You know what I did. Spinning, mostly. I’ll come back to that.

I’ve been in a special kind of Pattern Purdah pre-Rhinebeck - we are introducing three of last year’s club socks there, so that’s three pattern conversions, from club edition to public edition; a chance to correct errata, make adjustments based on KAL experience, and recast technique material into a different format. Over and above that, there’s all kinds of art to work up - new ads, booth signage, logos and goodies for the Ravelry party, blah blah blah blah.

Tsweater or no Tsweater, Tserf or no Tserf (blessed Tserf!), somehow the work ends up doing what work always does: it expands to overfill the time allotted. And the next thing you know, I’ve gone all absentee-landlord again. Sigh.

The three Tsocks we are introducing are:

• The Iceman Cometh
• Turandot
• The Nine Tailors

All three will be available at Rhinebeck, and then on-line immediately thereafter (that is, immediately after we recover from Rhinebeck!). Note to self: work up web pages for these. And updated Ravelry pages. And new ads. Sigh.

So anyway… my evening off.

Remember this?

Well, a few weeks back I had one of those little… you know… credit card accidents… when the last batch of new Abby-crack (i.e. Abby Franquemont’s tussah silk) became available. Among other things I bought a braid of the colorway called “Tangerine,” because I was pretty sure it was the same colors as the sample I’d been working from when I made the original petting skein.

I love being right.

I’ve been spinning this up in stages, plying it as planned with the nondescript pink, and the other night… I finished it.

The full Tangerine colorway has a good bit more bright orange to it than the sample, so the end result, while still peachy, tends more toward coral, with the petting skein at the light end of its spectrum.

About 720 yards of two-ply silk - 2 ounces. What’s not to love?

Aside from the Usual Learning-Curve Imperfections, only one thing: this is actually several smaller skeins knotted together, because in the early stages I was greedy and impatient and went straight to plying as soon as I had two copps to work with. Later on I got wise and spliced the singles, so the last sub-skein is nearly 300 yards. Lesson learned.

Not a very painful lesson, though. I can definitely do something lovely with this… and I can work around the knots.

Once that was finished and put together I had a brief moment of Post-Skein Letdown, much mitigated by the fondling pleasure… and then I bounced back and turned my attention to this:

That’s the mulberry sliver that Mardi bullied me into buying.

Another heavenly smooth-flowing spinning experience, with an enthralling progression of shades of color. Right now I’m loving this even more than tussah (though that will almost certainly change back again when I re-open my little bag of precious Abby-crack - when I’m not near the silk I love, I love the silk I’m near).

I don’t know what this is going to be. I don’t care. That is, not only do I not know what I’m going to knit with it - after all that is true of most of my handspun to date - I don’t even know what I’m going to do with the singles. There’s only an ounce, so if I ply it against itself I won’t have all that much yardage to play with. And so far I haven’t seen anything else I want to ply it with; that may change (maybe next week!), or it may not. So that jury is out, and it’s welcome to stay out as long as it likes. The spinning is enough.

Oh - there is also a sock.

Doesn’t look too interesting, does it? That’s because I can’t show you what’s on the other side - not until after next week. I have also disguised its true colors; it has to stay incognito for now.

Unmasking at midnight - after Rhinebeck.

Back to work.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Sock Designs, TsockFlock Club, Bloggerei, Spinning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.