The games have indeed begun. Scanning around blogland reveals everyone working very hard. Things are no different in my land of the short people. Friday night, while watching the odd opening ceremonies (with a ReplayTV dictated break for Battlestar Galactica), I cast on for my vest. All 291 stitches worth. That’s a lot of stitches. It became especially daunting that as I collapsed at the end of the ceremonies at MIDNIGHT with all of 9 rows of 1×1 rib knit.
Saturday, we had a visit from wonderful Juno. She so wonderfully bought that extra knitting machine from me, getting it out of my house. She kept looking at my Lendrum Saxony and asked if she wanted to try it out. I even pulled out a big bag of romney roving that was in stash hiding. I think it was only the impending storm that had her leave, but you should have seen her enjoying that wheel. Not to mention the snugglings she gave Sara and Earl. It was a lovely, if too short visit. I hope you enjoy the KM! Bad blogger me did not capture any of the visit with the trusty camera. For some reason, I go pretty dopey during a blogger get together and forget about the documentation. Oh well.
After Juno left, I had some time to myself as the twins were still napping. They went down shortly after she arrived so I got some work done on my vest. It is an easy pattern, well except for the whole fubar number thing for sizes other than small, but I’ve long since memorized Chart 1 and by last night’s primetime olympic events, I was one repeat shy of starting the alternating orange colors. Between the still not quite familiar English knitting motions, and that whole shoveling thing yesterday (18 or so inches) my arms and hands were sore so I decided to take a break before injury would force me from the games.
I am hampered by pinkeye. Blech. Started in my right eye on Saturday. Sunday morning I discovered that I’m one of the <1% of people who have "additional adverse reactions" to the eyedrops and awoke to a swollen eye that I could barely open, even after removing the goo. It is better today, but it has managed to spread to the left eye, which is now presently gooing up a bit. Though Kat might have had a part in the spread as she awoke with a gooey eye, giving us all another day home. Swell.
Anyway, to prevent hand injury, I took a break from the knitting thing and did some spinning. I’d had been fighting the spinning yen since Saturday when I watched Juno enjoy the Saxony. Having washed my hands so many times because of the eye goo situation, they were a bit chapped. I figured grease fleece spinning might be the ideal cure. I pulled out my Suzie Pro, put a chunk of that CVM fleece in a shoebox and set about spinning a handful of locks in 2 hours. Want to see how to make one lock of fleece last for 30 minutes? That line down the center of 
the penny is my CVM single. It probably is about 8 fibers wide. Holding that greasy lock in my hand, with my body warm melting the lanolin was just pure joy. I listened to the olympics and kept an eye on my drafting zone, making sure to take a consistent number of fibers out of the flicked lock.
This is a length I plied back on itself. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with yarn this fine, but it is sure nice to be able to spin my own fine laceweight. I have dreams of knitting an Orenburg shawl. Wasn’t there an Orenburg stole in a recent issue of IK? Now there’s an idea. I have a substantial amount of bombyx silk, bought a pound of it at MDSW a couple of years ago when Little Barn ran a show special that could not be passed up. I could ply this CVM with the silk. Now there’s an idea! I’ll have to figure out where I put the silk to age.
Finally some odd kitten zen for you this Monday morning. The funny little girl was helping me with the dinner dishes last night.
I’m off to watch Lunette learn how to knit on Big Comfy Couch.
Craft on!
