Knit like the wind! (I wish)

It's been a while since I checked in here, and ironically, my blog neglect has everything to do with fibery activities. I'll start of with spinning, because you know I always have spinning.

Fiber: Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino, "Stand by Me"
3 ply
832 yards
228 grams
Sigh. I think this is my new favorite CMF colorway (until I spin up the next one, at least). I definitely will be knitting something for myself with this yarn.

Believe it or not, I've been devoting most of my time lately to knitting. Apparently knitting for myself isn't much of a motivation, but knitting for others? That totally gets me in gear.

This pair of socks for a friend started off horribly, but I have since come to love them. The main problem was with the skein of yarn. The yarn itself (Brooks Farm Acero) is lovely, but I got a bum skein. It tangled so horribly as I was winding it that I nearly shed tears of complete frustration. At times I despaired of ever getting it off my swift. It took me more than two hours to wind it completely. As far as I can tell, it was a break in the yarn that caused all my heartache.

In my frustration, I fired off a diplomatically worded (I hope) email to Brooks Farm to let them know about the trouble I was having. Well, they couldn't have been nicer. They offered to refund my money, or if I wanted to keep the yarn, they would pay for the postage to have me send it to them so they could wind it for me. At that point, I had gotten the yarn wound myself, but I so appreciated their reply. Hooray for companies that stand behind their products!

The knitting project that has been eating up the most of my time, though, is the Professor's birthday present. Today is his birthday, but since he hasn't yet opened his gift (and since he reads this blog), I can't show y'all what it is. However, I will show the swatch I did for it.

Happy birthday, my dear, sweet Professor! I'm so grateful that you're my lab partner for life. You can keep me after class any time.