Knit One Below... Great Book

I saw the book Knit One Below (rav link) on a ravelry post about the best books published in 2008. Being the craft book person that I am I gave the list a perusing and found this one on the list. I hadn't heard of it before and thought hmmm, I will have to look that up at some point and see what it is all about. Well, then the next time I was in Barnes & Noble there it was on the shelf! I looked at it and was fascinated by the technique that is used for all the projects throughout the book. Most of the projects looked pretty straight forward and I decided that I really wanted to try out this technique. It also didn't hurt that I had a coupon to use. What is really fun about it is that it makes vertical stripes of two different yarns through your whole piece. Without intarsia or fair isle or slip stitching. Once I got the hang of the movement it was really fast and fun. After I got back with the book I quickly picked out a couple of stash yarns and set to work on a vest. I finished the vest the other day and today tucked in the ends and it is currently blocking. Yeah!! I can't wait to see how it looks on my daughter once it is dry. Maybe she can even wear it to church on Sunday given that we are evidently forecasted to revisit winter this weekend around here. The other nice thing about a lot of the projects using this technique is that they are reversible with both sides having a really cool look to them.

Back to the Blog...

Well I know that it has been forever since I have posted anything but I want to try to get back to it.

I don't know if it is the weather or what, but I have been suffering from major craft ADD. I seem to bop from one project to the next and then to another whole craft and back again. Luckily I have been getting things done and making real project progress. So why haven't I been sharing any of this? Well good question...

My main project today has been some test spindling of some alpaca that I have to see how I would like to spin it and figure out what kind of prep work it is going to need. It is from a mixed bag of raw alpaca fleece that is a couple of pounds and then some. I am planning for sure to spin it dirty and so far this spins pretty nicely.










I also have some of my very first corespinning to share. I have been wanting to try this technique for a while, but for some reason I find it intimidating. So the other night I got a wild hair and just did. This is what it looks like now that it is has had a bath and then dry. I am mostly happy with it, but I can tell some practice will also really help me out. I don't like the bumpiness it has in sections. I wish that I could get the whole spin to be even and totally smooth but still poofy. That is what I love about other people's corespun that I have seen. I think that this is destined to be a hat of some sort as the yardage is around 70 yards.