I finished knitting the first blue lacy sock about a week ago.  Since I think the yarn’s a bit heavy for the pattern, I thought I might knit the pattern in the soft alpaca I  bought the other week, and not rush to finish the  second blue sock.

So, I’ve started the alpaca ones, and the yarn is gorgeous – a luscious treat to handle. The blue bluebell isn’t in the same league, but you know, it’s growing on me. It might be just as well that I’ve got two sets of needles – I can see both on the go at once!

(Yes, yes, so my leg is not a Barbie doll! Memo to self: next time, wear something slightly more respectable than ancient track pants.)

I’m also knitting a little hand-spun jacket from a white merino-cross fleece for our group’s doll raffle.  I’m making it up as I go along, with twisted cables on the fronts. I hope I’ll have enough yarn – it’s stuff from the stash – if not, it will be a waistcoat 🙂

The doll project is taking up some of my thoughts just now, as we made the dolls last weekend, and now have to dress them. I still have a little handwoven fabric left from the last time we raffled dressed dolls (see below); there’s enough for a waistcoat.  It’s a plain weave with small checks of slightly thicker yellow on a background of fine black. I loved the fabric so much that I’ve woven a length with mauve on the black – I just have to find the time, courage, and pattern to make it up into a jacket for me!

Hmm… not a whole lot of the progress stuff. I watched a DVD the other night, so that was spinning time – and I think I’ve done about 25 or 30 grams of the fine merino, so next time I watch some TV I’ll start plying that. I did find the lace flyer in preparation for the plying, as the higher ratios will speed up the process.

The first blue lacy sock is almost done – about one more pattern repeat before I start on the toes. I might get it finished tomorrow night. I’ve done no more weaving since the weekend, but hopefully I’ll get the second rainbow scarf finished this weekend.

I’ll have to decide what I’m going to do for the Armidale Show. I’m not competitive at all, but I feel strongly that I should enter something so that there are at least some entries in the various spinning and weaving classes. The pavilion contests will just die if there are no entries, so I try to do my bit. But it’s a bit tricky when I haven’t actually made a whole lot in the past year! The second rainbow scarf will go in (that gives a deadline for it to be finished by!) and I’m thinking that I might dye some handspun yarn this weekend and knit either socks or mittens.

I’ll have a look at my fibre stash and see about spinning a skein or two for the spinning sections. Yes, I could enter the white merino I’m spinning now, but since one of my skeins won the fine spinning section two years ago, and the resulting scarf won last year, it might be regarded as overdoing things 😉 So perhaps I should challenge myself and do a fancy skein, or a medium-weight blended skein or something.

I think I’ll need to watch a few DVDs in the next couple of weeks, to have some spinning time 🙂  However, I have to fit all this in plus finding the pattern for the dolls we’re going to make and raffle, organise our group’s move to new premises, do a demonstration on Australia Day, and make some hand-spun and/or handwoven clothes for the dolls. Oh, yes, and go to the day-job, do some work on the PhD, and get some writing done.