Taking a long explore in the woods

That is how Tigger from Winnie the Pooh would say it.  (Winnie the Pooh is on my mind because of Sweet Thing of course.)

For certain, you have all noticed that I am not quite myself lately.  There seems to be so little progress on the knitting front, that it is non existent, and for that I am sorry.  I don't know what it is.  Possibly connected to job change.  Even though I am really looking forward to this one ending, it is stressful to have to go looking again, to be starting over.  

And poor Paulette is not getting her scarf as quickly as I hoped and for that I am so sorry.  She is such a patient lady.  I did knit yesterday on it, 3 long rows, so my whole weekend plus yesterday was 6 rows, but I still need a few more to be right.

I didn't knit on it last night though.  I scratched the other thing that I have been trying to fit in the last while.  

I spent some time spinning with the Vic and some pretty green (but aren't they all)  and golden brown fibre.  I am trying to teach myself to control what I spin, rather than just getting what I get.  After reading a little more in the Alden Amos book and watching not just the hands of the spinners at the retreat, but their feet and treadle speed and how they prep fibre or not, everything really, I have learned a whole lot and I might get it.  This pretty green and brown, will, I hope, be a worsted weight, not too tightly spun, that will make a nice warm pair of mittens.  That is the goal anyway.  We shall see.

Much thicker than before.

I do have a default setting when I spin.  I seems to produce a sportweight sort of yarn to a dk weight (somewhere in there) and until now I have always been working on getting it finer.  I've come to realize that wanting to make it finer is about wanting to gain control and to spin with a certain product in mind, and that understanding that I can spin what I want, when I want, has to go not just smaller, but bigger and loftier too.  Knowing only small fine yarns in spinning would be like only knowing garter stitch in knitting. Good and fulfilling in some ways, but leaving ever so much more to be explored.  

That doesn't mean I have a hankering to spin art yarns.  No, I can't see myself spinning something like that, but then who knows?  I didn't see myself knitting blankets either in that long ago time before.  Sweaters?  Yes.  Lace?  Oddly, yes, even before I knew how to knit.  Socks?  Of course.  But blankets?  Not at all.

And yet I did.  And there are several more in the wings.  Heaven knows I have the yarn for it.  

There might be art yarn in my future, but if there isn't, I am still certain there will be lots of other good stuff to explore.