Knit 1, crochet 2, spin!
Rox gave me a birthday present at knitting group on Saturday: a skein of KnitPicks colour-your-own sock yarn, another of Wool of the Andes in natural, and some Kool-Aid for dying! Having done some research on various blogs, I think I'm going to try for a long stripes effect, using orange, lemon, and cherry flavour Kool-Aid. Got my Pyrex dish, my microwave, my baster, some glass jars, all I need is a quiet evening to myself. Last week of the month, I'm going to dye! Between the KnitPicks dying instructions, the Knitty Kool-Aid article and the Knitter's Review article I should be set. Pictures to come at the end of the month.
It has sometimes pained my crocheting friends that I refer to their craft as "the dark side" and generally make fun of it. I figured out the cause of this antipathy: craft afternoons at primary school. While many craft afternoons were great fun, teaching us batik, how to card and spin fleece into yarn, and tie-dying, the crochet period was not a good one for me. I was making a small handkerchief holder out of thin blue yarn which had to be doubled, using triple crochet, and doing it before I got my glasses. Before I even knew that I needed them, before I knew that the people on the TV had noses, or any facial features beyond a fuzzy pink splotch, back when I couldn't see across the road, catch a thrown ball, or read anything further than a foot from my face. So I'll relent, and maybe one day I'll even get a copy of Debbie Stoller's The Happy Hooker.
Visited Myer's House yarn store on Saturday and got sent home with a free chunk of fibre. Not yarn, fibre, something from a sheep, cream coloured and soft and decidedly not spun. Double-checked my name is down for the spinning class, drooled over the spinning wheels they have in the barn, and came home with my new fibre, with instructions from the store to "pet it and feed it and name it George". George will be spun on a Cascade Little Si spindle, which will shortly be heading my way along with some dark Coopworth roving from Copper Moose. I have no idea how to turn George into yarn yet, but I'll find out soon.