A little bit louder, a little bit worse

Today I blocked the shawl I've been working on pretty monogamously since I finished the yarn (sagano shawl, rav link):

 Here's what it looked like before blocking, when I was wondering if I could actually make the top edge straight.  That teeny little ball near the center is what yarn I had left, but I foolishly wasn't worried about running out. 

 My 5-year-old remarked, "Mama, it looks like spiders."  Sigh.  Yes it does.  Where was the kid when I was picking out a pattern?  

An army of spiders

 I may not let the fact that it's made out of spiders and it's finally in the 70s stop me from wearing this at work this week. 

Here's where the project started:

I was not expecting stripes or gradient-ness - have a lot to learn about what to expect from fiber through the spinning process.  I've read lots of stuff that says that beginners might expect their first singles to be laceweight but are surprised at how much it plumps up, but my two-ply was definitely a laceweight, coming in at 650 yards over 4 oz.  I regularly hear about how small my handwriting is - maybe these facts are related.  For my next spinning project, I'm going to try to spin a thicker single so that I can make yarn for those worthy knitters in my life who aren't super into laceweight without having to spin 10 singles. 

I am finding myself tired, as I sometimes get, and a bit fallow, as my to-do list explodes.  Right before I started knitting the shawl that ate a month, I started an applique quilt knocked off from Crazy Mom Quilts:

Please ignore the purple/green blocks and orange circle, those are separate projects.

It went about like: I need a new quilt to make, something applique... yes, right there, that will do.  Monkey see, monkey applique.  This one will be for me, which is unfortunate because there is a long list of people I'd love to give a quilt to, and who deserve a quilt, and who I should be quilting for.  

::yawn::

Happy crafting!