Month: June 2010

UFO-WIP Progress

I’ve done a little more work on that UFO/WIP pile.

The whole pile, for your reference:

And The List:

1) True Blood Faery sweater

2) Crazy King Cole Mohair thing, um, stole RIP

3) Wollmeise Squashed Frog Socks

4) Grey Ribbed Peace Fleece Socks with red accents RIP

5) Frootloops Morning Glory Stole

6) Puppy Mittens

7) Evenstar Shawl

8 ) Baktus Shawlette Finished

9) Euroflax Linen Facecloth Finished

10) Spirit In The Sky Beret Finished

First up, #2 on the list.

This is really pretty stuff, but it just wasn’t working. The yarn is King Cole Luxury Mohair, color Biaritz, which is gorgeous. I started this a really loooooonggggg time ago, and just picked up needles and cast on for a garter stitch stole thing. This yarn deserves better, I just don’t know what. I do know that I have no plans to rip mohair anytime again in the near future. If it hadn’t have been 7AM, I’d have considered whiskey. I’m thinking that a feather and fan stole might show this yarn off to better advantage, but for now it’s back in the stash. RIP!

Next is some lovely Peace Fleece.

This was a misguided attempt to use leftovers. I had the Ukrainian Red leftover from a hat that I made a friend, and a couple of skeins of Negotiation Grey from John’s sweater. I decided I would make some heavy weight socks, with the red for cuffs, heels, and toes. I started the ribbing, and hated how it was working out, and it has been in the UFO pile for over two years. I pulled it out of the box yesterday and knit a row and gave up. It needs to be on smaller needles, and wasn’t working with a 2 by 2 rib. Then I tried to find the rest of the grey, and it’s disappeared into the stash somewhere. If you’ve seen my stash, you well know that this is a serious problem. There is no way I will ever find it.  The only way I ever find anything in my stash is if I put it into numbered boxes and record the item in my Mac Bento database. If I just jam something into a box to get it off the floor, thinking I’ll remember where it is, I am totally screwed.  So this one bit the dust as well. The red yarn is in a numbered box, and it’s recorded, so if I ever find the grey yarn, I might resurrect this. For now, it’s gone. RIP!

That leaves me with 5 active projects, which is a lot more manageable. I’d like to get one of those shawls off the list, and then I’ll be at the perfect WIP number: 1 sweater-like project, 1 sock project, 1 lace project, and 1 other small interesting project.

Have a happy Summer Solstice! It’s 51 degrees here, overcast and grey, and forecast to be drizzly all day. Ick. We might break out the gin and tonics tonight anyway, even if the weather’s not cooperating.

And one last item. I have been getting a ton of spam comments lately. My spam filter picks them up and puts them in a holding cell, and usually I scan through them to make sure a real comment wasn’t tagged by mistake. There were so many of them when I signed in this morning that I just deleted them. If you have left a real comment, and it’s not showing up, try again, or email me at loretteireneatcomcastdotnet to let me know.

More Finished Stuff

Boy, with a title that enticing, I should get loads of visitors flocking to the blog. Anyway, this time it’s spinning stuff that’s finished. First up is some pretty pretty Carolina Blue yarn.

Project Details

Fiber: This is a merino tencel 50/50 blend, purchased from Yarn Chef.  The color name was “Whisp of Clouds” but it is most certainly a Carolina blue. I live with a good Carolina boy, and he knows his blue.

Wheel or Spindle? Spun on the Schacht Matchless wheel. I used the high speed whorl and high speed bobbins. I think the ratio setting was 19.5:1. I set the wheel up in double drive.

Style of Spinning: Again, I’d point out that my style is still a little inconsistent. This is mostly an attempt at a short forward draw. It’s a 2-ply.

Yardage/Weight/WPI: I started with 12 oz of fiber, and ended up with 11.88 oz of yarn, or 337 g. It’s about 14-16 WPI (wraps per inch), depending on where I measure, which makes this somewhere between a heavy fingering and a light sport weight. There are about 684 yards.

What I Plan To Make With It: There should be enough of this for a shawl/stole of some sort. It will need to marinate in the stash for a bit first (see last post regarding numerous WIPs/UFOs).

What I Learned: Well. I feel like I’ve finally spun up enough fiber that I can start working more on being consistent. I sat down this past week and started to re-read The Intentional Spinner by Judith MacKenzie McCuin (reviewed here). When I started to learn to spin, every time I talked to more experienced spinners (meaning pretty much everybody but me) I kept hearing “well, Judith says this about that subject”. I read through the book last year, but there is just so much information in it that a brand new spinner can’t really absorb it all at once. I don’t want to just spin and see what I end up with, my goal is to say “I want to spin x type of yarn for a specific project, then figure out how to get there.

I learned with this project that it’s not entirely about the size whorl I use that gets the yarn I want. Typically the extra fast and extra extra fast whorls should get you to thinner and thinner yarn. I need to work more on tweaking the settings of the wheel, and also on my drafting technique to get to that thin yarn. I’m also beginning to discover that I like the Scotch tension set-up a little better than double drive. I set the wheel back up in Scotch drive after I finished this yarn, and I’m finding it much easier to control what I’m making. I also have learned that I need to change the drive band now and then. This should seem obvious, but I changed it out after I finished this, and the wheel is working much better.

The next project (yes, you get a two-for-one!) is spindle spun.

Project Details

Fiber: This is some unknown wool-sparkle blend that I got from one of the vendors at the Whidbey spin-in earlier this year. The sparkle stuff is Firestar or something similar. This color combo of red and vivid purple reminds me of a children’s book, but I can’t remember which one. It had illustrations of fireworks over a city, with big flashes of red and purple. It was one of my favorite kid books when I was a kid. Anybody remember which one I’m talking about? I don’t remember the story either, so I’m really not much help here. I’m in my early 50’s, if that helps anybody place this. I think it had dragons, but I might be making that up.

Wheel or Spindle? Spun and plied on my Bosworth midi spindle.

Style of Spinning: This is a worsted type of spinning, again pretty much like I do on the wheel, just with a drop spindle. This is also a 2-ply.

Yardage/Weight/WPI: I started with about 3 oz of fiber, ended up with 2.66 oz of yarn, or 75.5 g. There are 264 yards here. This is about 18 WPI, so more like a light fingering or heavy lace weight.

What I Plan To Make With It: I think this will make a pretty scarf or neck warmer, something with a lacy pattern.

What I Learned: I can spin a lot more evenly and finely on a spindle than my wheel. I’ve finished yarn on the spindle before, but with the other yarn I’ve done, I’ve chickened out when it came to plying and did it on the wheel. I decided to ply this on the spindle, so it’s the first fully spindle-ized yarn I’ve done (that should be a word!). Here’s how I managed my singles and the plying. I’ve tried a number of ways of getting the singles off the spindle when it’s full, but the easiest I’ve found is to wind it off around a clean tennis ball (no dog drool here!). After I finish spinning all the fiber, I have a bunch of tennis balls with singles wound around them. I made one giant plying ball onto an empty tennis ball, wrapping from two singles-balls at a time, and wrapping neatly and fairly snuggly as I went. Then I just plied from the 2 ply ball back onto the spindle. I tried plying from two separate balls directly back onto the spindle and ended up with a mess.

Reading through that last bit, even I think it doesn’t make much sense the way I’ve described it. The next time I’m ready to ply with the spindle, I’ll take photos and show you what I mean.

Last but not least is another photo that I took yesterday. We’ve had so much rain here in the last few months that I’m getting ready to start shooting holes in my refrigerator from cabin fever. Yesterday we had an almost day-long sunbreak. It was all the way up to the 60’s here, and we had a glorious trip to the farmers’ market to celebrate. Here’s a flower that I snapped.

Of course it rained again all day today.

My sweetie just handed me a martini, so I’m off to help in the kitchen. Until next time…

And Another UFO Becomes an FO!

For those of you keeping track, I’m trying to whittle down the UFO pile into something more manageable this summer. Here’s a list of what I started with, and a photo or two of the whole pile.

1) True Blood Faery sweater

2) Crazy King Cole Mohair thing, um, stole

3) Wollmeise Squashed Frog Socks

4) Grey Ribbed Peace Fleece Socks with red accents

5) Frootloops Morning Glory Stole

6) Puppy Mittens

7) Evenstar Shawl

8 ) Baktus Shawlette

9) Euroflax Linen Facecloth

10) Spirit In The Sky Beret

I think that’s it. The crossed through stuff is finished finished finished. There are a couple of things in that mess that will eventually get frogged and repurposed, but I think eventually most of it will be finished finished finished as well.

And here’s the last finished finished finished thing:

Spirit In The Sky Beret

Project Details:

Started: Hmmm. This is the second go-around for this yarn. It started as a pair of socks way back when in 2007. I took it with me to a knitting retreat in Idaho, and left the second skein of yarn under the bed or something when I left. It hung around as a half-knit single sock for awhile, since I was pretty sure that as soon as I ripped it out that I’d find the other skein. I finally ripped and started this in April 2008.

Finished: Last week.

Pattern: Here.

Yarn: Sock Hop sock yarn, color Spirit In The Sky. One of my favorite oldies songs, by Norman Greenbaum. Of course you can’t get this anymore. If you could, I’d have finished the socks, now wouldn’t have I?

Needles: Size 3.0 double points

For: ?? It doesn’t quite fit me, and I’m just not a beret person, really. It’s a little small for me, and will probably fit a kid in the family. It depends on who gets here first to claim it.

What I learned: Keep track of your yarn while on vacation. I’d have knit this to fit me if I hadn’t been worrying about running out of yarn. The pattern is pretty easy, but I’d be a little nervous knitting it with just one skein of Koigu, which is what the pattern calls for. If you want a slouchier beret, you might need a little more yarn. I thought about doing stripes, but I like what the orange yarn does all by itself, so a kid hat it will be.

And just because I want to, here’s a pretty flower photo I snapped today.

And I can’t for the life of me figure out why that smiley thing is in front of the Baktus shawl instead of a number 8, but I can’t get rid of it, so I guess it stays.

ETA: I fixed the smiley face, thanks to Chris!  8)