Embracing the Yarn Dandruff

Work continues on my cabled Shetland scarf; I'm now more than eight repeats done, and I think I'll likely go to about 15 or so. I've been working on it almost every evening at home, and on a good night, I can get about a repeat and a half done, so I think I should be through the main part of the scarf by this weekend if I keep up the pace. I have made my peace with the stuff that falls out of the yarn as I work with it (that which I'm lovingly referring to as "yarn dandruff"), though I have elected to keep this project at home for the time being so that I don't have to worry about trying to clean my work clothes off.

As you can see, it is curling up quite a lot, but blocking and the edging I'm going to add to the sides will help with that. I'm planning a rather aggressive block, and I'm hoping that will add some drape to the fabric in addition to getting it to behave.

Because I've been keeping the scarf at home, I've been bringing my handspun socks in to work for my lunchtime knitting. Given that these are just plain stockinette socks, it's a bit surprising how long I've been working on them -- more than a month now. Usually I can speed through socks like this. But in the case of these socks, they just haven't been getting very much attention. I cast on and knit the cuff in one day and then put them down for a couple of weeks. Then I knit couple of inches of leg and put them down again. It's been a pattern with these socks, which is part of the reason why I decided to make them my lunchtime knitting. I'm not in any sort of rush to finish them, necessarily, but it makes me a bit anxious to have them on the needles so long.

I finished up the gusset decreases yesterday and am now cruising down the foot, so I anticipate the first sock will be done very soon. I am finding that the yarn isn't as consistent as my three-ply sock yarn normally is; I guess I'm a bit out of practice at spinning two-ply sock yarn. There are definitely some thicker sections of the yarn, but you really can't tell from the knitted fabric. I am enjoying the texture of the yarn as I knit with it, so I predict more two-ply handspun in my future.

Stash Dash has now officially ended, and I'm very pleased to say that I not only met my goal, I exceeded it! My final total was 7,797.7 meters, or more than 8,500 yards. I'm pretty impressed with myself, as I wasn't entirely sure I was going to make it. Perhaps next year I'll push myself to get to 10K!