Short, medium, long

It's been a while since my last post. That doesn't mean there hasn't been fiber work... just that there hasn't been online documentation. I have to admit, it is hard for me to turn on a computer in the evening. I work at one all day, every day, and at night I want to touch texts and yarns and fibers - NOT keys.

But here is an update on a trio of projects.

First, a short project. The orange garter rib socks I started during our Vermont vacation just flew off my needles. Maybe it was that I was using a 2.25 mm needle instead of my typical 2.0 mm, and that the CO number was only 60 instead of 64? Or maybe I just focused on them. Whatever the reason, they were done in 18 days - and then shipped off to Bonny. In and out - I owned that yarn less than a month! This may be the shortest time a new yarn (nor purchased for a specific project) has stayed in my stash. I think she liked them.

Next is the medium project. I had a very atypical week at the beginning of August in which I was alone in my house a LOT more than usual (S1 being at a conference, and the boys being at band camp until 8:30 each evening). I decided to take over the living room and warp my new Flip loom. This time, I put a long warp on, enough for 4 generous kitchen towels. I used the direct warp method, and here is my setup:

As you can see, I didn't even remove the puzzle project from the table. This is the peg end of things. Here is the view from the loom end:

This is 8/4 cotton from my stash, on a 10-dent heddle, which is the only heddle I have for my Flip right now. (I've got a birthday coming up in a couple months, and I'll be asking for the 12-dent!) It seems like a lot of towel patterns recommend the 12-dent with 8/4, but a beginner pattern I found said that the 10-dent heddle produces a flow-y, drape-y towel. Since I had the yarn in stash, I figured it was worth a shot.

I am taking the time to work hemstitch at each end of each towel. Here you can see two hems (in white) with waste yarn between them (dark purple).

I'm just working plain weave on these. It's a nice, relaxing project. So far I'm two towels in.

And finally, my long-term project. Remember this hank of Miss Babs yarn I bought at MDSW in May? This gigantic, 1750-yard skein of FINGERING weight yarn? I bought the one on the left (and yes, that is Miss Babs herself):

It's going to be a Sempervirens sweater for me. It has a lot of different charts and instructions going on at the same time, so I finally made a spreadsheet to help me keep track of what I'm doing on each row. I have my spreadsheet (which is longer than one piece of printer paper) plus 3 charts all arranged on one of my kids' music stands, which holds it all at the perfect height for working on the couch. Like this!

Thank goodness for highlighter tape. This is a slow project - right now it takes me 20-25 minutes to work each row, and I'm not even done increasing on the top before dividing for the armholes. The sweater is worked from the top down, all in one piece, including the neck band. It seems like I've used a frightening amount of yarn already, but I'm trying to ignore that. I do have 3 large swatches I can unravel if necessary.

And that's the short, medium, and long of it!