You spin me round round baby right round...

...and that's it, I'm out of daft spiral / spinning related record titles. You're safe. The blanket continues to grow, it's now 24" by 27" (at the wider end). It's fascinating knitting as I keep wanting to see how the colours come will come out and what will line up where. I've broken and spliced the yarn a cuple of times, just so that I don't get a section that's blue next to blue so similar that you can't see the spiral shape, but mostly I'm happy for the kureyon to just do its thing and change colours randomly. I keep changing my mind about which section is my favourite.
Willow can sleep anywhere, at any time. Here she is on the stairs this evening, even when there were two warm beds, tonnes of wool and two laps she could have slept on all just waiting for some cat hair...

...she does love to be on the knitting whilst in progress, though. Just to be sure she's the centre of attention.

Random Saturday

Watch this ad if you love sheep (no, not like that!)

My favourite bit was the following notes on their website:

• "The advert was shot in Wellington Station, New Zealand. Why? Because sheep in the UK don't have woolly coats in the summer.
• 40 sheep spent a month training with the sheep handler from the film 'Babe', they were taught among other things how to baa on demand, step out of taxis and read newspapers.
• Sheep will do anything for a biscuit - No computer generated imagery was used to manipulate their actions. Instead they all left the commercial with full tummies (and slightly boosted egos!)"

(I am in no way endorsing any product or service, I just like the sheep).

I just love the mental image of sheep being trained to baa on demand by some nutter waving a biscuit from behind the camera! Brilliant!

thoughts from a sleepy head

Please excuse me if this makes no sense... I'm exhausted. Despite being shattered last nigt, I tossed and turned and barely slept at all. I know that at one point I must have dozed off because I dreamed that there was a snake in my duvet and I made hubby turn the lights on to check!
Willow thinks that all wool is good wool, and that it'a absurd to suggest that there is too much of it around.

I dyed some of it... and started spinning a nice, slightly thicker worsted singles that I might make a three-ply, but don't really have definite plans for. I'd like to finally spin enough of something to use it for a useful project though!

These were waiting for me when I got home today... (don't you just love ebay? Yarn with no time to visit a shop, and cheaper too!)

Good job really, as this evening I finally finished up the original 4 balls...

...without counting the bit where I've turned the corner at the bottom right, it's now 21" square.

(Trying not to think that this means I'll need 36 balls to get anywhere close to 6ft square...!)

How much wool is too much?

I have a fair bit of wool. No, more than that. I have quite a lot of wool. Well, no, masses probably covers it better. Not quite enough to use as loft insulation for the entire house, but probably half the house....

Two things opened my eyes to the enormous quantity of wool I posess. On Wednesday, I went with my Mum to a new yarn shop in Broadway. It's a lovely little shop, just opened a couple of weeks ago, and seems to have some nice wool. The Noro currently being knitted into a blanket came home with me. Now, this was a teeny tiny shop in an arcade in a small town, and the owner probably doesn't have all of the stock she's planning on getting quite yet, but I was a little alarmed on looking around and calculating to realise that I probably own as much yarn as was in her shop. Me. On my own. The only knitter in this household. All purchased in the last 10 years.

Holy smoke, Batman, I must have one hell of a lot of yarn if I have more than a yarn shop.

Then, today, I thought about spinning fibre. I went up into the loft to find some different fibre that I remembered buying a while ago. I hunted. And hunted. And hunted. There is a lot of stuff in our loft, but I wasn't having trouble finding fibre. I was having trouble sorting through all the fibre. You've seen pictures of the drawer that Willow likes to sleep in? That's where the fibre that's not in the loft lives. It's 30" x 20" x 15". The fibre in the loft could probably fill it again another 6 times over. Now, the big question (answers on a postcard, please...)

How did I end up with more wool than I could spin and knit in a lifetime, by the age of 27??

Spiralling into the abyss

Well, maybe not the abyss, but certainly some black hole around here is eating up all of my remaining holiday time (*cough* knitting *cough*) and I haven't done any of the school work I was going to do today. Whoops. Still, on the other hand, I'm on holiday, so stuff it. I've had a hard year. It isn't over yet, either: we're looking at an op that might be in around 4 weeks, but still waiting to hear a date. I got brave and watched a video of the procedure on youtube, and I'm glad it won't be me having it... it does all look quite simple and clean, though, which is a relief. I can't knit with my fingers crossed, so I've crossed my ankles instead. Hope that works as well.
The Noro spiral is even bigger than this now, but I can't be bothered to download another picture right at the moment. It's now about 21.5" x 18", and I've used about three of my four balls of Kureyon. I've sort of realised that it's going to take a fair old heap of wool to knit a 6ft square garter stitch blanket, so I'm glad that I've been planning this as a buy-a-ball and knit-as-you-go sort of project. It makes sense, really: with no need to worry about colourways or dyelots, I can just pick up a ball or two a month, whenever I'm in a wool shop, and knit it when I'm in the mood. Willow seems to love it already, so I'm thinking that by the time I've finished it, in a year or so, the middle will be well-worn and full of cat hair. C'est la vie.