something new for me and I had even kept it out of the stash boxes to get to it soon. Well, soon turned into four months, but I did manage to fit some spinning into my finish-clean-up frenzy and it turned out real nice. This has a lot more luster than you can see on the picture.

Since I am not the only one who does some de-cluttering in January I ended up with some bags of lovely yarns that a friend gave me (thanks, Marcia!!). One of the large wool balls really gave me an itch... no, I did not turn allergic to wool! - The yarn was colorful, but pale, muddy and boring even though it had many different colors in it. It screamed for me to over-dye and that's what I did. Nothing of the former dull mud is left, that's what a bit of magenta and purple and a half hour in the oven can do! 

You have not seen this either, the cowl that I have knitted for our sweet piano teacher - can you tell how she loves it?

There was another UFO on my needles, this cardigan that I was working seamless to show off the beautiful graduating color changes. The yarn is Sol Degrade by Lang, a stretchy cotton ribbon.

I'm looking forward to warmer spring temperatures, when I can wear it!

An empty desk is achieved, which is always a good sign... just some more letters need to be written!

 See you soon!