Yesterday, I suddenly realized that it has been a week since I touched my knitting. I sewed some buttons onto the lace sweater on Monday, but other than that I had done no work on knitted garments all week.

That’s partly because my fellowship is ending in a couple of weeks, and so suddenly everyone wants the impossible from me before I go. (No matter how much you plan, it seems this always happens. I’m trying to remind myself that the important things will get done, and the rest…well, the rest will get left for someone else.)

It’s also partly because I’ve been spinning this:

That’s the first of the greens for the fall colors sweater, which is getting ever closer to being ready to cast on. I’m loving the spinning, and the colors are great, but I needed it off my wheel so that I could do a little bit of last-minute Christmas spinning.

Those little clouds of fiber are some of my hand-processed Gulf Coast fleece, which is beautifully soft and fluffy. The bounce in that fiber is just amazing. These little bits of combed top are destined to become a skein of yarn for a very good friend and beginning knitter who was with me when I bought the fleeces. I’m also hoping to get enough for a small skein to send to Shelley, so that she can see the yarn that came from her sheep.

Here’s a sample, spun up in a light worsted weight:

I can’t wait to spin some for myself! Of course, there’s a lot of carding and combing before then, but I think that seeing this bounce might just be enough to get me going on that project again.

And then, Branden gave me an early anniversary gift on Friday. I’ve been working on making my yarn finer and finer in hopes of one day weaving with the yarn I spin, but I’ve been having a really hard time breaking past the fingering weight range on my wheel. I can get a heavy laceweight if I really work at it, but it’s a struggle to keep an even yarn. I’m sure that some part of that is just my skill as a spinner, but some of it is also because of the ratios on my wheel.

Branden solved the second problem by getting me a lace flyer. I’m not allowing myself to touch it until the Christmas spinning is done, but I did spin a few yards of singles, just to see how much of a difference it made.

Even on the “low twist” setting, I’m getting singles that are much, much finer and very consistent. I might just get to laceweight in the new year!