These are the Cheshire Cat socks from Purlescence, and I’m knitting them – as will be obvious at a glance to anyone who knows her – for friend-R in honour of her grey cat Ghost and her black cat Shadow. The other sock will have the colours reversed, so the illusion cat is grey

I haven’t done illusion knitting before, and it’s lots of fun, but it’s suffering from new spinning energy, of which more later.

To the right are my lovely, lovely new Harmony wooden interchangeable needles, a Christmas gift from partner-R. The yarn in the bag is a clue to the half-written-post WIP I mentioned above.

The top picture to the left, the skein, is a spinning FO, my best yet. Shetland wool, lilac and “natural black” (I can’t decide if this is grey or dark brown). It’s only about 140m, so not enough to do anything much with, so I’m saving it to be an accent in something knitted with another yarn.

The bottom pic is a spinning WIP, and I’m still getting better every time, so this is thinner and more even than the above. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with it, but I might ply it with some light-ish grey I haven’t yet spun

And finally, the piece de resistance! At a party at Bopeep’s place on Christmas Eve, one of her neighbours offered to give me a spinning wheel. I half thought she was joking or drunk, but it turns out she wasn’t The bobbin is my first attempt at wheel spinning. Not very even yet, but much better than my first attempts at spindle spinning.

And of particular note is that I took the wheel home about 6.30 this evening, covered with dust, and in many different bits (the parts visible in the picture were eight pieces, I think), and with only help from a guide to the parts of a spinning wheel from Joy of Handspinning,  I worked out how to put it together and get it working. It’s lovely. I don’t precisely have room  for it, but even partner-R admits it was fate