I must confess to a loss of knitting mojo. I'm suppose to be working on the socks for DH, but each stitch is excruciating right now. I'm very much a "in the mood" type person and am just not in the mood to knit right now. Socks that should be done in less than a couple of weeks are dragging on for months and months. So, admitting defeat for the moment I pulled out a skein of my own hand spun, hand dyed silk-merino and balled it up to crochet. Ok, that's not entirely accurate. I pulled out the skein and attempted to wind it into a ball. Lacking a simple tool that I thought I didn't need, a yarn swift, I placed it on my skein winder with the intention to ball it. Somewhere early in the process it twisted making winding impossible. In the process of untwisting it on the winder, it flipped off and tangled up into approximately 500 yards of beautiful, soft blue knots and tangles. What was suppose to take 5-10 minutes tops to turn into center pull balls became a week of frustrating knot picking. This skein evidently loved to be tangled and knotted as it fought the un-knotting process through the whole 500 yards! This has happened to me before and I've always put it down to beginners bad luck. This time I believe the knitting deity was a bit miffed at me for planning to crochet instead of knitting. Yes, I am buying a yarn swift. Soon. Before I wind another skein into balls to be sure. Hopefully this will prevent another week of madness and desperation around here. As you can see from the pic, I did manage to get the ball(s) made and started in on the 4 Generations Shawl from a recent issue of Spin off. I'm not sure if I've got the pattern right yet as I can be a bit dense about these things sometimes, but I'm making some progress any way. The first part of the shawl is done in the round until it is a comfortable length. At that point it's folded in half to create the semi circle and then the lacy part begins. I'll work on this until I'm insane from the ever increasing rows....then I'll start knitting the socks again. ;) It's always good to know you're limits and plan for them. lol There hasn't really been much going on here in the fiber department until recently as I've been busy in the garden and with Tucker. Things will take a different turn now though as my stash has increased violently and I need to get some fiber cleaned and put away. I'm hoping to be able to dye some soon as I feel that itch coming on too. There's always so much I want to do, and so little time to do it, which certainly keeps life from getting boring. I hope all is well with the group!