Inspiration Finally 'Springs' Up

I guess I have been in the project blahs lately, because all of the sudden the last three days my mind has been abuzz with ideas again.

This lack of inspiration often happens when I am working on projects with a goal. Right now those projects are baby blankets. They are acrylic for ease of care for the new moms, and to help rid my very ancient yarn stash of yet more acrylic. I have only been serious spinning for the last six years, and although the handspun is starting to equal the acrylic stash, I am trying to switch the balance the other way :)

I was at knit group yesterday afternoon, and got a good reminder of why I really only want to knit with handspun. There were at least a dozen of us knitting, and everyone one of us, except one, were using a commercially made yarn. The one handspun yarn glowed like a jewel in that circle, a brilliant purple over gray yarn. We all just kept looking at it, commenting on it, and secretly wanting to be knitting it.

I have not done a major spinning project for six months now. I have been dabbling with the breed samplers, or making yarn for socks. I think it is time to do a couple thousand yards of something. Probably it will be the corriedale roving that I recently got back from the processors. Spinning up three pounds of roving ought to make those yards I need to plan a few bigger projects.

Another source of inspirations came from Charleen in a blog entry this month. She did a dyeing project, that just makes me itch to do the same thing.

And finally I found two books on Saturday at a yarn store, that fit right into and added to the ideas popping in my head. One is Sally Melville's Style In this book, she explores uses for odd balls of yarn leftover. She has a wonderful explanation of using color and lovely patterns for sweaters to knit. Although she uses commercial yarns in her patterns, I know this will be a way to use up those small yardage skeins of handspun that I have around. I did not realize that this book was out of print, and now feel very lucky to have found it. And to compliment this, I found a copy of Alice Starmore's Celtic Knits. Her patterns are complex, knit once in a lifetime type beauties. I dream of spinning hundreds of yards of different colored DK weight skeins, to knit one for me.

That is what makes this a fascinating hobby for me, and one that has really made me set other hobbies aside. As I see more and more people learn to knit (I taught three people to knit yesterday!) and spin, I see my enthusiam for the craft rejuvenated again and again.

CW