Still Knitting

Spinzilla officially kicked off at midnight yesterday, but I've decided not to make myself nuts about it. No doubt there are people who stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to start spinning and will continue to do so for the duration of the week. I'm under no illusions that I will be anywhere close to winning the contest; my goal is just to spin when I can and get as much done as I'm able. At most, I'm getting an hour and half to two hours of spinning time each night.

I mentioned in my last post that I'd divided up what was left of my Romney fleece into 2 oz. bundles. Last night I manged to spin up the first one, and I must say that it was excellent practice for my long draw. I only had the yarn break twice on me, and while they're not nearly as even as my worsted-spun singles, these singles were getting more consistent toward the end. It is rather satisfying to see that bobbin full of poofy singles.

I am not spinning every spare minute of every day, though. I'm still knitting during my lunch break (and I do have a swatch to finish and block that needs to be sent off this weekend). Last week I started a new shawl with that beautiful green Malabrigo Sock for the October Stockpile event in the Ravelry Malabrigo group. I'd had this idea in my head for a while, so I wanted to see how it worked out in yarn. I started working during my lunch breaks toward the end of last week and then worked on it for a couple of hours on Friday night while I got caught up with my DVR, but it saw a lot of attention on Sunday, when we drove out to the middle of nowhere (or so it seemed) to visit with my father-in-law's family. We had about five hours total in the car, so you can imagine how much knitting that meant.

I'm about halfway through my planned sections for this shawl, though the rows are getting longer and taking longer. This has to get done this month to qualify for the knitalong, so it's going to be seeing a lot of attention in the weeks to come.