Spinning posts have been rather sparse lately. I sat down last night and played with this merino/tencel (70/30) top that has aged in my stash. This will be short and sweet.

The Fiber:




The Yarn:
About 32 wpi as a two ply.



The Fabric:

The stitch pattern is from Victorian Lace Today , next to last on chart p. 61. It is true knitted lace as there are yo's in every row.

I have 8 oz. of this top. I'm undecided about the drape of this fabric. When wet, the tencel made the fabric kind of crisp as rayon (and sometimes silk) is want to do. The swatch is about 4" x 6" and even though it's completely dry, it still feels a bit "stiff" to me for a drapey lace piece.

The color....only the fiber photo appears "true" on my monitor. The yarn photo was taken under the Ott Light last night. The finished yarn and fabric are darker than the top. The tencel in the yarn is white and does shine through in the yarn. I'm not sure how I feel about that either.

The answer is 70.32

In preparation for Md. S&W, I decided to inventory the spinning stash last night. Once all of the 'stuff' was hauled out of the closet and bins, scattered across the sewing room floor, ds came to the doorway.

"Wow, that's a lot of..........animal fiber? I was going to say yarn, but there's no yarn there. Where's the yarn?"

Followed by: "So, are you going to knit a........house cozy?"

Very funny, wise guy.

Excluding silk and plant fibers, guess how many pounds of wool/alpaca/cashmere is waiting to become yarn at my house.

I can go to Md. S&W, but I can't buy more stash. Books, maybe...stash, no.

PS: Thank you all for the encouraging comments on the 'Surprise Sweater'......I'll finish it and present it to the parents. But I'm still not big on high contrast stripes.

Ambivalent:
This is the sweater intended for the new baby boy mentioned in an earlier post. I plan to do I-cord around the neck and the buttons aren't sewn in place.

The sweater has sat in a bag for the past two weeks. I just don't like it. Am not sure if it's too stripey or just to much contrast. But it's knitted and I don't have any other ideas for this new baby boy whose parents love team sports.

For the future, I think I'm going to draw up a couple of Baby surprise templates that counts the number of garter ridges and indicates where the stripes are located in the garment for future planning.

Never the less, EZ's Baby Surprise remains a solid baby gift design. I've knitted 5 0r 6 of them over the past few years.

Two more finished objects:



These are the quilts for the high school seniors at church. On the second Sunday in June the quilts are draped over the communion rail and the students come up to the altar with their parents. The parents place the quilts over the shoulders of the student and a blessing is said over the kids and parents as we send them out into the world.

Meanwhile, I just received a phone call that the next new baby arrived...a boy, yesterday (whew! That was close to an April Fool's birthday!). I'm thinking another Baby Surprise sweater in boy colors....maybe even red, black, and white. Depends on what yarn and buttons are available.

So it seems that most of the handwork being done here this week has something to do with kids coming and going.