Something new

My plan this entire week was to take pictures of my knitting today, and wouldn't you know it, I wake up this morning to rain. Not just sprinkling rain, it was torrential downpour type rain accompanied by house shaking thunder (our house is on pier and beam...so it's a little bit easier to shake). There goes my lighting. But, I will take pictures today. I am tired of not having pictures of my knitting. I have 5 WIPs (yes 5, and yes, I have absolutely lost my mind), and all of them need pictures. I also have two FOs that need pictures, but I may wait until a sunny day to do that because lets face it, pictures of FOs need to be perfect. Its been a couple of hours since the rain has stopped, so I'm waiting to see if a little sunshine pokes through this afternoon. If not, you will have cloudy, poorly lit pictures of gorgeous knitting.

I'm going to wait until I have pictures to talk about most of my WIPs, but I have one that I can't wait any longer to talk about. Since Anne linked to my blog when she was talking about it, I figured now would be a good time. So, here goes...
Tuesday the (12th) which just so happened to be my birthday, I checked my email to find one waiting from Anne asking me to test knit her new Pave Sock. This was one of the best birthday presents I could have gotten. I immediately replied that I would. Seriously, it's one of Anne's patterns, I would have said yes even if she emailed me asking if I would test knit a doggie doo themed sock (although I might knit that for the novelty of it). Fortunately the Pave Sock is far from doggie doo, it's the same stitch pattern as her Paris-Roubaix set. I spent most of that day at work thinking about what yarn I would use. It was a toss up between two of Sunshine Yarns colorways: Gillyweed and Snape. I'm sorry I can't give individual links to each of them, they are both sold out on her site, and you can't click on the pictures of sold out items. They are both about halfway down on the first sold out page. I finally decided on Gillyweed because the waves in the pattern sort of reminded me of seaweed, and I love green. Plus, Anne was using a blackish color, so I wanted to use something completely different. When I'm looking for a pattern, I love seeing it knit in lots of different colors, it gives you a really good idea of what the pattern will be like. Anne started knitting it much quicker than I did (I swear, she must knit at the speed of light), and she realized that the stitch pattern turned out completely different than she thought, beautiful, but different. It really doesn't look much like the Paris-Roubaix set at all. Its much tinier, which you wouldn't think would make a difference, but it did. We both did some knitting and comparing. She ended up reworking the stitch pattern to get the same effect as the Paris-Roubaix set, and now there are two patterns. You can read more about it in her blog post for today (she even has pictures). I am knitting the reworked one that isn't so tiny, and Anne is knitting the tinier version.....actually, she is probably knitting both. I will keep you updated (with pictures) on my progress. I promise, if I only take one picture today, it will be of the Pave Sock.

Now, for something completely new, I've decided to try my hand at spinning. I've been wanting to for a while, but I've been too intimidated. Mike got me a learn to spin kit with a drop spindle, roving, and a book on learning to spin for Christmas. It sat on my shelf taunting me for a month or so before I finally decided to just do it. It's been....interesting. I'm really awkward and I get really frustrated, but I do have some some lumpy twisted up fiber on my spindle which I think counts as yarn, so I guess I'm learning. Of course awkward and frustrated did not stop me from buying these gorgeous spindles. And I joined Spunky Ecletic's fiber club to keep myself inspired and stocked with roving. I'm having trouble with drafting. I feel like I'm doing it wrong, but I guess I could be doing it right and I'm just not used to it. Any advice or links are appreciated along with links to gorgeous roving.