Two steps forward, five (or is that six?) steps back...

Yay! I finally got a skein of the purple wool done. Just goes to show that to-do lists can be fun! That's what I'm doing right now, you see: working through my to-do lists. Yes, spinning and plying the purple yarn is on there. Or was, anyway. Now they're off and knitting the purple yarn is on. Two steps forward one step back, hmm?

I'm pretty excited about this purple yarn. It's not anything terribly exciting to look at, no, but it is the first yarn I've ever spun with a particular purpose in mind. In fact, it's the first yarn I've ever spun with any intention of using it at all. Most of my handspun either goes into a bag and is promptly forgotten, or goes into a basket to be slept on by the cats. Every once in a while I dig through that bag and discover things I didn't want the cats to get at, like these things I found today while hunting for my niddy noddy:


I think I intended to ply the green with a chocolate brown. Mmmm, more chocolate yarn! Didn't have any plans at all for the blue - it was a really pretty sliver that ambushed me in a yarn shop in Victoria while I was there with Ron and Mom a couple years ago. I'm such a sucker for topknots of unspun fibre. All the pretty colours - how could I say no?

The wine coloured skeins were some absolutely delicious uncarded stuff that my friends Chris and Lisa brought me back from the Spinners' Retreat... geez, maybe five years ago now? I loved spinning that yarn - I didn't card it or flick it or anything, just teased the soft and silky locks open a little bit and spun them up into lumpy and bumpy and twirly stuff, then plied it with a really fine commercial 2/32 wool to stablize it without covering it up. Seeing as how it's plied already, I think I'll use it as an excuse to buy this book or perhaps this one, both of which I saw for the first time on Sunday at the Unspun Heroes' spin- and dye-in at CBU. And of course then I'll have to knit it up into something too...

More stuff for my to-do list! How many steps back is that now? I've lost track, but who cares? The trick is to keep filling the list up with stuff I want to do so that I can feel that satisfying sense of accomplishment as I tick things off, even if I never do get to those bits I'm avoiding...