Excess

I took Friday off as a mental health day, so I had a long weekend to enjoy! And enjoy it I did. Though I was very sad to hear over my Twitter feed that Knit Happens is closing its doors, I can't deny I squealed a bit when I heard that they would begin their closing sale on Friday. Friday, which I took off! And which the SO had also conveniently taken off! He was hoping we would be able to watch meteors at an ungodly hour on Thursday night/Friday morning, but his plans were foiled by rain, leaving him free to drive me to the sale.

We arrived before the store opened. There were several other knitters hovering outside the door. We joked about circling like vultures waiting for lions to leave a carcass. We were mostly polite when the doors opened, filing in with some degree of order. Stocks for some items that I was interested in were clearly low or depleted already (curses), but I still scored pretty big.



That, my friends, is 11 balls of S. Charles Tinka and 2 balls of Filatura di Crosa Superior - otherwise known as the ingredients for Leyfi.

I nearly plotzed. The Superior was 50% off and the Tinka was 60% off and this sweater, which I thought was far outside of my financial reach (Superior retails for $25.00/ball, bringing the tab to $50 before you even add in the Tinka), is now going to be MINE. MINE MINE MINE AHAHAHAHA.

Ahem. Sorry. Of course this world is not perfect, and I now face a sizing issue. I have enough yarn, according to the guidelines, to make the 40" size, plus a ball of Tinka to spare. However, this leaves me with no ease at all in the sweater. The next size up takes one ball of Tinka more than I have, and would give me 4 inches of ease, which seems like it might be too much. Rar. Right now I am leaning towards making the 40". Knowing me it's unlikely I will get exact gauge anyway, so maybe if I'm lucky my gauge issues will give me a little extra ease (but not too much).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I also got this:



Schaefer Andrea, 100% silk, in colorway Barbara McClintock. I don't know what this will become. I'm thinking about Waves of Grain, maybe? I feel like it should be something corn/grain related (there are not, as it turns out, all that many corn-related lace designs). I can't help it - I'm a theme person. I'm kind of regretting not signing up for Bad Cat Designs Summer Swatch Me thingy, because this totally looks like corn growing on stalks to me.

Once again, though, I'm getting ahead of myself. I have a ton of projects to worry about before I get fussed about that.

Anyway. In addition to the above-mentioned yarn, I got a Euclan sampler pack. I have tried Kookabura wash and Soak wash, and Euclan is the only one I haven't tried yet. I also snagged an Addi Turbo lace needle. I want to try one of those babies out. I love my KP interchangeable needle set, but it's true that they aren't the sturdiest. If I like the Addi lace needles I may invest in an Addi interchangeable set. However, the lace interchangeables that they've come out with have shorter tips than usual to accommodate a 16" cable. I don't want shorter tips, I find them very uncomfortable to work with, so I'm absolutely waiting until they come out with full length tips. In the meantime, I'll try the one I bought and see how I like them.

Since I was in the area, I went to check out Fibre Space, since I had never been their before. OMG. So much love. I really wish they were easier to get to/closer to my home. I walked in and they had big signs that said LACE, WORSTED, FINGERING. I thought, FINALLY, a yarn shop that understands how I shop. I went straight for the lace area, and then straight to the sock yarn. I looked over all the other yarns, too, but it was so nice to be able to immediately see all the yarn in the weight I needed/wanted.

I bought this:



And this:



The top is Fiberphile in a colorway whose name I have totally forgotten, and the one on the bottom is Dragonfly Fiber Djinni in the awesome colorway "Reluctant Dragon." I am now on a mission to find the perfect dragon-themed sock to make with it. I squealed a little when I picked up this yarn because it uses the same yarn base as my beloved Casbah.

I also had a little falling down during the week and ordered yarn from Fiber Optic, so in addition to the yarn I bought on Friday, I came home to two skeins in my mailbox.





I regret nothing. (though I must observe from the last few pictures, I seem to be going through a green period)

I ordered gift yarn from KnitPicks to get a jump on the Christmas knitting (also some birthday knitting for which I am woefully behind) and that...did not arrive. Even though it should have. I'm going to have to call the post office because I am really annoyed that my packages are not coming. My package from Twilight Knits has also not arrived, and I'm really mad about it. I contacted her and she definitely mailed it, and she is very graciously sending me another skein, which I really appreciate since I don't hold her responsible for the failings of USPS. Either someone else is getting all my yarn deliveries, or someone at the post office is hoarding it for themselves. I am not amused. I know my address has been correct on all these packages, so I don't know what's going on.

In addition to all this yarn acquisition, I did actually do some knitting. All this shopping has induced some guilt over some of my UFO's, so I pulled a bunch of them out. I finished my Summer Flies Shawl since I was close to the end - although this took a great deal more time than I expected because of the ruffle. My love of ruffles will kill me one day. I adore ruffles on the finished project. I hate that the only way to get a ruffle is to rapidly increase from a reasonable number of stitches to an insane number of stitches (or the reverse - either way, you are knitting an insane number of stitches) and then knit stockinette until you want to die.





At least it was a worsted weight yarn. Cut it a little close with the yarn requirements on that one. The picot bind off took foreeeeever. These pictures are unblocked, since it was late when I finished.

I finished a swatch for the Simone sweater from French Girl Knits (shut up. it still counts as finishing if you started the swatch more than four months ago).



I didn't get guage. I was closest on the size 8 needle, but I may have to knit another swatch with a 9 to see if I can do better. Supatight Knitta strikes again.

I pulled out my featherweight cardigan and began binding off the collar. This project needs nothing but that bind off and sleeves to be finished. Shameful.



I'm a little worried my bind off is too tight, even though I'm using a needle something like three or four sizes up. I need to decide whether to keep going or undo what I've done (again - I started out with a needle only one or two sizes up) and try again with either a larger needle or a different bind-off technique. I wish I could remember what I did for the bottom edge, as that bind off is both beautiful and appropriately stretchy.

Not pictured is Veronique from French Girl Knits, which is also on my list of "just suck it up and finish it" projects. This one needs to be seamed before I continue, and I intended to block it and then seam it, since seaming unblocked edges seemed like a recipe for madness. However my hatred for blocking and my hatred for seaming have combined to sideline this project for months, which is really too bad because I really, really like the garment in the book. Therefore, I commit to you, blog, that before I post again, I shall block and seam this piece so that I may knit on. Once seamed, it will be knit in the round until I'm satisfied with the total length of it, and then it will need sleeves.

Both of these garments are knit in fine weight yarns - Veronique in Kidsilk Haze and the Featherweight cardigan in a laceweight (knit picks gloss lace, I think) so even though there isn't much left to be done on them, finishing these still represents kind of a lot of knitting. Boring knitting. Time to get some movies from Netflix.

The End Is Upon Us

Short on time today. I finished Evenstar on Tuesday except for the graft, which I let wait until Saturday. I almost attempted it on Tuesday, but I realized my working yarn was attached to my front needle instead of my back needle, and that threw me off enough that I decided to wait. I thought about turning around to the other side but I realized all my stitches would be twisted.

Finally on Saturday I threw caution to the wind and just went with it the way it was, and I think the end result is actually not too bad.



I'm perfectly fine with it all through the beaded section - the place I am unhappy is at the base where it actually meets the shawl. I ended up with a big giant hole there, and basically I used my ends to kind of sew it shut. I'm hopping this will look a little better once it's blocked and the ends are trimmed away, it won't be quite so bunched up. I hope. But, even if it doesn't get any better than this, I defy anyone to find it when they're looking at this.



You know what bothers me more than the graft? The ladder stitches in the center from when I first started.



But again. Will you really see it when you're looking at this?



And some extra glamour shots that I don't have a clever lead in for.







It's still not blocked, and I am rather perplexed as to how I'm going to block it. It's huge. It covers my whole ottoman and I can't fit the whole thing in the shot when I'm using my 50mm. Normally, I put sheets down on the floor of my guest bedroom and pin the piece out on that, but that's not going to work unless I take the bed out (which would involve moving heavy things, and then cleaning and vacuuming and more work than I really want to do).

I have a queen sized bed that I don't think will be large enough. All the floor areas that are big enough for me to use are hardwood and not suitable for pinning. So, I'm a little stumped for the moment. I may have to go buy some of those interlocking foam floor tile thingies that lots of people like.

I did block my Maia shawl from 7 Small Shawls.







Love. I'm desperate for the next shawl to come out - though, I'm even more desperate for my yarn to arrive. I had considered using Schaefer Audrey again in Indigo, but instead I ordered this from Twilight Knits and I have been checking my mailbox obsessively for days. It makes me giggle a little that this shawl will use the same stitch motif in the edging that was used in the Evenstar shawl. IT'S FOLLOWING ME.

While I wait I'm working on a Summer Flies shawl.



Yeah, not very impressive looking, is it? But it's very soft, and I think it will block out pretty. Maybe not as dainty and feminine as the picture in the pattern though, and it's been a very quick knit. I'm on the second to last section, the knotted openwork area. When I finish that one I will switch to the lighter colored yarn for the ruffled edge.

I also went back to my Follow the Leader shawl and I'm almost done with the lace shoulder band, at which point it will become mindless take-a-long knitting. I'm still not sure about this project. I'm not passionately in love with either the yarn or the color, but I'm going to keep trucking on it anyway. I may give it away when I'm done.



Whew - picture heavy post! Just as well, since I don't have time for 1000 words today.

Thwarted

I started this weekend on a mission. I had 18 repeats left to go on Evenstar and I thought, if I really tried, I could finish the whole thing this weekend.
But. I was really on the home stretch for my Maia shawl. I've been participating in the knitalong on the Romi Designs Ravelry group, and I just couldn't face my fellow Maia knitters without having made any progress on her all weekend long. Especially since I was so close to the end! So I decided I would go all out to finish Maia on Friday and then try to finish Evenstar on Saturday and Sunday. It seemed very possible at the time.

Sadly, I forgot about this little thing called "real life" and this other thing called "job." I had a deadline on Friday so even though I was feeling absolutely awful with some kind of stomach issue, I had to stay until my deadline was finished. It actually got done in reasonably good time, considering, but I would've made more progress on the knitting if I'd been able to go home sick!
Even so, I finished everything but the bind off for Maia. I figured binding off would take me roughly an hour, given how long it was taking me to complete rows at that point, so I just couldn't hang in there and do it that evening. I knew it would cut into my time on Saturday.

Making matters worse, I had an appointment for a haircut on Saturday morning. I am not a morning person, so getting up early to work before the appointment was absolutely not going to happen. Then, I got stuck coming back from my appointment because there was a helicopter (!!!) parked in the middle of the road, along with about seventeen billion cop cars. I still don't know what that was about - there was no debris in the road or anything to suggest there had been a crash. There was a fire truck and and ambulence on the side of the road. And the weird thing is, none of this was there when I drove to my appointment half an hour earlier. Anyway, that delayed my return, which delayed my lunch date with the SO, which delayed my getting home to finish Maia. It was clear before I even started that Evenstar wasn't getting finished by the end of the weekend. I worked a little on it half-heartedly, and got a few more repeats done, but not the nine I would have had to finish to have a shot at getting it done on Sunday.

I did, however, finish Maia, and we will pause to admire her.







These photos are all pre-blocking. I pinned it out and blocked it yesterday, so by next post I will be able to provide fully finished photos.

Anyway, knowing that I wasn't going to finish Evenstar, I had a little bit of a breakdown and I cast on for a Summer Flies shawl in some Urban Silk I bought on sale last week. Yes, I know I'm on a yarn diet. I got $60 worth of silk for $30. I regret nothing. Most of what I bought is in chocolate but I bought one skein of either cream or silver, I'm not sure which (and I'm not at home so I can't go look). My plan is to knit to the last section and then do the last, outer section in the lighter yarn. This plan is subject to modification when we see how the yardage works out.

I'm not certain how I feel about it at this point. The design is not charted, it only has written directions (I can't imagine why people prefer this method, but to each their own I guess), it uses the dreaded M1 increase (I HATE that increase for no reason I can rationally explain), and I'm afraid the yarn may be a little too textured to look nice. But I'm forging ahead anyway. Just to add to my frustration, I couldn't find a size 8 needle anywhere. I couldn't even find a 7 or a 9! I finally found a 16" size 8 fixed circ and started with that, but I'm going to have to figure out where on earth all my needles have gone.
I did the first section and then, feeling better, I put it aside and worked on Evenstar some more.

By the time I had to quit on Sunday night, I had only six repeats left. If I can manage to get in two repeats a night, I can have it done by Wednesday. It's taking me between 40 minutes and an hour per repeat, so while I would love it if I could get it done sooner, I'm not going to count on it. Between work (blech) and going to the gym (blech) and various other necessities like feeding the dog, cleaning the house (blech), doing the laundry (blech), I'm thinking two repeats per night is probably as much as I can reasonably count on - if not more.

Of course, once the border is done, I have to figure out how to graft the edge. Here's my thinking - if done as written, the graft adds an extra row to make the join, which will disrupt the pattern a bit. However, I'm thinking that if I go ahead and graft it the way I graft socks - which is to say, very tightly - the seam row will be so small that it won't be so obvious, and the two pattern rows will be drawn together and match up. I don't really care if the graft shows a little bit, to be honest, because the shawl is freaking huge, and out of 54 (56? I can't remember) repeats of edge lace, it seems like the graft would have to be really, really awful to make a difference. We're talking a shawl 6 feet in diameter with 54 (56?) points on the edge. It can't possibly show that badly. (Right?)

Anyway, I'm thinking if I do it this way, I will need to block and then graft, since I fear the seam would not stretch, and the one thing that really would make it stand out would be wonky blocking in that one spot. I don't know, though. I'll have to ponder this.

Romi seems to be almost finished designing the next shawl in the 7 Small Shawls series, and I'm looking forward to it a lot. The shawl is inspired by a starry night sky. I debated and hemmed and hawed and then I ordered this yarn for it. We will see what it looks like when it gets here. If it doesn't look right for this project, I may look for something different and save that yarn for something else. (Yarn for 7 Small Shawls is the cheat I allow myself on my yarn diet to keep me from having bigger, messier accidents along the way - sort of a pressure release valve.) The shawl is beaded so it looks like I will be making another trip to Star's Beads. I have a pretty fair number of blue beads in my bead stash, but they are all size 8 and I will need size 6 for the fingering weight yarn. I'm debating whether I want to get blue beads, or if I want to get silver or gold or some other neutral-ish color beads to be the stars. I guess it will depend on what the yarn looks like when it gets here, and what strikes my fancy when I go to the bead store. You can't beat internet bead stores for selection, but I just never know what will grab me so I love being able to try different combinations in person.

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).

Super Scientific

It took me a week to spin the first half of the shetland. This weekend, I decided that I didn't want to spend another week staring at that fiber and I spun the other half in, essentially, two sessions, on Saturday and Sunday. Mostly on Sunday, since I actually spent part Saturday finishing the first half.

I can see from putting the two bobbins side by side that my super-scientific method of folding the length of top in half and splitting it at the center point did not give me an even distribution of fiber across bobbins. It may be time to buy a larger scale. I have a really cheap one that is exactly big enough to fit a ball of yarn and nothing more. Not really effective for fiber measurements, so I pretty much eyeball everthing.



I'm actually pretty okay with these two being uneven, since I suspect the singles at the beginning of that first bobbin probably aren't that great anyway, since it took me a while to figure out they didn't have enough twist to hold together properly.
The second bobbin actually probably has a lot more twist than the first, because I was annoyed, and trying to spin quickly, which means I had to fight the urge to run the wheel like an exercise bike (sometimes...I didn't fight it).

I've continued knitting the Maia shawl every time I could come up with a reason not to be spinning (such as "My back hurts!" "I'm tired!" "I HATE THIS STUPID FIBER!").



The pattern directs to repeat chart E 5 times, and in this photo I had done exactly one row of the fifth repeat. I think I'm going to do two extra repeats. For one thing, I have a crap-ton of yarn - the pattern calls for something like 400 and I have somewhere around 700. Also, my yarn is slightly lighter than a normal fingering weight and I'm using a size 4 needle (the pattern directs a size 5) since that's what I used with this yarn last time and I was happy with the results (also, I could not find my size 5 needle tips).

As you can see (or not, since it gets a little blurry), the shawl currently measures about 7 inches down the center spine. Using my usual super-scientific methods, I dropped the tape measure down my back, pinched it at the spot I would like the shawl to reach, and checked and it was about 13 inches. I MIGHT get that kind of length out of it after blocking (keeping in mind there are two more charts to be worked after the last repeat of chart E), but I'd rather be sure. Two extra repeats, at slightly less than an inch per repeat, should give me some insurance. Plus, look at that ball. I've barely made a dent in the yarn.

That said, someone on the forum posted that she had finished the chart Es and she hadn't even touched her second ball of yarn, and did the last two charts really take up that much? The answer was yes...so I'm trying to keep that in mind.

Someone on the forum asked me to post my progress since she is a little behind me and also using a slightly lighter yarn (I believe she is using Schaefer Heather, which I covet greatly), so I did something out of character and weighed my yarn. I had 85.2 grams left at the time that picture was taken. Someone else asked me how many yards I had used. This stumped me for a little bit since I hadn't weighed the yarn beforehand. The label for Audrey says that it starts at 4 oz, which google informs me is equal to 113 grams. So I did the math and determined that I had 13 yards left to finish my project.

Okay, there was no possible way that could be right, so I e-mailed the SO and asked for help, and spent some time pouting about the fact that my teachers were right about the usefulness of all those stupid word problems. Happily, I figured out my mistake before he e-mailed me back, so I don't have to feel totally stupid, though I did wait for his answer to confirm my numbers before I posted, just in case. Unless we have both lost our minds, I have used 172.2 yards.

Of course, the odds of the skein being a perfect 113 grams and 700 yards are pretty low, I figure, so I'm expecting to find out I have actually used more than that. It's probably more accurate to say I have 528 yards left.

There have been glimpses of the third shawl in the series on Romi's blog regularly, and I am so eager for it. Having used Audrey for the first two shawls in the series, I am seriously thinking of using it for the third. I'm also contemplating getting some Schafer Heather. I've always wanted to try Heather for socks but none of the local shops carry it. Actually, that's not true, I think Knit Happens carries it, but frankly, it's a bit of a difficult area to find parking in, so I really dislike going out there. I may call and see if they have either yarn in stock in the Indigo colorway, since if you call ahead and tell them what you want, they will run it out to your car. Though, I'd really like to visit Fyber Space which is in the same area, and Bead Obsessions. That area is full of great shops. It's too bad it's also so full of people and cars, and so low on parking.

I'm really enjoying these small shawl knits and the e-book subscription. The only problem is, it distracts me from spinning.

One of the things I have learned from doing the Tour de Fleece, and I have learned much, is that knitting is still my first love. I enjoy spinning, I love making yarn, but if you give me the choice between the two - I'd rather be knitting. This doesn't mean I'm going to stop spinning at all by any means. I'm just going to try in the future not to torture myself with trying to do nothing but spin for weeks at a time!

Despite my difficulties with the Pomegranate fiber, I'm not too, TOO behind on my goals. Knowing myself and the demands of my job, I calculated what I thought I could do and then gave myself some leeway. The kicker will be the extra spinning I will have to do for the challenge day. I'm pretty sure I can finish my last bag of the four I wanted to get through, but finishing that challenge bag of merino may be more difficult.

Or not, who knows. Since I have so much trouble drafting merino, I'll probably spin it at a heavier weight than the easier wools, and if that's the case I may actually get through it faster. This is another thing I have learned - the finer you spin a yarn, the longer it takes to go through the same amount of fiber. Which explains why going through 2 oz in a sitting was a breeze when I first started out, and now it seems like 2 oz takes foooooreeeeevveeeerrrr.

Uphill Climb

I lost some momentum this weekend on the Tour de Fleece. I went out with my coworkers on Friday, so I only spun for about half an hour when I got home, just so I didn't miss a day. But, that put me behind. In order to reach my goal, I want to spin 2 oz per day and then ply on the third day. Yesterday was supposed to be my plying day and I haven't even finished the first two ounces of my next fiber bag, which was this:



The little nests you see in that top half of that photo are the first two ounces, and as of last night, I still had two nests left. The top in the bottom part of the photo is the second two ounces and I haven't even predrafted yet.

I love the color - I'm a big fan of the jewel tones you get when dying natural colors (as opposed to bleached or otherwise white fiber). Sadly, I kind of feel like I'm spinning crap. This fiber is not so challenging to work with as the wensleydale. Although I've tried to stick with fiber I've never spun before, I'm kind of feeling like maybe I have actually spun Shetland before, right at the very beginning, but I'm not sure. I've decided not to worry about it too much. Anyway, I don't feel like the fiber is that difficult, I'm just not handling it well for some reason. I may just be tired. I really planned to spin at least the rest of the first two ounces yesterday, but I was nodding at the wheel, so I gave up and took a nap. Here's where I am:



Knitting is still my first love, so I while I wasn't spinning, I did work on Maya. I'm having such a blast with these little shawls, and I kind of love the subscription model, where I get a new one every couple of months. I've also been hanging around the Designs By Romi group forum on Ravelry and popping in on the Maya KAL board, and that's been a lot of fun. I have traditionally been more of a lurker on these types of things, because there are just so many people and posts that I get overwhelmed trying to keep up with them all, but the Maia knitalong is a small enough group that I feel like I can participate without getting lost. This photo shows through the second repeat of the leaf chart, but I'm halfway through another repeat since this photo was taken.




And here is Maia with Ella, because it was cute.



I also fixed most of my Follow the Leader Faroese shawl. I didn't rip back any further, I just managed to get the stitches in order and then proceeded from there. I still haven't quite finished the shoulder bands. I'm just not feeling too sure about this project. I kind of thing I should have popped up a needle size, it feels kind of tight to me, and I'm afraid of the color obscuring the lace pattern. This really isn't a big deal, though, because there is only this small lace panel and the rest of it is mostly garter stitch, which looks fine. When I stretch it out, the pattern opens up some, so I may just continue on and trust that blocking will fix the things I'm not liking. This picture is terrible, as it pretty much shows exactly what I'm talking about.



See? You can't tell there's any order to that openwork at all.

I'm not going to frog it, not yet. We'll see how I feel about it once I get all the way past the shoulder band and into the garter area. This is supposed to be my easy take-a-long project, so if that part isn't fun, it'll never get taken along and I will have to take corrective action.

Not Giving Up

This week was a tough stretch on the tour. Time was very short thanks to work and family issues, but I still managed to keep up (although, as a result, I only went to the gym once this week).

The second bag of fiber I pulled out for the Tour was the club shipment from December 2009, a set of blues called "Cold Front."



The fiber is wensleydale, which I had never spun with before. I did absolutely no research prior to plunging in, other than pulling a few staples out to check them out. I saw that they were super long, and didn't appear to have much crimp.

I decided to predraft this fiber. I don't do a whole lot in the way of color control when I spin, I pretty much let things fall as they may, other than deciding to strip the fiber or predraft it (Amy the Spunky Eclectic queen can tell you about that here, so I'm not going to try). When I spun the falkland over the weekend, I tore the roving into strips. This time I predrafted, which gave me a lovely watercolory result - which I did photograph this time:



I posted previously that I had a lot of trouble spinning this fiber, and I did, right up until the end. Even the plying was a bit of a challenge. I actually felt rather discouraged after the first bobbin, and I thought about switching to something else, but I soldiered on and completed both bobbins.



When I sat down last night to ply, I was pretty worried. I was afraid the singles would just break. But, although plying was not without its challenges, my singles held together and I am actually really pleased with the finished yarn.

I mentioned in my TdF prep post that I wasn't getting enough twist in my singles, and that as a result I thought I would also have to add more ply twist. I have found this to be less true than I expected. I am paying a lot of attention to my singles, making sure they stay in my hands long enough to get some good twist. The more even my drafting, the less of a problem it is, since the physics of spinning dictate that twist accumulates in the skinny areas and you don't get as much in the thick areas. (I can't explain why this is, but I'm sure it's physics. It's always physics.) So, if my singles are mostly even, the twist distributes mostly evenly anyway, and I don't end up with skinny areas that are too tightly spun and thick areas that are barely holding together.

Anyway, I've been stopping regularly to check my ply twist, and almost always, if my yarn twists up, it twists up because of too much ply twist instead of too little. (We won't speak of the agony I went through trying to figure out how to tell. Suffice it to say, after much struggling with the concepts of z twist and s twist and pictures of same, I have concluded through trial and error that if it twists to the left, it has too much ply, and if it twists to the right, it doesn't have enough. Don't ask me why this was so hard for me to grasp.) So even though I'm adding more twist to my singles (I think), I haven't had to add more ply twist.

After all the pain, I have to say, the wensledale looks pretty good.



I soaked and blocked it last night after this picture was taken (wet handspun looks ratty) and this morning I checked on it before I left, and I was pretty happy with the results. There's one or two areas that look kind of wonky (I had issues maintaining even tension on the singles while plying and it shows) overall the yarn looks good and useable. I came out with about 190 yards I think.