Thursday, July 10, 2008

Itchy with a side of scratched

The wild black raspberries are in full swing and even a little past their peak. This year, our crop has been very nice. So far I've mashed up 6-7 cups of the berries and have more berries waiting to be smooshed and frozen. Mom has made a large and small black raspberry pie (which was wonderful!) and there is still tons left over for jam. Though Mom wants to have jelly so I'm going to have to gather much more in order to have enough. The problems with picking berries are that you get completely scratched up and the mosquitoes love to nibble on me while I am picking. My arms and legs look like I've been climbing through razor wire and that I'm covered in hives. It makes me wonder sometimes if the jam/jelly is really worth it.

Last night, I took benadryl to make the itching stop. Apparently, that drug and I really don't mix. I slept extremely badly and woke up at 3:30 this morning for good. This is going to be a long day, isn't it? Why am I so lucky as to experience non-drowsy side effects when everyone else gets put into a coma by this drug?!

Anyway, in Tour de Fleece news, I've been making my goal of spinning at least 10 minutes per day. Sometimes I've been doing much more than 10 minutes. My lace is getting slightly more consistent though it is still really overspun. I'm going to have to tweak things in order to stop that. There is almost 1/32 oz of Finn fiber left so I should be able to ply the lace up really soon. It will kind of be nice to go onto another project. The Finn fiber is white so there isn't even color changes to keep my interest. I keep day dreaming about which fiber to use next. Maybe I will spin up some of the 100% merino that was one of my first purchases.

I have also been knitting whenever I am not spinning. I've picked up a pair of socks that have been languishing since last October (which is when I started spinning. Coincidence?). They are a pair of gift socks so I really needed to get the recipient to try them on before I did much more. I'm glad that I waited because, when she tried them on, the ankles were a little too tight. I ripped back to the heel turn, added 4 additional stitches and started the leg of the sock in a ribbed pattern. The first 2 inches of the leg were knit on 2.5 mm needles (US 1.5s), the plan is to knit the next 2 inches on 2.25 mm (US 1s), and the rest of the leg on 2.0 mm (US 0s). I didn't want the leg of the sock to slouch so decreasing needle sizes should help. These socks need to be finished by the 12th because the recipient is going out of town (on a Scandinavian cruise) on the 13th. I think that she will need warm wool socks, don't you?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Our berries really spaced out their ripening this year, so we still have a bunch that aren't ripe yet. We've been lucky and have managed to avoid getting covered in poison ivy while picking them, but our luck is going to end sooner or later... so worth it, though!