Where ya been???

Can I say the dog ate my homework???  Noooo, guess not. I don't have a dog..... But, what I can say is that my computer went to the great place in the sky for computers. I am told that computers don't last forever and mine had lasted a long time.... I was sad to see it go. BUT, on the bright side I now have a new computer and it is working superbly.

When we last met, I had cast on my sweater from my dark red hand spun yarn. Well, I misunderstood the directions and started my knitting in the wrong place, after the cast on. This caused an issue, in that it was large enough for a a 4 year old, when I was told to divide the arms off from the fronts and backs. A ripping I went and had to start over. That was sometime around the beginning of August, right around the same time as the computer issues.  August was a great month. Hahahaha!

Here is the new beginning of the sweater. Still using my classy stitch markers. :)

Here we are today. I am getting to the real point where the sleeves will be divided off from the body of the sweater.  I refuse to count how many stitches I have on that needle. I think when I am ready to divide there will be way over 300.  I say that I won't count, but I am.... A knitter always counts..... It takes about 30 minutes for one row right now. You may be saying to yourself, "Why does she do this to herself, when she could knit pieces and stitch them together?" My answer is that I am not crazy about seaming, so I decided to work top down. That doesn't mean that my next sweater won't be pieces and seamed, just that this one won't. If I start the next one right away, it won't be top down. :)

I have been spinning! I finally have my Easter egg dyed roving plied.  I have about 386 yards. It is a sport weight yarn. There aren't plans for it right now. 

One of my new projects is a pair of Fair Isle Mittens. These mittens were designed by Kate Davies and are named Jazz Hands, the pattern is on Ravelry here. Kate writes a wonderful pattern, I have knit one of her patterns before. My friend Debbie at the momartist blog recommended her patterns to me.

The dark yarn for my Jazzy Hands is a deep eggplant purple color and I had spun it back around 1998 or 1999.  It is a single ply yarn, that I steamed and then shocked, so it would felt a little. The beautiful yellow, pink and orange color was a prize that I won from mysistersknitter's blog.

I am sorry if the pictures look a bit dark or of bad quality. I have been trying to wait for some sunshine to take them, but we keep having uncharacteristically cloudy weather and rain. So, I decided that I will just take the pictures, so that I can blog about my projects.

Thanks for chatting with me today. :)