Dyeing and spinning

Now that the weather is warm enough that I can put yarn and rovings outside with no risk of them freezing, I'm back to my wheel and crock pot.

I had to dye and spin one skein to replace another one that got lost in the mail :(. The first roving I dyed didn't come out quite the way I wanted, so I dyed a second.
Since I'm a very thrifty frugal cheap person, I decided to spin both rovings using different plying techniques. Turns out, I liked both yarns.

The first one is a two ply, lace weight yarn. The second is a n-ply, heavier lace weight (me thinks):
Right now they are both reserved for the person who bought the missing skein.
As soon as she picks one of them, I'll make the other one available to the general public.


Although the spinning is coming along just fine, I'm having an awful time with my knitting.
I'm working on a new design, knit a sample, didn't like how it came out and decided to chart it first.
For this new design to work as a pattern so people (other than me) can actually knit it, I'll have to do some serious mods to the stitches I choose. Problem is, I'm tired of starting this over and over again...sigh.
There is another design idea that has been haunting my nights and I know there is no way I can knit this one without charting it out first. Oddly enough, the knitting itself will be less complicated than the one I'm working on now.
I also have an almost finished (as in knit by me and another person) triangular shawl design that only needs an edging and the (dreaded) writing. I might release this one before the other two I talked about above.

On other news, we bought a new toy and had to take some money out of our down payment account to get it. Also, today I had to turn a comission down. I really don't like doing that, but the job was awfully labor intensive and would take time away from my test knit and the designs I'm working on. Oh, well...