fifth hat, a K1P1 Watch cap

Knitted a K1P1 stitch watch cap out of the nineteenth and twentieth skeins.

The knitted cast on worked beautifully again, and I successfully tried out a slip, slip, knit (SSK) decrease. Had to look up how SSK is done in continental knitting. The effort and effect were worth it.

Laddering appears wherever one double point needle (dpn) ended and the other began. The dpns help me keep track of where to make the decreases, so I want to keep using them but I also want to eliminate the laddering. Blocking didn't do much. Will have to concentrate on pulling the second stitch on the needle tightly the next time I knit in the round. Someday I'll probably get a set of circular needles.

That Skein Didn't Last Long

I knit the thirty-sixth skein into the scarf and now I must spin some more. Everything you see after the unsewn ends is progress.

Cue the Music!

Why do I tire of counting sheep
When I'm too tired to fall asleep?
-"Fireflies," Owl City

My spinning goes more quickly when I listen to music with a quick tempo. Yes, these are the things you only find out by trying.

thirty-sixth skein

I forgot to take a photograph before wrapping this skein into a centre-pull ball, so you get to see it this way in all its mathematical perfection.

1 ounce Ashland Bay merino top in peacock colour
102 yards, which is what I was going for. I checked the gauge as I went along rather frequently to make sure I didn't bungle this skein like the last one I spun in this colour. Needs to match the skein in the scarf so I can keep knitting.

Voyez, des Moutons!

You know handspinning has changed you when you watch a documentary called Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution* and you get excited at the 101 minute mark when the camera pans over a flock of sheep, and again at the credits (a shorn flock this time).


*the original film title is Nos Enfants Nous Accuseront, or "our children accuse us," because the film looks at the impact of organic and non-organic food and agriculture on children at a particular school district that changed its cafeteria policy to organic, local food sources.

Another Link to another Viking Whorl Artifact

Happy Boxing Day!

I just can't leave the L'Anse aux Meadows soapstone spindle whorls alone. Here's another link, this time to a page on the Parks Canada website.* Photo of the whorl is partway down the page.

The whorl looks something like the top half of a miniature pumpernickel bagel.


*Parks Canada administers the national historic site, the actual site of the excavations which is, to be redundant, a park. A park on land on which Vikings once settled. And in one field there is a sheep, one side of which is black...Sorry, that's the punchline of an old physics joke.