Crochet?! What?

This is what my living room floor looked like Saturday night.
That blanket, it has been crocheted. I started it last summer after I did a little crochet experiment to see if I would like it. Apparently I liked it enough to go buy some cheap acrylic yarn and an afghan pattern book... I found the blanket with all the blue made up, just needing a border.
I realized that this would be a great house-warming gift for a friend that was moving to a new apartment on Sunday, so I finished it. Granted the weather is now consistantly in the 60s and 70s so she probably won't be needing the blanket, she liked it.

A little aside, I actually do enjoy crochet, just not with acrylic. I have a set of 5 hooks and a desire to produce more crocheted products. I've been toying with the idea of a granny-square afghan using just a few colors to match my living room. This would allow me to crochet a little bit every once in a while, just when I want a small change from knitting and granny squares are perfect for that! Does anybody think that is just incredibly dorky? Are granny-squares awful and not to be seen in a 20-something's apartment?

This same friend is getting married in late June and expressed a desire to knit up something to wear for her wedding. She's fairly new to the knitting thing (she didn't even finish her first scarf) so I said she probably shouldn't try to knit up a sweater and plan her wedding at the same time. Also, she really liked the whole idea of the lace hoodie I'm knitting for myself. Well, a little light went off and I decided to knit her a similar lace-y summer shirt. She's not a fiber whore like I am so she's perfectly fine getting acrylic knits. While I was looking through my stash on Saturday I found a whole whack of white acrylic yarn (don't ask) and thought there might be enough to make a sweater. If I run short I'm fairly certain I can run over to the nearest Walmart and pick up another skein. Anyway, this is the pattern. And here a shot of the finished back.
The pattern is knit on size 10.5 needles. That's HUGE! So while I should be able to crank this project out pretty fast, I hate it. I'm just slipping it in the knitting queue before my own lace hoodie.

I geuss that I prefer smaller needles, no matter the size of the project. Also, I HATE acryilic yarn! It's all stiff and scratchy and makes my wrist hurt to knit it up. Still, it'll be nice to get rid of all this acrylic. See, before I became a fiber whore I collected quite a bit of cheap acrylic yarn and this blanket as well as the white yarn relieves me of at least half of the acrylic cr*p.

Anyway, back to the picture of my floor Saturday night... You can also see my cardigan blocking. It took until Monday morning to dry because I blocked all the pieces in twos to make sure everything matched (sleeve on sleeve, front on front, and the back folded in half). Well, yesterday I set out to seam it and ... realized the eye of my needle was too big. I'm a little worried now because I've never seamed a sweater before and I think if I don't get started soon the sweater might be doomed to wander around in pieces forever! I noticed that my yarn store sells needles up by the register for 25 cents a piece. I'll pick one up when I'm in Boulder tomorrow for Wednesday knitting with Val and Maria.

Last night after binding the back off of Rachel's sweater, I was really craving some small needle knitting with something of more color. So, I pulled out my green sock yarn and swatched for Hedera.
I love this yarn! It's superwash/acrylic... But it's much softer than the 100% acrylic and the green is so pretty! I'll be knitting these up as ankle socks for some summer sock wear.

An update on my spinning activities. This is the variegated merino that I navajo plied.
I quite enjoyed this method of plying, especially when compared to triple-plying with three seperate skeins of yarn; trying to keep every single seperate and unknotted really stressed me out. While this skein is a little over-twisted, it is still quite soft and the overtwist really isn't a big deal. The thing that really gets me is the way all the colors were distributed after plying. I originally did not like the way the singles were spinning up when I pulled out the various colors and spun them seperate. So I switched to just spinning up a piece of the fiber, letting the colors do what they wanted. I think I've changed my mind again, the navajo plying would work best with the first method. I've started spinning with the first method again and hope to have another skein to show some time next week.

Also, I bought 2 lbs of black merino fleece from morehouse merino. I hope to see it in the mail soon!

Also, I've been really bad with Eye Candy Fridays, so here is a picture that I took at Rachel's new place. Such pretty blooms!