Spinning and knitting

The Yggdrasil is moving along slowly.  I finished the first side of the final border and rounded the corner!  Ya me!  I've basically got the pattern memorized and can fly along.  In fact the row that I thought was the hardest the first go around has become the easiest for me.  I'm trying to do a side a week, but with all the evening festivities it is more of a challenge than I'd like.  I also took a picture of how all the borders look together.  I'm hoping when I block it will open up the cable and vine border just a bit.  I think that will add to the look of the border.

Yes, I'm standing on my bed taking this shot. With my ceiling fan whizzing mere inches above my head. Who said there isn't danger in knitting!

To take the edge of knitting only on the Yggsdrasil, I'm spinning again.  One reason is I'm planning on spinning enough yarn to reknit Girasole as a baby blanket.  I bought 20 ounces of roving from JulieSpins on Etsy (also saw she is now selling her stuff through The Loopy Ewe ) but in order to get the 1500 yards of yarn I will need, I need to spin it quite thin.  Thinner than I've ever consistently done before.  So I need to practice before I break out the beautiful roving I plan to use for the blanket (and what is it with me and knitting blankets all the sudden?)  So over the weekend I pulled out some roving Emily gave me for Mother's Day.  And after a couple days of spinning I had this

It is pretty, but it isn't nearly as fine as I need.  I haven't spun for several months so I clearly need to practice.  I love the yarn though, it will be a lovely hat or cowl, very soft and squishy.  So I dug through my stash and found some Ashford roving I totally forgot I had.  (bad bad when you don't even remember all the roving you have!)

And this most beautiful deep teal roving slowly turned into the thinnest single I've ever spun yet.  So I'm cautiously optimistic this will help me get the perfect yarn for the baby blanket.  The Ashford roving is the softest smoothest spin I've done in months.  The roving slides through my fingers into the neatest tight single but it doesn't break.  Hopefully it will hold when I start plying.  But one thing with spinning this fine, it takes longer to do.  Both a good and a bad thing.  Smile...but hopefully spinning an hour a night will help me churn through the final borders of Yggdrasil.