Heads or Tails

The start of my Azalea shawl out of my handdyed two ply silk.

So, as you might have noticed, I have an awful lot of stuff going on with all my projects right now. Between the two wheels, and my spindles, not to mention the bagillion WIP's that I'm knitting right now. I've been splitting time between work, home and my BBE's house for a while now (almost a year actually!). My wheels are at home, and I always have at least one knitting and a spindle project that I schlep around with me to work on when I'm not at home, so I've been doing a lot of spinning at home - which works nicely except that I tend to do most of my crafty work at home, and have been feeling like I'm not getting much done.

I decided to try to mix things up a bit, and when I have the time to get a little work done bring it on in more of a random mix. So after dinner I've been flipping a coin - heads is knitting, tails is spinning. Then if I get heads I further refine my choices.... For a knitting night I flip again with two projects in mind - new project/old project. For spinning it's big wheel/small wheel.

Well, the last 4 nights in a row have been knitting. How does that happen? Ask any mathemetician it is not probable. Apparently I should have been able to do a bit of spinning done since last Saturday!

But I did finish my P90!! Whoohoo, finished objects are so good.

I also started my Azalea shawl (pictured above) out of my handspun rainbow silk, which I'm liking very much so far. The coin has fallen to the Azalea shawl for the last two nights.

I mentioned that I've done this shawl a couple of times already, and I'm finding it very soothing. I like the pattern (obviously, this is the third version!). I love the symmetry, I love the look of the flower petals radiating out of each other. I love the general flow of the pattern. It is very intuitive, I don't have to concentrate too much on it, and it just comes out looking very pretty. Other bloggers have called it mindnumbing - but I like mind numbing - bring it on!

If I ever get to spin on my Joy again I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and spin up the merino tencel blend that I dyed the other night. I had been thinking that some kind of orangey rosey colour to go with the other two bobbins that I spun last week? I think it was last week anyway - time is flying by these days - I'm so busy I don't have time to think straight half the time.

Anyway, when I was dyeing this I just couldn't see the yellow tones that I wanted, so I added some straight dye powder into the mix. Hung it up thinking, it'll work out ok - well, when I got home the next night this blinding brightness greeted me from the shower. I still think it will be alright. It will definitely be interesting! I'm planning on spinning it a bit finer than the other two bobbins, if of course I ever get to spin on my Joy again. And hey, at least it's not all blue all the time!

I had a comment on my last post from Tallguy asking if I could name the flowers that I post on the bottom of a lot of my posts.

I take a lot of pictures on my walks - it brings me a lot of joy. I've found myself looking at the world in a whole different way since I got my camera. I really enjoy taking pictures of things I find pretty! Does it detract from the image that I capture that I don't have a name for it? The obvious Shakespeare quotation comes to mind...

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

I will try to let you know what they are from now on - but there are a lot of them that I just don't know - the best I can come up with is wildflower for the one pictured at the bottom of my P90 post. The one before that was some wild irises and a rose - but those are pretty obvious.

This one is a macro of a Lychee - we have a tree right by work and I got some nice shots of some ripe ones that had fallen off the tree. Very evocative of the Merino Tencel that I dyed the other night.