Fiber content of today's post: 70% animal hair, 30% silk.

Which also happens to be the fiber content of my most recent Knit Picks order.



11 skeins of Elegance (70% baby alpaca, 30% silk), and one skein each of Gloss Lace in Mango (70% wool, 30% silk) and Shimmer in Lilac (70% baby alpaca, 30% silk). They're all super-yummy. The Elegance is for the Sylph Cardigan from Interweave, the Shimmer is for a Swallowtail shawl, and the Gloss Lace is for I'm Not Sure Yet, maybe Laminaria, the shoulder-shawl version.

Here's how that Sylph is coming, by the way.



I'm really enjoying it. I'm not going to enjoy the seaming so much, but I love the pattern so much that I don't think I mind.

Intolerable Cruelty is going nicely. I'm fairly confident that I'll have it all done in time for my self-imposed deadline of the end of June, when my boyfriend comes over for a visit. :3



Knitting-group-compadre Iza helped me out with the crochet part, for which I am forever grateful.

Oh, did I mention I began packing things up for moving home for the summer? Starting with my yarn.


(click for larger)

That became this:



On the spinning front, I've picked up my spindle for the first time in quite some time, producing these:



The center yarn is some extra navajo plied yarn for my Kaylee socks. One is finished and the other is being worked on.
The yarn on the right is spun from all my fiber scraps which I've saved. It produced a "very interesting" "artyarn" which I navajo plied into a worsted weight or something. I used it for a project I've been planning for a very long time.





This scarf (very simple, garter stitch with a bias pattern) was knit out of my first and second handspuns, and a few other scraps. These yarns had been sitting in my cabinet, alone :(, waiting to be knit into something but they were in such small amounts that I hadn't a clue what to do with them (about 30 yards or less each).

By the way? I am in LOVE with how this yarn knit up:

It was spun from a 6-or-so-color roving set for needlefelting from Hobby Lobby. Any time the fiber broke (which it did many time, it being my second ever spinning attempt), I would switch colors. Then I 2-plied it using the handy plying method, leaving me with a *very colorful* yarn with each ply changing colors at a different time. I love how it knits up and I think I'll have to do it again sometime.

The other yarn was instant gratification - well, almost.



I died and spun the blue/green single months and months ago. Only recently had I gotten around to spinning the black single to go with it, and then plying it. Then, almost immediately after, I whipped this up, which I am quite proud of:



67-yard Calorimetry! Woot!



I spun the yarn, I dyed one of the plies, I knit it, I got the button from the dollar store. I love it.

The next thing on deck to spin is this lovely lump of love:

That's 2 ounces of hand-dyed silk in gorgeous green, blue, brown and sometimes yellow and other stuff. Sooo pretty. What I'm planning to do is spin up all 2 oz of this, ply it with 2 plies of black wool, and make some pretty sportweight socks or something. :) I dunno what kind of patter would be good for a marled yarn like that, other than stockinette, but hopefully I'll find something. Something lacy maybe, not necessarily with a lot of texture but with a lot of openwork. We'll see.

And finally, what I'm most looking forward to knitting when I get home for the summer is this:



Okay, so it's just 9 balls of Paton's Classic Merino. But. I have plans for this thing.

I'm dyeing up two of the skeins to make the 3 hour sweater, only because I am a glutton for instant gratification and I love vintage patterns, too.

Then I'm taking the remainder and dyeing it up and making Viveka, adding in some waist shaping and stuff because I like the design of the sweater but not the shapelessness of it.

I'm excited for the summer, hooray! Yummy. Sweaters, shawls, spinning, oh my!

~Joy