I am completely smitten with freeform lace crochet (see this book).

I was hesitant, as I am not really that good at crochet, but I don’t need to know what any of the names of the stitches for this, so I am fine.

(I swear the same stitches have different names in different places, and they don’t all define everything, but don’t listen to me I am just bitter)

The other exciting thing is that I am not sure I could come up with a better combination of yarn and technique than Noro kureyon sock yarn and this, and just look at it:

I am liking this so much; it is much more fun than counting and reading patterns.

I think I may like to stay in this newly discovered crafty country for a while and see where the randomness takes me.

I am so very smitten with my yarn and my spinning and my wheel.

This is the alpaca I wanted to spin, and I wanted to have a yarn kind of pull up from a ball something like this when it was being plied, but when I started touching the fibre it seemed too loose and liable to pull apart to do that with, so I spun it in a thick and thin single:

But I felt that leaving it to untwist as it went back through the wheel it would fall apart, so I wanted to ply it with something to help it stay together. I raided my stash and came up with some brown Sisu from some gloves I knit my mom about five years ago:

I am running out of Sisu, so I will have to find some other brown yarn and just hope it isn’t too different, but how could one not be proud of oneself to have created this:

My mind is running a mile a minute trying to figure out what I want to do with it. I am thinking it would be fun to knit it all on one size of needles, but switch to larger ones for the bulky sections. I figure that would make a really textured knit, but the only problem is that you would almost certainly need to make it into a scarf — surely I can come up with something more exciting than that.

Here are my newest gloves in an almost completed state:

When I submitted Gloves Can Be Deceiving to Knitty Amy asked me for pictures of the gloves in the process of being sewn up, but I didn’t have any (I didn’t have a digital camera, so I didn’t document every aspect of my life as obsessively as I do now), so I didn’t want to let the opportunity to pass this time.

I am very happy with them.

I spent my day off this Monday (happy Saskatchewan day to one and all) writing the pattern out, so I hope to make it available in a couple weeks. I have the seamed version now and I plan to do another version knit in the round.

They really do help you channel your inner princess, and I anticipate being very grateful when they meet my three-quarter length sleeves in the middle.