camera found!

I didn't realize how much I use my camera until it was missing. Where was it? Hmmm. It mysteriously appeared on my 13-yo daughter's desk in her room on Sunday. Hmmm, again. Perhaps we'll never know where it was in between shooting this on President's Day:

and this one week later:

Awww, Mom! We would never hide your camera! Uh-huh. Such sweet little girlies.

Okay, on with the show. Here's my Sweet Pea chart and yarn (please see the previous post for more detail on this lovely yarn). Aren't those colors beautiful? Yes--sublime, indeed. I cast on to knit it in one piece to the sleeves and knit about 1 1/2 inches, but then decided that I didn't like the way the cast-on row looked. I had done the "proper" thing of following the long-tail cast on with a wrong side row and it just looked smushy. It was also rolling to the knit side severely, even though I'm starting out with a 1x3 (interspersed with a vine rib that's 1x2x1) rib on the bottom. So I pulled it out and changed my first row to a right side row and, yes, I now have little purl bumps on the bottom of the right side, but I like it. I also decided to knit it in pieces (back and fronts) and I'm feeling a greater sense of accomplishment since my rows are now only 74 stitches wide instead of 153. I don't mind seaming that much and now I can make adjustments to the size of the fronts if it turns out that my calculations were off on how much the vine rib contracts. I'll get a shot of the back piece tomorrow. I've actually got about 7 inches of it done--amazing with all of the rip-and-redo action going on around here.

This past Friday was spinner's night at the shop where I took my spinning class. Just look what a nice spinning wheel can help a person turn out! Shall we have an extreme close-up? Yes, I think so. That's some natural brown Corriedale-cross wool spun on a Schacht Matchless double-treadle wheel. It's wound on a toilet paper roll and can you see the difference between what I'm doing now and what I was doing three weeks ago? I want a spinning wheel with every fiber (heh) of my being. I need it. I neeeeeeeed it. I've been researching wheels and I've about come to the conclusion that a Lendrum would be perfect for me. I've tried out every kind of wheel I can get my hands (an feet) on, but I haven't found anyone locally who has a Lendrum to let me give it a test drive. I still think that it would be a good choice. My spinning teacher likes Lendrums (if only she carried them at her store!) and I have found that I like the same things in a spinning wheel that she does. If only I could get myself to stop buying yarn and save some money for a wheel. Hmmm. I have a birthday coming up...