WIP Wednesday

I always have way too many WIPs going at any one time. In my experience WIP simply stands for "Work In Progress" but for me that definition includes waaaaay too many projects, so for the purposes of my sanity, I use WIP to refer to projects I've worked on recently. Usually the last 4 or 5 projects or what I've worked on in the last week or so. Below are pictures of some of my WIPs:

I picked up some pretty purple fiber at Appleumpkin (local fall festival) last year and I've been hesitant to use it even though I got a huge ball of it.

I finally got over my nerves and started spinning it. I'm really glad I did! It spins really well.  I think I did a pretty good job of keeping it even and I thought I was keeping it pretty thin until I plied it...

I plied it with some green fiber that I also picked up from the same booth at last year's Appleumpkin.  The green fiber was a bit more challenging to work with since it had some black and white sections (very small sections).  I like the random additions though.  Plying two "thin" singles together ends up in a bit heavier yarn than I expected, but I still love it.

Here's a close up of it.

 I had to immediately start knitting with it. Here is my partially finished scarf in seed stitch.

This close up of my knitting shows that my spinning still needs some work. I'm fairly sure that I spun the singles in the wrong direction to begin with then plied it in the wrong direction (to be used for knitting).  As I knit, the yarn was unwinding. I've started re-spinning it on my thigh as I go before knitting it... It still does the job though and it's still gorgeous!

This is a quick mindless stockinette in-the-round scarf in crochet thread that I started because I need some more scarves (I freeze at work) and because I needed something mindless to knit while reading. The seed stitch scarf above is technically mindless knitting as well, but because it's knit flat I have the tendency to pause at the end of a row without realizing it while I'm reading. When my project is just in the round, I just keep knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting...

Another picture of the yarn from my previous post "Waiting..." Here it is off of the bobbin. Again, I know it needs some work, but it looks like it'll make a really comfy blanket (a small one though as I don't have much yardage) or something. I'd say scarf but... *looks at above WIPs* Something tells me I have enough scarves in the works right now... Plus my coworkers tease me more when I wear the big cushy ones all day.

Here is the left-over single after I plied the rest. My bobbins were uneven.  I soaked it in warm water then hung it to dry as I found out that some people do that to set the twist in a single.  I haven't played with it much yet, so I don't know if it worked or not. Unfortunately, I'm finding that I don't like this yarn spun up as much as I liked it before it was spun up... Not really sure why. Usually I like the yarn as much as the fiber, if not more... Not sure what I did wrong with this one.

And here is my most recent addition to my WIPs. It caught my eye... somewhere... someone else's blog perhaps? Anyway, it's Knitty pattern Phalangees and so far I'm loving it. It's actually a lot simpler than I originally pegged it for. You only use one color at a time and you switch colors every two rows. So far I learned a new cast on - Twisted German Cast On - which I love. It may just become my new favorite cast on!  And I'm looking forward to learning the lazy way to make fingers.

Here's that project again. And behind it is actually my last project. The books I requested at the library came in! I'm now working on reading The Intentional Spinner: A Holistic Approach to Making Yarn and then I'll move on to Spin Control.  The third book hasn't come in yet.
Coming soon: An update about what I've learned from my books!