It's All Part of the Process, Right?

It has been a long week, and I'm very ready for the long July 4th weekend. I have just about finished up my secret project (only one last bit of finishing and blocking left to do this evening), so I've started something new, and it's another project for the pattern collection. This is the humble start of a pair of mittens. I probably would have had more substantial progress to show you were it not for the fact that I've had to rip out and go back to square one on these -- a not infrequent occurrence when I'm designing, but still a frustration.

The problem in this case was the colorwork motif. I had already scaled down the motif from the one on the hat, but my initial version was a 10-stitch repeat. That meant that all my sizes had to have a stitch count that was a multiple of 10, and at my gauge, each multiple of 10 equated to a little more than an inch and a half of width. Hands don't vary in size quite as much as heads do, so this made sizing tricky. When I cast on for the first attempt, I ended up with a cuff that I probably could have comfortably fit both wrists through at the same time. That meant ripping out and rethinking my repeat. I mocked up another version of the motif with an eight-stitch repeat, and that seems a little more adaptable. Keep your fingers crossed that this attempt will be successful!

I'm hoping to find time to finish my Waiting for Rain this weekend; I'd really like to get it off the needles so I can focus on my design projects.

Because tomorrow is July 1, however, I am also thinking a lot about spinning, as the Tour de Fleece kicks off on Saturday. Due to my design stuff being front and center, I likely won't be spinning as much as I have in previous years, but I'm still hoping to make a decent dent in the stash. I have some fiber club shipments that have been piling up for several months that I'd like to get to, not to mention fiber I bought at MDSW last year (we won't even mention the two fleeces I've never managed to spin, either). So while knitting will continue for the next month, expect to see some more spinning on the blog over the next three weeks!