pulling my weight

DisKnit is right...I neeed to post. I haven't shown my face around here since Portland, which was 2 + weeks ago, and lovely to boot. I saw snow. I got cold. I bought yarn. I drank beer. I stayed up and out til the wee hours. I knit a hat. Since the return, spring has come to Hawaii, with warmer weather, a cessation of the hideous, mud-bearing rains, and better moods all around.

No pix of the new yarny stuff; I confess, it's Malabrigo; something I've never knit with before, but I was enchanted with its softness and extraordinary colors.

To amuse myself, and to continue the endless photographing and documenting of my stash for Ravelry, I've been playing with the swift and ballwinder, and making yarncakes out on the deck. I share examples of stashdigging and yarncaking below:
Here is some delightfully Project Spectrum-inspired Woolarina Boucle, that I am wondering about. It's about 750 yards of more or less worsted weight, in a color that's absolutely enchanting:


And this is the spoils from the Virginia Fall Fiber Festival, some merino laceweight that will see my needles very soon, probably as Icarus, in a beautiful silvery green color known as lichen. Alas, it was not dyed with lichen...


Here's the view I have from the deck. Never mind the intrusive tiki torch, we in Hawaii must have our tiki torches. And our mosquito coils and citronella candles, but that's another story.


And the fruits of my "labor" are sweet:



Alas, now I have a drawer full of yarncakes and have to knit something, as Forest Canopy is finished (but not photographed) and the Austermann Sock #1 is galloping down the homestretch. I'm going to have to pick up the front of Must Have again... I've been wearing Forest Canopy as a wrinkly crinkly neck scarf, which is pleasing to me. I am a little worried about blocking it, but that's coming up, and hopefully will be documented.

soy silk struggle

Isn't this pretty? It's something whose name eludes me, but is doing well, in spite of my current policy of benign neglect.

Little peek in here. I have some soy silk, Southwest Trading Company's Karaoke, that I got in a yarn swap months ago, at Aloha Knitters. I was sitting on it, unsure of what to do with it. I thought it was so pretty, and soft, and the yummiest warmest French Vanilla color. I contemplated mixing it up with some Rowan Calmer, in Annie Modesitt's corset top, but after a swatch, realize they aren't quite the same gauge and look funky together, and not funky in a good way, either, but mismatched, like something I'd wear to walk the dogs on a Sunday morning. I thought about a washcloth, because, really, I just wanted to rub that soy silk all over myself. But the pattern I was trying to knit wasn't working for me, and I was mighty damn tired of ripping and re-knitting and getting the wrong number of stitches after that silly bobble row (oh accursed Mason-Dixon seductive washrags...)and suddenly I realized that I am done, finished, completely over that soy silk. It's going to Knittybird on Thursday, because it seems it's haunting her from a distance, too! She asked about it the other night at knit night, and I gave her an iffy answer, and then went home and tried to make something out of it, just to see if it would work for me. Since it's obviously not working for me, it's time for it to fly the coop. Adieu, soy silk! Blessings to you in the creative hands of Ms. Bird!

The weather has been all over the map here. Windy as all get-out, and rainy at nights, hard, warm rains, with huge drops that fall horizontally and end just at dawn, leaving a nice cool sunrise. The wind has provoked my usual case of spring-driven brainfog, and I'm fighting it with Claritin and giving myself extra time and caffeine to accomplish just about anything.

Little knitting (see the aforementioned soy silk struggle) has been done that hasn't been ripped. I'm taking a knitting break this week, as I concentrate on other things, namely, my backlog of ungraded student work, dog grooming and cooking. I made dolmas, oatmeal cookies and lentil soup the past couple of days, in a domestic frenzy. Somehow that's a balanced diet, I guess. The cookies had chocolate chips in them, too, making them more complete.