Second Verse, Same as the First . . .

Last weekend was my second Official All-Pajama Weekend in a row. And it wasn't even voluntary; I caught the plague from ToolMan. He got a cold that developed into an upper respiratory infection and wound up in the urgent care clinic. I tried mightily to avoid catching it from him, but to no avail. I stayed home from work last Friday, too sick to read or knit. I slept from Thursday night until Sunday afternoon; waking only to take doses of a well-known cure for what ails you:



That's right; the old reliable hot toddy. ToolMan had bought me two of those little airline bottles of Jack, but when they didn't do the trick, I had to send him out for a bigger bottle. I had to get over it by Monday, not because I needed to be back at work but because I wanted to see the opening night of Dancing With The Stars!

Before I fell victim to the crud, I had started my last contribution for the auction for Thomas:



A Faroese shawl, using the Summer Shawlette pattern from Knitting Daily. I used a single skein of Fortissma Socka and had a little left over (I'm saving little leftovers of sock yarn to do a Celestine. The pattern is free at Berroco.com, and they have a crocheted version, too.) The shawl was a quick knit; I had it done in a week and the pattern was really easy to follow. When I took it in for donation, all the ladies in the office were eyeing it and trying it on. I hope it brings a good price at the auction.

After being sick and working on that lace pattern, I decided to tackle something easy. Since I wear so much black/gray/navy blue/dark brown at work (it is, after all, a law firm), I felt like I needed a brightening up of my wardrobe. Sock yarn to the rescue! I pulled out some of my single skeins to knit up some quick scarves for spring accents. This one is a skein of Lion Brand Magic Stripes in "Jelly Bean":



I started in a faggot stitch, but quickly decided that I needed to break up the random stripes, so I frogged it out and started a multi-directional scarf. This one should give a good shot of spring color to my navy blue suit. Next up, is a skein of my handspun in a soft turquoise, and a couple of beautiful hand-dyed skeins from StitchJones; one in "Dusk" and one in "Summer of Love." You can buy from her own site, or from her Etsy shop; the woman is genius with color!

And I spun and plied a sample of the alpaca I bought last year at OFFF. Here it is, still wet, after being soaked, agitated, wrung out, and thwacked.



It's balanced, but by no means as soft as I'd like. The staple on this alpaca is fairly short, only about 1 1/2 inches long, so I spun it fairly tight to get it to hold together. And it still has guard hairs which I had to pick out as I spun. It's hanging up to dry, so we shall see how it looks tomorrow. I think I'll try to spin the next sample a little thicker and see how that comes out.

Whew! I think that catches up on all the goings on here. Now, I think I'll go make myself another dose of that "cold medicine" and toddle off to bed.