Knitting and piecing and knitting and sewing and.........

 The mittens are done!  The fleece was a variety of fawn colours from cream to the almost brown, with hints of grey.   Very pretty and the mitts knitted up easily.  The colour varigation is quite pronounced, although not as much as in the photo.    The recipient didn't mind.   It really didn't take that long to knit either.   The ribbing felt like it took the longest time to knit, although I doubt it really did. I loved knitting with that particular skein because it just worked so well.  It was soft, well spun, wasn't splitty or anything else hard to work with.   It just felt right.

Then I started on these.  Yes, I swatched.. I knit my first ribbing based on the swatch and it was too large.   I took away just a couple of stitches and now it's too small.  Obviously I changed my tension in there a couple of times.   I'm going to rip this out and start again, being more careful of my tension or adding a few stitches and keeping the tension at a bit of a tighter gauge.  As well, it's the Clun Forest fleece which I spun with a long draw.  It's very springy. I've noticed when I'm knitting it that it takes much more tension that most of the yarns I use.  I'll have to take that into consideration as well. 

Finally I realized that if I didn't get off my duff, iron the quilt fabrics, start cutting and sewing, I'd not have the Xmas pressie quilt finished in time.   I still may not as I've no idea how long it will take to machine quilt it when I've finished piecing it.   I had to run out and purchase a new quilting ruler, suitable for rotary cutting.  My old one is 15 or so years old and not only was too narrow but getting rather weary and worn.  I was astounded by the cost...$45 for one 8.5 in x 24 in ruler!   Luckily, it was on sale for 1/2 price..   I'm using one of the speed cutting techniques, cutting long strips,sewing them together in the required order, slicing off pieces and stitching them together to make the correct block.   It's saving a lot of time.   I decided upon a Double Irish Chain, which interestingly, one source commented that it's called an American Chain in Ireland.  I wonder if that's true? 

I actually wanted to use white instead of the beige, but the white I had was too stark.  While I think this beige is too pinky, it looks okay.   I'm piecing it on the treadle.  I know it would be faster going on one of the electric machines, but I'm finding the treadling very relaxing and still getting a kick out of powering the machine myself and not running up the electric bill.

More spinning -  More grey -  Looks exactly like this on the wheel.   While I've loved the end result, a whole pound is a lot of wool to spin.  We've had a lot of grey days and I'm just not appreciating the grey wool right now.