Lazy Labor Day

The spouse and the manchild are at the neighbor's wood shop for the afternoon, so I have the house to myself. Bliss! Today I'm knitting because every muscle I use in spinning is killing me.

I've knit a tiny bit more on the lace scarf. This is for the spouse, who is unfortunately allergic to wool. The scarf is to see if she reacts to alpaca too. I hope not, because it would be very nice to knit something for her in something other than acrylic! I have had many people tell me that most people who can't wear wool don't have the same reaction to alpaca and llama. We'll see. I've heard about the "magic" of blocking when working with lace, now I can kinda see why it makes such a huge difference.



The is the Fair Isle bag I've been working on for awhile. Also my first attempt at Fair Isle. This is the project for a class I took at http://amazing-threads.com another LYS that I like. It has yet to be blocked and there are about 4,638 threads to be woven in yet. Then I make a cool twisted cord that is used for the drawsting. The pattern is an adaptation of one that appeared in Knits
magazine (http://www.interweave.com/knit)
several issues ago. My teacher rewrote the pattern so it could be done on circular needles rather than straight, which seemed to be a definate improvement on the original pattern. I love the colors in this bag, which is why I took the class. (Must have this bag.) The little spots of white on the photo are little dapples of sunlight, I didn't accidently spill bleach on it or anything.

I'm also working on a pair of socks for the spouse (acrylic, of course). Does anyone know of a good cotton yarn blend suitable for making socks? I've tried Cascade's Fixation but really didn't like the way they turned out at all. To thick or something. They were just weird. Surely there's got to be a decent all cotton or cotton blend sock yarn that doesn't have any wool in it. If not, there's a MARKET out there people!