Curse you, M!

So I really don't have any finished projects to report with exception of some handspun, but I just wanted to share with you today my frustration and hatred of the letter M.

(to the clever crafter that noticed my S was backwards- fear not!  This is M actually a W, which is an upside down M and the S does in fact go the right direction)

I should probably explain that a little better.  I hate making Ms in filet crochet (which is how my little doilies are made).  They take so much longer than other letters- most letters take 5 rows to create, Ms take 8-9, depending on which I do that day.  Plus I seem to have this mental block about the Ms and can't do it without looking up a past M.  The first dozen or so I made of these doilies, I had to carry around my few pages of graph paper with all of my letters carefully charted. Now I'm free to crochet without my papers...until I get to an M. It's not a particularly difficult letter to do, just long, boring, and my brain refuses to remember how to form an M in lace.

The last doily I made had two Ms...right next to each other...and I was kind of over the doilies anyway.  It wasn't really that bad, I just liked to grumble about it as my mother was nearby and I frequently joked, saying how they probably wouldn't notice if their last name was misspelled so that I could eliminate 1 or both Ms.  By the way- this was 2 weeks ago.  I'm now TOTALLY over the doilies and still have 3 I need to make before Christmas and 3 more that I would like to make people eventually.  Considering sucking it up and getting them done and off my to-do list. (If you're keeping a mental tally, I decided not to make a doily for the person who gets my knits all the time, as gifts are never reciprocated nor am I thanked  and continuing to craft for this person is a little like continuing to throw freshly finished projects into a black hole)

So with this latest doily for my potential (dare I say probable?) in-laws, I am facing my arch nemesis, M, but it's disguise nearly fooled me- until I actually started it.  Their name starts with SW... as in Smoothly Sailing along WAIT! W is just an M that's upside down! Curse you again, M, with your longness, trickery, mental block and common appearance in last names!  Then I was like, it's cool W-Dawg, I got this.  I'll just put on a pot of tea and crank this W out- and since I've done 3 Ms in the past month, I totally don't need to go find my letter cheat-sheet.  And I was halfway through row 5 and realized...that I've screwed it up.  So now that my W upside-down M is almost done....I get to rip it out and do it all over again.

It took an extra 45 minutes but I'm now on to the third of 5 letters and the world hasn't ended.  So perhaps I'll finish it today, perhaps I'll finish it tomorrow, but it will certainly be done in time for Christmas.  And the great news?  In the next 4 planned doilies, there is not a single M or W.  Winning! (Did you say that last work in a Charlie Sheen voice?  That's how it's meant to be read.)

And on to the topic of the week- finishing up old spinning projects!

I finished 2 more lurking projects this week!  The first we shall call Gilbert Grape.  It is purple shetland wool with little blobby bits of blue soysilk that has been on the wheel since August.  I absolutely love shetland wool.  I know it's not the softest to wear, but it's one of the more affordable fibers and I think it's also one of the easiest to work with if you want a a consistent yarn, which I do.  Plus I have 2 places where I buy my shetland wool, the Wool Room at the State fair (which is where Gilbert was found) and the Feast of the Hunters Moon- a historical reenactment of when the French Fur traders discovered the Wabash area- right around Purdue.  Buying shetland wool from the Shepherd's wife and talking about her sheep (who are all named after Rock Stars) is one of my personal traditions.  It's a great fiber for newer spinners as well.

The second yarn (pink and green) is a little outside my comfort zone, and probably the oldest project I've ever gone back and actually finished.  This merino and silk blend was one of my very first projects as a new spinner- and I got a single braid of it which was probably all I could afford at the time. So we're looking at a spinning project here that's around 8 years old.  The two hanks that were finished were thick & thin and underspun- a far cry from today's spinning.  So I tried very hard to recreate that beginner spinning artyarn yesterday as I finished the third and final hank.  I think there's around 60 yards total- it will definitely be a cowl because it's so soft I can't *not* wear it around my neck.

If you know what you're looking at here, you can see that the third (outside) hank is a plied a lot more tightly than the other two.  I'm patting myself on the back for getting the thick & thin part down though.  Can't win them all, but I do love this yarn.  I'm thinking it's going to be a quick cowl on size 10.5 or 11 needles in either a seed/moss stitch or a Farrow rib.  But if you have other suggestions- holler/leave a comment!

So I'm curious....do you have a knitting/crocheting/fiber arts arch nemesis like my M?  I'd love to know if there are any parts of certain projects that you just really can't stand!