Knitting with Handspun

Handspun iPod Cosy
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

It's not every day you get to knit with handspun. So far it has been even more rare for me to knit with my very own spun yarn. I have a test-square knit out of the very first yarn I ever spun, using hand-carded rolags of unknown wool and spun on a heavy Ashford student spindle in the grease. It's not lovely, but it is my first and I really like having it. I have a couple little balls left over of this yarn and I have no idea what to do with them. I think they'll just float around in my stash indefinitely, as examples of where I started.

I also have a hat I knit out of a merino/bamboo blend purchased at Dyelots. I love this hat. The yarn is absolutely beautiful. It is an ultra-bulky single with very low twist. The colors and bamboo blend from one to the next in a soft heathery rainbow. To spin this, I basically just split the roving until I had the thickness that I wanted and then added twist. I didn't really even draft it very much, and what I did was pre-drafting what I had already split out of each length of roving. This is a very valid way of getting yarn! But it was very much a beginner's effort.

But unlike these first projects, my "Lady Violet" sock yarn from Drunkard's Dyelot roving is the first time I sat down and said, "I want to spin THIS way" and then did it. In between making the super-bulky and this first skein of 3-ply sock yarn, I worked my way through nearly eight ounces of plain brown wool, practicing drafting worsted and then woolen (not that I knew the difference at the time), and working towards thinner and thinner singles. I did it all on a 23 gram Bosworth spindle (instead of the big Ashford) starting with park-and-draft and graduating to suspended spinning. I spun bulky two-ply, DK-chain-ply, and fingering two-ply. I test-spun a small amount of my Drunkard's Dyelot roving and was able to get a fingering weight 3-ply (chain) and decided I was ready.

And boy was I! I spun that roving into 400 yards of 3-ply fingering weight yarn. Since then I have often pulled out the skein and squished it, petted it, sniffed it, and pondered--what do I make out of this lovely yarn? It's overspun and tightly plied to the point of being slightly "crunchy" to the touch, and not even a gentle bath in hair conditioner fixed that. It is also Romney and Corriedale, so it's never going to be Merino soft (nor would you want it to be). It should be great socks, although part of me winces at the thought of cutting my skein in half!

I had a golf-ball sized nugget of extra yarn. After winding my plies, I had two bobbins with singles remaining. I doubled one on itself and used that with the third to make this last bit of three-ply yarn. Still thinking about what to do with the big skein, I set about making myself a mini project. I'm so glad I did! The yarn knits up very nicely, but it's great to see the difference that handspun makes.

It's not perfect. I have some fuzzier spots. In places it's just a bit thinner or just a bit thicker. It doesn't make absolutely precise lines and rows like a mill-spun yarn can do. I love the effect, but it does mean I need to look at sock patterns that can stand up to these variations and not look sloppy. I don't think I want to go with an elaborate twisted-stitch pattern that you might see in a sock by Yarnissima or Cookie A. I want something that shows off the yarn more than the pattern.

I still don't know what that will be, but I hope I can think of something lovely and perfect. And if I don't, I'm still going to end up with an awesome pair of socks.

When you can't leave well enough alone...

Leyburn Socks
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

The Blue Moon Fiber Arts group on Ravelry (called "Socks that Rawk", after BMFA's "Socks That Rock" yarn) has started organizing a quarterly Knit-A-Long. The idea is to take one of Ravelry's less-well-known patterns (so, no Monkeys, no Jaywalkers, nothing with 1000+ projects already done). In fact, we're trying to pick patterns that have less than 100 completed projects and give them a big old KAL boost.

Leyburns were on the high end of this (I think they already had around 400-450 projects) but that's still pretty low and they won the popular vote. Now Leyburns have 624 projects, and over 200 people signed up.

It's an interesting pattern and I've done one other sock by this designer before (both Leyburn socks and Anastasia socks can be found at pepperknit.com). I like that they are toe-up patterns, but don't like the provisional-cast-on toe (Judy Becker's "Magic Cast On" from Knitty is just as easy and much faster in my opinion). The stretched-float pattern is also fascinating and does a lot to break up the pooling that can happen with a hand-painted yarn. The Yarn Harlot did a stunning pair that was a lot of fun to read about. But I just couldn't leave the pattern alone. I tried to knit it as-written, but the toe was only the first thing to go.

After getting up to my heel, I tried working a short-row heel, but didn't like it. I tried reinforcing the short-row heel. No-go. I tried to figure out how to turn the heel with a flap and just couldn't get there in the same space as a short-row heel.. so I frogged both socks back half-way and started a gusset using Cat Bordhi's "Riverbed" architecture. This keeps all the increases down on the bottom of the foot and gives you plenty of space to keep your stitch pattern going. It also hugs your arches really nicely. But because I had knit so far on both socks already, and because my pattern had something going on every-other-row, I didn't want to deal with increases every third row as is called for by Cat. So I did them every-other row. It makes for a funny bump when the sock is laying flat, but on my foot they fit wonderfully! It also gave me plenty of stitches for a very nice reinforced heel.

After that, I looked at what everyone had already done, counted my stitches and figured I either needed to add three, or loose two stitches to make counts work out, and the pattern is purported to not have a whole lot of give in it. Because I really like socks that cling to my leg, I decided at the very least I wanted a little bit of ribbing right at the heel to keep it pulled in tight. After that, I decided to just keep the ribbing going the whole way. This gives you an interesting little problem.

The float is created when you knit one stitch, and then slip five with the yarn in front. This happens every four rows. So on the instep, you knit six rows, but on the sole you knit eight. Since things are knit in the round, this difference is evened out a bit more than it might be otherwise, but there is still obviously more fabric on the bottom of my foot than the top (this seems to make it fit even BETTER). Now that I opted to not continue the pattern all the way around the leg, suddenly the back of my leg was longer than the front! But, the ribbing is also much "stretchier" than the stretched-float pattern across the front. This distributes more of the strain to the back and effectively shortens that stretch of knitting.

These socks look bizarre when laid out flat on the floor. But once on my foot they look lovely! To finish them off I opted for a picot edge created by knitting a stretch of stockinette with one row of yo-k2tog in the middle. Fold this in half and graft and you have a lovely, sturdy picot edge that grows invisibly from the rest of the sock.

March Spindler's Challenge - Burgundy Rose

March's challenge for the Spindlers' group on Ravelry had a theme of "Romance". Once again I found myself drawn to roses for the theme. Whether or not women actually love to get roses and flowers as a gift, the perception is that they are romantic. It doesn't hurt that in my Big Bag of Random Bits of Roving, I had the perfect colors again.

A search on Flickr yielded a picture that nailed exactly what I wanted for colors, and a little careful prodding wrapped my roving into a flower all its own.

I spent a lot of time debating how to spin this roving. I have been wanting color-repeats to match up. The very best way to do that is to chain ply (also known as Navajo plying). Some debate that this method is not as strong as a "true" three-ply yarn. Either way, I don't really enjoy chain plying. But it does mean you can keep your colors all together, rather than having them "barber-pole" and blend. I chain-plied a small amount of the roving and realized in addition to all this, the color repeats come out much shorter when chain-plying as well, since you condense the yarn by two-thirds. In the end, I opted for three-ply yarn to see how well I could keep each color section together that way. My logic was that if I really wanted the colors to stay together without blending at all, I ought to be dying the finished product and not the roving. Handspun yarn ought to blend. Or at least, that's how I feel about it right now!

I split the roving into thirds, and then each third in half again for spinning. This let me get a full two repeats of the colors in each third.

Burgundy Rose
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

When I wound the three plies together, I only had one that came out enough longer that I had to break out about five yards to bring the colors back into alignment again.

My yarn is 100 yards of fingering weight with three plies. My singles are not so heavy on twist as some earlier efforts, and I purposefully over-plied by just a little bit. This is supposed to make the yarn slightly more springy. It certainly is very squishy and soft! The colors even stayed together pretty well.

Mini Arches

Mini Arches
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I started these little socks quite a while back, using the pattern for "Arch-Shaped Socks" by Jen Showalter. I wanted to do a test pair that wouldn't take very long, so I decreased the number of stitches cast on to something that would fit my son and then redesigned the rest on the fly. It worked pretty well on the first sock.

When I came back a little later, I tried to remember all the different things I had done on the first. I had some notes, but they were a bit sketchy. Still, it's not like it was very difficult and so I jumped right in again, re-improvising in places. In the end, the two socks are extremely similar. But when I began knitting them, I didn't bother splitting the 2x2 rib when going from one DPN to the next. I just k2 and then p2 all the way around. When I got to the heel I then shifted all the needles one stitch over, so that the ribbing would be centered down the top of the foot. Only.. I didn't shift it the same way both times.

This is fine. They're socks for a child and that child (whoever it may be) is hardly going to care that a knit ridge goes down the top of one foot, and a purl trough goes down the top of the other. If they even notice. I notice, but mostly because it makes for a much nicer join at the heel, and a cleaner gusset one when I put the purls down the center. So that's good to know when I knit these for myself.

I love a non-painful learning experience.

Finally, for me!

Celtic Cardigan
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

The title sounds like I never knit for myself. That patently is not true! In fact 80-90% of what I knit is for my own personal use. But when I took the leap from hats and socks to sweaters, my first two were earmarked as gifts for little people (my niece, and nephew). This had the advantage of letting me learn about sweater knitting, without committing to the price tag associated with enough yarn for an adult-sized sweater. I love both of these sweaters, but they left me feeling confident enough to jump into yarn I had earmarked for myself--10 skeins of Classic Elite's Inca Alpaca Print in a variegated blue colorway. This amount of yarn totaled 1090 yards, and I had originally planned on making a pullover sweater with it. Then I learned more about alpaca.

I originally purchased alpaca without knowing much about it. I knew it felt silky-soft in the store and I loved the heathery appearance. It made a beautiful shrug. What I didn't understand is some of the various properties of alpaca. Normally it has very little crimp to the fiber, which means unlike most sheeps' wool, it doesn't have a lot of memory of its shape, and the cloth knit with it likes to drape. Over time it likes to stretch out under its own weight. It is also hollow at its core and incredibly warm. The first two properties can be offset somewhat by blending it with wool (I stranded my project with a laceweight merino). The hollow core means a pullover would be great--if I lived in Alaska. In the Pacific Northwest, not so awesome. I elected for the cardigan instead and embarked on a long process of modifying and innovating. But I've mentioned all that before!

All of the individual elements worked out in the end, and I'm really happy with the product, even if it didn't come out exactly as I had planned. As you can see here the back looks awesome! I'm extremely please with how this motif worked out. I was able to create a diamond around it where the knitting switches from stockinette to reverse stockinette. This is necessary to show off the cabling, and has the added bonus of looking really nice.

The design wasn't perfect. I ended up with two yards of yarn to spare at the end. After basting the sides with waste-yarn, they arms were way too tight. I raveled my swatch and used it to create gussets at the armpit. You can hardly see them on the finished product, but they give the sweater just enough ease to be really comfortable. I couldn't help but snap off a picture of that amusing process. Just ignore the drips on the mirror. Finishing my sweater was much more important!

I am also inordinately proud of a little-noticed detail, the graft at the back of the neck. I was able to graft the cables together seamlessly with the help of a wonderful tip I got off of Ravelry. To quote that user: When done the main knitting (don’t break your yarn) - knit about four or five extra rows with a light colour dishcloth cotton. Knit or purl the stitches as they present themselves. Cast off. Bring the two sides together with your kitchen cotton folded in like a seam. When grafting you can follow the light coloured dishcloth cotton in and out of your stitches. When you are done you just undo the bind off and rip back the kitchen cotton. You end up with perfect grafting in knit/purl and you don’t have to think about which direction you are going in and out of stitches. Don’t have to worry about stitches falling off your needles or juggling all the needles. It makes it as easy as straight seaming.

There are parts of this sweater that make me think, "I could have done this a little differently." But when I look at the whole, it is a lovely, fashionable sweater. It is dreamily warm and looks fabulous with blue-jeans or dressier pants. I am extremely proud wearing it and love showing it off. And I appreciate every last bit of advice and help I received in creating it. I couldn't have done it without all my friends.

Mardi Gras Rose

Mardi Gras Rose
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I love when inspiration strikes just the right note, and you can actually follow through on an idea.

I've been stumped for two weeks on this month's Spindler's group challenge. The theme is "Mardi Gras", and quite honestly, I've never been to one. I'm not really thrilled with the traditional combination of purple, green and gold, either. I couldn't manage to piece them together from my meagre stash of fiber, nor did I feel like making any sort of novelty yarn with lame, sparkle or beads.

So I went to Google and searched their image database, giving it "Mardi Gras" to go on. Of course the majority of images that came back were pictures in green, purple and gold, along with beads, feathers, masks, and masqueraders. But amongst all that, one popped out to the front, grabbing my attention. I clicked through to the page and read up on the Mardi Gras Rose.

Now, this I could work with!

I happily went stash diving. I have a nice variety of tiny bits of random rovings that I picked up on a lark. It was called a "Cupcake Bag" on Etsy, and is someone else's leftovers from other projects. I'm not entirely sure HOW you end up with leftovers, but I'm perfectly happy to practice on them! I culled out what would work for me, and arranged them artfully to reflect my inspiration.

Then I developed my plan for spinning.

I decided I wanted a soft, fluffy yarn from this batch, and I wanted to preserve a specific color sequence, but I didn’t want to chain ply it. I split out each color that I wanted in the roving, and came up a little short in weight, so added a little blue to the beginning to bring me up to one full ounce of roving. I then split each section into thirds (I love my gram scale) and spun them up in sequence.

In the end I had a color sequence that went: blue/green for the dark stem and foliage, bright pink, orange pink, yellow, orange pink, and bright pink. I knew I wouldn’t spin each section exactly the same, but I wanted some blending between each color so I was pleased with the prospect of the singles not matching exactly. I also decided that because I already felt very confident with a worsted draw from the end of the roving, that instead I would practice a woolen draw from the fold of each section, trying to spin the singles evenly.

Here's the final result. It is approximately 45 yards in 30 grams, woolen spun, 3 ply. It is also deliciously squishy and soft!

Handsome Devil

Grey Gansey
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

My daughter originally modeled this sweater for me, making sure that it was going to fit the intended recipient. He's a year younger than she is, but that just made it all the more certain that he woulud be able to use the sweater this year, and hopefully next year as well.

The pattern is inspired by a DROPS design, but I ended up tossing out the pattern (as I often do). Instead, I took a size 4T sweatshirt and kept it in my knitting bag. Every ten rows or so, I compared the two, altered my knitting plan where necessary, and continued on. It yielded a very comfortable and lovely grey sweater with drop sleeves and double-moss-stitch patterning. Quite classy. So is the young man wearing it!

February Lady Sweater Swatch

FLS Swatch
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

In between large amounts of spinning, I sat down and attempted to swatch for my February Lady Sweater.

Technically I am running a KAL that started on February 1st. I had intended to knit the entire sweater in the month of February. That is, before my marathon knitting to finish the Celtic Cardigan left my fingers exhausted, hands rubbery and arms sore. Ah, well. Even the best plans don't always work out.

Part way through the swatch I started to feel a bit rubbery again, but I pushed through to the end so that I could wash it and at least have my gauge. Half the swatch is knit on the suggested size-8 needles, and the other half is on size-9s. The 9s hit gauge spot-on, both before and after washing, so provided I don't start knitting even tighter as my hands heal up, that's what I'll be using.

The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Socks that Rock, Heavyweight. It's billed as sock yarn, but listed on their site as worsted, rather than fingering. In garter stitch it knits up as a super-smooshy fabric with lots of bounce. I adore this colorway and think it is going to be an absolutely fantastic February Lady Sweater.

Little Yarn Angel

Little Yarn Angel
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I had to wait for the morning light to capture the full glory of my finished skein. My daughter insisted on sharing the moment, showing off my yarn to the overcast sky to get a true-light shot, or at least as true as we can get it in a Pacific Northwest Winter. I wanted to get a few more pictures posted of the finishing process, now that I have them.

For instance there is the wonderful fact that with a PVC niddy noddy, you don't even need to take off your skein to wash it! With as much twist as I have in this skein, it was good to get a long, warm bath to set everything in place. After that I enjoyed beating it on the ground to shake things up. I must thank the fact that I have a sweater-rack in my dryer to satisfy my need to have the skein done and dry RIGHT NOW!!

And what would we do without one shot of the final product?!

Idiocy Strikes

My first attempt at making a PVC niddy noddy (with 18" center) created a skein that was too long for my swift. At its fullest extension, the swift holds 70", just short of two yards. When winding out to the very ends of the arms of my niddy noddy, I was getting a significantly longer skein than a mere two yards. In my mind, 1.5 yards ought to be just the right size, and great for recalculating yardage later (since 1.5 * wraps is easy).

Because I was winding along the ends of my niddy noddy, rather than right next to the cross-piece, I was making a long diagonal length from end to end. Feeling smart, I got out my pen and paper and applied a little basic trigonometry to the problem and arrived at what I thought was a proper length for the center bar. Intuitively, it seemed awfully short. However, I'm rarely one to trust a gut feeling over a properly calculated answer so I sat hard on that little part of my brain saying, "Hey, there.. not right! Not right!". Hack-saw in hand, I obtained a properly short piece of PVC. When done, I measured the skein and that half-squished part of my brain piped up again. "Hey! That's too short for a 1.5 yard skein! Too short! You did the math wrong!"

So I futzed with the niddy noddy, holding it in odd contortions and trying to wrap yarn around it while wishing for a third hand, and estimated without math. This added 2 inches to the center bar and produced a longer skein that matched what I thought it should be.

The problem is that my BASIC MATH SKILLS failed me here. Oh, no. Not the Trig. THAT, I did right. For some reason, when I checked the skein length the first try my traitor brain said, "54 inches? No WAY that 54 inches is 1.5 yards..." Um, Brain? Heh-LLO! 54 inches is exactly 1.5 yards! When I extended the center-bar, I ended up with a 66" skein. I don't know why my abused, sleep-deprived brain settled on this as the CORRECT amount for a yard-and-one-half. But there it is. A 66" skein.

Not all is lost! I still have the shorter center-bar so I can make a 1.5 yard skein. In addition, the skein I wound off last night is not the 345 yards I believed I had, but rather a full 400 yards (I checked, twice)! The yarn is a little rough to touch even after washing, conditioning and thwacking thoroughly. And while it's not dreamy in your hands like merino, the color is so amazingly beautiful that I'm not sure I can relegate it to my feet in the form of socks. I'm debating a triangular scarf/shawl of some sort I could tuck on the outside of my black wool pea-coat for decoration. It would be gorgeous!

One heavy spindle!

100 grams of 3-ply fingering yarn
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Let me tell you, I'm very seriously considering finding some other project for this yarn.. because it seems a right shame to have gone through the trouble to ply the whole 100 grams, only to cut it in half for socks!!

This thing got heavy. The cop got seriously huge. I had to tinker with all sorts of different ways to wind it on to keep it stable. I ended up alternating between winding it cross-ways for one layer, and winding straight around to even it out. The yarn is beautiful so far and very even as far as I can tell. I can't wait to get it wound into a skein.

Some days I am really thankful that I'm not afraid of tools. I don't mind pulling out a power drill or hacksaw and going to town. I put together a PVC niddy-noddy just for winding this yarn. To make one, you start with about 4 feet of PVC pipe (I used 1" diameter pipe), and two T-connectors. Cut four 6-inch pieces, and one longer one for the center. The length of your center piece depends on how long you want the skein to be. You also need to account for the width of your T-connectors in the length of your center bar (and technically you also need to account for the width of the pipe as well, but let's not get too crazy with the math). In this case, 18" from top to bottom yielded a 2-yard skein, which is too long for my swift. I went back and with some estimation and basic trigonometry came up with new numbers and cut a second one to 12.5" ... but this came out to 60" for the skein. So much for estimation. Five feet is a perfectly reasonable skein, but also a pain in the rear for calculating final yardage (wraps * 5 / 3). So I increased that to 14" and viola! it was a perfect 1.5 yard skein.

I think I'll put on some TV (can we say DVR of "Heroes" and "Battlestar Gallactica"? Yay!) and wind myself a skein tonight. This baby wants to be washed!

Pretty in Purple

Pretty in Purple
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

And now, for a monster spinning update.

I've been wrestling with a mild repetitive-stress injury (self-diagnosed) that left me with aching arms and difficulty gripping my knitting needles. There was this sense that as I knit, I was making things worse, but it didn't actually hurt. At least, not yet. So being body-aware, I decided to leave things off for a while and try something else that wouldn't aggravate my arms, or at least not bother them in the same way.

A day later my arms really started to ache along the tendons, so I counted it a good deal, and on the advice of a friendly P.T. began to douse myself to the elbow in ice-water and a warm bath on a 3-minutes-cold / 3-minutes-hot cycle for up to 15 minutes at a time. It's amazing what properly applied cold and heat can do!

In order to distract myself from my waiting knitting projects, I pulled out my lovely purple fiber that I got as a Christmas gift, and my new Bosworth 22-gram Midi spindle, and got to working. This fiber is a Corriedale / Romney / Alpaca blend, and before you ask "Why that blend" let me remind you ... it was a GIFT. It's also fabulously dyed ranging from powder blue and lavender to deep royal blue and rich purple.

My first thought for it was a lace-weight shawl, but after petting it for a while, and consulting more experienced spinners, we all arrived upon the conclusion that this stuff is a bit too hardy for a lace wrap. Corriedale and Romney are both long-wool breeds (more or less), and long wools are better suited for hard-wearing outer garments. Sock yarn, my spinning friend suggested. Spin the heck out of the plies and then three-ply them with lots of twist. So that's what I attempted to do!

Here, we can see one third of the roving. It's actually slightly more. The bag was labeled 4.4 ounces, so I spun up what I thought would measure 1/3 of that, but ended up being 40 grams. Close enough. I went on to spin the remaining 2/3 in 37-gram sections. The first cop and second, I wound off onto toilet paper rolls with my ball-winder. The third I left on the spindle. This was because I knew my spinning started a fair amount thinner and thickened as I got more fiber on the spindle. By working from the 'tail' end of one cop, and the 'front' end of the other two, I was able to even out the thickness a bit over the entire length.

Here we can see my "bobbins" on a makeshift kate (a "lazy kate" is intended to hold multiple bobbins of yarn to allow you to spin the singles on them them back together as plies). I wound these three bobbins together onto a ball to use for plying. This is a great suggestion made by Abby Franquemont of Abby's Yarns, a very knowledgeable hand-spinner. The benefit of this technique is that it leaves you with an extremely portable storage "container" for your yarn, rather than having to tote around your kate wherever you are going.

At this point in time I have plied about 80 grams (of 120g total). My spindle is starting to get VERY heavy and the excitement of having a soon-finished yarn is wearing off under the realization of how much further I still have to go.

I'm still pretty excited about it all. I should finish with over 300 yards of fingering-weight yarn in lovely colors, ready for whenever I finish enough projects that I can actually get around to knitting it up!

It lives!!!!

In a fit of insanity inspiration, I figured out how to calculate (or rather how to NOT calculate) my sleeve cap. Inspiration struck as I shrugged into an old shirt and noticed that (once again) the oil spots had not washed out of the front, and the hem was unraveling (hahahaha--some of you will get that) and in general it wasn't in very good shape. What better to sacrifice to the sweater gods?

I hopped downstairs and pulled on the body of the sweater-so-far and grabbed a Sharpie out of the pen-jar. Wonderful things, Sharpies. At this point my daughter started to pipe in with the obvious questions, "What are you doing with the scissors, Mommy? Why do you have the pen? Why are you drawing on your shirt?!!" (At which point I took a moment to explain that you should never, EVER, ever do this to your own shirts, and it is only for Mommies to do and .. hmm.. this probably should have waited until nap-time, but too late now! -- If I ever find a size 4T shirt sacrificed to the "sweater gods" I'll only have myself to blame.) I traced what I could of the armhole of the sweater right onto the shirt.

Replacing said beat-up-old-drawn-on-shirt with something slightly less beat up (hey, I was having one of those days where only the oldest, softest and most beat up comfy shirts would do) I flopped the poor thing down on the floor and applied the scissors to the shirt (remember, sweetie, you never EVER ever cut up your own clothes and shouldn't touch the scissors without Mommy around..). I snipped up the inner seam and laid the whole thing out flat. There! I had my correct arm-cap shaping. I then measured the thing, and figured out how to knit it. Viola!

It even worked. I finished knitting it this morning and carefully seamed it onto the body from the top of the shoulder down to the armpit. I didn't bother with the long seam under the arm, because this was purely a "I really hope this worked!" moment. It may not be the most amazing design ever, but it did work! I'm not sure if I don't want to take it off and clean up the lines a little bit. I know for certain, now, that I will be popping open the side seam and either adding a cable-strip all the way down to the hip, or at least a gusset under the arm because it is way too small around the arm.

But at least I know it worked! We're on to the second arm to see how much yarn will be left at the end, and if I need to risk picking up one extra skein at the LYS to finish things off.

Derailed on the Learning Curve

I like to understand how things work. I also learn better by doing than by reading (although I enjoy both!). These two little things combine so that (sometimes) when I get to the middle of a project, I have to stop. I frown. I prod. I get out a pen and calculator and scratch my head. I head to the internet, and the library and get my hands on everything I can to figure out how to fix the itty bitty problem that stalled me and somewhere along in this process I have to start to watch my mouth so that little ears don't pick up some new words, because I've come to realized that having half the information can get you into some really "interesting" situations.

Take my Celtic Cardigan. This sweater started out as one thing (the Cardigan for Arwen) got chucked out, kept the cable, pulled Carolyn from Knitty.com for its body and took off running, realized that the fancy cable for the back just wasn't going to work, so found Continuous Cables for its special motif, started the second lap, borrowed a little more from Continuous Cables for the cuffs and then got to the arm cap.... and stopped dead.

Now mind you, I've only done two sweaters before this, and a shrug. The shrug had NO shaping.. it was a big cross that you seamed up on two edges and bam.. it was a shrug instead of ... a funky big cross of lace you couldn't really use for anything. I did a cardigan for my niece which was striped and had slightly inset sleeves, and a pullover for my nephew (oh, dear.. I'm the Knitting Auntie) with drop shoulders. For some reason, then, Carolyn seemed like a good idea to me, with raglan shaping. Don't ask me why, because all of a sudden I realize I had no idea what "raglan" really was.

I don't have raglan shaping now, that's for sure. I have REALLY DEEP inset sleeves. But there are 7 stitches there at the shoulder that seam up. So.. since the sleeves don't go all the way to the neckline, it really isn't a raglan (or so I've found out). This makes an interesting problem when you start considering that the sleeve cap I have is written for a raglan pattern. It's also written with errors, for which I must bless TPTB, because without those errors I would have blithely knit the sleeve cap as-written and then been knocking my brains out trying to figure out how to fit it into an armhole that is much too small!

Except now I'm going to have to sit down with a ruler, paper, pen, my math brain and a very long article on Knitty.com of how to calculate a sleeve cap, and figure out how to design a cap to fit an armhole I've already knit...

Guess I took that curve a little too fast.

When do you give up?

Or do you?

I have finished the left and right front panels on my Celtic Cardigan. I have also knit the entire back, joined the side seams, managed to graft the knot-work at the back of the neck and joined the shoulders and collar in place.

The knot in the center of the back looks amazing! It worked fabulously and I'm thrilled I finally found Continuous Cables and bought it. However, I can't seem to photograph this yarn to save my life. It is so dark I just can't figure out how to get enough light on it to show the detail without washing out everything. Either the pictures are so dark everything is lost in shadow, or they're so bright you can't see for all the light bouncing off every single stitch in the project.

I love knitting at my gym. They have a nice lobby with huge picture windows and a couple of chairs right where all that wonderful light spills right down onto your work. Even on an overcast day there is some of the best lighting available. It gives me enough time to wind down from my run and for my daughter to finish up at her preschool. It's perfect. As I was working the last of the knot-work up the front and extending it so it would go around the back of the neck, one of the women with which I frequently chat came up to look at the project in progress. She looked over and admired my work and then very kindly clucked her tongue, shook her head and informed me, "I think it will be too small." We debated this for a bit, mostly because I've been a bit concerned the whole time while working it. I chose the Medium over the Large size with some trepidation. It's right on the edge for me, but I have lost a lot of weight and am still loosing more.

Her comments spurred my efforts to seam everything I had done together and try it on. I finished this afternoon and tugged it over my shoulders. I fear she was right, but it's so hard to say. I haven't washed or blocked it at all yet. It could stretch out a little. Maybe. My yarn is alpaca, but I did strand it with lace-weight merino to give it a little extra "memory". There is a lot of give in the knit cloth I could exploit, but it doesn't hang with any positive ease right now.

I'm down to three-and-one-half balls (out of ten) of the alpaca yarn, which is just over 300 yards and I fear I will run out before I finish both sleeves. I fear the whole thing is too small, even after some judicious blocking. I just don't know if I should back out of this project now, or see it to its very end, be it bitter or sweet.

I think I'll persevere, but boy, am I ever nervous!

The post in which I show marked improvement!

Spinning improvement
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Practice, and you ought to get better, right? It's so nice when that works out! Here is my second go at my brown roving. See the strand? It's that thread-like line across the dime. Now that is some thin spinning!

The first skein dried and fluffed up into a gorgeous yarn that is, in fact bulky. The upside of it being bulky is that it is two-ply yarn. So at least I spun half as thick as I ever had before. This next step is even more exciting.

Now I have to decide how to ply it!

In the meantime, I have completed another six pattern repeats on the left front of my cardigan, so progress is happening there, too. Unfortunately I have been ill, the children have been ill, and DH has been ill as well. So, there is not as much progress as I'd like, and pretty much everything around the house has come to a grinding halt. It's a little worrisome because I'm participating in sweater KAL starting in February. Wish me luck getting done in time, 'cause I'm going to need it.

Sidelined by Spinning

Bosworth Midi 23g
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Once upon a time I promised myself I wouldn't take up spinning. I had just finished a very nice class on drop-spindling at my favorite LYS. We covered every step in hand-spinning yarn, starting with the fibre. Our teacher had several unprocessed fleeces and discussed the merits of each. We picked, carded (into rolags) and spun on heavy Ashford drop-spindles. We plied our singles and washed the resulting yarn free of lanolin and dirt. We also got a chance to sit down with roving at a wheel and give that a whirl.

It was fascinating and I really felt it expanded my understanding of yarn, and wool but the process was just too intensive to be practical in my lifestyle. Picking and carding wool wasn't my favorite activity (okay, I flat-out didn't like it much other than the lovely lanolin smell and soft hands afterwards) and I couldn't see how to fit it in around a rambunctious toddler.

It was two years later that it occurred to me that since you could wheel-spin roving, you could drop spindle roving, too! That idea stuck with me and I finally gave in to the urge with some gorgeous wool/bamboo blend roving.

My Christmas gift from my mother this year is a spindle. Actually it's two spindles (one for spinning fine, one for medium/plying). I also received a lovely gift of roving from a good friend. Since I want to see this roving become something between lace and fingering weight, it became very necessary that I get more practice. But my spindle is amazing and a lovely and functional tool that I just like to pull out and rub a little!

I bought myself a Bosworth (also known as a "Bossie") spindle. It's cherry wood and I love the way the grain lights up when it catches the light at just the right angle. It spins like lightning! At only 23 grams, it's pretty light, but still just what I wanted. So far I'm only "park-and-draft" spinning, which means you get a lot of spin in your single and then stick the spindle between your knees to work on drafting out the fiber to put spin into it. I managed a little bit of suspended spindling, too. I can tell that will work easier as I get faster at drafting. Right now I take too much time to move between getting up spin and drafting the fiber to get very far.

This week's project is 8oz of beautiful latte-colored merino roving (actually it's only 50 grams of that 8oz, plenty left!). It still has just a wee bit of lanolin in it (because I can smell it, and LOVE it). It is undyed and probably won't see dye from my hand. It's working wonderfully for practice. I have successfully spun up 75 yards of 2-ply yarn. It's drying now so I'm not certain of the WPI, but it is much loftier than I expected. I think it's somewhere between DK and worsted.

I'll have to find a project for it as-is, or spin more, because it's just lovely. I'm really excited about it! But I need to get back to my Celtic Cardigan so I can be ready for a KAL in February.

Rubbing Elbows

I get to go to a knitting group here in town and sometimes I get to see Joan Schrouder. It's so cool! She's so knowledgeable I'm almost intimidated.. except that she's so nice it's pretty hard to stay that way!

I've been working on The Knot for over a month now, and bringing my progress to Monday nights. After bringing in my cut version, and explaining it all to Joan, she immediately stated that I ought to write Janet Szabo (the original designer) to let her see what I'd done.

Me? Write Janet Szabo? I don't know what it is that makes contacting a published author so daunting. Maybe because there's a small part of me that would love to get published as well.. to end up famous and popular. Woo. I also know that published persons are just like the rest of us.. only.. published.. and therefor more well known. And more spammed. My brain debated this and decided that Janet would probably like getting a nice mail from someone not trying to sell her anything and really just saying "thank you" for a gorgeous design.

So after directing her to my blog in a short email, I went on to visit Janet's and.. it's funny! It's funny like I'm not funny. I'm too mathy, I think. At least now. Maybe a couple of years of blogging will loosen me up. (Here's hoping!)

Anyway, a couple of posts down I ran into a fun little MeMe, and had to jump in and do it myself.

Turns out.. I'm an Argyle Sweater.

You Are an Argyle Sweater

You are contemplative, brainy, and serious. You don't take much lightly - life is too important for that. You are a very determined person. You don't let anything stand in your way. You think out your actions and act deliberately. You don't waste time, money, or resources.

What Kind of Sweater Are You?

Just Too Many Stitches

Sometimes you get a good idea. You run with it, work on it, love it, and notice that maybe, even though it's a good idea, it's not quite right. So you tinker, modify, adjust, (curse quietly), frog, rework, evaluate, (mutter under your breath)... Maybe now it's to the point you wanted in the beginning. But maybe it's not.

"The Knot" isn't there. I dragged it with me to my Monday Knitting Night, and got to show it to.. one person. It is Christmas week, after all. I should have anticipated it. But Monday night is so very important to me that I'd almost skip out on family to go. Okay, I DO skip out on family to go.. but it's my family and my husband can handle it one night a week!

Spread out on the table, still on the blocking wires to hold it, it was all too clear that The Knot still wants to be more circular than square. There is more fabric at the center of each edge of the square than there ought to be in order to lay flat. I could still work around this. I could work more rows and expand at the corners until things are straight. I could do a few short-rows to compensate for the wider-at-the-middle-than-the-corners problem. I could also realize that after all this work I still have no idea how to put it in the back of my sweater... a back that I suddenly have realize is not square, itself.

Back when this was a design where "square" was the name of the game it was logical to stick a square in the middle of the back. As I searched through many, many cardigan patterns, I opted for raglan shaping at the arms and shoulders rather than Kate Gilbert's "innovative" shaping in the original "Cardigan for Arwen". Yet, despite these changes, in my head the back was still square. Last night I realized that.. um.. there are now ARMHOLES. Armholes! These won't be square! I'll have to figure out how to graft in The Knot not AND decrease for armholes!

I just can't do it. I could sit down and figure it out mathematically, but my intuition tells me it doesn't fit. I'm pretty logically minded, and most likely correct in my estimates. My raglan-shaping will "eat in" to the already knit square (that still doesn't lay flat). My ruler agrees.

I'm afraid I must give up on The Knot. I've found a lovely alternative. I had continued my search as The Knot became harder and harder to work. I happened across Continuous Cables. Lots of great material here! Lots of information on how to work, and design, circular, swirling, twisting cables knit on a background of plain old reverse-stockinette. There's even a pretty knot that I think would do well on the back of my sweater, as-is.

I still love The Knot. I'm thinking I'll get some pretty, paler wool that will show off its delicate curves and knit it once again to cover a pillow. That way I can enjoy it often and remember all the things it taught me. And maybe, in the future when I've learned a few more tricks of the trade, I'll figure out how to put it in the back of a very lovely cardigan that I designed, myself.

Are you a Pusher?

Are you a pusher? Whenever I forget, or get in a hurry, all of a sudden I'm a terrible pusher. I gleefully shove the needle back through the stitches. As an English-style knitter, this lets me maintain better control of both needles as I "throw" the yarn around and greatly improves my speed. When I was learning on Clover bamboo needles, this wasn't a great tragedy. But last year a generous family member gifted me the Knit Picks Nickle-plated Options Circular Knitting Needle Set (complete with binder, before it was switched over to the clear pouch). I cannot express how much I LOVE these needles. This leads to the problem ...

I have a couple of Addi Turbos, and at the time I thought they were the bomb. I even have a really nifty little set by Plymouth Yarns (the Bamboo Sister Set). Interchangables.. how cool is that?!

These needles were more than adequate. Addis in particular have a beautifully smooth join and hat-knitting zipped by on them. The longer circulars served me well knitting my first baby blanket. Then a new kind of knitting came into my life... lace, and with it laceweight yarn.

I really wanted to produce some of that amazing lace that I saw in magazines and books. I picked out a project and bought a bunch of laceweight yarn, but before leaping off the deep end, I thought I'd make something small. Something easy. Something that wouldn't frighten me off of this very thin, very insubstantial yarn..

Enter the Airy Scarf. It looked simple enough. I pulled out appropriate Addis, my new lace-weight yarn, and went to town... and HATED IT. Ugh. The yarn was terrible to work with.. so hard to get it to move around the way I wanted it to. Something as simple as a knit-two-together was impossibly difficult. I forced myself to finish the scarf and in disgust wrote off lace knitting altogether.

Christmas arrived, and with it the deliciously pointy Options needles and all of a sudden, lace knitting seemed possible again. I worked out some swatches and everything just clicked! The narrow tips picked up that tiny yarn wonderfully and didn't just push it around the needles like my other sets. I jumped into the Sugarplum Shrug (Interweave Knits, Holiday Gifts 2007) with great abandon (once figuring out that it didn't actually call for lace-weight yarn! But that's another story).

But where does this all add up? Pushing. My Options may be fabulous for manipulating stitches.. no need to balk at k3tog or more. But the tip of my finger when I stop thinking and start knitting like crazy.. the poor thing suffers. Today I am on a self-enforced knitting break to allow a small split to heal before it becomes worse. It is absolutely no good to punch a hole in your own fingertip, and I refuse to bleed for my craft. At least, not on purpose!

So, to anyone that I showed the handy "trick" of pushing that needle back through the stitches, I'm sorry! Quit now and save your fingers, or enjoy the gentler points of many of the lovely needles out there. Just be careful, or you too might be taking a few breaks from your knitting.. to heal!