What else I have been up to

I did a bunch of stuff yesterday. Actual housework, actual laundry, a little yard work (but not too much), dishes. This is an appalling amount of housework for one day. Thoroughly abnormal.

I spun. I worked with some blue and white roving I've had forever. It was purchased with the first spindle and it was a great practise yarn. I have to say how much I love this wheel. I have control like I only dreamed of on the Babe. I got there on the Babe, but not without a lot more effort. It is so easy to treadle the Julia and I have a way better feeling for how much spin is going into my yarn. Overspun, be gone.

I knit a lot too. I picked up the Fair Isle baby sweater, and then put it down without knitting a stitch. I dug out the fair Isle vest and put it out in the world where I could see it. I thought better of working on the fair Isles, and decided I ought to finish a thing first.

So I picked up and knit about halfway through Clue 6 on the River Valley Shawl. I'm well into the edging now. The rows are incredibly long. There was a row which increased the number of stitches by 15 at least a thousand times across the width of the shawl and I don't want to know how many stitches there are, but having seen the finished shawl, I know its going to be well worth it. When I just could not think that much anymore, I knit on something much less traumatic.

I have started the Easy Drop stitch scarf before. It is a pattern I really liked from my very first days on Ravelry. The yarn did not feel right for the pattern, and eventually, it was frogged. Along comes a new shipment of Noro sock yarn from the store, and there was a fantastic new to me colourway, S301. Purples and greens and fuchsia, turquoise and gold and just a little in between. Outstanding. The long Noro colour changes mean that there is a pleasing flow to this scarf, there is a symmetry and rhythm that is much more pleasing to me.

Plus a little fuchsia and hot pink against my winter coat on the long dark winter days is not a bad thing.