As a warning, this posting will probably be pretty photo heavy. Makes up for the photo-lite posts of last week. Actually, I was a little camera happy and thinking like a good blogger as I busily made my way through a crafty type of weekend. As a change of pace, I think I'll organize as a project history rather than a day-by-day blow as I did mix up the projects through the weekend. There was spinning, knitting and sewing. Lets hit the new kid on the block first:
Sewing
Saturday morning, after picking up the groceries, which as an aside the resident toddlers HELPED PUT AWAY?!?!?!?, we all piled back into the car for a trip to the fabric store. 
Okay, I weaseled out and didn't go to the fabric store, I needed a few other things that I didn't get at Shop-Rite so I opted for the fabric department at Wal-Mart. I picked out some nice fabrics, all pretty colorful and realized that I really had no shirts to wear with them. So I figured I'd get a couple of coordinating summer tees to go with them. The pile on the left is the shirts with the matching fabric to the right. I probably didn't need to buy a red shirt to go with a blue with flowers fabric, but I was on a roll. Saturday evening I was distracted from doing more than laying out and cutting for two skirts by the necessity of having to clean my living room closet/storage room out. Unfortunately the water meter and main shut off valve is only accessible through the back of that closet and my landlords were having some work done. Oh well. I found things I had completely forgotten about and finally trashed some of my ex-husbands old clothes. Incidentally, he moved out in July of 1996 so it was indeed a long time in coming. 
Once the work is complete and I can put things back in the closet, I can store all this year's fleece acquisition, but I digress.
After the twins went down for an early nap yesterday (Baron woke the household by breaking into the twins room and climbing into Kat's crib thereby causing her to scream at 5:30 AM), I got busy with the sewing machine. I opted to start with both the orange/red/yellow multiprint and the deep peach fabric and sewed the two of them piecemeal. I finished the multi first, doing the waist casing, threading the elastic and then excitedly trying it on. That was a mistake. It felt horrid. I didn't like the drape of the fabric, it was too bulky at the waistband and just icky. Sorry no pictures. As a result, I piled up all the fabric, shoved it in the bag and buried it in the closet. I might throw the thing in the wash to see how it feels then and if I still don't like it... tote bag. Incidentally, the shirt was a smidge too snug either so I have to return that. The second skirt is just missing the casing and the hem and living in the closet as well. I have to check the stash for patterns, but I think this fabric is more suited for a straight skirt (or it has way too much sizing in it ergo the fervent hope the wash will help). Ugh. Strike One.
Knitting
I've been working pretty diligently on my Mondo Cable sweater. Friday afternoon on the way home, I ran out of yarn supply while on the train and had to work on the Path Train socks. Good thing I had another project with me as my train was held in the middle of the Meadowlands for about 40 minutes due to "police activity". It turned out that this police activity was because someone had been hit by a train. According to the article, a 28 year old was on the tracks in an area off-limits to pedestrians. This was one stop from mine and unfortunately, curiosity got the best of me and I was looking out the window as we came upon the sheet covered body. This is the second time in the last year that I've seen a body out the train window. For some reason, the hands are never under the sheet. Why is that? {Shudder} Seems this line is known for fatalities and there's a stretch of it that is known as suicide alley. While loss of life is sad, my heart really goes out to the engineers who are operating these trains who have no chance to avoid it. There was an interesting article that I found while looking for this accident, here.
In between other things this weekend, and after the miserable failure of the skirt sewing, I still had time during the nap to go to something I usually had far more luck with: knitting. I pulled out Mondo and parked myself in front of the TV. There was a dirth of anything good on yesterday afternoon so I picked the mindless Bridezillas on WE, unsure of when the twins would be getting up and not wanting to kill something good in the middle. I guess I could have gone with an episode from the newly acquired box set of the first season of 24, but I forgot all about it. As it turns out, they napped 
for 3 hours and I could have watched something far more interesting than psycho brides. I was able to completely finish Mondo. Though I did have a problem with it, pretty much the reverse of Stephanie's. Instead of the armhole being too short, mine were HUGE.
A 9" arm opening is far too large for this little person. I thought it looked a little odd when I was assembling it, okay to be honest, while I was knitting it, but in one of those self-delusions that us knitters are famous for, I thought I was just seeing things, or in the alternative, a good blocking would fix it. Nevermind that it is All Seasons Cotton and that I really wanted to SHRINK it rather than stretch it, that's just besides the point. I will have you know that I did the right thing last night, undid the shoulder seams and ripped down each shoulder piece to a much more reasonable length and redid the shoulder bind off. It was 11:30 by the time I finished that so I didn't re-sew the shoulders and will do that tonight. It does need a light blocking/pressing as the pieces are curling a smidge to the inside so I'll do that before sewing tonight and mondo will finally be done. It wasn't looking good for me yesterday afternoon.
Spinning
I turned to my Lincoln crossX batts and my Hitchhiker on and off over the course of the weekend. Friday night I finished spinning the rest of the second batt. I then had two pretty well matched bobbins of pretty fine singles.
As there wasn't much to finish off and I still had plenty of time before the sandman called me, I popped a disk into the player (Love Actually) and went about plying. Not a bad movie later and I had this:
Plying for two hours is pretty darn tiring, especially when it is pretty tightly twisted singles and you have a single treadle wheel with a 7.5:1 ratio. For those who don't know, the ratio is measured between the number of times the flyer rotates for each turn of the drive wheel. Higher twist + lower ratio = lots of treadling + tired leg. I pulled out the little wpi tester and came away with 16 wraps per inch, or a nice fingering weight. I like to let my newly plied yarn age a little on the bobbin before I skein it up. That's actually a fancy way of saying I was too damn tired of the stuff to skein it after plying for some two hours and let it sit. Yesterday after my lack of success with other items, I went back to something that wasn't turning to sh*t. As I said earlier, I was a bit camera happy, not to mention a trifle pleased with my 364yds/4oz of newly spun yarn. I still have two more 2oz batts to spin up. I think this should be good for a lightweight, smaller FBS.
That's pretty much it for crafting this weekend. One out of three ain't too bad and since one of those is actually improving, I feel much better. The sock, while giving me some fits on the short row heel, which I do have experience with, is progressing. I'll finish the heel this afternoon. I've also pulled Trellis back out of the hold pile and it too is in my bag so that will be my main train knitting again. Didn't do it this morning because it was far too crowded, sock was better for that.
I did some other shopping this weekend and I'll post that tomorrow. Don't want all the goodness today do ya? If you've sent me an email or a comment, I'm a bit behind in answering and I beg your indulgence. With all my crafting this weekend, I opted for a break from the pile of silicon circuits in the corner of my living room.
Craft on!
