Auntie Em, Auntie Em!

Well we have survived the crazy weather we've had down here in SC and GA this weekend. Saturday night there was a huge storm and a bunch of tornados touched down and did a lot of damage. Our house had zero damage, while many not far from us had trees through their roofs. It's amazing how powerful and how precise wind can be. Gail had a small tornado touch down right next to her house and tore down part of the fence, but didn't even loosen the vinyl siding on the outside walls.

But that's over and done with, moving on to wooly things!

All but one of my awaited packages have arrived, and I've already gotten started on them.
Behold, the wonder that is pure undyed merino top from Hello Yarn. A whole pound of it (with my average-sized spindle thrown in for reference). I actually spread it out on the floor and layed down on it. Well, I was mostly letting it air out, but I really wanted to lay on it.

I started spinning some up for Urchin, a hat from Knitty.com, but I've stalled on that since it turns out that spinning a lumpy yarn on purpose (at least for me) is harder than you'd think. Also, most of my practice yarns have been on the thin side, and I'm not used to letting a lot of fiber in at once. Oh well. Need more practice.

I also got 5 skeins from KnitPicks! The 2 on the right are undyed sock yarn, and the 2 on the left are undyed laceweight.

There's another skein of laceweight that I've already wound up and cast on for the Forest Path Stole. 10 rows of seed stitch take kind of a long time in laceweight.
Last week, Tita and I went to our LYS to cash in our store credit, and I used mine on 7 balls of Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Patine` for Blissful, a halter top from Stitch n Bitch Crochet.

While I was waiting for my packages, I didn't have a whole lot of knitting to do, but one thing I did do was a lot of swatching and experimenting. I decided to knit up the little bit of yarn I spun from the surprise Christmas fiber. I'm really digging the brown/grey/yellow portion, it reminds me of birds. I think I would name a colorway like that "Falcon."

Gail's computer was dead when I went over there today, so I didnt' get my fix of blogs and podcasts. Off to remedy that now!