I made the mistake of taking a Claritin-D last night. I was careful by checking my blood pressure before and an hour or so after taking it. No increase in my BP. So far so good. But 4 hours later, I woke up and wasn’t able to go back to sleep. I was wired. BP still good, but couldn’t relax. I had forgotten what the extended pseudophedrine does to me.
So what’s a girl to do? Go to her spinning wheel and experience a little zen.
This is “The Beat Goes On” colorway (discontinued) from Crown Mountain Farms. I sort of followed Teyani‘s directions for spinning the fiber, with one difference. I broke the roving into approx 10″ lengths. I ended up with approximately 60 lengths each of light and dark. I’ll be spinning 20 lengths of each onto 3 separate bobbins for a 3 ply yarn. The singles are approximately 40 wpi.
Isn’t it pretty?
And you know what? It worked. My body and brain settled down enough 90 minutes later for me to head back to bed for another 3 hours.
Oh, and you see that bit of fluff where the red arrow is pointing? It was a tip I picked up at SOAR. Remember my complaint of the rattle with the new WooLee Winder? It turns out that it’s because of my spinning method (semi-long-draw). When the tension is taken off of the spun fiber for drawing in, the mechanism has a bit too much play and rattles. By tying a bit of yarn around it gave it just enough cushion to muffle the rattle. It still rattles a bit, but no longer as annoying as it did before.
By the way, look at this! See all those tick marks? Yup. I’m 3 squares from finishing the body of the sweater. I was hoping to finish it by 2008, but I’ll have to settle for finishing the body by 2008.
I think I will seam it up and work the neckline and waistband before starting the sleeves. That way, I’ll know exactly how much of each color I have remaining. I’ll work the sleeves in stripes instead of squares, as shown on the book’s back cover.
The colors are approximate and not exactly me (except the purple, which I bought later when I decided to work this sweater). They worked better for my stepmother, for whom I picked the yarn out for. But it should be a nice cozy sweater for wearing around the house or walking the dog.
To close, here’s a picture of the finished fingerless gloves. As I said earlier, they are dense and warm. A little bit of all the colors in the repeat shows up in each glove to make them definitely fraternal, but not identical. I like.
P.S. I finally signed up for Ravelry. My screen name is FiberMusings. Now I can see what the fuss is about.