Spinning, spinning...

I joined another swap (blush).  I know, I shouldn't have done it, but the swap deadline is before the Olympics start, so I'll be fine.  It's a shawl swap, and I spent yesterday afternoon with pencil and calculator working up the pattern.  I think I have it mostly set at this point, at least enough to get started.

DP said that I could buy yarn for the project (we're trying to tighten our belts currently), but I decided to spin it from some Cupcake Fiber Co batts in stash.  I got 2 oz of two ply spun on Sunday, and I hope to maybe spin another ounce today.  It would be great to get 5 oz spun up...in time for me to spin up 7 more!  I decided that I needed a bit of insurance, and since it comes in 6 oz increments, I had to get another box :)  I'm excited to blend the two fibers:  I'll be doing 2 2oz skeins of each, 1 1oz skein of each, and 1 2oz skein of blend.

I wanted to go with a 2 ply, even though I usually do shawls in singles, because I want something a bit heartier.  If I have any left over, I might even eke out a pair of fingerless gloves, but we'll see about that.  I'm also using two different fiber blends - one blue faced Leicester and one Merino, with the Merino being on the part closest to the neckline.

With these swaps, it's always hard when your partner doesn't give you a lot to go on.  If their likes are just "knitting" and so are their hobbies, what's a person to do?  What I do is pretty methodical, and the closest I'll ever get to my dream of being a private investigator's secretary.  I go through all their posts on Ravelry to see what personal information lies within.  I check their projects, favorites and queue.  I cruise the boards that they're members of.  If they have a blog/flickr account/website, I check it out (unless it's F@cebook, since I'm not on it).  I G00gle them and see if there are any groups they're part of, or if they're in the news.  Usually that nets me enough information to go on.  But you can never tell if that's the real person or just their persona, so I always have that fear that they'll hate whatever I make.

In old business, my swap partner for the GoIaF swap liked her patchwork blanket!  I'd love to make one of them again - you take wool felt, cut it into squares and just seam them together overlapping (thank you Purlbee!).  I added a border and backing to hers so that it would be warmer and able to be used as a ground cover for picnics/fireworks/etc.  She made me an amazing wall hanging that is now over our fireplace.  DP loves it.

Back to spinning!