Keep On Keepin' On

Wednesday's meeting of the Hurricane Knitters was a lot of fun in spite of the headache that sent me home earlier than usual. I started my second Bird in Hand mitten and got to the first cuff chart before calling it a night. The real highlight of the evening, however, was the spinning lesson Yvonne gave me. She is a great teacher -- take a look at my first "yarn"!

I definitely need more practice, but I understand the process much better now than I did when I was playing on my own. After this success, I signed up for the spinning class at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival that's coming up next month. The class covers spinning with both a spindle and a wheel. There will be Babe wheels to practice on, which are not among the wheels I'm considering, but they should at least give me an idea of the feel of wheel spinning. I waver between being really excited about spinning and not knowing why I'd want to spin at all (mostly because it would take time away from knitting!), so I'm not yet sure if I want to buy a wheel and I think experiencing what it's like will help me decide. I have, of course, been doing some research, and at the moment if I had to choose I'd lean towards a Lendrum original. It's not the cheapest option, but so many of the reviews I've read seem to say that a Lendrum is great for both beginners and experienced spinners, so it could last me a long, long time. However, I'd love to hear some ideas and opinions from those of you who spin!

In the meantime, when I'm not thinking about spinning, the baby knitting continues apace. Thursday evening I cast on for the first of the Baby Surprise Jackets for the triplets:

Hooray for using up stash yarn! The green is Cascade 220 Tweed that I picked up at the big Knit One sale last summer, and the brown is the last skein leftover from the Seamless Hybrid. This is great, relatively mindless knitting -- viva la garter stitch!

I've got to knit a little something for myself, too, you know, so here's the first Noro sock, completed last night:

This is my first Noro experience and I have to say that I can see what all the fuss is about as far as the color changes go, but the actual knitting with it is not so wonderful. It's very rough and, being a singles yarn, there's a little thick-and-thin action going on that makes the fabric not at all uniform. I've heard that the yarn does soften up with washing, so we shall see whether this one skein of sock yarn proves to be a gateway drug and turns me into a Noro addict. If it softens enough, I might have to be a complete copycat and knit myself a Lady E to keep.