So much time, so little accomplished

For a long weekend I got remarkably little accomplished. I started the Knitty French Market Bag in order to have something to knit in yarn big enough to see without extra magnification. I've only gotten this far so it's not really worthy of a photo yet. But I'll go ahead because it does show the pretty yarn. I hope some of that heathering will show in the final felted version.

That's a set of caesin needles. Which I'm glad I bought, because the dog apparently thinks they taste yucky so she only put one tooth mark on one of them. Unlike the bamboo dpn in my Inside Out socks which she splintered into many little bits.

I got a little further with the Inside Out socks out of Monsoon from the February (yes February) kit from the sock club. I still haven't knit up everything I ripped back yet but so far I'm still getting stripes not pooling. I hope that will continue and that I have found the tensioning trick and can remember to use it consistently. In case the info is needed by someone else, the only way I can get gauge (or close anyway) is to force myself to knit tightly. Even using 000 needles I could only get 7.5 stitches per inch, not 8. So I changed how I hold the yarn. Normally I just wrap around my pinkie and that works ok.

But I couldn't get gauge like that for this pattern with this yarn even going down to 000 needles. For these socks I found that if I also wrapped around my ring finger I could keep the yarn tight enough to get very close to gauge if not right on it.

It makes it harder to knit and slower but I'm getting gauge - or close enough anyway. Anyway, hopefully that might help someone else sometime. Yeesh my hands look horrible. I'm not really a scullery maid. I just apparently have her hands. (I wonder if she'd be willing to trade back?)

I also managed to find a scrap of white wool and make a tail for my sleepy sheep. But a photo of that would just be gratuitous cuteness so I'll stop myself. For now.

Oh and some spinning got done. At least half of this was spun well over a year ago. I finished it up over the course of the last month and plyed it up this weekend. The grist of the singles is all over the map because I was using this to try to teach myself how to spin the size yarn I wanted not only what the wheel would let me have if that makes sense. It's a mystery fiber that isn't as glossy as it looks in this photo.
This was spun on my Columbine but plied on my Jensen Tina II wheel. And I was quite sloppy about the plying because, really I just wanted the Columbine bobbins for the luscious brown wool I'm spinning on it. I have no idea how much this weighs or how many yards there are. It is in three skeins because there were intervening bits of other stuff (I have no idea why about that either at this point - last week is already out of active memory stores, let alone last year) which I didn't want to just ply in. Anyway, I dunno that I'll ever use it for anything. I don't find the color particularly appealing. That's fairly close in the photo there. A bit more mauve and less lavendery I guess I'm just not a mauve person. Which begs the question, why did I buy this roving in the first place? I have no idea.

And in further annoying dog tales, she's eaten the longest magnet for my chart keeper. I have no idea so far how much of it actually entered her system vs just getting chewed up but I'm starting to get a bit annoyed about how every freaking thing has to get chewed. None of my other dogs were this bad. Even the one who chewed an electrical cord (and miraculously was uninjured) didn't chew everything he could get his mouth on. It also turns out that there is still a piece of felting needle missing. She's not acting like it's in her system but I may have to take her in for an xray soon if I can't find the needle bit or the rest of the magnet. Stupid dog. Good thing she's so cute.