96 Yards of Handspun lace/fingering weight

I just finally (I actually finished spinning and plying the yarn in December) skeined up and finished the singles that were left after spinning and plying my Girl Insane top.  The colors in the top were light to medium pinks, shades of grey to black, light to dark purples and white. (Don’t have a picture of the top, so here’s the link to the original listing in etsy: Girl Insane Top.  I split the colors into lights and darks, spun the singles fairly thin (I’m still terrible about figuring out things like what drafting method I used or how many twists per inch etc.) and then plied the two together.  It came out really pretty.  When I was through, I had just under 100 yards of singles left from the dark batch, so I skeined it and finished it tonight – it’s drying right now.  Pictures to follow once it’s dry and I get off my lazy ass and take the pics.

Any suggestions on what to do with just about 100 yards of light fingering to heavy lace singles?  I’m stumped, but this came out so pretty that I want to use it.  I thought about plying it with itself after it finishes drying, but then I’ll only have 50 or so yards and I know there’s not a lot I can do with that.  Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

The Coriolis socks are coming out beautifully.  I’m back on track after the frogging incident and I’m really enjoying these socks.  I’m going to buy the book (I’ve had it out of the library for two renewals now and I don’t want to keep it out of the hands of others who might want to read it) before I leave for CA (on Tuesday) and work on the last sock on the plane ride.  It seems like a good, portable project for the plane.  It’s either that or my Clapotis and that thing is pretty big and bulky for a plane ride at this point.

As for my two baby gift projects:  I’ve hit a wall with the Moderne Baby Blanket as the book is still packed up in a box somewhere in this house (I swear we’ll never be fully moved in) and I was able to find the pattern as a freebie through Ravelry, but it’s a scan of the book and doesn’t include the border, so until I find the book I’m kind of stuck.  I know I could just come up with my own border, but I’m just not feeling that creative with this one.  I draw a blank whenever I try to think of a good border pattern for this…again, suggestions are welcome and appreciated.  The Anouk pattern is coming along nicely.  The baby it’s for is due in July and I’ve got the first half done and am ready to start on the second.  The first went really quickly so I’m hoping the second will be as swift.  These are the only projects I plan to bring on the trip, along with some needlepoint that I’ve been working on for awhile on and off.  I figure if I don’t have many choices I can’t get caught up in “startitis” and might actually finish a few things on time…

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Close only counts in those things, right? Definitely not in sock knitting. I was SO close to finishing the 2nd Spiral Corolis; I was almost done with the leg, leaving me with only five rows of ribbing and binding off. Happy day, I was going to be able to wear them on the plane with my slip on sandals and show them off. Not to be. Well, maybe I’ll still have them done, but this throws my knitting plans for before the trip way off. What is this, you may ask. My abject stupidity would have to be the answer. I just knit along happily, reveling in my ability to knit a pair of socks from the toe-up (or at all) and have them come out beautiful and comfortable as hell; whoever said that custom knit socks feel much better than store bought ones wasn’t just whistling Dixie. The first sock feels marvelous on my foot. Then it happened. I was getting close to the end of the leg portion of the 2nd sock and for some stupid reason I had forgotten to write down the number of rows I used from the end of the heel to where I started the ribbing. I knew basically where to stop based on where the corolis band stopped and I thought I could get out the first sock and try to count from the end of the heel on both of them and see where I was. That’s when I realized my horrible mistake. You see, using the master patterns in the New Pathways book gives you a lot of freedom in choosing things like toe, heel, cuff etc. which is a great thing. My problem, however, was that while working on the heel for sock #1 I used the sl1, k1 reinforcement only for the first part of the heel and then switched over to stockinette for the decreasing. With #2 however, I used the sl1, k1 reinforcement for the entire heel, switching back to stockinette when I started the leg. So here I am with two very different heels which make the socks look very different.
I admit that I thought about continuing on…I’m so close after all…but in the end decided that I had to fix it. So even though it broke my heart I just finished unraveling almost 2/3 of the sock. All I can say is OUCH!!!