Bright Little Bits, For A Gloomy Day

Hiya from a.,

Sorry for not posting sooner, I've had stuff done, but we were slightly occupied with r. defending his dissertation (which was awesome and it is fun to call him dr.).  I do have a couple little things to share with you.  We were having a nice weather week, and then of course the gloom settled in for the weekend, and I know that one of the moms at least hadn't seen sun in a week, so I thought that showing you a couple of cheerful and bright things might make us all feel good.
First up here is the finished yarn that was on a spindle I showed you last time (the blue alpaca, wool, silk stuff):

As is generally the case with my yarn it is a two ply.  It was a small batt so it is only 80 some odd yards, but it is soft and pretty, and that should be enough to make cute little fingerless mittens.
Next is a  project that I'm in the middle of.  It is the neat rainbow stuff I was spinning.  I got about a third spun and could resist playing with it, so I set it and started crocheting, only now I've run out of yarn and have to go back and finish spinning the rest.  With how bright and awesome the colours were, I did decide to just leave it as a single so that nothing would end up jumbled.  Here is the project all squished up so that when you see the final it will be a bit of a surprise:

One of my favourite things is when you go through your yarn and rediscover something.  It is that, oh yeah I totally forgot about you, or the hey I had more of this left than I thought I did.  The latter was the case for me, as I had more of the Noro Silk Garden Sock left than I had realized (it was a pretty lacy scarf that I showed you in the fall, I do believe).  So I decided to play with what was left and this was the result:

I have decided that I am completely enamoured of hats made out of Noro.  I mean how cute is this?  I am totally going to be hunting down tons of sale Noro and making an epic amount of hats.  You would just have to be happier on  a dark winter day, wearing something like this.  Of course, I made it in May, but it will get used eventually.

Take care,
a.