In Lieu of Knitting

Here's what I've been working on these past couple of days:


















I finished spinning my sky-blue alpaca singles yesterday and today I plied from both ends of a center-pull ball to get the bobbin you see above. I just love how my Louet bobbins hold so much yarn! I don't know how many yards I have, but I think I'm going to try making either a neck warmer or an Elizabeth Zimmermann dickey (hoping I have enough, of course). The alpaca is so incredibly soft, and I love the subtle glint the little bit of glitz gives the finished product. Now I just need to set the twist and it'll be all set.

And here are the beaded necklaces that I made yesterday:





























I wish my camera could get a better close-up shot, but this is as good as it gets. The first necklace is in oyster shell (if I'm remembering correctly -- they're the square orange beads), blue coral and rough-cut amethyst with sterling silver findings. The coral beads are pretty cool -- it seems that they grow on sunken subway cars and the iron in the cars turns the coral naturally blue. Whoda thunk it?

The second necklace is mainly quartz chips with bali silver, glass (the large central bead) and seed beads.

Aside from keeping occupied with every other craft besides knitting, I'm also planning my next knitting projects (tendonitis, shmendonitis). This afternoon I ordered the Icosa Welt Ball Pillow pattern. This too-cool-for-words spherical pillow is knit in what look like mitered equilateral triangles that are then grafted together to form a ball. You can see a finished version on Bente's Blog.

The only place I found the pattern was at Knit-Purl in Oregon, which charges a flat $6.50 shipping fee to anywhere in the continental U.S. -- great for folks buying in bulk, kinda sucky for someone like me who only wants to buy a single pattern.

I even looked into buying the yarn from K-P just so I felt like I wasn't getting so very screwed on shipping. However, there was no freakin' way I was buying 6 skeins of Koigu at $12 each to make a pillow! I headed over to Knitpicks instead and picked up some fingering weight at about a quarter of the price. I don't know when I'll get to it, but knowing I have a cool project just waiting in the wings makes me very happy.

Finally, I've decided that since I'm spinning so much more these days I'm going to invest in another Bossie featherweight. I've already contacted Sheila to see what woods and weights they have in stock, so with a little luck I'll be able to place my order this week. Then I'll finally be able to try my hand at spinning a little silk...mmmmmmmm, silk....... ;-)

In other news, I went out and bought a couple of little treats to tuck into my MDK Warshrag Swap package. I've also been checking in on my partner's blog and have discovered that she likes beads too; I may just have to include a couple of beaded stitch markers in my package. Photos to come....