Mission Accomplished

At the beginning of the tour, I started with this:



And I ended up with this:



Goal met. Hurray!!




Field of Screams
Falkland
11-13 wpi (worsted)
171 yards


Cold Front
Wensledale
16 wpi (sport)
198 yards


Pomegranate
Shetland
16 wpi (sport)
296 yards


Storms of Jupiter
Merino
10 wpi (worsted)
141 yards


Kentucky Derby
10-13 wpi (light worsted/DK)
135 yards

I'm happiest with the Storms of Jupiter yarn, even though it's one of the heavier yarns. This was my challenge yarn and I was really happy with the results.

I'm the least happy with the Shetland. Frankly...it's crap. It's awful. It's inconsistent and the plies don't want to hold togther at all. This is actually a consistent problem across most of the yarns I have made lately. The two plies don't stick together at all. I make splitty yarn. It seems to me that it means I need more twist per inch, but how do I get that without ending up with an unbalanced yarn? I don't think I can really spin the singles much tighter without kinking. I'm not really sure what to do about this so I'm going to have to do some research.

I finished all of this on Saturday, which meant that Sunday I was free of my spinning obligations. Challenge met, tour over, now I can do whatever I want. So what did I do?

I spun some more. Flush with success, I pulled out a Butterfly Girl bat and spun it up. Spun it, plied it, and washed it, in fact, so hopefully I can photograph it tonight or tomorrow. It's super bulky, but I don't really mind, because it's also totally awesome. It's a blend of green bamboo and black merino and it practically glows. Seriously awesome stuff so even though the spinning was more difficult than I anticipated, I really like the yarn.

This does mean, however, that I am not ready to spin the Blue Morpho versions that I have in the stash. I am saving that until I am good enough to make some really good yarn out of it, because I think it is going to be really, really cool.

I hope I will continue spinning more regularly (although my back pleads, not every night any more).

You Can't Stop Progress

Three days down on the Tour de Fleece and...a whole lot to go. I'm starting to think my goal may be a little ambitious. It wasn't that hard to go through 2 oz a day back when I was spinning super-bulky yarn, but now that I'm getting things down a little finer, it kind of takes a while.

That said, I'm still on schedule. Yesterday, I took advantage of my day off and spun until my toes were numb. I finished the singles for the first batch of fiber, and after letting those sit until late evening, I went ahead and plied them. I ended up with probably about a 160 yards of 2-ply from the Falkland wool in colorway Field of Screams.



I haven't checked the wpi yet, but based on the yardage I'm guessing it's about heavy worsted,

Next up was some wensleydale fiber in Cold Front.



Beautiful - especially when you draft it out so that it's all watercolory. I love the look of predrafted fleece (but I didn't photograph any of it, so use your imagination.

I had some serious trouble with this stuff. I'm not sure if it's just a difficult fiber or if it's just very, very different from the Falkland. The Falkland spun a lot like BFL, but the wensleydale is a super long staple fiber, and pretty slick, so it took a while to get used to. My singles were falling apart at first. I think I've gotten the hang of it now. This is spinning out super fine, but I'm watching it as carefully as I can to make sure it gets enough twist to hold together. We'll find out how successful I was when I ply. Anyway, I got one bobbin finished.



In non-Tour related spinning, here is the blue and white yarn I spun before the Tour started.



And, though I am spinning like a fiend, I have not completely neglected the knitting. I finally unpinned Merope, which was pinned out blocking for practically a week before I let it off the wires. Oops. Oh well, It looks great. The top edge made it really easy to block.



So did the points along the side edges.



It's really beautiful, and it's way, way too hot to wear it, so it's going to have to go in my drawer to await cooler times.



In the meantime, the next shawl in the series has been released. I present Maia in Schafer Audrey (yes, again) colorway Dian Fossey.



I'm in love with this project. The yarn is dead perfect. The beads are a great match (although I question whether I should have used size 6 beads rather than 8. Audrey is a heavy laceweight/light fingering yarn so I went with the 6, but I'm thinking the 8 would have been fine. I might be in danger of ripping out and starting over, if the beginning of this wasn't such a huge pain. I seem to have issues with provisional cast ons. I worked the beginning of this shawl three times on Sunday night, and each time I completely failed to properly pick up the stitches from the provisional cast on. Since you knit a full chart after the provisional cast on, with beads, this got a little annoying. I gave up on the Sunday knitting since everything I knit on Sunday turned to trash (more on this later).

When I tried again on Monday, I did the provisional cast on, knit about 3 rows of the chart, and then I put my stitches on a holder, and went back and picked up the provisional cast on. I did this on the theory that if I messed up again, I wouldn't have to reknit the whole first chart again. Since I was now prepared for failure, I of course had no problems. I knit the second chart, put the stitches on a holder, went back and knit the first chart. Problem solved, cast on successful, carry on.

Anyway, the piece is beautiful so far, and my picture doesn't do justice to it. In the right light the yarn practically glows, and the beads are just the right color to be compatible with all the shades of green in the project (they look darker in the picture than they actually are).

My only regret is that I don't own any green stitch markers to make it perfect.

The other project I have on the needles right now is the Follow the Leader Faroese Shawl using Rio de la Plata in a discontinued yarn, in a special colorway from Yarn Market called Paris Rain. I started this to be a semi-mindless project that I could take around with me. Problem is, it doesn't really become mindless until you knit through that shoulder band. Still, it's not hard and I thought I would be fine taking it with me to knit over the festivities for the 4th (since said festivities for us involved a lot of sitting down). I had some trouble at the beginning of the pattern, and I think the reason is that I am most used to seeing a knit two together followed by a yarnover ( O/ ) rather than the other way around ( /O) so I kept getting confused. Well, I sorted it out, but I made a mistake at about the second or third row of the pattern that I didn't see until I had already done three or four rows past it.

Normally, this is not a problem for me - I am a master of dropping stitches to correct a problem. Only, there were some issues with this. One, I didn't have a crochet hook with me. Setting aside that this is poor planning, it's not usually a problem. I can generally make repairs work with just the needle. Two, the stitches that needed fixing had become involved in decreases in the following rows which I would have to undo and repair. Third, and this is really what undid me I think, this is a garter stitch project and not a stockinette project. I find stockinette infinitely easier to ladder up and down.

Now, a smart knitter, a clear-headed knitter, would have put the project down and waited until she could get home and stack the odds in her favor. But I was a knitter sitting out in the heat, with nothing else to work on and the prospect of several more hours of sitting ahead of her. I got desperate. I attempted to ladder the stitches. The attempt failed. I gave up, and decided just to rip back. I did. But in ripping back, I couldn't get the stitches back on the needle properly. So what I have right now is a total mess. I'm thinking I will just rip back the rest of the lace band, pick back up at the eyelet row, and work the whole shoulder band over again. This project did not get a photo because it was in time out.

I have family business to attend to tonight (an inconveniently timed birthday), which means my TdF goal is really in question, but I am technically 2 oz ahead since I spun 2 oz of singles yesterday, which was supposed to be a plying day. Hopefully the setback won't be too detrimental!

Blog Free!

No, not, "free of the blog." I mean, blog freely, as in, blog without guilt because you don't have any pictures. I have to remind myself of that every once in while. So, here I am, with a thousand words for every missing picture. Ta da!

I did make it to the Spinner's Day Out Fiber Farm Market, and I did buy fiber. I got 3 skeins of yarn out of Icelandic wool, in very light gray, medium gray, and black, that I think will make a nifty gradated something. I got a bag of llama roving (round) and two (4 oz) bags of alpaca roving (dark brown and medium brown - I plan to ply these two colors together), and two 4 oz packages of 'meriboo' (merino/bamboo blend) that I bought because somebody at the table said that is what they give their beginner spinners. I got one in a sort of cranberry and one in black.

Over the course of the weekend, I finished spinning the BFL in "Myrtle" from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club of the month (from several months ago). I really, really enjoyed spinning it. While I let the singles rest, I spun a bobbin of the cranberry meriboo. I see why they give it to beginners. It drafts really, really easily. Spinning it was FAST. So, I spun a bobbin full and then turned my attention to plying the BFL.

This is the first yarn I've spun that I actually want to knit with. When it dries I'll check the wraps per inch and see what I've got, though it isn't very consistent in places. Spinning it has been an adventure and a learning experience, though.

First of all, when I started spinning the singles, my yarn kept falling apart. I tried a couple of different things but to get the thickness I wanted, I really needed more twist, so I flipped down to the smaller whorl on my wheel and that solved the problem immediately. Then, as I spun, I kept trying to decide how I was going to ply it. I'm not really a fan of yarns where the colors barber pole, so I wanted to chain ply it. However, the last yarn that I attempted to chain ply came out so unbalanced that I couldn't even block it into behaving. I was pretty sure that the yarn was overplyed, so I thought, when I went to ply this yarn, I would go ahead and chain ply it but use the larger whorl on my wheel. Since I spun the yarn on the small one (more twist per revolution) I thought that maybe plying it on the larger one (less twist per revolution) would help reduce the overplying issue.

I finished spinning the singles yesterday, and today I started plying. I went with my plan, but my single broke right before my first bobbin was filled, so I stopped and wound it off to see how I was doing. No good - still too much twist. I looked at it, though, and thought maybe I didn't have enough ply in it. I went to my spinning book, examined the descriptions of Z twist vs. S twist and I THOUGHT it confirmed what I was thinking, that I didn't have enough ply. So, I went back and switched back to the smaller whorl, started a new bobbin, and picked up where my single broke, stopping to let the yarn twist back on itself to check and - darnit, it wasn't working. I treadled faster. It still didn't look right. My single broke again, and after a few tries at reattaching it, I gave up and wound off the little mini-skein I had plied. Horrible. HORRIBLE! The second I took it off the niddy noddy it twisted and kinked up so tight and thick it looked like cord. Clearly, I was mistaken. The stuff WAS overplied.

I sat there for a minute, and then I went upstairs and I got my umbrella swift and the previous chain-plied skein. I put the skein on the swift and then fed it back through the wheel, spinning clockwise to take out some of the ply twist (like most people, I spin clockwise and ply counterclockwise). I didn't hold on to it or anything, because I didn't want to untwist it too much, I just let it slide from the swift through my fingers and into the wheel. I wound it back off the bobbin and it seems to have worked. I took my skein of the myrtle and did the same thing, and that also seemed to work - only a little bit of extra twist, and in the opposite direction from before. I put both skeins in buckets to soak and went back to ply the second bobbin of myrtle. This time, I paid very close attention to what I was doing. I used the larger whorl, I scooted my chair up a bit to move my hands closer to the orifice, and I tried to concentrate on slowing down my feet and speeding up my hands. This was HARD. But, I succeeded - when I wound the skein off, it didn't twist back on itself at all. It hangs there in a nice calm loop. Success! It's beautiful and I love it.

The first skein looks pretty good, but some of the thicker places could actually stand to have some of that ply twist back. Oh, well, you can't have everything. I'm thinking it might make a really nice hat. I really, really enjoyed spinning that fiber, so I will be on the lookout for blue-faced leicester in the future.

I was so jazzed with success that I spun a bobbin full of the black meriboo, and, throwing caution and this whole 'resting' concept to the wind, I went ahead and plied the black and the cranberry together. The first skein had a little extra twist to it, but not bad at all. I concentrated harder on the second skein and triumphantly held up a perfectly balanced loop at the end of the night. Then I had to quit whether I wanted to or not because my back was KILLING ME.

I did find with the meriboo, that even though it drafted really easily, it wasn't very forgiving of mistakes. In most of the wool that I've spun, I haven't had to pay THAT much attention to the difference between yarn spun at the front of the bobbin, and yarn spun at the rear. My spinning teacher had taught me that this could make a difference but I really didn't have much of a problem with it - until I tried spinning this stuff.

Basically, your yarn gathers twist until it is wound onto the bobbin. The further it has to travel to get onto the bobbin, the more twist accumulates in the yarn. So, yarn that's wound on the front of the bobbin (the part of the bobbin closest to the spinner) has less twist than the yarn at the back of the bobbin (the part of the bobbin furthest from the spinner). Also, yarn spun onto an empty bobbin has more twist than yarn spun onto a bobbin that is already great with child yarn. Normally, I don't worry about this too much; as long as the yarn doesn't kink too badly or fall apart, the twist is distributed when you soak the yarn anyway (maybe this is a flawed approach, but it's worked for me). In other words, As long as I can't see the difference, I don't worry about it. But, in this case, yarn at the front of the bobbin would be fine as I spun, but yarn at the back of the bobbin would kink up and be weird. So, I had to be more conscious of how I worked with the yarn. I spin with a really tight tension already, so it was more about adjusting how long I held onto the yarn before I let it feed into the wheel, and where my hands were in relation to the orifice. I find all of these things easier to control than the speed of my treadling. Again, maybe it's not the 'right' way to do things, but I find it easiest to treadle at whatever speed is comfortable, and adjust the rest of my spinning style to compensate. Of course, there are times when that doesn't work and I have to concentrate on slowing down the treadle, but as a general rule, the feet do what they please and the hands follow after.

Send help!

I will have a huge update when I actually have time, projects, and a camera in the same place, but I can't seem to get everything to come together. I haven't crafted much this week, so almost all of the progress is from last week still. I did spin on Tuesday. I tried some of the Hog Island wool and...it didn't go very well. It spins very thin and it seemed to be doing fine at first, but then when I went to switch hooks the strand broke. Not only did it break, but the end completely disappeared, and I had a lot of trouble finding it. It just kind of melted into the spun fiber on the bobbin. Every time I tried to pull out enough length to get started again, the strand would break again. I guess I needed to flip to the smaller whorl on my wheel, because the single didn't have enough twist to hold together.

After a while, I switched to the BFL that was in my Spunky Eclectic club package. I had started spinning it a while ago and then been distracted by other things. It was an absolute pleasure to go back to it. The wool itself is so soft and it spins really easily. Love it. Will definately have to try BFL again in the future.

Other than that, I've done a little bit of work on my featherweight cardigan and not much else. Everything else is going so fast that the knitting is very slow.

The Answer

This weekend, I:

--blocked & seamed the sleeves A sleeve of my sweater. I blocked both, but only got one seamed. It turns out that seaming is a soul-sucking demon from which there is no escape. I decided for my own sanity to seam the second sleeve later.
--finished the front of my sweater.
--spun quite a bit on Friday night and some on Saturday, and got through almost all of the Spunky Eclectic fiber from January. Had to quit when my burning resentment of the fiber for being so difficult (even though I already knew that merino and I have issues) became too great. Have about two lenghts of the roving left to spin, then I plan to chain ply this mess and see what happens.
--hauled off and started something totally new to feed my lace craving, Swan Lake. Made it through chart A and most of chart B.
--worked on the Hemlock blanket, but didn't get very far. It turns out the speed with which one can complete the first couple of chart rows is not indicative of the speed at which you will continue. Funny how that happens on things that are constantly getting bigger.
--slept late and stared into space, but did so with my fingers moving. I also watched some stuff from the DVR and most of Goodfellows on Netflix.

I had photos, but I'm a ditz and though I put them in the flickr uploader tool, apparently I forgot to actually hit "upload" so...photos later.

A weekend full of progress

Although I didn't take pictures because they would just be boring, I did get a lot done this weekend. I had several events to go to that were knit-friendly, so I made progress on several different projects. I'm at the heel of my second Caribbean sock, I'm into about the fourth increase row of the feather & fan chart for the Hemlock Ring blanket, and I made progress on both the sleeves and the front of my sweater.

I cast on the sweater front because we were going to see Coraline and I needed something easy to knit, and I thought managing the two balls of yarn for the sleeves would be problematic. I was also in the increase section and I didn't want to go past where I needed to increase in the dark. This turned out to be a good decision, since it turns out you can get a whole lot of stockinette accomplished during a movie. I have maybe three to five inches of the front knitted (I did cast on and knit the garter rows on the hem before we left for the theater, but that's maybe only an inch.

I did work on the sleeves, enough to discover that over the decrease rows I did end up with substantially more length than I was supposed to have. I expected this to happen. The instructions are to work the decreases and then work even until the sleeve is a certain total length. According to the diagram, there should be about two inches of even knitting between the decreases and that certain length. I only had about an inch to go. Kind of a big difference!

I am definitely going to have to compensate for this somehow during the yoke, and I think I will do this by eliminating the first diamond at the start of the yoke. I'll do the one decrease row that happens at the end of that diamond, and then work the rest of the yoke as written. I think that take off about an inch of length to get me in the ballpark of where I need to be. I hope. I hope it doesn't affect the look of the sweater too terribly much.

I will also need to take this into consideration when I knit the sweater front. There's decreasing and casting off and all kinds of stuff at the top that will have to get done in a certain amount of space. However, I'm not too worried. My biggest concern is the front not matching the back, and since the yarn on the back is still attached, I can add a couple of rows if I need to. I like my sweaters to be long (waist-length sweaters never look good on me, I really need them at the hips or lower) so I'm not fretting over this too badly. Much. Really. (I deserve every worry I get for going ahead without worrying about the fact that I didn't have row guage, even after I realized my stitch guage was also too big. I really should have tried it on smaller needles. I probably could have saved myself a lot of fuss. Oh well...I've got a total of about 30 inches of sweater knitting that I don't plan to rip out until I have to, so nothing to do but forge ahead. I hope I am not being intolerably stupid, but if I am I will always have the "well, it was my first" excuse for why the thing looks like it was made for an ape.)

I also did some spinning this weekend, and I finished off the sparkly purple batt from Butterfly Girl. Tonight I plied it, and it's soaking as I type. Before I go to bed, I'll hang it up. I ended up with a lot more on one bobbin than the other, so I wound the remainder off into two center-pull balls. I was just going to do one and ply from both ends, but the singles broke at a spot that approximated the halfway mark, so I just went ahead and made two balls. I have about 250 feet (not yards) of yarn if my reckoning is correct. I'm going to use it on the end of a scarf or something like that to give it a little pizzazz. It's largely thinner than my previous attempts although there are some spectacularly uneven bits. It was a fun experience.

Old Business and New Business

Old Business



Ta da, the finished mitts. Blocking did not entirely solve the ladder stitch issue, unfortunately.



You can see here what I was talking about before regarding the point on the top "orchid." On the right mitt, the top border lines up to complete the orchid below it:



This is the original photo of the mitt that was lost. This was the (original) left mitt.



You can see that the point didn't line up. When I redid this mitt (grr), I moved the pattern over so that the point did line up correctly. I don't think I would have frogged the previous one, but it did really bug me so I'm glad I fixed it. I'm really not convinced I didn't make a mistake because KnitSpot patterns are usually pretty meticulous and it seems like an odd blip. I really think I missed an instruction.

Speaking of comparison shots...here's the reason I decided to restart my sweater.



Original back on the top, new back on the bottom. See the difference? The original was HUGE.

Here's the pics of my Spunky Eclectic fiber.





And here's some of my Spinderella spinning:



Didn't even put a dent in the bag. A pound is, apparently, a lot of fiber. I'm definitely well-supplied for a while with the extra fiber she threw in.



Next up, spinning class spinning:



New Business

This weekend, I finished the first Caribbean Sock:





And I got to the stopping point on the back of my sweater, so I started on the sleeves. I'm working both at once to make sure the length is consistent. No photo, because it looks just like the back.

Today was my last spinning class (postponed from last week, where we got snowed out) and I learned how to Navajo ply, among other things. It wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be and I was so tickled! I asked for help on drafting and got some good tips, plus I got to spin with a bunch of different fibers - flax, a finn/lincoln cross, a mohair/wool blend, something called EcoSpun made out of recycled soda bottles. It was a lot of fun and I'm so pleased with all the progress I've made in the past few weeks.

Busy Butterfly

I say butterfly, instead of bee, because bees do not spin and butterflies do. I have spun my little heart out - well, really, I've spun my little BACK out. I think I need a lower chair for spinning. I don't have nearly as much difficulty at my Monday night spinning class as I do at home. It may be that I'm spending longer on the wheel at a stretch at home, I'm not sure. I haven't timed myself. Anyway, I'm going to take a couple of days off spinning at any rate (even though Tuesdays are for spinning) because I really overdid it a bit and my back is pretty sore.

What all did I do? Why, I did this!

And this!

And this!

Yeah, you're computer's not broken. There's no picture there. I took pics and didn't get them off the camera again. So, the written word will have to suffice.

I have recklessly abandonned all the stuff I was in the midst of spinning. The purple batt and the wine red corriedale are sitting off to one side. For one thing, I had homework for spinning class. I had to spin two full bobbins of singles to take so that I could learn to ply at the next class. I dutifully spun my two bobbins, and I came back with two bobbins worth of 2-ply yarn. Washing and setting will be the next class.

Meanwhile, I got a nice big box in the mail. KGD (formerly known as SOMom) expressed an interested in some handspun because she likes textured yarn, and I thought, I know just the thing!

Back when the Yarn Harlot did the Tour de Fleece, she posted about Spinderella thrum mixes, and how it's impossible to spin an even single from them, so you just kind of have to relax and let it go. I thought, that might be a really great source fiber to make a nice, textured yarn and it sounded like fun, so I ordered it, and I started spinning it. Unfortunately, life interfered a bit, so I only got four skeins spun, plied, and set before the birthday dinner. But, I got what I wanted out of it - it's very textured, and all four skeins seem to be well balanced, so I felt pretty good.

Except for the color, which was not at all what I expected. I am actually wondering a little bit if the wrong thing got put in the box. But, KGD liked it so no big deal. And, to make the whole experience even better, when I opened the box there was a SECOND bag of fiber in a different colorway, and a note on the invoice that she couldn't find a smaller box so she just stuffed some extra fiber in there. Then it said, "Sorry!" and I just laughed. It's not a small amount of fiber, either!

I also got my Spunky Eclectic shipment for the month. This time it was 4 oz of Corriedale with yellows, orangey reds, and a littel bit of brown. I haven't touched my January fiber yet, since my last experience with merino made me a little gun-shy. I'm kind of holding off on it until I can draft a little better (or until I have time to really thoroughly pre-draft). But, I thought to myself - Corriedale I can do! And I did. I spent most of Saturday spinning it. At first, I thought I would try to keep the colors in order - not by Navajo plying or anything complicated like that, but just by predrafting and then splitting the predrafted roving down the middle.

It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be (I really can't imagine why I thought it would be easy, because if it were, why would people learn to chain ply? clearly I am not as smart as I think I am). I had some trouble drafting the fiber, because it didn't occur to me to open the fiber up a little bit after unrolling it from the bump, even though it was clearly still twisted and the whole premise of spinning is that twist keeps the fibers from moving. Duh. Once I figured that one out (dumbass) I had a much easier time, but I don't have enough control yet to keep the thing from falling apart, so of course I had thin spots and when I went to tear the pieces in half they didn't want to cooperate and it was just kind of a mess.

I persevered through the first half of the fiber, but - I really didn't care for the results, so I just spun the second bobbin in no particular order. I let the bobbins rest overnight and then plied them on Sunday afternoon.

I don't think my color is really a success. I had a boyfriend in high school that would mix all his condiments together on his plate and dip his french fries in them, and that's what my end result reminded me of. I think I need to get a book on how to deal with color in spinning. I clearly do not have a clue.

But, but, but! The end result is clearly the best spinning I have done to date. It still varies quite a bit in thickness, but overall it is much thinner and there are places where it acutally looks kind of a little like commercial yarn. This tickles me to no end. I don't necessarily want to spin something that I could just go buy off the shelf - I just want to be ABLE to spin something that I could just go buy off the shelf. At the very least, I want to spin something that could generally be classed as worsted or sport as opposed to, you know, super bulky huge. I'm making progress.

I have also made progress on the Caribbean sock (note to self - do not name projects things you cannot spell). I got through the heel turn and gusset decreases, and now I'm headed down the foot. I don't know how I feel about the yarn; it doesn't seem to bounce back the way wool does when I put them on (it's a wool-bamboo blend), but that really doesn't matter once the sock is made - it should (hopefully) return to its shape when I wash it. It's only a nuisance now because I keep putting the sock on to see how much farther I have to go.

I also worked on my sweater, but I'm still not quite where I was at the restart. I plan to get back on the exercise bike this week, though, and I may be able to add some more length onto it during my exercise time, as long as I can find a way to keep it off my legs/lap.

Round and round

I didn't knit most of the time that I was sick, just because all I wanted to do was sleep. I finally picked up some knitting Friday night, but I found that sitting up to knit made me kind of dizzy. I eventually found a compromise pose somewhere between sitting up and lying down that made the vertigo bearable, and I knit. I picked out the part of the Orchid Mitt I had messed up (again) and was able to finish the whole mitt (I may have knit the thumb on Saturday, I'm not sure). With this encouragement, I was also able to motor through the second mitt, and last night I finished it up. They're finally done and I don't have to worry about them anymore.

Overall happiness with the project...meh. I should have used a different yarn, one with a little more bounce. I have HUUUGE ladder stitches down the sides, which is a problem I really haven't had before. I'm not sure what the problem was. I'm hoping that in the soaking and blocking that maybe things will even out a little bit, but I can't block these much because there isn't much give in them to begin with, and I don't want to stretch them out huge. I hope they fit the recipient.

And, just like that, I'm down to three WIPS. I definitely had some startitis going on at the beginning of this year, but I've managed to finish all of those things off and so now I'm down to 1 pair of socks, 1 lace shawl (that has languished for months, but we'll ignore that for now), and the hemlock blanket on my active project list. (I do have a few more wips that are 'hibernating' but those really don't bother me the way active projects do).

Three projects feels very reasonable to me, so I no longer have this "I have got to finish some of these off before I start something else" feeling. I hope to get going on my phyllo sweater tonight.

I'm going to attempt to go on a yarn diet until MD Sheep and Wool; between Christmas and my other recent purchases I have really got more than enough yarn to keep me going for a while and I really need to put the breaks on the money output. I did make one more big expenditure this month, and that was on a spinning class being offered by Nature's Yarns. It turns out...I am the only student! Yesterday was my first class and I learned several things I had not gotten out of the book, so I am looking forward to next week. I have spinning homework to do before then, so that's also on the agenda for tonight. Teach gave me several different preps to try spinning, and I am to try each of these and also to fill two bobbins before class next week so that we can cover plying.

I also had the chance to talk to her about staining my wheel, and she pretty much said there is nothing special I need to know, just to go for it, so I'm going to have to set aside a weekend for that. I still have hopes of getting a certain someone to paint something pretty on the flywheel, maybe in exchange for some of my, ahem, highly textured handspun.

We discussed whether I needed to take the wheel apart to stain it and Teach thought I could do it without taking it apart, there would just be some areas I wouldn't be able to get to as easily, but those parts would be largely covered by the wheel anyway. This is a relief, as I had so much trouble getting the wheel onto the thing that taking it off was kind of a terrifying prospect.

So, plans plans - spin my homework, start my sweater, finish Moonlight Sonata so that I can start Swan Lake, now that I have both yarn and beads in hand. I don't think I want to have both on the needles at once; I try not to have more than one of the same type of project going at the same time. I like to have multiple projects that are suitable for different types of knitting time. I have the hemlock ring for TV knitting, the sock for travel knitting, moonlight sonata for times when I can focus, and the sweater is several different kinds of knitting depending on where in the process I am, so I can move it around as needed. I really think that after all the lace knitting I have done and all the scarf knitting I have been doing...the sweater will move kind of fast.

The Pretty Post

...in which I finally post all the photos that had been accumulating on my camera. There are actually fewer than I thought there were, but oh well. New business first! This weekend, in no particular order, I:

1. Took my first handspun, seen here:


and turned it into my first plied yarn, seen here:



It's, um...textured. To say the least.



Many thanks to the SO for loaning his hand & arm.

2. Took my second handspun, which I apparently did not photograph as singles, and turned it into my second plied yarn.



Apologies for the absolutely bizarre angle of that picture. It was late, I was tired, and the SO had gone back to his video game and I didn't think it was fair to bug him again. Also, I am impatient and could not wait for him to cross the room.

While not perfect, I think we can all agree that the second attempt was much better.



I'm sorry - I meant to say the second attempt had not nearly so much character as the first. Yes. Character. But it is soft and beautiful and I plan to make a hat or something out of it. I am rather desperately in need of a hat, but I have spent all my time knitting them for other people and haven't got one for myself.

Both skeins are currently hanging in my shower drying out. As prescribed, I put them in water and Euclan to set the twist and then hung them up (actually, the prescribed method according to Maggie Casey's book is to put them in water with dish detergent, then dump that out and put them in with distilled vinegar, and then to put them in with a plain rinse "to get rid of the salad smell" but I figured the Euclan was close enough). I checked on them several times before bed and when I got up this morning. The bottoms are still wet, but I have faith that when I get home they will be dry.

3. Finished a super sekrit hat.



Ha! You all didn't even know I was knitting that one! The SO's birthday was this past week and I didn't want him to know, and while I don't think he reads very often (most likely because he hears way more about yarn and knitting than he wants to when he is home anyway) I didn't want to take the chance. 1x1 ribbed hat based on a cross of the noro scarf pattern and Kim's Hats from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. I took the largest size from LMKG, looked at the difference between it and the second-largest size, which was about 2 inches. Since I needed one four inches larger than the largest size, I took the difference in cast-on stitches between the second-largest size and the largest size, and added twice that many stitches to instructed number of cast-on stitches for the largest size (bless that man and his 26" head). I then ignored the pattern until I got to the decreases.

I knit the whole thing in Noro Kureyon, using a 1x1 rib, and switching colors every two rows. I'll have to check the tags when I get home to see what colors they were, I forgot to look for the purposes of this post. I didn't finish the hat before the birthday celebration (which took place several days after the actual birthday), but this turned out to be a good thing, because when he tried on the unfinished hat I found that I had actually overestimated the length I would need to knit (I will be taking better notes on this hat than I did on the last one I made him, for sure - also, I will make an effort not to lose my knitting journal that has his measurements next time. I did find it - right after I finished the hat). I frogged a couple inches, did the decreases last night, checked it on his head several times, wove in the ends, and dunked it in water with some Euclan to try to soften it up a little bit. It's actually wet in the picture above, because I did not plan ahead, so the colors are darker than they should be.

Once I finished that, I cast on this:



Men's wristwarmers from LMKG, only in a 1x1 rib instead of a two by two so that they will match the hat. I had planned to make the hat, and then a scarf, and then the wristwarmers if I had enough yarn left, but the man expressed a level of enthusiasm for the handwarmers that made me think maybe I should do those first, and just end up with a shorter scarf (or go buy more yarn). Thankfully for my sanity, he does not care if the two wristwarmers match each other in color, because I think attempting a match would send me off the deep end. If I can get them close enough to at least look related, I'll be satisfied. The scarf will pull it all together anyway, if he wears it.

4. Saturday I went with a friend down to the Museum of American History, and I needed metro knitting, so I wound this:



I'm knitting it up in Pink Lemon Twist's New Fallen Snow pattern from her Visions of Sugarplums Sock Collection. Now, this colorway looks nothing like snow - it is actually all the colors of a tropical ocean somewhere in the Carribean. But, I think the NFS pattern could also be interpreted as waves, so - as far as I am concerned, I'm knitting the Carribean sea.

(ETA: Oops, almost committed a blog sin. I'm going to hae to go off memory until I can look up the details. The SO bought this yarn for me while he was in New Hampshire. It's from a local dyer. The tag says Serenity and it has a Celtic knot on it. The blend is superwash merino, bamboo and nylon and I will have to look up the colorway. I actually thought I took a picture of this yarn in the skein along with the purple one he bought me, plus two skeins of Happy Feet I received for Christmas that I had forgotten to photograph, but I did not find the photos last night.)

(ETA2: Ah, here we go - Sereknity yarns Sereknity Sock Options Shimmer Merino Bamboo[rav link] Ravelry to the rescue as always! The other yarn he brought me from them is a merino-seacell blend [rav link].)

(ETA3: I'm slow. The spelling rang a bell and I went and look, and sure enough - this is the same Sereknity that dyed the Eye of Jupiter Yarn the Yarn Harlot is using for her Battlestar Galactica socks.)

So, that was new business. On to (or back to?) old business.

One of my Memorial Day activities was stashing all the Christmas yarn.



Except for that which I intended to knit over the long weekend.



(I may have overestimated my abilities somewhat.)

From left to right: Yarn for the noro hat pictured above. My noro scarf and the two balls of yarn I had left to knit into it. Malabrigo Silky Merino in Velvet Grapes for a Just Enough Ruffles scarf. Right above that, a ball of Valley Yarns Northampton (one of three) for the Hemlock Ring Blanket (I have been pilfering the yarn off that ball to use as leader on my spinning wheel, because I didn't have any non-superwash scrap yarn that I could find). And, last but not least, the nearly finished Tilli Thomas bag I have been meaning to get to. There is a lot more finished than it looks like because it rolls up, I really only need like an inch and a half to get it done and I swear half an hour would do it, if I could just stop KNITTING STUFF FOR EVERYONE ELSE FOR FIVE MINUTES.

I'm not actually sure what that purple ball in the left corner was...maybe the Homestead yarn I was going to use for the Hamsa scarf? I think that's right.

I am crazy enough that I actually believed I would finish the bag, the hat and the scarf and the center part of the Hemlock Ring blanket (leaving me with easy tv knitting at the feather-and-fan section). Ha. On top of that, I'm actually crazy enough that when I put it together for the picture I was thinking that that was my knitting stuff for the day. Then I took the picture, stepped back, and thought, that it was probably enough to last me the weekend. Maybe.

One week later, I have finished the hat, gotten through about half the two balls left on the scarf, cast on and worked maybe six rows on the Just Enough Ruffles Scarf, and the rest is pretty much untouched (although actually...I don't think that's half bad).

And, of course, the one last bit of old business...pictures of the finished and blocked Whispering Pines Shawl. Unfortunately, they are kind of crappy pictures, because it was really late by the time I got around to uploading stuff last night and I didn't take much time to fix them. They also just weren't great shots to begin with, since I was a bit giddy after pinning it all out.











I did not pin out the edging, since I kind of liked it floopy, and I may have chickened out at the thought of pinning that many points.

Round and round

My spinning hit a snag earlier this week when one of my bobbins - one that was full of newly spun singles - fell apart. Both end discs came off (I want to call them whorls but they are not the whorl, so...discs it is) and I'm just sitting there with a wooden tube wrapped in wool that could leap off the edge at any moment. I'm a little miffed - this is not supposed to happen. I guess it's possible maybe I overfilled the bobbin? I googled to see if it was a common problem but I didn't see anybody else having problems, so I think it was just an isolated issue with my bobbins, which really weren't in great shape coming out of the box. Two out of the three were dented, though not badly enough to really affect the function, and one of them had one disc fall off before I even put any yarn on it. The SO is calling the place he bought the wheel to fuss a bit, but last night I bought some superglue and fixed them. One of the bobbins still has a problem, because the disc on the end is dented, which has splintered the wood a little bit, and splintered wood is not good for yarn. So I'm hoping he can get them to replace that one at least.

I tried gluing the discs back on the bobbin without taking the yarn off, but that didn't go well since the yarn kind of wanted to expand so it was pushing outward on the discs, and I didn't want it to get in the glue, so I had to wind the yarn off on my niddy noddy and then glue the bobbin back together.

I did order more bobbins and a tensioned lazy kate after all this insanity. When I took the merino off the bobbin to free it up to spin the Corriedale, I wound it off on my niddy noddy, aand I'm hoping that putting it on my swift like a normal skein would give me more tension than the kate, and make a nicer, less kinky and tight ball.

So, I have both the merino and the corriedale to ply (is it asking for trouble to ply the merino? Also, am I supposed to capitalize sheep breeds or not?) and I will have to ply both from center-pull balls, since I am not winding the Corriedale back onto the bobbin, so - I guess this weekend I am learning to ply from a center-pull ball!

Oops

I could have sworn I updated more recently than that, but...apparently not. I did take a bunch of pictures, but they are all still on the camera. So, let's see. Friday night I got to the end of the first two balls on my Noro scarf. Saturday I worked on super sekrit knitting for the SO's birthday, which is Wednesday, since he ended up having to go to work. When he got home I hid that project and cast on a Just Enough Ruffles scarf in Malabrigo Silky Merino, colorway velvet grapes, which is just gorgeous. Yum. Sunday was more Noro scarf as we were in company and busy and I needed simple knitting. Monday, I was off of work, so there was more super sekrit knitting, since he was not. Then I got called into work, went to the grocery store on my way home, and knittted on the Noro scarf for the rest of the evening. So, that's where I am on the knitting front. Lots of scarf. Not much else.

I did sit down to swatch for my sweater, but it occurred to me to check the yarn requirements before I got started, and I discovered that while I did have what the book says it will take, I only had about 50 yards to spare. This seems like asking for trouble to me and I did not dare use any of it to swatch. Time to contact Webs, see if they have any left in that dye lot (unlikely, as the SO bought it for me in October) and if not, get a couple of balls in another colorway to use for swatching purposes. If I knew how much it would take to do the pentagons, I guess I could do the pentagons all in one color and do the body of the sweater in another, and hope it looked like a style element. But I'll have to think about that.

Thursday I gave the finished and blocked Whispering Pines shawl to the SO's Mom, and she was well pleased. I'm thrilled with the end product, and do have pictures, though I'm not sure how clear they are. I was a little punchy by the end of the blocking and may not have held the camera adequately steady. It's so beautiful, though.

I said something about Nature's Yarns in her presence and she wanted to go, so I met her there on Monday morning and we shopped and gabbed for a while (a long while, actually). She picked up a bunch of things but only actually bought a few, while I bought three braids of brown "Colonial Wool" (the shop lady said it was Corriedale) because my spinning needs work.

I have been spinning with great enjoyment but very little success. The first thing I spun was some Merino I got at Nature's Yarns, and I...should have listened to all the sources that said Merino was not a good beginner fiber. The first bobbin was uneven, overtwisted, and generally bad.

I thought about the problems I was having, and I went looking for some spinning videos on youtube and the joy of handspinning website, and I got a pretty good idea of what was wrong with my drafting technique. The next time I sat down at the wheel I

The second bobbin was better, but still way, way, overtwisted and kinky and not much fun to get off the bobbin. Winding it off onto a center-pull ball turned out to be not so much of a good idea. I'm not sure the ball is usable for plying purposes. I'm not sure I'm eveng going to bother to ply, I was going to just for practice purposes and because I have heard that plying will hide a multitude of sins, but I have several problems. One - the center pull ball is not very nice. Two - The other bobbin of singles is considerably shorter, or so I anticipate, than the second bobbin, in which I got the hang of drafting a little bit better and managed to draw the wool out much thinner. So, I will have to think on that for a while.

But, last night (after getting said mess off the bobbin to free one up), I started spinning the Corriedale, and while working with it was a little freaky (it is almost the same color as my own hair and the long staple length made it seem even more hairlike) it WAS easier to draft, but more importantly, my singles were still kinking up before I got them on the bobbin. I had thought this was happening because I couldn't draft fast enough, but when it happened on the Corriedale too, I thought, maybe I'm wrong, and so I tightened then tension to increase the take-up onto the bobbin, and lo - no more kinks. At least, not many. When they happen they are single kinks and not inch-long corkscrews. I felt both dumb, and elated. I think part of the tension issue was that I was testing the tension using my worsted-weight leader and when I was drafting out much thinner singles, the tension that worked for that worsted leader didn't work for those thinner, more twisted singles. I am slow.

Actually, I'm fast, which is another problem with my spinning. I need to work on keeping my treadling at a controlled pace. Actually, there are several things I am trying to pay attention to in order to improve my spinning.

--Watch not only the fiber in my hands, but the fiber between my hands and the orifice, to see how it is behaving between leaving my fingers and going into the orifice, so that I don't spin along thinking I am doing great, only to look at the bobbin and find that it is full of corkscrews.
--Stop the wheel when I start to lose control of the drafting triangle. Don't keep treadling while trying to sort it out because the twist just builds and builds and then I am in trouble.
--Treadle at a steady pace. I have an exercise bike for speed. Spinning is not a race.
--When I get frustrated, STOP. Walk away. Come back later. Working while frustrated just makes things worse. I tense up, I jerk on the fibers, and most importantly, I treadle faster, which adds more twist even more quickly and just kinks things up faster. It's not worth it. Just stop, and go away.
--Understand that it is a learning process, I have no teacher, and that it is okay to suck at the beginning. Breathe.

Self-Indulgence

Current knitting frustrations aside, my stash has experienced considerable growth over the holiday, even though only a couple of people got me yarn for Christmas.

The SO's mom gave me this:



and this:



(note the lovely handmade drop-spine box she presented it in)

The panda silk is so lovely I am considering whether it could possibly be used for something other than socks. Not that I don't love socks, but it would just be so pretty in a lace scarf or something like that. Pondering.

On top of this, I have managed to make her something of a knitting convert. She does crochet some, and learned to knit once many many years ago, but up until now she has continually protested that purling was awful, the height of all evils, something greatly to be detested, but then on New Years' Eve I showed her how to do it and she found that it was not, in fact, as difficult as she had thought. She promptly took herself to a yarn shop, procured some large needles and a variety of novelty-ish yarns, and is knitting away. Score 1 for the knitters! (she does, however, protest that she is only going to knit square things...and socks, eventually)

Such a convert was she that she called me about Aylin's anniversary sale, and met me there (even though she had already been and bought a bunch of stuff). I procured this:



One of the ladies working there looked at me and said, "Are you making...the scarf?" and I had to laugh and admit that I was indeed. Baaaaaah.

I also bought this:



The SO's mom (I shall have to think of a better way to refer to her, because that is getting tiresome and sounds oddly disrespectful to me) gave me a kit some time ago for a tilli thomas bag using these yarns, but she had only bought one skein of each, and when I looked at the yarn requirements, I found that - one skein was no where near enough. Fortunately, my memory was equal to the task and I was able to get matching skeins last night. They might be different dye lots, but they are close enough. I know I could have asked and Aylin's could've looked it up for me, but to tell the truth...I didn't want to admit in front of SOMom that she didn't buy me enough. It was very generous to get it for me at all and I didn't want her to feel bad. I am determined now to knit this bag up ASAP since I am sure she must wonder why it is taking me so long to make it.

Before I even left for Christmas I had ordered this:



which will become a Hemlock Ring Blanket. I'm going to go back and find the Ready-Set-Knit podcast knitalong for that too and pretend I am part of the cool crowd who knitted this ages ago.

I also ordered this:



Which is a sparkly mohair that I got for so cheap that I am sure it is not entirely on the up and up. I have had an uncomfortable feeling ever since I got the order confirmation and saw that it was shipping from Turkey. I will have to do more research before I buy anything there again. This is, alas, more Christmas knitting, but no deadline on it for now. A work friend wanted a white sparkly snowflake scarf. well, 2 down...I will have to work on the snowflake thing. But it's not as if I don't have resources. I have all this to draw on:



Wasn't that a lovely segway? Have some edging shots - big ones, because I could not find any that showed the edging to my satisfaction when I was looking to knit it, so here's hoping someone else will find these useful:





I was squinting at many other pictures trying to figure out if the purl side really was supposed to be the right side, and couldn't figure it out, so - I hope it is! I am somewhat concerned because I can't figure out how this is supposed to be the right hem, because it totally looks like the left hem to me in every way. Except, I guess, when you are knitting, because you are holding the shawl upside down? I am sure I could e-mail the designer or ask on ravelry and have her answer my question very nicely, but apparently I am determined to figure it out without help. It looks fine the way it is, anyway, so I'm trying not to fret. The edging does make it so pretty and feminine looking!

One more, to show a little more of the pre-edging:



I love the row of eyelets it's making along the edges. Should certainly help when it comes time to block! If that day ever comes (I am almost done with 1/2 of the edging).

If she does not like it I may cry. Kind of a lot.

Back to the yarn pr0n...

When I got back from my lousy vacation, and everything seemed to be going wrong, I bought some feel-better yarn, and it arrived to thrill me the day before yesterday - but I didn't see it until I was on my way out to work yesterday morning, so I grabbed the package and took it with me, ripped it open in the car, and admired it all day.

Handmaiden Casbah in Topaz:



and Peridot:



I didn't realize how much blue was in the peridot until I took that picture, but I checked the skein and it is definitely there. If it were on the other side, though, it would show more green.

I have decided that I really hate my current sock, and I think it is on its way to the frog pond. I already frogged back to the ribbing, thinking I just hated the way it was working up, but I really think I just can't stand that color combo right now. (it's hand dyed and I feel guilty for saying that - I'm sure the designer is a wonderful person and that this colorway is perfect for someone that I have not met yet, and will eventually meet a happy fate)

I started the Noro scarf yesterday to give me something simple to knit at choir tonight, but the rest I have put aside for now. Sockwise, I am caught in serious indecision. I am having a hard time letting go of my current sock, no matter how much I hate it, and I am having an even harder time deciding what I would knit and what pattern I would use. I did buy the Pink Lemon Twist new fallen snow pattern, but I just don't know.

Everything else must wait until the Christmas knitting is done, and so, alas, must this:



I am DYING. As a side note...I managed to make one of the footman joints about a quarter of an inch shorter than the other one, because I am apparently measuring impaired (really, I think that it has more to do with it being difficult to put the screw in without accidentally pushing the treadle either up or down before the screw makes it to the joint, but both possibilities are valid). Is this a problem? Am I going to be miserable? Should I just buy a new footman joint and fix it right away, and am I sabotaging myself as a new spinner by having uneven footman joints? Or am I being overly anal and is it really not that important?

(Please note that the smear on the treadle does not in any way mean that I do not love and respect my new wheel. I was just a little clumsy while oiling the hinges. I swear to be a better, more coordinated person in the future and not so reckless with the application of the oil. It is my first wheel, and I was excited.)

More stash to come, when I remember to photograph the rest of it. I have at least 4 more skeins to show!