Joy oh joy

I meant to do post earlier this week, but things got away from me. Mostly my insatiable need to buy a new camera, and it took me many hours of internet research to convince myself that I really DESERVED the very expensive camera I wanted. It's been ordered and dispatched, but will probably only arrive after the weekend, so playing with my new camera will be next week's excuse for not posting.

I traveled to Lisbon for a 4-night long weekend last week, and I LOVE it. What a beautiful city! On the other hand, any place that has blue skies and sunshine will probably get my vote after this past winter, so I might be easy to please. I came away without any sunburn (SPF30 rules) and without any souvenir yarn. The shops were closed for a large part of my time there, so that might have helped to save me from myself.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the Knit Nation programme included some spinning classes. How I managed to ignore that information for so long I don't know. Then I noticed 'bring your own wheel'. My Kiwi is not a travel wheel (especially not on the train, my main mode of transport to London), so I was suddenly consumed by the need for a portable wheel. As luck would have it, someone was selling a second hand Joy on Ebay, which I managed to obtain. It's a well-used single treadle, but it works fine. Not as fine as my Kiwi, but maybe more practice will improve things. Now I am signed up for two workshops at Knit Nation, both the Friday workshops by Judith Mackenzie McCuin.

Not doing much knitting, between sightseeing and internet surfing. I did cast on for the Transverse Cardigan mentioned in the previous post. However, I've been worrying about running out of yarn, especially seeing as I want a longer body than the pattern is written for. Last night I checked Ebay, and what luck, someone is selling three balls of the yarn I need. Because of dye lot issues, I'm planning on knitting the garter stitch sections in the Ebay yarn (if someone does not grab it from under my nose), and because the pattern starts with a garter stitch section, I've frogged the bit I've done to wait for the additional yarn. That's my excuse for not knitting and I'm sticking to it.

I tried some navajo plying tonight. I've tried before, not very hard, but tonight I decided that I really would try and concentrate. I've got some lovely maroon/pink English Wool Blend (Ravelry link) from Spinning a Yarn that I'd like to navajo ply to preserve the colours, so I practised on some undyed Cheviot samples that I spun up on the Joy. Some of it's a bit messy, but I think I'm getting there, thank to the great video from Sarah Anderson. Looks like the weather might be miserable this weekend, so maybe if I stop procrastinating and do all my chores early on, I can spend some time improving my navajo plying, and possible even move on to the good stuff.

But now off to bed. I WILL try and be on time for work tomorrow (unlike all the other days this week)...