Running Out of Time

I looked at the calendar yesterday and realized that if I'm going to hit my 15K Stash Dash goal, I needed to do something different. I'm still working my way out of that knitting black hole here; I'd hoped to finish my hat yesterday, which didn't happen (I've only just started the crown decreases), but even if I had, it would only have been a drop in the bucket with maybe a few hundred meters. The truth is that the fastest way to rack up the meters is by spinning, because the Stash Dash rules allow you to count your meters for each ply in the yarn and for plying. That means that if I spin 100 meters of three-ply yarn, I get to count it as 400 meters. I was also getting pretty close to finishing up my first bobbin of purple singles yesterday, so I decided to take decisive action and split up the Southern Cross Fibre Polwarth I just received and spin it next.

I've spit the fiber for a fractal spin. That's when you have dyed fiber and you split it so that each ply in the yarn goes through the same sequence of colors but at different rates. I split the long piece of fiber in half, and then I intended to split one of those pieces into half again but did a lousy job, so I ended up with three strips. It'll still work just fine; having more pieces for one of the plies just means that the colors will have shorter runs when the fiber is spun. I'm spinning a two ply and aiming for fingering weight -- I'm spinning the singles at my default thickness because I know that Polwarth tends to poof up when you wash it. The goal is to spin and ply by next Friday for the end of Stash Dash.

One reason spinning is so appealing right now (aside from the fact that it seems a bit faster than knitting) is that it's something I can easily do while reading. Yesterday I was surprised -- delighted, actually -- when my library hold came up for The Warmth of Other Suns; I'd thought I had at least another week to wait for it! As luck would have it, I was just about to finish another library book, so the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I finished my bobbin of purple and the book by early afternoon yesterday and then started both the new book and the new spin at about the same time. Those of you who have read it know that this book isn't a short read, so it will be excellent to keep me company while I try to spin this one last skein.

Tomorrow I get to go to my office to pick up some items, and it's been almost exactly five months since I left it. I have a feeling it's going to be a bit surreal. I'm sure all my plants have long since died, but otherwise I expect everything will look exactly the same. When I was last there, I knew I'd be off for a couple of days, but none of us thought we'd be out for the foreseeable future. I certainly never expected to miss the office, either, but I have caught myself staring at the building wistfully from time to time (I see it regularly because it's along my running route).

I'll leave you today with a little bit of eye candy that Rainbow and I spotted when we took a stroll around the neighborhood yesterday. We had a lot of pretty shades of pink and blue in our hydrangeas earlier this summer, before the heat burned all the flowers up, but we'd never before spotted this deep purple shade:

Have a good rest of the week, stay safe and hydrated, and wash your hands! I'll be back to update you on my spinning on Sunday.