a very merry unbirthday to me, to me

those endless days are slipping by me so fast it'll be fall before i know it. but i pushed the pause button for a half hour to sneak in a post.

ages of endless days ago, my contest yarn got here. yarn in the mail always feel like a present, doesn't it? lucy has some pictures on her blog of the actual spinning, but here's what it looks like after its trip across the country.mmmm, blue angora. i've been eyeing it since it got here, and finally swatched it this weekend. i knit it up at 4.5 stitches per inch on US4s and i think i'd still go up a size. this is my first time knitting handspun (and angora), and it was so fun to roll it up and see the variations in thickness and color. according to ravelry it's only 170 yards, but looks like way more rolled up. it's 2 ply (i think) and silky and smooth. something visible and against the skin, not to mention lacy, would be perfect for it. and there the dreams and dithering decision making start.

any suggestions?

around the time lucy's yarn came in, another yarn present came in the mail (even though i paid for it, it still feels like a gift when it comes. maybe because of our still-kind-of-tight-budget, or because i forget about it, so it's a surprise by the time it gets here).this stuff's destined to become a tahoe, one of those nice 'throw it on as you go out the door cuz you're too lazy (crazy?) to wear a coat' sweaters. i been needing one of those. like all winter. it was almost irresistable, but i put off swatching and casting on until the FFF shawl was done, and one of chuck's sleeves. the yarn is lovely, soft but with an underlying feeling of substance (that would be the wool bit of it, i'm thinking). i did cast on and knit a few inches before the hem started bugging me.the pattern makes a sewn hem by casting on, knitting like nothing, making a purl flip row and just sewing it together when the sweater's done. sewing - yuck. this was not attractive. so i did a provisional cast on and knit the hem together, but i must have messed up my row count cuz it was flipping. we don't like that. so i frogged it back and i'll start it again sometime, with a smaller needle for the rows that end up on the inside. and pay better attention to the row count.

a bonus: a small project finished somewhere in there (i am still working on those stash-busting, project-finishing goals of mine - although we'd still better not talk about the striped turtleneck sweater. or the silk cami. anyway. the small project.) the building block slippers from socks, socks, socks. they were kinda fun to make, fast and origami-like. does it get any better than that? maybe if you don't use chunky yarn. they're a bit sloppy, and since i ran out of the red and blue yarn ends, one slipper has (oh, horrors!) some orange. mostly on the bottom where i (luckily) can't really see it.the second one is more true to the pattern with more seams, and that slipper is not quite as sloppy. but they're for the house anyway, so who cares. right?

and that's today's half hour break. *sigh* back to the blur.