A Mixed Bag

Who else is still dragging from the time change this morning? I did not stay up to see the end of the Oscars last night, as I have in the past, but a certain daughter of mine was having trouble settling, which meant my presence was requested in her twin bed for about an hour, and that meant less sleep. Oh well.

The weekend was a mixed bag thanks to a visit from my old nemesis, acid reflux. I think I overdid it on the triggers Friday night, so I spent much of Saturday feeling a little ill. I also skipped coffee yesterday morning (that's a big trigger food for me), which I don't think helped with the maladjustment to the time change. I'm feeling back to normal this morning, though, so let's hope my nemesis has gone away again for a long time.

Despite feeling not so great for much of the weekend, I did manage to finish a couple of things. First, a skein of handspun:

This is Kingfisher on Corriedale, the April 2021 Southern Cross Fibre club shipment. If you're keeping track, this is my eighth SCF skein spun so far this year. I did my default yarn with this one -- three-ply fingering weight -- and ended up with about 380 yards. As you can probably see, there's a bit too much ply twist in it (I guess I was really excited about it and treadled just a bit too quickly when I was plying), so at some point I'll run it back through the wheel to remove that. I am delighted with how the colors worked out, though. I didn't want them to be too concentrated, so I did a little splitting of the fiber to break them up and distribute them more evenly. Here's what the fiber looked like to start:

I split the fiber in thirds width-wise first (I folded it in thirds and pulled it apart at the folds). Then divided each of those pieces in half lengthwise. This ensured that all the colors appeared multiple times in each ply, and although it can be hard to tell from the photo, I don't think there were very many spots, if any, where all three plies in the yarn were the same color. I have quite a few club shipments still to spin in similar colors, so I'm planning to spin them up in the same manner, with the idea of knitting another handspun sweater like my Shifty Pullover.

I also finished up Rainbow's latest pair of socks, which might look a little roughed up here because she put them on as soon as I finished them and wore them around the house all afternoon. I think that means they're a hit!

These were knit using my typical vanilla sock recipe, but I changed things up a bit with a 1x1 ribbed cuff, starting with a tubular cast-on. I really like the look of the cuff, and I think it would look really sharp on a pair of shortie socks (I know that with my, um, athletic calves, the cast-on might not be elastic enough).

Now that these socks are done, I'm turning my attention to my secret design WIP, which should be finished today, and then my Love Note, which I have neglected for several days and which I don't think will be done before we leave for Florida. But I do have a four-hour (virtual) workshop to attend on Wednesday, and I expect that will yield a lot of progress. I'm not planning to take it with me because I think mohair and Florida sound like a bad combination, but I will be taking another sweater project! That means I'll have to wind some yarn and swatch this week.

Here's hoping this Monday is kind to all of us. Have a good one, friends!