Lessons learnt

This weekend, we learnt not to soak the invading Ginger with water when our cat Charlie is watching. Otherwise, when Ginger turns tail to run away our normally passive, sweet natured cat will take this to mean that he's scared him off and leap on his rival, starting the fight you're trying to prevent...

*sigh*

Much blood and fur later, Charlie limped back into the house and spent the rest of the evening being quiet. This morning he seems no worse for his experience. I'm hoping the same can be said of Ginger.

The focus of this weekend (when not trying to break up cat fights) was Christmas shopping. I have an unreasonably large family and with only a few free weekends available between now and the date itself, I had to get cracking.

All of this means that I didn't really have much time this weekend to do anything crafty. I did start making up the lining for the cotton bag, cutting it out, lining the strap and making up a little pocket. I just have to starting sewing everything together now.

The Stolen Moment's Wrap has been transformed by blocking and I'll post about it in due course, with photographs - which means waiting for suitable light levels.

Oh and I had my first go at plying on a spindle this weekend.

We've rigged up a lazy kate from a plastic box with some knitting needles from a charity shop which worked, but may need some adjusting before I try again. I'd measured the holes based on the assumption that I'd be using bobbins, forgetting that I've wound my singles off onto the cardboard tubes found inside toilet paper rolls. Due to the vast difference in hole size, the cardboard tube drops onto the bottom of the box which means it doesn't rotate cleanly.

That aside, the lazy kate did work and I did get the singles to twist in the other direction, taking on the resemblance of plied yarn. I was working on my first spindle spun singles and the quality varied considerably, so trying to get a balanced finished product was never going to be easy.

I shall have to wind the result off the spindle and skein it up, wash and dry it... Then I'll take a photo for posterity.