Not just rose..

Tour de Fleece overview
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

So, the rose wasn't the only thing I spun this past three weeks. Oh, no. In fact, after a bunch of the rose, I was getting pretty darned tired of dusky pink. And dark pink. And light pink. And pink-y brown.

Yah.

So somewhere in there I conceived a desperate need for blue. I went by my LYS-dyers' place and picked up the most gorgeous blue/green/purple/gold tussah silk top you've ever seen.

And then a few days later I went back and bought the rest of it that she had (for 6 oz total). Since this was never in the original plan for spinning, I didn't really have any major drive to get it done. I started out spinning a very thin and even single and just working my way through it as a break. At the same time I was working on knitting a shawl and it came into my head that it would look amazing with a green border. At my Monday knitting group I approached my friend dyer and asked if she couldn't cook up a batch of green silk. Green, like the pretty fronds of plant in the vase beside her on the table. She took a sprig, tucked it behind her ear, and by Wednesday, I found GREEN waiting for me!

So the green became my second project of the Tour. But wait, you say, isn't the blue your second project? Well. Yes, and no. You see the green silk is finished. Two ounces spun in 385 yards of 2-ply, lace-weight tussah silk yarn. And it's already wound and being knit as well! (You'll get to see that later. Maybe Friday. I'm keeping it under wraps.)

The peacock blue/green/purple/gold was still being spun.

Side trip number two was getting back to a project I'd planned for the month, but sidelined for my Tour de Fleece projects. I spun up my Spindler's Group Challenge yarn. I had planned on this being my second attempt at a cabled yarn, but it just wasn't working for me, so I went with 3-ply instead.

I also took a side trip into supported-spindle spinning. Of course, I don't own a supported spindle. But I solved that problem! Channeling my inner MacGuyver, I dug out a bamboo skewer and a racquetball and constructed a perfectly serviceable supported spindle. I began to work on my long-draw techniques, so that I might feel confident enough to take the leap into spinning down fibers like cashmere.

I'm still working on the "peacock" silk. I'm trying to decide if I should ply it with itself, or find a coordinating wool to use as the second strand. At the moment I'm leaning towards wool, to give it a soft hand, loft and bounce.

As a final overview of this past month's efforts, and listed in order of spinning:
950 yards (+100 yards leftover silk single) of 2-ply rose in 3.8oz of tussah and 4oz of merino, (24-20 WPI)
55 yards of 3-ply “just for giggles” in 47g of random wool (didn’t measure WPI)
385 yards of 2-ply green in 2oz of tussah (22 WPI)
? yards of cotton “challenge” yarn on a bamboo skewer+racquetball. (Go MacGuyver!)
1200 yards of tussah silk single, waiting for its perfect mate (as yet undetermined)

950x2 + 100 + 55x3 + 385x2 + 1200 = 4135 yards or 2.35 miles.. approximately

From Fiber to Yarn

Tour de Fleece - July 14th
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

What you see here is my first week-and-a-half spinning for Ravelry's "Tour de Fleece". This fun group makes a spin-a-long of the Tour de France, with the only requirement (and a loose one at that) being that you at least TRY to spin every day.

This is made easy by the fact that if you post your progress for the day to the "daily progress" thread, then the next day people vote on their favorites and an award is given to the top two most-voted-yarns. Being somewhat competitive in my nature, this spurs me on each day to at least a little bit of spinning, and sometimes to a whole lot of spinning!

One of my goals for this (my first) Tour was to finish a project I've had in mind for a while now. I originally purchased 2 ounces of tussah silk from Dyepot.com because it was on sale, and it was lovely. I later went back and bought the rest of the lot (almost another two ounces) as well as four ounces of a coordinating merino wool to ply with it. This, I reasoned, would easily give me 1000 yards of lace-weight yarn with which to make a shawl.

Another shawl-in-progress at the moment was my first attempt at working with tussah silk. Rather than leave it all to chance for the "Big Shawl", I decided to spin a smaller project first. This was especially easy when I happened on another sale of a lot of four ounces of silk. (I'm a sucker for a sale, and know it. Thus, when I need to save money I'm very careful NOT TO SHOP in the first place.) That was done just before the Tour and I'm knitting it now. What it did for me is allowed me to test out how evenly I would spin over time, and how I liked for the silk to be spun.

With that knowledge, I embarked on this, my second (and largest) lace-weight project to date. I started with the silk and purposefully spun it "thicker" than my original yarn. I wanted a slightly softer yarn, and my first silk had gotten quite twisted, and thus a little rough, in many places. I also didn't want to stray towards cobweb weight, which is all too easy when spinning silk.

Over the course of the week I worked my way through the silk, documenting my process each day. It is especially fun to spin outside while my kids play in the yard. We get to enjoy the sun (and sun on silk is a beautiful thing to behold). They get plenty of playtime, and I get spinning time. They'll even chase the spindle, or I can chase them. It's wonderful to be mobile!

At the end, I could feel myself getting anxious. I wanted to get this project done. I was also nervous about my yardage, so for the first time I sat down with my singles and wound them onto my niddy-noddy for measurement. Relief! I was well into 600 yards of silk single on the first attempt.

I polished off the silk (and wound that.. it was over 500 yards) and then heartened by my success I pulled out the merino top. Here, I ran into an issue I'd never had before. This particular top was so densely compacted I almost couldn't get it to "break" apart into sections. I knew that would be an issue for drafting. In addition, parts of it were dyed brown, rather than rose. I'd expected a bit more of an even application of color. This wasn't bad, just not what I'd originally envisioned.

My first hour of each day spinning the wool was sitting down and breaking it into sections by brute effort. Then I split each of those sections along their length several times. And finally I mixed-and-matched the sections until each one had an equal number of rose strips, and one tan strip. These lengths I then carefully "pre-drafted" together. I tugged a little bit at the bottom just until the fibers started to slip past each other, and then moved up a little bit and repeated the process. This turns a compacted, dense top, into a light and airy length of fiber that is easy (or at least much easier) to spin. As an added bonus, it also blends the various strips together, so the tan became incorporated into the other colors rather than standing out bluntly against the various pinks.

Then I went to town. My silk spinning had put me in good practice, but the merino went like lightning. I spun through two ounces each day, finishing four ounces in two days! This didn't spin quite as thin as the silk. Despite having a bit more wool by weight, I spun about 100 less yards of it. Still, this was putting me right around my 1000-yard-total mark, and that made me happy enough.

Now I had four rolls of spun fiber. Each of these I wound together so that one strand of silk was with one strand of wool. This is known as a "plying ball" and is a great way to make your plying work much more portable. I hold the ball in my left hand and unwind enough yarn to ply, spin it up, wind it on the spindle, and continue. You can ply all over the neighborhood. At the gym. In the supermarket (if you wanted, but I wouldn't). Did I mention I like portable?

Plying spindles get full. You want to be careful how you wind them. I've had trouble with the bottom getting loose, despite careful winding and cross-winding to keep it stable. This time I cross-wound very rarely, and straight-wound quite a bit more. I came out with a really solid cop. There's just enough cross-winding on it to make sure the spiral-wound strands won't come loose, but not enough to make the cop slippery so that things start falling off.

The last step is to wind one more time onto the niddy-noddy. This confirmed I had 950 yards of finished 2-ply merino/silk lace yarn, with 100 yards of silk single left over. Whew!

Next Monday

I dropped by Dyelots today. I've been desperate to find some super-saturated blue/purple SOMETHING to spin. Of course, she had some. AND it was silk. I'm so addicted to silk right now. She also had insanely saturated mohair, which just wouldn't cut it on the spindle, but dang. PURDY.

Janice says, "Let's knit at Cafe 440 on Monday." So I'm sure people will be getting email soon. Except the list is totally broken, so she'll be doing her best to get the word out. Spread it around. Cafe 440 (on Coburg road, just a little north of Pier 1 and Trader Joe's) on Monday night!

Setting yourself up for failure

Some days, you just can't get it right.. and while it was entirely my fault. Well. It wasn't my fault!

Okay. It was all my fault.

I took lace knitting to my Monday night group. This was, of course, a minor risk. Lace takes thought and attention. Chatting it up with a half-dozen knitters (or more, but summers are pretty light in attendance) isn't exactly conducive to either. But the shawl I'm working on (with my own handspun, I might mention!) is a very easy "leaf lace" pattern I've done several times before and hardly have to think about now. The only trick is remembering the center-line where the pattern starts over.

We set the scene on Monday night amidst several happily knitting women. I knit along on my project and at some point I spread out my stitches at the end of the row and frowned. Things didn't line up right and it was very odd. So I spent an hour over that small section, figuring out what was wrong (which I never quite did) and finally fudging the stitch count back into shape so I could continue. But it bugged me. I'm pretty darn exacting about my knitting and even small errors gall me.

Then, near the end of the evening, I stretched the whole thing out to admire my work and noticed an oddness near the center. Oh, sure enough, in that one tricky spot where I've debated every row that I ought to put in a stitch marker to remind myself that HERE is that tricky center stitch... I'd missed it. I'd shifted the whole thing over (by an increasing number of stitches each row, due to the way the lace is put together). It was a mess.

I will admit that I used some fairly strong language (greeted with much kind laughter by my friends). I scowled at it for a good amount of time as one of our more accomplished lace knitters packed up to go home. I was advised to let it go and look at the whole thing with fresh eyes in the morning. But fresh eyes would be at war with two children. I just don't have the ability to drop back lace AND properly take care of things around the house. Monday nights are my best bet.

I took a deep breath. I could see what the issue was, and I could see a plan to fix it, so I dropped back those dang stitches and proceeded to knit them back up again... wrong. At this point it was 10pm, and everyone else was packing to leave, so I did as well. But I know myself well and I muttered about it all the way home. There was no way I was going to get to sleep with this looming over me.

When I got home, I dropped those stitches down again and this time fixed the persistent error. I was rather proud of myself for it. I went to sleep a happy woman.

This morning, bolstered by my success, I resolved to do the same with the other problem. Only, I just couldn't find the root of it. After dropping more stitches than I like back more rows than I like, I finally admitted defeat. I pulled my circular out of the knitting and several rows of yarn were wound back onto the ball before I carefully picked up each stitch in the next row down as the yarn popped out of it.

As I began to re-knit that "first" row, the first row of my evening out, I was happy to have erased my error (even if it did mean loosing a fair amount of progress). I once again got to the end of the row and couldn't help but notice that things weren't matching up. So I stopped, counted, and scrutinized and found the one stitch I'd dropped into a yarn-over.. and realized that because of this I had decreased incorrectly in three different places for the rest of the row. There was NO WAY I could have fixed this by dropping back stitches in the middle of a supermarket cafe with women chatting all around me (and certainly no way I would have noticed it in the first place, chatting back as I was doing at the time). And once I noticed the error it was much too much to fix easily. I would defy any but the most accomplished (and OCD) of knitters to be able to drop back that 20-some stitches in any circumstance.

But now that I had frogged back, fixing just the one row below was quite simple. And now I'm back on the right track once again.

Whew!

Chunky Knits

Square One
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Whenever you need a break, or just need something to make you feel a little better.. pull out the chunky yarn, I say. After sock yarn, nothing is more fun.

I've been trying to work through the skeins of yarn I bought early in my "stashing" career... the ones I purchased when I didn't know that one skein of bulky yarn wasn't enough to make anything out of, even if it is luscious and soft.

I picked up two skeins of Mirasol's "Sulka" yarn (50% merino and 50% silk). This is a fabulous soft-spun single that has 55 yards in 50 grams. It was on sale, and it was gloriously soft and what did I know? I figured out later that I would have needed to go back for... way too much to do a scarf or anything else. But hats, now, hats are great. I was going to do this hat alternating my two skeins (one is a lovely aqua blue and the other a soft tan). But then I remembered "Turn a Square" and I started looking into Noro yarns.

You see, Noro has many beautiful yarns and originally this hat is knit using one of them. It doesn't match my Sulka, tho. Luckily, my LYS carries Silk Garden Chunky -- a match all around! It's wool and silk, spun as a single, and well.. chunky. The slow color changes are what make the hat so fun, combined with the gradual shift of stripes that seem circular to stripes that appear to be square at the top.

They knit up in about a day and used exactly one skein of Mirasol "Sulka" and one-half skein of the Silk Garden Chunky. I actually ran out of the blue Sulka, but bound off the hat with Silk Garden and I don't think it makes a bit of a difference.

And now I have two fewer skeins left to be knit! Two fewer skeins that I had no idea what to do with. That makes me terribly happy.

Big, bigger ... big enough

Tussah Silk
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Lately there has been some talk on the Ravelry Spindler's group about how heavy your spindle needs to be, how weight on the spindle changes its profile, and just how much fiber can you pack on a spindle. The acknowledged master of this, Abby Franquemont, posted a thread and picture of an amazingly packed spindle with a massive amount of fiber on it.

I'm not quite that talented (yet).

But this is still a fair amount of fiber. This cop uses Abby's technique of cross-winding the single for stability, as well as circular-winding to compact it. Packed on this 23 gram spindle are 50 grams of spun silk. I could get more on there, but it's about half of my total, and so it's time to stop.

Tussah silk is the slightly lesser cousin to bombyx silk which comes from the fabled silkworm fed only mulberry leaves. While the wild moth that gives us tussah silk is less picky about its food and enjoys munching on oak leaves, it is still no slacker in its spinning and the combed top is lustrous and beautiful.

This particular batch was dyed by the Etsy seller HandOverTheWool. The colors are lovely white, pink and violet and titled "A Bunch of Lilacs". I'm rather amused by the differences in light between my picture and the seller's photo shown here. I was certainly expecting rose much more than pink, and nothing as deep as the purple I received. I love it anyway.

Silk is slippery and it wants a lot of twist. I want laceweight and I want it to be tightly plied. Since lace is traditionally 2-ply, and I like 3-ply, I'm putting not just a lot of twist in this single, but a WHOLE LOT of twist. I'm getting somewhere around 47 WPI in the single, which will hopefully get me around 20 WPI in the 2-ply (maybe 25). That's firmly in lace-weight. This is consistent with what I learned from my test cards.

Amusingly enough I picked up this silk mainly for practice. I have another four ounces of tussah silk in another color, and a coordinating merino roving for a future planned project. I wanted to see what would happen if I spun my "default" single with silk, even with a heavier spindle. My planned project is going to be a lot bigger, and it's going to be for an elaborate shawl, so I want it to be as consistent as possible.

I'm really looking forward to the finished 2-ply yarn but it took quite a while to spin this much. It's going to be quite a while longer to finish the second half.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Bollywood

This month's theme for the Spindler's Challenge is "Bollywood". The spindler's challenge each month has simple criteria. Spin a skein, any size, within the current month and have it somehow relate to the theme. The prize is equally simple: your yarn pictured on the group's front page for the next month, and the pick of a following theme. The only restriction is "no seasonal themes" (I think they got burned out on that last year).

Bollywood is a pretty fun theme. I was introduced to Bollywood by my friend Arjumand. She's a wonderful person and her enjoyment of these movies is undisguised. The singing is a little over the top for me, but the imagery and energy are unmistakable and enticing. In short, these movies are bunches of fun. It is also very easy to turn up hundreds of great pictures for inspiration. Above are my choices of an album cover that exactly represents the colors I think of when Bollywood is mentioned, and what I was able to dig out of my stash to match it. The largest piece of roving is 20g and is fiery reds and oranges. The smaller piece is dusky red, gold and purple. And the white is a merino/silk blend I picked up from Dyelots here in town. My intention was to make a cabled yarn so that the merino would pop out like pearls all down its length.

Here are my various cops spun for this purpose. I split the bright red roving in half down the middle to start. I then took the first half and split that into finger-wide segments and spun it onto the first cop. The second was my merino/silk blend. The third was the dusky roving and my fourth (not pictured here) was the orange/red again, but this time spun without being split. This gave me one strand with fast repeats of red/orange, one white, and two that had longer repeats of color but didn't match each other.

I plied the short-repeat red with the white single, and the two longer repeats together, turning them so that hopefully the similar colors wouldn't line up (this wasn't entirely successful, but close enough). I knew I would be plying these strands together again, so I put a lot of extra twist in them and then wound everything together into another plying ball. Unfortunately, it still wasn't enough twist to make a nice cabled yarn. So I had to un-ply what I'd done, and then unwind the two parts onto separate balls so I could add even more twist. Unfortunately this turned what had seemed like fairly lofty 2-ply yarns into super-dense, over-twisted strands with little springiness left in them.

Plied back together we get my cabled yarn. This time they twisted around each other nicely, but still remained pretty dense. I was going for something a little bit more squishy and luscious. What I got was a very compact yarn. It still looks like it was strung with seed-pearls, which was my original intention. But it doesn't have the hand that I want, so I suppose I'll just have to spin a cabled yarn next month, too!

It did leave me with just the smallest bit of leftover 2-ply of the merino/silk and red yarn. There are only five grams of yarn here, but they're still really pretty. I let the extra twist back out, so the plies fluffed up nicely. I like this yarn, but would love it as a 3-ply.

Variety in Laceweight

Silk laceweight - test cards
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I have been working on spinning laceweight. This is important because I have 4oz of gorgeous silk top and coordinating ultrafine Merino top waiting to become enough laceweight for a shawl. To facilitate this (and to not screw up a limited quantity of a uniquely dyed batch), I purchased another 4oz of Tussah Silk top from a different vendor so that I might practice.

The four cards pictured above are about one gram of material, each. And each time I tried spinning slightly differently. The first was "lets get a feel for silk, and make sure it's laceweight thin". So I was trying moderately hard to spin thinner than I usually do. The second card is "let's see just how very thin I can spin silk on this spindle". The third is moderate-thinness, but one ply is silk, and the other is some of my random unknown top (probably BFL). And the last is silk/wool spun to what I consider my "default" single weight. This is what I revert to spinning whenever I stop thinking too hard.

The funny thing is they are all laceweight. The last one is the thickest, and it's right around 24 WPI. I think the pure silk ones are 30+ WPI. So really, how thin does laceweight have to be? (Really, Andrea. How thin?) When is it too thin? My WPI-gauge page tells me that anything over 16 WPI is "laceweight" (AskTheBellWether says 18+WPI). But that's a huge range. I've seen pictures of people spinning frog hair so thin you'd wonder if there were more than three strands in it at any one point. But that would be "cobweb" weight (and a quick internet search here in another tab reveals AskTheBellwether's references of cobweb weight at 40+WPI).

So I guess my answer is somewhere between 18 and 40 WPI. That's still a huge range! And it doesn't really tell me what knits up nicely into a shawl. I've decided to spin my practice lump of silk on my "default" single and see what it becomes. If it's a little thicker that's okay. I have a lovely shawl pattern picked out that's written for lace-to-fingering weight and I'm good to go.

But what's really driving me crazy is that I've missed two weeks of my "knitting night" already, and I'm going to miss another two. I can't sit down with anyone and get their personal opinion on these samples, and I still won't be able to actually SEE anyone until the 22nd.

I don't suppose anyone will be at BSG on Friday morning? I'm thinking about roping someone into a little childcare and taking off to ravage the marketplace solo for a couple of hours!

A day of "ARGH!"

I've just frogged my sock for the fourth time.

I decided to try Cat Bordhi's "Veil of Leaves". It's a lovely pattern in the Cedar architecture. I wasn't entirely certain about it. I'm very mathematically minded and this sock has a little bit more of an organic feel than I really like. But I figured I could work with it.

Let me present to you my last couple of days knitting.

First Attempt
Hmm. Cat says to cast on 72 sts for a "Cobblestone Cuff". Okay. Oh, wait. She says cast on with Judy Becker's Magic Cast on... that's.. good heavens that's 144 stitches. Well. Okay. Casting on 144 stitches with JBMCO.. Hmm. Judy's doesn't work really well with more than 10 or so stitches. But. She says do it. Okay. There's 144 sts. Knit. Knit. Knit. Urg... getting tough here. Stitch #10.. crud. This is too tight. Let's try again..

Second Attempt
Okay. Cast on 144 stitches with Judy Becker's Magic Cast on and do it LOOSELY, you ninny. Hum-de-hum. This is a lot of stitches. Okay. This still seems pretty tight. Doesn't Cat Bordhi like to work on two circs or something. I think I'm going to begin to hate DPNs at this rate. Knit. Knit. Kniting. Too. Tight... what exactly am I doing here? Knit 5 rows and turn inside out then join together and decrease a bunch of stitches. Hmm. It didn't LOOK like a purled cuff in the picture. (Picture me frowning at the example picture here). No. That's not a Cobblestone Cuff by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, there's a little purl ridge at the top, but it's clearly knit, and there are CLEARLY no decreases.. blast it. rrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiipppppppppp

Third Attempt
Okay. Where's my book? Nevermind. I can remember. I've done this twice now. CLEARLY I need to cast on my final number of stitches (63). That'll be 27 for the sole, and 33 for the instep. Provisional cast on with the crochet hook. Hook. Hook. Hook. Isn't this a pretty green? Hook. Hook. Hook. Okay. Knit those in my nice red yarn. Join in the round. Knit Knit Knit... pretty pretty. Okay. There's three rows, we'll just purl one row for that ridge in the pictures and then maybe knit four to make sure it lays flat against my leg. Wow. This red yarn is gorgeous. Knit stitches from my needles with the provisional cast on. Great. Looks awesome. Start lace and remember it's a nine stitch repeat.. here we go. Wait. 9*7=63 .... 27+33=60. CRUD. Okay. I'll just.. skip a couple of the lace decreases until I have the right number. There we go!

Knit. Knit. Knit. Ugh. I really don't like this lace. I want symmetrically paired decreases, not this leaning-one-way nonsense. (glaring) rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiippppppp

Fourth Attempt
Alright. This isn't working. Where's my graph paper? (Much math and planning ensues wherein I completely redesign the lace pattern into a standard leaf-lace AND figure out how to manage the increases in it at the ankle AND match gauge and stitch count and row counts to match Cat's pattern within one to two stitches/rows at any important point.) Ah-ha! That's a workable pattern.

Provisional crochet cast on 64 stitches (for 8 repeats of an 8-stitch lace pattern). Knit 3 rounds. P2tog+yo around. Knit three rounds. Join two parts and start lace. Oh, this is really pretty. The picot edge looks positively firey in this red yarn. What a great idea! And this lace is working. I like it much better. Hmm. It looks a little bigger than I thought. I'll just finish this repeat.. Wow. That looks like it'll be baggy. But.. socks always look different while you're working. Maybe I'll just slip it over my foot and.. blast it. It's probably an inch too big! But I checked my gauge! Twice. Sure, it was on an old sock but.. dagnabit, it's the same yarn and the same needles and ought to be close enough to gauge. Where's my ruler and... You must be kidding me. 7sts/in? I'm supposed to be getting 8.5 sts/in!!

*RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

Current Status
I have yarn in a ball. I have a good idea. Now I need to sit back down with my proper gauge (and maybe knit a swatch again to make sure, dagnabit) and recalculate my master numbers and totally toss Cat's "Veil of Leaves" to the wind and redesign my "Veil of Flames" from the master Cedar pattern.

At least I'm getting better at this. I think.

FO Frenzy

Felted items
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I've had a couple of WIPs sitting around for a while, and of course a nice sized stash marinating with yarns that have been around for over a year now (which is a darned long time for my project-oriented mindset) and I finally figured out what to do with them and got to it!


First, I sat down and finished off my Gift Box. I've had this lovely handspun sitting around for some time, but there just wasn't much of it. It's very pretty and squishy, but not really one that I want to save around for displaying as a skein. So I took my Mardi Gras Rose yarn, and some black 3-ply that I had already spun, and started a box.

My intention was to create what would essentially be wool wrapping paper. I wish I could remember who or where it was, but on something that I read (a blog or board), Furoshiki was mentioned. It's a method for using a large square of cloth, folded different ways, as a universal bag and it's being revived as part of the Green movement in Japan. I thought that a box that I knit (or even several boxes), might be a really fun way to use up some of my odds-and-ends of handspun yarn from Spindlers' Challenges each month.

I cast on and knit a square in black using seed-stitch to give it a little more structure. Then I picked up around the edges and knit upwards, switching to the Mardi Gras yarn at an inch or so in, and switching back to black when I ran out of the Mardi Gras skein. Near the top I purled one round, and then knit a length that would fold shut at the top like wrapping paper would. I created "creases" in the cloth by strategic placement of yarn-overs so it would naturally fold along those lines. Then I stretched it over a plastic toy and tossed the whole thing in the washer to full.

It went pretty well, but apparently the blades of the washer tore holes on the hard edges of the toy. So I ended up stitching them shut with nylon thread and re-washing the whole thing without the toy inside. Luckily it didn't shrink enough that I couldn't get it back over the plastic box in the end and let it dry there.

I also finished off my daughter's socks. I was using these as a test-knit for an idea for my own socks. I can't decide what I think of them. The spiral band is just darling. It is also (as many people predicted and complained on Ravelry) extremely tight and hard to get over her heel. Once on the socks look adorable! Getting them there, however, is quite a pain. I think I may possibly frog them to the ankle and knit the twist straight up one side of the leg. Or I may just do that for the next pair.

Last, I pulled out a couple of skeins I bought on sale with no real plan other than "make hats" and found patterns for them! The light brown skein had always been scheduled to be a "Clem" hat from "Hip Knit Hats" by Cathy Carron. I had even purchased a matching skein of mohair to strand with it (as the pattern requires). Am I allowed to say "darn, this is cute!!" if I made it myself? Well, I will, anyway. This is the second time I've knit Clem. The first time I used two strands of the same yarn and no mohair. The hat shrunk more than I expected in the felting (fulling) and it has never fit quite right. I didn't bother to do the embroidery for it, because it was too short. This time I was careful to knit the hat longer, but I ran out of yarn in the end. The mohair ran out first (that's what I get for not paying attention to yardage requirements) about an inch before I used up the last of the Manos del Uruguay. That's fine, because you can hardly tell in the final product, and the lack of mohair is pretty nice to show off the embroidered edge. I'm also not a great hand at embroidery, but I did a passable job this time!

Last, I dug through my 101 Designer One Skein Wonders book and found a pattern for the "Two Hour Bag". This looked like a great match for my darker skein of Manos del Uruguay, and boy, was it ever! It surprised even me. I put the two together with little thought, mainly wanting to use up the yarn. But as I knit, the colors of the Manos came into play and all of a sudden it didn't look thrown together, it looked quite purposeful and lovely. It just looked even better the more that I knit. And after a round in the washer, the colors tightened up together and it is simply stunning. The bag wants one of Janice's raku buttons (from Dyelots) so bad it isn't even funny. I'm going to have to sneak out of the house tomorrow and go purchase one so I can get it completely done.

As a final comment, I want to mention that I may have said "felting" in a couple of places. Technically, when working with a knit project with heat and agitation, the process is called "fulling" and the object is "fulled". An object is felted when you do the same thing, but start with un-worked fiber. In the end what you have is felt cloth (fulled cloth?) and personally I like the sound of "felted" better. I don't know why, but I do. So any slip-up is mine, and I do know the difference. Sometimes, I just don't care.

You can see more pictures of everything on my Flickr Photostream or check out the projects under "TinkerTots" on Ravelry.

Irony

I spend a lot of time thinking about Alanis Morisette's song, "Ironic". Probably a lot more time than it deserves. But it all stems out of a big debate I had with a friend as to whether or not any of the song actually is ironic. He held to the opinion (apparently related to him by a rather strident professor) that there isn't a single example of true irony in the song and that really only things like O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi" express real irony.

I hold to the opinion that irony isn't quite so very narrow. Happily, the dictionary and Wikipedia both agree with me (neener neener!).

But when I was the random-winner of the Spindler's Challenge for February, I was placed in the position of choosing the next theme. It's rather a fun little "prize" for participating and being the "winner" in a completely arbitrary contest. My yarn was also displayed on the main page for the group for the month so people got to see my pretty (and you can, too, because it's right here).

The group moderator has a general request that the themes NOT be seasonally inspired. I had a small problem with this as I stared out my kitchen window at the perpetually-gray skies and falling rain that marks our winter months. "Heavy Cloud, No Rain" (by Sting) ran through my head, and then of course Alanis' song in competition. Sting's song is easily the more ironic of the two, and seasonally appropriate, but I didn't know that I wanted to bring everyone down with "rainy" yarn. And really, isn't that seasonal? I didn't want to get into April Showers or May Flowers or all that. Bleh.

So, "irony" became stuck in my head. What is an ironic yarn? Something that isn't what it says it is? Something that looks soft, but feels rough (or vice versa)? Amusingly enough when I discussed it with other spinning friends, they questioned if it ought to have metal in it or be grey or red, which confused me greatly until they explained they were thinking it was "iron-y". Maybe it should be ribbon yarn.. flat and "ironed" out.

After much personal debate my imagination settled on that story, the only example my friend could ever manage to explain what irony "ought" to be, "The Gift of the Magi". Della's hair is perfect here, dark long locks shorn off and sold for a watch-chain. One of my LYS's had washed Romney locks, ready to be spun along with a thread of gold that could represent the watch-chain.

I was thinking I'd spin the locks thick and fluffy and have them spiral around the gold cord, but nothing worked out quite that way. I didn't comb out nearly as much fiber from the locks I purchased as I thought (there were quite a few short-cuts and just tangled masses). It didn't want to spin fluffy and thick, it wanted to be thin and worsted... probably because I've been spinning three-ply sock yarn for almost two months straight now. My gold-lame cord was almost more trouble than it was worth. I found 2-ply cord which I decided to un-ply to double the length available. That alone took more time than everything else I did to make the finished yarn: processing the Romney locks, spinning and plying everything back together again, and washing, whacking and drying. I will never, ever again un-ply synthetic cord like that.

But in the end I still have really lovely yarn. I think in the spirit of the story, I will knit this yarn into a small pouch and felt it for a coin-purse... to save up my pennies for gifts.

OMG! A sheep went 'splody on my porch!

Jacobs Fleece
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Okay, not exactly, but it sure does look like it.

Spring is here and not only do we have thousands of adorable lambs running around in all the big grass fields, but apparently it is also time to shear off the fluffy coats of all the older sheep so they don't slow broil over the course of the summer.

What's amusing about this is that I've gotten several offers of "free fleece". I'm told this is a dangerous thing. You really don't know what you're getting into. The sheep may not be a breed that's meant to be shorn for its fleece (it may be intended for other sorts of consumption... leg of lamb, anyone?). It's likely to be very dirty, and there are hundreds of other things that could be "wrong" with it, or so I've been informed my more experienced fiber artists.

If I were a discerning spinner, no doubt I would want to go to a show and go through the various fleeces and pick the very best one, buy it, and toodle home to fleecy goodness of my own design. However, since I am not a) experienced or b) discerning at this point, the major point of "free" is awfully hard to pass over. I figure if it's truly an awful fleece then we're planning on a new vegetable garden this year and I hear it's fantastic mulch.

This particular 'splody fleece on my porch is "Jacob" fleece. It's a fascinating breed of sheep. I got two of them (fleeces, not sheep) from a woman at my gym. She's noticed my knitting and spinning before (because I am not shy about sharing my projects about the locker room and in fact a couple of people "follow" what I'm working on. It's quite gratifying). So I'm very happy to have received this kind gift. However, one of those small "unfortunate" things did happen in that the sheep were sheared in their stall and the fleece dropped right in the straw. Oh, yay. She did offer to have them shorn on top of a tarp next year. But this time I spent the afternoon pulling the two fleeces apart to separate the two colors of wool, and doing my best to pick all the straw out of them. The upside of this activity is I got a really good up-close look at the fiber.

I was able to pull out the shorter cut parts and anything that still had too much dirt (or other matter) in it as well as the places that had felted on their own from the elements. What's left is really beautiful, and I have a 5-gallon bucket packed with prime mulch material.

I also was gifted a huge fleece that looks buttery yellow on first examination. I wiggled a little lock out of this monster bag (displayed here with some affection by my darling Yarn Angel) and submerged it in the hottest water my tap produces and a little Dawn detergent.

I wasn't particularly surprised (but I was extremely pleased) to see every last bit of that yellow mist away into the water leaving behind a pearly white lock. This stuff is gorgeous!

I'm going to take my fleece(s) up to Canby to a mill and see what they can do with it for me. I think there's plenty in the big bag to make at least one sweater, if not two. And the Jacob fleeces are going to be wonderful to play with!

Stash Update

Today, there was sun. It was amazing. It was beautiful and... my children were sleeping. So instead of fleeing the house and running across the neighborhood lawns with much abandon, I drug out my Macro Studio and the half of my stash I have been pretending doesn't exist, and I took pictures. I added yarns to my Ravelry stash page, and made sure all my fiber for spinning was included as well. I moved items from the stash page to "all used up" status, and double-checked one last time. I planned what yarns for what patterns and in the end felt much better about 3/4 of my stash. The remainder refuses to be labeled for its exact use and thus remains an annoyance to me. I desire everything to be in a nice bin with a plan, rather than waiting about undefined. The plan may change, but there at least should BE a PLAN.

It's rather daunting to see what you've socked away around the house, and at the same time rather gratifying to see how much you actually have knit through as well.

It was also rather nice to take a final look at a few skeins and realize that I'm really not going to use them for anything at this point. I put them in my Destash page for reasonable prices (I hope) and if interest happens, great. If I come up with a Plan for them before then, great. But right now they're redefined in my head as "not in stash". I've had good luck destashing so far, so here's hoping I get a message or two showing interest!

Oh, no!

February Lady Sweater - stalled
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Some days, things just don't work out. Despite much reading, estimating and calculating, taking into account other people's gauge and sizing.. I thought I had plenty of yarn. I should have had plenty of yarn. Almost everyone I looked into used 2.5 skeins or less to finish this sweater.

Not me! I started into the second sleeve and looked into my knitting bag and blanched at the floppy rings of yarn remaining. I pulled all that yarn out and re-wound it into smaller balls and weighed it. I knit a few rows and weighed again. I calculated in my head, and weighed it again. I knit a few more rows and... yes.. weighed it again.

I was so close. So very, very close. And yet, I knew it. I was short. Short! I was going to run out of this lovely yarn, dangit and now i had to decide... tear out some of the sleeve, or tear out some of the body... or beg online for more yarn.

I could, of course, buy another skein. I have alternated skeins through the entire project so one more new one wouldn't be the end of the world. Unfortunately, it would be another $22.50 for a very small amount of yarn to finish this dang project. Not really where I wanted to go.

I pulled out the sweater again and argued with my little remaining balls of yarn. Can you make it to the end? The yarn didn't think so. I weighed it all again, gnashed my teeth and said... sure you can! It replied, "Did you remember you have to do the garter-stitch cuff, too?" I cursed (quietly, internally, for it doesn't do for little ears to pick up on such things) and put on my best face so that certain small parties wouldn't decide that why mommy was upset was extremely interesting and start asking pointed questions. There's nothing quite like being peeved and having a four-year-old grill you as to why you're not happy.

Then I hit Ravelry. I found five people that have used this yarn in projects already (I love that feature!). I figured out that three of them have actually been active in the last couple of months. And I sent out desperate pleas for help... and I was promptly answered by all three! I love the internet community and people willing to send you their little leftovers to help you finish a project! I love that one of these three is willing to send me an entire project that never got gifted to a friend, so I might frog it and use the yarn. It's amazing and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I need to go find some little warm-fuzzy things to send back as "thank you" for such wonderful generosity! I'm thinking.. chocolate.

February Lady Sweater

February Lady Sweater
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Works in progress are so much fun. I found I have all sorts of great pictures, but have been too much of a slacker to blog them. So, here they are, a bit late and after the fact, but happily put together so you, kind reader, can see what I've been frantically knitting over the past couple of weeks!

My friend Andrea lit a fire under me (figuratively and I'm sure unintentionally) by making more progress than I did on her gorgeous FLS over the course of last week. I decided I was going to catch up, although probably not surpass her. I was hoping we'd both be able to wear our sweaters next Monday and get a paired picture. Wouldn't that be fun? So I set to knitting with a vengeance, and bumped up my goal of one lace repeat per day, to two repeats.

One of the things I found really interesting was the variations in color between skeins. I assumed that BMFA did they're dying in larger lots, but what most of us in this KAL have found out (because we were kind enough to share the information around) is that BMFA generally dyes two skeins at a time. That means with a three-skein project, you're sure to get one that was dyed a bit differently. In some projects, this has been painfully obvious. I opted to start striping back and forth between two skeins once I got to the lace portion of my FLS. It's a bit more work (okay, it's a LOT more work) but in the end the outcome is worth it. Pooling is much reduced and so is the obvious "argyle" pattern you can get from shaded yarns.

Because this is a cardigan knit in one piece, I didn't want to switch my skeins at the edge of my work. This would make for some obvious "floating" bits of yarn every time I switched skeins, right on the front edge of the sweater. Instead, I opted to switch at the edge of the garter-stitch border, right where it transitioned into lace. I started by twisting the two skeins together, but this didn't provide a strong enough link between the two skeins. Instead, I ended up knitting the first stitch after the switch with both strands held together. Because it was a transition from garter to lace, you can't even see the slightly thicker part where every-other-row there is one stitch held doubled. It made the join even and almost un-detectable. In fact, I dare anyone to find it without a magnifying glass.

I also did this again on the sleeves at the beginning of each round. There's a little jog there anyway, so it hides the irregularity of the stitch-weight. I'm really happy with how the sweater is turning out! It has beautiful colors that will look lovely with my wardrobe, and I have high hopes to finish in time to wear it for Easter.

Sparkle Yarn!

2009 April Spindler's Challenge "Celebrate"
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

April's Challenge them was "Celebrate". Once again I went out of the box to pick what I thought was the ultimate celebration song, Prince's "1999". Because, let's face it, New Year's 1999 has got to have been one of the biggest parties in a long time (and we must admire Prince's genius for engineering the resurgence of his career for a brief time with this song).

For this challenge I got to bring out my brand new (at the time) ITS Crafts spindle from Europe. It's dang gorgeous. It is exactly the same weight as my cherry Bosworth spindle (23g), but it feels so much more delicate. The whorl is topped with amboyna burl, and ringed with reclaimed brass shavings in epoxy. The shaft is walnut and is gently tapered for its entire length. I'm afraid to drop it. But it spins smoothly and long (as a rim-weighted spindle should do). The roving is unknown random top from my grab-bag in purple, pink, black and grey. Not shown here is the magenta angelina I picked up because for this challenge, I have a special request.

My daughter wants a hat. Specifically she wants a purple hat. With sparkles. For the first half of this yarn, I took 6-8" lengths of roving and carefully plucked and pulled it out flat. I then laid the angelina out over the top and rolled the whole thing up like a sparkly jelly-roll. I spun the first batch from the fold, wanting a lofty, soft yarn that would barber-poll. Only the purple got the sparkles. The black went in plain. I did what I think of as "long draw", although I'm not entirely certain that's accurate. Rather than pulling the fiber in with my fingers and following the twist up into my drafting zone, I hold my single further down and let the twist grab the fiber out of my hank as it wants to. I'm still not letting more twist up into the fiber until it looks like I'm not grabbing any more. Then I open my fingers to let what twist has built up jump into the higher single and drafting zone and then pinch it off again to pull out more.

This method resulted in a more blended single. The colors across the roving mingle more. The purple/pink side came out more uniform, and the black/grey became heathered. My daughter took one look at the resulting two-ply yarn and pronounced it "not sparkly enough!". So I began again.

This time I opted to spin worsted. I'm better at it and it goes faster. I took my purple roving and broke it again into 6-8" lengths and spread each one out into big, flat squares. To these I added a LOT of angelina and rolled them up like the first. Instead of spinning from the fold, I spun from the end. I was better able to control the spread of the angelina this way, since if I got a little thin at one point I could just grab a few more strands into my drafting zone, or a few less when it got a little thick. The black section had more white in it than grey and I was able to separate them so they would stripe rather than blend. When plying, it was fascinating to see the black and white line up versus the purple and pink, making one color or other pop out.

This yarn met my daughter's approval.

The hat was knit from the top-down, increasing every other row in six places. After finishing the crown, I knit a few rows and then switched to 2x2 ribbing. I bound off the edge with some of the pink-only strand (extra that I plied back on itself). And the very last bits of yarn I wound into a pom-pom for the top. The hat is big! It easily fits me. The woolen-spun yarn is at the bottom so it is especially warm around your ears. But the beauty of 2x2 rib is that it collapses on itself and this hat still fits my daughter. And... she loves it! The crown is quite sparkly and so is the pom-pom. By using the purple ply (with the angelina in it) doubled back on itself for the bind-off, there is a little extra sparkle around her face, and she doesn't seem disappointed at all (if she even notices) that the "less sparkly" skein was used as well.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Eva's Hat

Eva's Hat
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Here's a quick little project I've been using to fill my time. I've found that knitting a large object (or in other words, a sweater) on circular needles causes my hands and arms to ache after a few rows. Rather than push into the area of repetitive-stress injury, I've opted to knit those few rows and then move on to something smaller that doesn't seem to bother me as much. I've had this cute little hat on my "to do" list for a long time, thinking I'd use it to finish off the Baby Cashmerino I had from the Striped Cardigan. I thought the two might compliment each other nicely.

I opted for the 18" size, thinking the 15" would be too small. While that might be true, I believe that the 18" is going to be a bit too big for the intended recipient (my niece, who is not-quite-one-year-old). Modeled here by my 4-year old daughter, it's quite cute (but still a little bit big). On me, it's just a tad tight. Part of that was learning more about Fair Isle. I thought I had kept the floats in the back loose enough to not be a problem. The knitting looked just fine when laying flat. But once you pull on the band a little, the tight spots become quite clear. I spent quite a bit of time redistributing tension across the band as best I could, but I still can tell where it puckers a bit. It's not fatal by any means, but I'm really glad I got some beginner's practice before embarking on a larger project.