Back in the Saddle Again

Well, here's the first post in almost 2 months now. I am a lazy, no-good slacker, but now I shall endeavor to post more frequently (and no, my fingers are not crossed behind my back ^_^).
A lot has come and gone in the two months since my last post. I won't bore you with the details, especially considering that several of you see me regularly off-line.
But, I have the SKB finished..almost. It wound up a little big and I still have to take out the bottom and redo it without the darts, and that should, theoretically, make it fit. Admire my truly terrible attempts at picture taking. All together, the SKB was a good project, though the pattern had some major issues. Just about everyone I know had issues with the purl ridges at the edges. I solved it by knitting a bit beyond the purl ridge and binding off to the inside to form a hem, but the downside to that is that it makes it really lumpy. Grrr...



















I also just finished a craft swap from Craftster. I am really happy with how everything for it turned out. . SicMariaVic (my swap partner) sent me a lovely hand made hat in mohair, and three skeins of pink/maroon yarn with bobbles. Here is the hat, and the yarn.














I really have no idea yet what I'm going to do with the yarn. In the hat picture you can see the gift I made for my swap partner, it is a neckwarmer from my handspun. Some really old handspun I might add. This yarn was spun for Katharine, a friend of mine at school, and she made mittens from it, this was the leftover which she returned to me when we were all packing up at graduation time. The yarn is so old (relatively speaking), that I spun it with my first wheel. Yes, I used to own a Babe . I have since had several wheels, and the Babe was, by far, the worst, most picky, ugly, ungainly, breakable, not to mention shoddy, wheel that I have ever owned. Can you tell I don't like them? It was free though. But this yarn I spun my freshman year of college on that wheel. I'm happy with how the neckwarmer turned out. It is a merino from Lamb's Ear in Tacoma.
I think that's enough for now. I will write later on my knitting travails.