2-ply | Lucymade

Well, hello there, unintentional month-and-a-half blogging hiatus. February was rough, yo. I think I was sick for the last month and a half, which isn’t pleasant in the best of weather. But here north of Boston, we have many feet of snow, which has pulverized our public transportation system (aka how I get to work every day). Not feeling well + commuting for several hours a day on crowded trains with cranky fellow commuters has left me very tired at the end of the day, so much so that crafting hasn’t been my number one priority.

To be completely honest, most nights I watch Jeopardy and then go to bed.

I did spin a little, turning this delicious Malabrigo Nube braid into 324 sproingy yards of delicious sport-weight yarn.

The braid itself wasn’t the easiest spin. The fibers seemed very compacted, so it was difficult to pull apart and each piece needed to be fluffed a bit before spinning. I was going for a slightly thicker spin (than my usual super thin) and I’m very happy with the finished product.

But! It is now March! We’ve gotten through yet another February and Spring, the most wonderful season, approaches! Already the light is returning and days are noticeably longer. Now for temperatures to rise above freezing and the snow to melt (also, for the storm scheduled to dump more snow on us tonight to not dump as much snow as predicted).

And it being March means that the wedding of my dear friend S is a little over two months away, so I better bust a move on the HST Chuppah. Today, I sewed all the HSTs and started trimming.

I’d really like to finish this top by the end of the month, so for a bit of motivation, I’m making this my March ALOYF goal.

Here are my handspun Rye socks, finished on a day that looked like spring finally gave winter the ol’ boot. And then it snowed two inches this morning, because clearly we need more snow.

Rye is a free pattern from The Simple Collection, and it made for a quick, easy knit.

The yarn is Crown Mountain Farms Superwash Merino, spun 2-ply during my time in Oklahoma. I love seeing the colors transition and blend, and I am especially fond of that bright yellow stripe across one foot. When I spin, I dislike plying colors opposite each other on the color wheel (for example, plying green with purple) because it muddies the colors, but I really like the effect with complimentary colors.

I did have an issue with pesky ladders on the first sock, but I mostly solved that by moving stitches between needles during the garter stitch section to break up where the break between needles happened. It was a little tedious at first, but I got into a rhythm by the second sock. This might be a pattern better suited to being knitted on one or two circular needles so that the breaks can happen in the stockinette section instead of the garter stitch section.