A little free time

I have hardly any free time lately and I hate it. I've been working late almost everyday and by the time I get home I am too tired to do much of anything. If I am not working I'm at rehearsal - but that's fun, tiring but fun. Although time has been an issue I do have a few FO's. Since I knit on the train to and from work, and each ride is 45 min, I get in at least 1.5 hours of knitting in - oh yeah baby I can always find a way.

This was a simple 2x2 rib scarf which is so soft and warm. It knit up really fast on large needles. The yarn is an alpaca bland called blizzard, it is really soft but it sheds like a mofo.

These are my very first pair of gauntlets knit with some of my handspun. I am very proud of these little babies cause I actually used DPN's and didn't faint...not even once! As of this picture they aren't quite finished but this was before my morning train ride.
Now I'll have nice warm wrists and palms when it starts getting cold. Here is what one of them looks like on - modeled by moi. Since I did so well with the DPN's on these, I'll be starting my first pair of socks with this yarn:
It's a little thicker than some of the other sock yarn I was looking at, it knits up on 4's. I figure I'll wean myself into the smaller gauge stuff.


I've been a little lax with spinning cause I've got the knitting bug but I started to spin up some of those green romney locks into fuzzy warmness. ohh and more spinning will be coming soon becuase I got this in the mail:

It's 4.4 pounds of Merino and 2.2 pounds of "silky" merino - otherwise called Optim merino. Optim is merino which has been mechanically stretched to a fineness of 14 microns. It is amazingly soft and it really does feel like silk or even cashmere! In the stretching process it actually gets stronger rather than weaker cause its molecular structure changes. I can't wait to dye some and take it for a spin. Stay tuned for some serious dyeing soon.

Take a look at this bad boy isn't he cute???