New Year, New Technique

I'm learning to spin beads into my yarn. You can barely see them in there, but they are the little clear flecks. Only one is really in focus, but one or two more are slightly out of focus at the bottom of the picture. I'm spacing them about ever 12 - 18 inches. I am absolutely loving how this yarn is coming out! This is one of my favorite things that I've worked on. The roving is 70% Merino, 30% Tussah silk, color way Seamist, through Woodland Woolworks. I got a luxurious 8 oz of this stuff! I spun up 2 bobbins, probably about 2/3's of the fiber, so work the beads into. The beads are strung on a chocolate brown 100% silk sewing thread. They are size 10 seed beads. The yarn has a gorgeous texture and is a dream to spin. Love! Depending on how much I get, I think this is going to be a really airy, drapey scarf. Big needles, US 10 or 10.5 and just a little bit of openwork. Something really simple. I'll show you more pictures when this one is done.

In knitting news, I finished my Oblique sweater. It's fantastic! This was such a fun pattern to knit and went relatively quickly, when I was focused on knitting it. The back took about a week, each sleeve probably took 3 days of knitting and each front took 2 - 3 days of knitting. So I could have finished this within 3 weeks. But instead, I ADD knit it and was distracted by 2 pairs of socks, a baby hat, a baby sweater, a crocheted afghan, a knit baby afghan, and 2 shawls. And only 2 of those previous items are actually finished. Oy. I need someone to control me. I need to do a great big update on knitting, but the weather hasn't been cooperating. See: http://www.union-bulletin.com/local_news/
We came through the storm just fine. Lost power for 25 or 26 hours, and lost our car port roof and my greenhouse. But no major damage. Many, many people were not so lucky. It's devastating to drive down the streets in the older parts of town. There are 200 year old trees there that came toppling down with these winds and they did an impressive amount of damage. I've heard reports that individuals with weather stations on their houses clocked wind gusts up to 85 MPH, but the official report is 78 MPH. Of course, that 78 MPH gust took out the power to the official weather station, so we don't know if it got any worse. All in all, Friday was a pretty rough day for many in my county. There are still a few areas without power, but most are back up now.

Anyway, once it clears up and life settles down a bit (hopefully this week) I will be taking many pictures to share. Lots in progress to update you on! And the super secret sock pattern is about half way done. I'm at the directions for the heel now and... Well... I know what type of heel I used, but I don't really know how to write it out so it makes sense. So we'll see what I come up with. I'll figure it out sooner or later!

Have a great night, all!