Ugh, what is it with some people that think it's just ok to let domestic pets go free when they get tired of caring for them? We noticed a few weeks back that our neighbor a few houses up had taken down their bunny pen. Then a week or so ago we thought be saw a black rabbit in another neighbor's yard. Strange. Never seen a black wild rabbit before. Yesterday, I looked at my garden as I walked by to go to my car and noticed that a bunny had eaten up my broccoli plants. When I got home last night and took a better look at the damage I found the bunny had also dug a big hole in my onion bed and another in the yard. I fixed up the hole in the onion bed hoping to not lose those plants, but just look at what they did...
There's a leaf left on 2 of the broccoli plants, so I put cans around them in hopes they will survive. Thankfully the rabbits haven't developed a taste for any of our other garden plants. I happened to see the neighbor in question out today and mentioned I thought his rabbits might have gotten loose. He had the nerve to say, and I quote "Oh yeah, we know. We've been trying to catch them, but they're just so darn fast. We've even got a kid trying to help us catch them." These neighbors are not old and feeble. They are in their 20s, 30s at most and have 2 kids and a dog they keep up with. They had the rabbits penned all the years they've lived here and never had a problem. I doubt very highly they "got loose" and just can't be caught. But I'm not the confrontational type and didn't want to accuse the guy of lieing, so I just said I'd let him know if I see the rabbits again. I suppose hubby and I can try to catch them and present them to the neighbor. Think he'll give us a reward for the safe return of his bunnies?
Let's have some knitting to lift our spirits, shall we? Here's the body of Milan blocking on a towel.
I decided against steaming since it's acrylic and steam sometimes does weird things to acrylic. I just pinned it out as flat as possible on a towel and gave it a good misting with water. I'm getting a bit nervous about the sleeve, I fear my row gauge may be off (I never check my row gauge by the way). But my sleeve seems to be almost as long as my arm and I've got at least 24 rows to go to finish my increases. I'm going to have to sit down with a tape measure and calculator this afternoon and figure out what I need to do to not end up with sleeves that touch my kneecaps!
The yarn came for Flyingdales this week. Here's just a small sampling of the NaturallyCaron.com Country yarn.
I bought 10 balls in all in the colorway Plum Pudding. The color is gorgeous. The yarn itself is quite soft, though not as soft as pure merino wool. But there is only around 20% merino in this yarn. The suggested needle size is US 9 to get 4 st/inch.
I had to go up to a US 10.5. Of course, that is the one and only needle size I'm missing from my Knit Picks Options set. But I was thinking about placing an order anyway. I'm quite excited to work on this sweater. It's probably a good thing I don't have the right needles or I'd be casting on already!
I FINALLY got back to dying some yarn this week. And oh baby am I ever pleased! I tried a new technique with these and I think the results are stunning.
I've not had much luck with darks in the past, but this time I hit the nail on the head for what I'm after. They are even more beautiful in person. They appear almost iridescent. These should be going up on Etsy in the next few days, if I can bear to part with them.
New on my bookshelf this week is 2-at-a-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oaks. I'm not a huge fan of patterned socks, as we've seen with my failure to complete the last 2 patterned socks I started. But these patterns look pretty appealing. I like the Twilight socks and love Socks for Aidan. The Aidan socks are written for a child's size, but I think I might be able to size them up for me. Spice is another favorite. My only disappointment was that many of the socks are in child sizes. But, again, the patterns should be easy enough to size up, so I'm sure I'll get some use out of this book.
Another favorite thing to report this week. And this one is a direct result of listening to Miss Favorite Thing, Meghan's podcast. It is Henna. I am a woman, reaching "a certain age", and have begun the vane pursuit of keeping the grey hairs at bay. Now, I love dyeing yarn. Dyeing my hair on the other hand, not so much. Chemicals are smelly and leave my hair dry and heaven knows what they do to the environment. So when Meghan mentioned she uses henna to color her hair, I thought I'd give it a try. She recommended the Henna for Hair website. There is a metric ton of information on this site. If you are at all interested in hennaing your hair, go hear and read up on it. I used henna from Rainbow Research. Their's is pure henna, but the henna's are preblended so you can achieve the level of red you want without having to blend your own henna. I chose Mahogany. The process is messy, but there is no bad smell. It's very herbal. The stuff was very hard to rinse out, it's kind of like packing your hair with mud and trying to rinse it out. However, it was really worth it. The color is absolutely even. I've never had that result with chemical dye. It's a lovely old penny color, not too bright coppery but not brown either. My hair is soft and manageable. No pictures, sorry, I'm not so good with the self portraits of the back of my head. But take my word for it, it's definitely worth a try if you are looking for a natural alternative to coloring your hair.
PS...title comes from the fantabulous film "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit".
No, I'm not going around taking potshots at the romantically unattached. I am, however, showing my yarn who's boss. There has been a lot of talk lately on Ravelry, in Spin Off, on Yahoo groups, etc about setting twist in your handspun by whacking your wet yarn against a table or some such to help distribute the twist and energy more evenly throughout the yarn. Jen finally convinced me to give it a try. I'm still on my quest to learn to spin a decent singles yarn. Here is my latest attempt with some corriedale roving I hand dyed. 
As you can see, the yarn is quite energized. There are kinks and coils and the yarn doesn't even begin to hang straight.
Into a sink of very warm water with a bit of shampoo for a half hour soak. By then the water had cooled so I drained the sink and gently rinsed in cool water. I squeezed as much water from the yarn as possible (this helps to minimize mess in the next step). Then I held the skein by one end and smacked it against the shower wall. I did this a few times, then turned the skein and did it again. I believe I did about 8 or 9 whacks in all. Just be sure to get as much water out as possible or you'll get a face full of water! I've heard of people twirling their skein of yarn airplane-style over their head (outside of course) to use centrifugal force to help remove water. I'm going to have to try this one day (when the neighbors aren't out of course!) I hung the skein to dry and here's the end result.
Oh yeah, BIG difference! I am quite surprised and impressed. The twist definitely redistributed itself and the yarn is much more balanced.
I still have a ways to go at achieving the lofty soft twist single I'm aiming for. But this technique transformed a pretty rough looking skein into a lovely bit of quite usable yarn. Thanks Jen for pushing me to try this!!
Since my last post, I have finished the Spa Slippers.
They have been sent on to the one who requested them and thankfully they fit her well. One of
these days I must make myself a pair of these.
I finished spinning and plying the Gryffindor yarn.
I loves it! The picture doesn't do it justice. The burgundy and gold subtly change throughout and the dark brown/black really sets it off. This yarn is destined to be fingerless mitts.
One stash acquisition to show:
This is Pigeonroof Studios superwash BFL roving in Nightshade purchased from a fellow Raveler who is destashing. I adore the colors in this and can't wait to see how it spins up.
On my needles: Jack socks, I'm almost to the heel of sock #1; Darvoset socks, finished sock #1 and just past the toe on sock #2; Milan cardigan, finished both fronts and back, seamed the shoulders and half way up the first sleeve.Although I've got at least a few weeks of knitting left on Milan, I broke down and ordered yarn for Flyingdales. I was going to go with Valley Yarns Sugarloaf, but ended up ordering a new yarn called Country by NaturallyCaron. This yarn looks and sounds very interesting, a microfiber/merino blend. I ordered it from a place with a good return policy, just in case, but I've been happy with most everything I've tried from Caron so I'm confident this will be a worthwhile purchase.
A new podcast to check out...The Knitmore Girls. This is a mother and daughter team who podcast about their knitting. They are delightful.
I've gotten the garden all planted for the year. I changed the layout this year and we removed some ornamental grasses from one bed that we can now use for vegetables, so we are trying some new stuff this year. Here we have onions, peppers, cucumbers and (eventually) acorn squash with a cherry tomato plant in the pot.
This long bed has eggplant, basil, tomatoes and zucchini.
And this little bed has butternut squash and broccoli. 
There's still some work to be done on the beds, the little bed needs edging and more grass patch around the perimeter and I want to get straw down on everything, but for the most part it's done and we need only wait for mother nature to do her thing.
So a few weeks back I was helping Jen turn her first sock heel via Yahoo Messenger (since we live a continent apart and couldn't meet face to face). This worked well enough, especially since she did indeed complete that heel successfully and has gone on to do the second heel un-aided (HOORAY FOR JEN!!) But at the time, I so wished I had pictures to show her what I was trying to explain. So tonight I turned the heel on a pair of slippers I'm making and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get those pictures. I'm still trying to learn how to use this new camera, so the pictures aren't the best, but I think they show the steps pretty well. And bonus, the new camera software lets me put little text blurbs right on the pictures, how cool is that?
So these pictures show how I pick up my gusset stitches and get back into working my sock in the round on magic loop after I have turned the heel. You start by working across what ever heel stitches you have.
Now use the same right needle to knit up one stitch in every long stitch along the side of the heel flap (making note of how many stitches you pick up). Now all my heel stitches and the first half of the gusset stitches are on the right needle. Slide these up onto the cable and prepare to knit the instep stitches that have been hanging out on the back end of the cable while you knitted the heel. The instep stitches are now slid on to the left needle and the right needle is ready to knit them.
Knit across the instep stitches. The instep stitches are now on the right needle. Carefully slide them on to the cable keeping the loop between the end of the first gusset and the start of the instep. It may be helpful to slide the heel stitches onto the left needle at this point, just don't bring them all the way to the tip until after you pick up the 2nd gusset so they don't slide off.
Now using the right needle, pickup one stitch in each long stitch along the 2nd side of the heel flap. You want to aim to get the same number of stitches you picked up on the first side. However, if you don't, you'll just do an extra decrease on whichever side had more stitches. Now you are back to where your heel stitches start. 
Continue knitting across the heel and first gusset without pulling the loop through in between. Your goal is to have your loops at the intersections between the heel and the instep. I find this by far the easiest way to knit a sock, always keeping the heel stitches on one half of the magic loop and the instep on the other. Knit across the instep stitches. Now you are back to the beginning of the heel side. There are way more stitches on this side of the needle than the instep side. Decrease at the beginning and end of every other row on the heel side only until you have the same number of stitches on the heel as on the instep. And that's all there is to working the gussets on a sock. Easy-peasy.
The model, by the way, is the Spa Socks from the Spring 2007 issue of Knit-1 magazine. The yarn is K1C2 2nd Time Cotton (one of the only cottons I can stand to knit with). The needle is a 32" US 8 Susan Bates Silverado. Unfortunately, my US 8 Options are being used for Milan so I had to settle for the Bates. I do like my Bates needles very much, but the cable is far less pliable than the Options and I've become very spoiled these last few months. I think it's time to order some second sets of points in my favorite sizes!
We're back in business with photos. First up, the lovely Gryffindor singles. 
on bobbin. 3 oz nearly fills the bobbin up.
and plyed with dark brown and silver singles. Which do you like? Chuck and I are both leaning towards the dark. He said it makes a nice Halloween yarn. I'm thinking fingerless mitts to wear to hand out treats for trick or treat. At a distance the red and yellow do look rather orange, but up close you see how subtly the colors blend. So pretty.
I'm motoring right along on Milan. Left front done and half way up the right side. 
This yarn is nearly impossible to photograph, though. It's so shiny it just wants to glare, but you get a general idea. It's really pretty in person. The yarn is ever so slightly mottled shades of pale brown.
Finally, a favorite thing. If you listen to Meghan's podcast over at Stitch It, you'll know she includes a favorite thing in every episode. I adore this. It's such a happy positive thing to do. So today, I'm listing one of my favorite things. My Chamilia bracelet. 
Last year I was at the local jewelry store getting my watch battery replaced and started looking around while I waited. Now, I'm not much of a jewelry hound. I've got my few pieces I wear all the time and a few special things I'll pull out for nice, but I don't have boxes full or change my earrings to match my outfit kind of thing. But I was feeling like I wanted to treat myself that day and thought these bracelets were really neat. You start out with the bracelet and can add charms as you go along. I've had charm bracelets before, in fact have a gorgeous one mom had made for me years back. But being a computer worker, regular charm bracelets were constantly catching on stuff or digging into my wrist. But these are different, since the charms are beads, they are comfortable to wear and don't catch on things. I love each charm on my bracelet and they all mean something special to me. Unfortunately, they don't have knitting or spinning charms yet. Pandora, who's charms also fit Chamila, has a ram that is pretty close to looking like a sheep, so that one's on my list.
The Simply Soft yarn came from Knitting-Warehouse on Thursday and I started swatching as soon as I got home from work. I was unable to get gauge for the Flyingdales sweater, but the gauge is perfect for Milan. So Milan it is. The knitting is going very quickly so far. I've finished the left front panel and am a quarter done with the right. The yarn color is perfect, a soft light brown. The yarn tends to want to knot up on itself, I found rewinding the skeins into center pull balls helped with this problem. The yarn is soft and not at all plasticy like some acrylics. Unfortunately, we are having camera problems so no pictures today.I finished spinning the Gryffindor batt from Hanks in the Hood. I spun the whole 3 oz onto one bobbin. I want to ply it with a solid and spun a bit of coffee bean merino and a bit of a pale silver merino to see which I liked better. I think I'm going to go with the darker color. Pictures of the samples as soon as possible. I must say, it felt so good to spin. I've only been able to squeeze in a few minutes here and there the last few weeks. I got in HOURS of spinning this weekend and it was WONDERFUL.Major news this week: Opal, the fantastic German sock yarn company, has announced they will be putting out a line of Harry Potter sock yarns to coincide with the theatrical release of Half Blood Prince this fall. SQUEE!!! Here's an early photo (and there are more pictures here)
I've read the labels may be different here in the states, which would be a shame. But I'm really loving these colors. I HAVE to have Hedwig (2352), Malfoy (2356), and Dumbledore (2357) for sure. At at least $20 a pop, I better start saving my pennies now! More details here.
Well, the counter is officially back to zero (for the record, I reached 107 days). I am indeed a week short of the end of tax season, but I deserved a reward. I FINALLY finished the V-neck shell. For such a small item, it took an obscene amount of time. A YEAR! That's just wrong. I finished more than 20 other projects in that time (mostly socks, but still!) And for all that time, it's not anything extraordinary to see.
I am going to try to learn from my downfall here and stick to yarns I love to knit with. I will try to relegate my cottons to machine knitting or very small projects, like washcloths.
So what did I break the diet with? You are all going to be so disappointed in me. I didn't end up going with any of the superwash wools I was looking at. And I knew better than to purchase any more cotton, no matter how tempting. No, I broke the diet with...acrylic. Caron Simply Soft Heather in Truffle to be exact. With the economy being such that it is, the price was certainly right. A sweaters worth for less than $30. I've used Simply Soft before for a baby sweater that turned out just gorgeous, so I'm confident this will not be a disappointment. My intention was to order it now so I'll have the yarn to cast on a sweater next week to celebrate the end of what has been a most disagreeable tax season. That sweater was all set to be Milan...
But then yesterday, these arrived in my mail box.
Start Spinning by Maggie Casey and A Fine Fleece by Lisa Lloyd. I've only briefly paged through Start Spinning, but it looks like it is LOADED with great information about spinning. The page shots I had seen from AFF looked like it would have lots of patterns to interest me and it did not disappoint. There are lots of cabled sweaters and everything has that simple, classic look I love. I fear that poor Milan has just been ousted by a newcomer...
Flyingdales. It's gorgeous. All cabled on top, roomy fit, and knit seamlessly to boot! I'm in love. I MUST make this sweater. The great thing about this book is all the patterns are designed to use either handspun or millspun yarn. I'm really hoping I can get gauge with the yarn that's coming. I'm not anywhere near ready to spin a sweater's worth of yarn yet. But if the Simply Soft doesn't work out, damn the economy, I'm going to have to find something that does!
I'm still here, slogging away in tax season hell. This was another particularly heinous week and I'm so glad I have the weekend off. Yesterday was bright and sunny, although cold. Dad tilled my garden last week so I was able to get my onions planted. March 29 planting in my garden, that may be some sort of new record for me. It was so nice to get out in the fresh air. I put in 10 rows of onions this year. I planted a variety of sweet onions including Candy Sweets, Texas 1015s and Walla Wallas. Candys have always done pretty good for me, I'm interested to see how the others do. It will be several weeks before I plant anything else out, until it starts warming up some.
I've started a new pair of socks. Another toe up pair, these using the Lime and Violet Sasquatch sock yarn I got last year in a color called Darvoset.
It's knitting up very pretty. I'm also trying to finish the cotton V-neck tank I started last year. Man I hate knitting with cotton. I don't know why I keep talking myself into trying it again. I can stand it for about a day or two, then I just want to chuck it. I'm knitting the neck band now and hope to finish the damn thing this week. Just to be done with it. It actually doesn't look too bad, and the fabric does feel nice. I'm just not happy knitting it.
Which brings me to the new KnitPicks summer yarns. They've got a new yarn called Comfy. It's a cotton acrylic blend that comes in a gorgeous subdued color palette. For a few tremulous moments, my mouse was poised on Add to Cart. Milan would be fabulous in the Blackberry color or maybe Flamingo. But then I made myself remember all my cotton-cursings and stopped myself. The little devil on my shoulder keeps saying, this time will be different. But I'm not letting myself be tempted. At least not until there is some chatter on Ravelry about how this yarn behaves. At the very least, I'm going to restrain myself to one ball the next time I need to order from KP so that I can try it before committing to a sweater's worth. The yarn diet is in the home stretch. Only 17 days to go. Easy-peasy. Although, I must say, it it hadn't been for the wheel and my fiber pimp, opps I mean Jen, keeping me busy, I might have caved a month ago. I'm about 80% leaning towards the Elann Superwash Worsted and 20% towards KP Swish for Milan. It will probably all come down to which color strikes my fancy the day I breakdown and order.
Speaking of my fiber pimp. Check out the new goodness I got:
This is a batt I bought called Cozy Stripes. Jen said it was inspired by a cold rainy day in the mountains and wanting to feel cozy. The colors sure feel warm and cozy to me. Along with the batt, she sent me two test batts of Harry Potter house colors, Gryffindor of course!
I've started on the first batt already. This one had the gold and burgundy somewhat blended together. It's spinning up a bit barber pole, which is really awesome. I'm going to do a whole bobbin and then probably ply it with a black or brown solid single. I'm afraid plying it on itself will just end up looking orange from a distance.
I haven't opened the second batt yet. The gold and burgundy are layered in this one. I'm interested to see how different or similar it ends up compared to the blended batt.
The last few weeks I've been limping around with a sore foot. Being that it's tax season and all and I couldn't take off from work to stay off it, I tried my best to stay off it when I was home. I followed every bit of advice people gave me...ice it, soak it, rub it, prop it up, use heat, wrap it, but the worst was don't spin. The thought was I should keep it elevated and not make it work. My foot was starting to feel better until a week ago we ran into a major computer problem that had me on my feet running from my workstation to the servers (which are located in the basement) for a whole day and then 3 days later another computer issue that had me standing for several hours. Needless to say, all my progress was negated and I was limping as bad as before. So I finally went to see the doctor. Thankfully, there's nothing major wrong. She feels it's either a touch of tendinitis or just an inflammation of the heel. It's just going to take a while to get better. She gave me some anti-inflammatory drugs and gave me stretches to do. I bought some inserts for my shoes that also seem to be helping. But, joy of joys! she told me I should be exercising my foot. Riding a bike is ideal she said since it moves the foot without putting much weight on it. You know what that means, right? SPINNING! Treadling certainly moves the foot very gently without bearing weight. So I'm back to spinning with a vengeance. I finished spinning and plying the rambouillet/columbia roving.
Final statistics: 4 ounces, 271 yds. Even though I spun the singles fairly fine, the nature of the wool resulted in a very springy yarn, lots of loft. No plans for the yarn, as yet. Perhaps mittens or a hat.
I got this bit of excellence from Jen earlier this week.
It's 2 pounds of wool/mohair mill end rovings. I very much desire to spin this into a soft singles yarn (think Malabrigo type). So far, I'm not having much luck. After 2 months of trying to spin as fine as possible, it's really hard to spin thicker. It's like going back to day one of spinning. The thing is, the thinner the yarn, the more twist you need, so it IS actually easier to spin thin. You have more time to draft while the twist is entering the yarn. But thick yarn needs very little twist, so you've got to move much faster before the twist builds up. I seem to be having the best luck using park and draft. This means you treadle until you build up twist in the yarn then stop treadling and draft out the fiber letting the twist run up the yarn. Then you treadle to wind on and start over. But I find the starting and stopping tedious. This was my first attempt, splitting the roving in two strips.
It was EXTREMELY energized when I wound it off. I probably should have left it sit on the bobbin at least overnight, but I'm really impatient. I soaked it in warm water and hung it under tension to dry. It's still very tight and kinky, not the soft fluffiness I'm after. My next step is going to be splitting the roving in 4ths. Maybe if I start out with the roving closer to the finished size, so I don't have to draft as much, I'll have better luck. I've noticed this roving really sheds, I assume that's the mohair in it. I'll have to remember to drape a towel over my lap while I'm working with it.
I finished the handspun socks.
These were knit using Wendy Johnson's toe up sock pattern. The pattern is super easy, although I think they look a little weird laid out flat. They look much better on.
They are a bit on the thick side, but super comfortable. Of course, now the weather is warming up so I probably won't get to wear them much until fall. So I'm left with 3 projects on the needles...the Jaywalker socks, which I seriously don't even want to look at; the chevron scarf, which doesn't thrill me either; and the v-neck shell which has been hibernating for months. I am going to make an effort to get the shell finished so maybe I can actually wear it this spring. I wish I could love cotton more. I love wearing cotton, but knitting with it really just grates with me. I'll probably cast on another pair of socks so I'll have on the go knitting, but I've got to try to finish at least one of these languishing projects.
Back around Christmas, the seed catalogs arrived as usual. I wasn't planning on ordering much since my past experience with starting seeds hasn't been overly successful. Lack of good light and the cool temps we keep the house don't seem conducive to growing seedlings. But while I was looking for the onion plants I wanted to order, I happened upon something that sounded interesting. I mentioned it too hubby and he was more excited than me. So we ordered ourselves a Portabella Mushroom kit.It arrives looking like a big box of dirt (because that's essentially what it is).
You wet one packet of dirt and spread it over the other dirt then close up the box and let it sit for a week.
After a week, we opened the box with great excitement and found this...
Yep, that's moldy dirt. At this point, we moved the box to our basement. Every few days I would mist the moldy dirt and wait for something to happen. After a week, I thought I must have done something wrong because nothing changed. I read the instructions again and discovered I should have covered the box with a plastic bag. This I did. Within a few days, little white bubbles appeared and before long we had mushrooms. (Sorry, missed getting pictures during this period). Now, here we are a month later and we've got mushrooms all ready to harvest.
I'm so blown away. They are awfully crowded in the box and probably won't get as big as the portabellas we get from the grocery store, but still. It's pretty damn awesome to find something you can grow in a cardboard box in your basement in the dead of winter!Oh, and seeds? I did decide to give it one more try after seeing Boogie's post about these nifty little seed starting pots. I planted eggplants and tomatoes. The "greenhouse" is an olive oil jug with the top cut off. I keep it covered with plastic wrap to keep the cats from reaking havoc and keep it in the sunniest window of the house (supplemented by my Ott light on cloudy days). And lo and behold, we have plants!
So far, I'd say 2008 is starting out to be a pretty good gardening year!And now for something completely different...As mentioned in my last post, the prior week was pretty bad. So bad, in fact, I almost caved on the yarn diet. The Milan brainworm is still nudging around and then Elann's newsletter came to my Inbox shortly after I got some money for some yarn and bags I sold. The combination was nearly my downfall. Elann has new superwash worsted wool for $2.38/50 grams! I could get enough yarn for the Milan cardi for like $35. And Merlot or Cape Cod would be just perfect, don't you think? But I resisted. And I'm resisting now, even though I had to click over there to get the link. I'm closing the window now. If it's meant to be, the yarn will still be there April 16th.
A few knitting projects to report on. Here's a cute little bag I made to keep my oil bottle handy on my spinning wheel.
I used some scrap hand dyed sock yarn I had lying around and just made the pattern up as I went along. I also made one of Mason Dixon's felted boxes for my library auction donation. I missed the errata for the pattern and knit nearly a third of the box before finding out they had the wrong needle size listed (they had US10 and it should have been 10MM, US15). So I had to rip the whole thing and start over. 
Turned out great though and it was a fast easy knit. The box is going to be a tea lovers gift basket. I knitted a little mug cozy from some of my handspun.
The pattern couldn't be easier. Cast on enough stitches to equal a little less than the height of the mug. Work a few rows of garter stitch, then work in stockinette (always knitting the first and last 2 stitches) until the piece is almost long enough to fit around your mug. Work a few more rows of garter stitch, bind off, and sew together the first and last two stitches from both ends to make the hole for the handle. I'm not much of a cozy fan, but i do think this is cute and should help keep ones tea warm.
Currently I'm knitting socks. I finished the first handspun sock and love it. I'm well into the second sock. The slightly thicker yarn is making them a fast knit. I cast on another pair of plain jane top down socks, just so I'd have some variety.
These are rovings from CJ Kopec. Oh My Goodness! Words can not express the gorgeousness of these delightful orbs. I heard about CJ Kopec on Lime and Violet some time ago but hadn't really checked her out until lately. Her stuff looked really pretty and I signed up for her newsletter. Last week I got my first newsletter and she announced a new limited edition roving. I HAD to have it. That's the top one in the picture. It's called Cottage Rose and is a BFL, merino and silk blend. It has a gentle shine to it that is just fabulous. The second is Cowboy Chic, 100% merino, very similar in color, but without the shine. Both are 4 ounces of fiber. According to her site, she hand cards them and pulls them into roving as they are ordered. The balls are about the size of a bowling ball! No plans for either at the moment, except to admire their beauty. 
The blankets were all piled up on top of the sofa after we cleaned and he perched himself way up on top. Such a sweetheart.
