Catch up on knitting and spinning!

I've been a busy girl lately with knitting and spinning, here's a catch up on my latest finished projects...

First is my Ishbel shawl, which I got the cashmere solid purple yarn for up at a town near Laurie's family's cabin. Ultimately, when I was knitting it I decided that I wanted to do more lace repeats than the smaller size of the shawl recommended. I ended up doing one more set of repeats of the lace pattern than the larger size called for and decided to hold my breath that I would have enough yarn to finish it. Alas, when I was nearing the end, I realized that I did not have enough yarn to finish the shawl and I was either going to have to frog it all back to the extra repeats I did or figure something else out. I figured something else out in the end, when we were in Jerome, Laurie and I found some beautiful 100% silk handpainted yarn and bought it because it matched so well and seemed to be the answer to the problem. It worked out beautifully if I may say so myself. :) The silk adds a bit of weight to the cashmere on the edge and helps to hold the shawl on. I love the two yarns together and I'm excited to wear the shawl out somewhere soon. (Please let it cool off here!) Here are the pics:

This project has been done for a little while, it's the Baby Surprise Jacket that I knitted for my nephew, Paul, who is due late December. It's knit in sock weight yarn so it will be small enough for a newborn to wear, and is also superwash, so it can be thrown into the washing machine. Laurie isn't quite done sewing the buttons on, the pictures show 3 buttons, but there will be 5.

And finally, some spinning...

Here is my very first wheel spun handspun. It's Pagewood Farms, in the colorway "Butterfly". It's two ply (although I had set out to make it three ply - I didn't put enough twist in some of the singles to be able to chain ply it, alas a learning experience!), BFL and it's definitely lace weight or smaller. I still have the second halves of the bobbins to ply up, and then I think that it will be a small shawl (can you see I'm on a lace craze lately?) or scarf. I was thinking of giving it to my mom, but she doesn't have the best track record for taking care of hand knit things, so I'm hesitant to give her a handspun, hand knit item that can't go into the washing machine... Maybe I can spin her some superwash fiber sometime and not feel so bad about it's mistreatment. I ended up running this skein through the wheel a second time to add to it's plying twist, it looked barely plied when I was skeining it and I'm glad I added the extra twist because when I soaked it and lightly thwacked it, it has come out just slightly unbalanced, leaning toward under-plied. It is beautiful :)