This weekend I learned that the music of the Grateful Dead is the perfect accompaniment to hand spinning. DH found an old Dead concert on public tv he wanted to watch and I was working on spinning some Easter egg dyed kid mohair for the cover mittens of the new Spin-Off. This is the first time I've spun a yarn for a specific project and the yarn is quite pretty. We'll see if I can get gauge with it...



I took the Aran sandal socks to Thanksgiving at a friend's house and made a mistake so I gave up on that. I thought I'd spin the mohair on my purpleheart Bosworth spindle to give myself something mindless to do the rest of the weekend.



Here are some of the gorgeous socks in the new Katherine Misegades (formerly Pence) pattern book, The Tongue River Farm Sock Collection.







And here's a pair of socks from her previous book A Time to Knit Stockings.

Mittens in the Snow

I have been reading about Christmas gifts in other blogs. While I agree that hand knit gifts are inappropriate for some people (like most of the males in my family), I do give hand knit gifts to those who want them. I dislike knitting on demand so this year I chose a variety of projects that interested me and knit them. Yesterday I divided my gift knitting into three piles for three long-distance girlfriends and their families. Since they all have growing families I have no desire to agonize over sizes so I've made items in a variety of sizes and colors. I'll include a note saying to use whatever they can and give the rest away. This is kind of similar to my knitting box idea.

Last year I didn't have time to give hand knit gifts. Fortunately I found Baltic Shop. If you look under Crafts, then Gloves & Mittens you'll find some beautiful authentic hand knit Latvian gloves for less than the price of a kit to make them. I believe all of them are under $20. I sent some gloves to my mother last year and she really loved them. I may buy myself some Kurzeme mittens one of these days to analyze their construction.

I doubt I'll get much knitting done this weekend. We're going to spend Thanksgiving with a big crowd at a friend's house so I can just sit around all day and knit. Ahhh, heaven. I hope you all have an equally perfect day. Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be back Monday.

The Cormo wool I bought at Taos Wool Festival from Elsa Sheep & Wool (pictured with the t-shirt I bought) is a complete revelation. It is incredibly soft and feels almost as soft as the cashmere I made some Estonian mittens with earlier this year. You can feel the lanolin in the wool and it is so beautifully bright. I feel almost like I'm in love with this stuff and I simply have to buy a whole sweater's worth next year. I'm greatly enjoying doing the Aran Sandal socks from Socks, Socks, Socks with it.



Perhaps all this love stuff is because we saw the movie Love Actually this weekend. Nice piece of Christmas fluff although Colin Firth works for me year-round.



I apologize again for the poor quality of photos for this blog. Santa Claus is getting me a new scanner for Christmas so I can do a lot more up to date photos and show little details better for the blog. So just hold on for a little longer...