Packing For The Weekend

I didn't quite manage to get all my stuff packed for my weekend away before I left for work this morning.

I did, however manage to pack the really important stuff.

Two balls of cerise Louisa Harding Kimono Angora and two turquoise, a ball of cerise Alpaca and a cake of pale pink and white mohair blend.

Anyone want to place a bet on how much of this is in it's current form by the end of this weekend (after two six hour car journeys and with only crochet hooks packed)?

There's a skein of yarn in it for you if you guess right. My choice (won't be nasty acrylic).

You've got til about 8pm on Sunday night (UK time) to get your answers in, and I'll reveal all then.

Bobbin Along

I know it's a terrible terrible pun, but I'm not apologising for it, because it makes me grin, and with the week I've had, that's a much needed thing.

As were these bobbins.

When I first bought my wheel, it came with three bobbins, and I kinda thought I might need more, but figured three was enough to be getting on with. Which it mostly was, for about the first week.

Since then, I've been desperately trying to justify buying more bobbins, and specifically, high speed ones, to help me spin finer yarn.

Typically enough, in that time of self denial, I've slowly developed techniques for spinning fine yarn on the normal ratio bobbins and since they're all full of lace weight singles, it follows that having finally gotten hold of high speed bobbins that I'll have an urge to spin heavier weight yarn.

Since the odds of anyone feeling confident about what I want or need to brave the P&M Woolcraft site to buy me bobbins for my birthday without me knowing about it were fairly small, these were purchased using birthday money. Two were bought using money from my mum and the other one - well the other one is a little bit special.

Since meeting K, my lovely boyfriend last year, I've been welcomed into his family in a way I didn't expect but am extremely grateful for. I was very touched that his parents brought birthday presents for me with them when they came to stay with us a few weeks before my birthday, but was entirely overwhelmed to get an unexpected birthday card in the post the day before my birthday.

I don't tend to get birthday cards through the post so I was a bit curious. It turned out that his grandparents had not only remembered my birthday, but had sent me a birthday card - which was surprise and delight enough, but as I opened it, a banknote slid out into my lap. It wasn't expected, and it wasn't much, but it was almost enough to buy one bobbin and so instead of the two I was originally going to buy, I bought three.

I think they'll appreciate it when I tell them what I used the money for. His Gran crochets granny square afghans despite her sight failing, and his Grandpa was taught to spin as a child by his mother and the last time we met, we had a lovely chat about it.

I've got a plan too. It may not be entirely do-able given the timescale, but I have a plan to spin up some yarn and knit or crochet them both something for Christmas.

Now to find the perfect patterns.

Waving, Not Drowning

I've been dealing with quote a lot of stress lately. Some of it comes from external sources, some from within myself (I'm sure I'm not the only one who beats themselves up for not being perfect all the time).

It sounds corny, but when I think about it, knitting (and crocheting, and spinning), have literally saved my sanity over the last couple of years, and I have a kind of sliding scale of what I can do when I'm stressed.

When I'm ok or a little bit stressed, I can knit. When I'm too stressed, I can't, but I can crochet. When I'm too stressed (or too tired to concentrate) to do both, I spin.

Normally this works really well, and accounts for the vast amount of spinning I've been doing lately, over and above what I'd do just for the love of it, but for the last couple of weeks, my wheel has been broken. The screw which holds the foot pedal post to the ball bearing worked it's way loose, and I didn't want to break it any more, so had to stop for a couple of weeks til I could figure out how to fix it.

This has left me with a bit of a hole in my therapy plan, which I've been filling with frantic crocheting, most especially this current piece, a wavy crochet wrap, using up the other 5 balls of Noro Silk Garden that I bought when I was making Lori's Clapotis.

It's kind of taken on a bit of meaning above and beyond just being a wavy wrap. Every day this week I've been crocheting furiously on the way to and from work, each stitch helping (but not entirely) distract me from the worries that have been crowding in, and as a result, it's become a bit of a monument to my need to recognise that I can't be perfect all the time, and sometimes, good enough is enough.

So although this has so many mistakes I'd be almost embarrassed to show it off to anyone who knows about crochet, I love it, because with each stitch, it helps me keep my head above water.

I'm waving, not drowning.

Honest.

(... and the wheel got fixed last night. Amazing what a little squirt of superglue can do.)