Spinning,Socks, and Unicorn

 My newest spinning project is looking good.  I have been able to draft quite a bit thinner and more even.  I hoping to attempt chain-plying on this one.  I have to admit I am loving spinning even more than I expected.  I had to force myself not to spin to finish my snowflake project on time, and I think if I have the time and money spinning could become my favorite of the three fiber arts I know so far.

 I know I posted the cast on of a pair of peach socks a couple weeks ago.  I have since ripped those out, because they were too hard.  I decided to try two and a time toe-up socks and to that end I received (at my request) KNITfreedom's class on the subject.  So far the class has been great and very helpful.  These grey socks in Brava worsted weight are my practice project for this class.  I am sure they will become bed socks for someone on my Christmas list.   This week while working on the socks and watching the videos I discovered that for the past two years I have been twisting all my knit stitches and creating twisted stockinette.  This unpleasant discovery was less difficult to fix that I imagined and I have knitting much easier since fixing it.
This beauty is Hermione the unicorn by Dawn Toussaint.  In many ways I am unhappy with some the construction in this pattern and I have had to do a lot of embroidery repair (both duplicate stitch in white and decorative) to make this unicorn look acceptable to me I would probably have put it together differently if I had know before I started.  On the other hand I love the face I have come up with and probably wouldn't have done the star on the forehead if I hadn't had some of the other problems.  The nose could have really benefited from more shaping and has be squeezed and shaped with the fiberfill to make anything resembling a horse shape.  You can see this even more clearly in some of the other project pages.  I am really looking forward to the mane when I get there though.

As for reading  I finished listening to A Mighty Fortress by David Weber for the second time this week.  I have really loved the Safehold series which feels like a mixture of historical fiction and sci-fi.  The series is set on the world of Safehold 900 years after the destruction of all other human colonies, including Earth, by a hostile alien species.  Safehold is at about the technology level of Pre-industrial revolution and the people living there have been kept from innovating past this point by the repressive religion instituted by the colonies founder's 900 years earlier.
Merlin Athrawes is a PICA, basically android with the personality of a long dead woman, named Nimue Alban's who's mission is to undo the millennium of brainwashing by the oppressive religion and all the humans on the Safehold to begin innovating.  The Safehold series more or less follows Merlin's decisions and the friends he makes through a harrowing fight for religious and intellectual freedom against the corrupt Church of God Awaiting.  I won't tell you more for fear of spoiling the series for you but I love it.
I am now currently listening to Funny Boys a drama about a gangster's girlfriend set in the 1920s .  So fa I like it pretty well.  I am also starting The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan, which is the second book in the Wheel of Time Series.