What's Going On?

So I am back, after a sabbatical to have my daughter, Miss Katy Niamh. My little cute and recipient of an awful lot of my crafting efforts. Well if you ask me you can;t find a decent wool cardigan for a little girl for love nor money these days, so mummy has to make them doesn't she? But since I have had a sabbatical, just what am I up to currently craft wise. Too much is probably the answer. 

I have three crochet projects actually on the go, and two long term knitting projects. Not to mention I have spinning on the wheel. I AM trying to streamline but we shall see. 

First and highest priority is the second of two Queen Anne's Lace scarves. Priority because they are thank you presents for two of the staff at my son's preschool. He has his last day a week today! So I better get cracking. 

Second, I have picked up my In Dreams shawl. I don't have a picture of where I am in the pattern right now, but I really am not too far at all from here:

I am doing a small handful of rows every day that I actually get some quiet time, so its actually growing and going at a snail's pace towards finishing. 

Third, I have already begun the project to follow the priority scarves because I had a case of startitis, Impossible to not start something new! The pattern is Dragon Master. This is being crocheted in a lovely handspun yarn that was given to me as a gift through a magic yarn ball swap:

Beautiful yarn. The swap had a theme, and my swapee chose to focus on my love of Tolkein. This yarn is so reminiscent of Smaug from The Hobbit that these are becoming my Smaug hide Mitts. Yes, I know its July, but doing my winter things now ahead of time. I think its working up nicely so far!

Fourth, I have started a blanket project for Katy. I knitted her brother blanket, so she needs to have a blanket, though this time its crochet. I have used Barbara Smith's African Flower Square Tutorial as the base for this, but have made some changes of my own. I will feature the changes and link to my Ravelry project for my notes when I focus on the progress of this project another day. But this is early progress:

Lastly, and no picture for this one, I am still working on my version of Shelly Kang's sock yarn blankie. I say working on, but its sat in hibernation really. I want to streamline down my other projects, and then much like my In Dreams shawl, I want to give it some time every day so it grows slow time alongside something else I am doing. 

Spinning wise, this is my latest spinning project:

Its what's lovingly known as a Batt Dropping from Nunoco. Basically carding batts results in left overs. The two lovely ladies in Wales then card those together to give their customers surprise batts! To go with this lovely bobbin, I am attempting to learn how to work with my wheel to spin a superfine single to ply with, so hopefully I end up with a lot of yardage from not a lot of fibre. My bobbins are dinky by the way. They only hold 60g of fibre really, but I will introduce you to the wheel another day!

Lastly, what have I been creating. My most recent FO is a shawl for my best friend. My friend chose the pattern (Photosynthesis by Emily Wessel) and the yarn (Wollmeise in Golden Pear - boy is she lucky enough I love her enough to splurge on Wollmeise!), and I aimed to have it ready for her birthday on August 2nd. I think I did pretty well there. Just shy of a full skein (143g of 150g) produced this lovely shawl:

And that's my catch up. Hope everyone in crafty blog land is doing well and watch this space for the next post. A lot sooner than my last craft post!

Kat xx

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