Finished Spinning Projects – The Knitting Doctor

Kermit

There is something very satisfying about going from fluff, to handspun yarn, to a finished wearable thing.

The fiber was something that had been sitting on my wheel, partly spun, until a few weeks ago when I finished spinning and plying it into yarn. As soon as it was dry, I cast on a little neck scarf.

The pattern is Orbit, by Janina Kallio. I knit this on 4.5 mm needles. This was finished two days ago, it came off the blocking boards this morning.

I couldn’t be happier with this. It will be a very wearable piece, and if this color doesn’t make you happy, you might be dead.

Well, well

I’m going to call it a sabbatical, and leave it at that.

Having a Corgi that is in many ways still a puppy (he’ll be 2 in September) has made spinning an unrealistic hobby. A wheel that spins around, with pretty fluff on it? That’s more of a temptation than Hank can stand. I moved the spinning stuff well out of his way when he came to live with us.

Yesterday, I brought it out, dusted off the cobwebs, and got it going. There was some mostly spun up fiber already on it, so I finished spinning that yesterday, plied it up last night, and got it off the niddy-noddy* this morning.

That there is 228 yards of a merino/silk blend. The label for the fiber is long gone, so I have no clue where I got it. The color really is a Kermit the frog acid green, and I love it. I need to wash it up to finish it, but I think this is going to be on the needles as soon as it dries. It will be some little neck accessory, though I haven’t decided on a pattern yet. It needs to be something where I can use every last inch of this yarn.

I’m sure the ever-worsening political news has affected all of us. Getting the wheel out is one meditative way in which I’m counteracting the stress of doom-scrolling. Those of you who’ve been with me for a bit know which side of the political aisle I stand on. All I can do at this point is plan to vote, and encourage others to do the same.

Take care of yourselves in these times of conflict.

*Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy! That is such a ridiculously fun word to say!

Making

I sort of fell off the radar screen there, didn’t I? June just whizzed by, we had an awful heat wave, and now we’re settling in to the other part of summer in the Pacific Northwest: the season of vacationing relatives. Which means time for fun, food, and hanging out outside enjoying the beautiful summer weather.

Despite our high temps a couple weekends ago, I have been getting some knitting done. Our house isn’t air-conditioned, so when it gets hot, I retreat to the basement where it stays relatively cool. I have a big woolly cardigan that is just short of the front bands and buttons, but I’m not too enthusiastic about working on that in the summer, so it’s in time out for a bit. I am working on a pair of socks, a lace shawl, and a Hitchhiker. I’ll save the photos of those for another day.

I have been finding myself sitting at the spinning wheel more often. It’s such a relaxing, meditative thing to do when my mind just wants to veg out. I finished this over the weekend.

That is around 684 yards of lovely cream colored blue-faced leicestershire wool. This was handspun and plyed on my Watson wheel. The weight of the two hanks is 320 grams. I thought about throwing this in the dye pot, but I’m now leaning towards leaving it the way it is. I think it would make a lovely shawl.

Here’s another photo:

It isn’t everyday that I finish a big whack of handspun yarn. Instead of shoving that into the vault, maybe I’ll wind it up today and cast on for something new. There isn’t a rule about how many projects I can work on at the same time, right?

Stay tuned.

Coreopsis!

It’s finally off the blocking board, after a little mayhem. I tried to expedite things and just pinned the bottom edges instead of running blocking wires through it, which resulted in a nice scalloped border. I looked at it for a day before I did the right thing and put in the blocking wires, then steam blocked the edge to straighten it out.

Project Details

Pattern: Boneyard Shawl, by Stephen West

Yarn: My own handspan, spun from Bluefaced Leicester wool on my Watson Wheel. I then dyed the yarn using Coreopsis flowers from our deck plants. I blogged about the dyeing here. The fiber came from Paradise Fibers, the brand is Ashland Bay. It was nicely prepared and very easy to spin. It also takes dye beautifully, which is a good thing, since I bought 4 pounds of it originally. This was 366 grams worth of yarn, about 790 yards.

Needles: 4.5 mm

Started: July 16, 2015

Finished: September 3, 2015

For: Me

Modifications: None

What I Learned: Oh my. It is really a lot of fun to see a project through from fiber to a finished wearable item. This is one of those patterns that could be adapted to a wide variety of yarn types, or even color stripes. He has a second version here that uses extra increases to make it wider and shallower. A nice bonus is that it’s a free pattern. I predict that this will get a lot of wear. It’s just the right size for a little warmth around the shoulders, and nice and squishy soft.

I’m calling this one a success!

Onion Soup

Well, we really didn’t have onion soup for dinner. I finished my dye project that I mentioned in the last post. Here’s the finished yarn:

This started as “commercial” natural colored yarn, from my Nature’s Cauldron natural dye CSA. The wool is 100% merino, grown at Mary Vega’s Ranch in California, and milled at Yolo Wool Mill. In all there are 600 yards of sport weight wool. I put “commercial” in quotes, since although this is mill spun yarn, it’s not exactly a big commercial yarn business.

That color is pretty true to real life. Want to know how I did that? I didn’t get any photos during the dye process, since it was just a big mess of boiling onion skins.

I’ve been saving yellow onion skins for over a year. We use a lot of onions in cooking. Every time I would get out an onion to chop, I pulled off the papery yellow skin and put it in a bowl. When the bowl got full, I started putting it in a big bag that I kept in the garage. Last weekend I finally used them. I shoved them all down into my huge stockpot that I use for dyeing, and covered with water. Then I brought it to a simmer and cooked it for a little over 2 hours. I let it sit for about another hour with the burner off, then pulled out the onion skins and strained the liquid.

Then in went the wool. I prepped this the weekend before, using an alum mordant to help the dye stick. The yarn went into the dye pot, brought to a slow simmer, and again left to simmer for a couple of hours, then I let it cool right in the dye pot. Rinse, dry, and there you go. Bob’s your uncle, I have this gorgeous pumpkin pie colored yarn that I never would have expected from a bag of onion skins. And it is surely one of a kind. I’ve seen photos of the results that people get from onion skins, and it’s anything from a much paler yellow to a deep bronze.

Here’s another one of my do-it-yourself projects. I didn’t dye this myself, but I did spin it.

The fiber was from Cupcake Fiber Company, it’s a superwash merino/nylon blend, about 6 ounces worth of fiber. This was spun up on my Marie wheel, it’s a 2-ply yarn, mostly a sport weight. There are about 460 yards there.

And just because I haven’t shown a picture of the wheel lately, here she is in my little spinning corner.

We’re off to the farmers’ market! Have a great Sunday!

Ack!

We’ll get to the “ack!” later. The sister visit was great. Unfortunately all the good photos are on John’s computer, and I’m too lazy to go down and get them. We drank a lot, ate a lot, saw a few of the local sites, and for a change, had a bit of sunshine around here. Very little knitting got done, though I did get some spinning done. Here are a few photos.

I showed this before, but I finally got it washed and recorded the details. Again, this is Targhee wool, about 12 ounces of fiber, spun on the wheel. It turned out to be a heavy worsted weight, about 10 WPI, and around 1040 yards. This is going to make some nice warm mittens and hats. John gets the first set, and anything left will be mittens and perhaps a hat for me.

The next stuff is the fiber that I showed you in progress last time.

This is a BFL-silk blend from Wolf Creek Wools. I spun this on the wheel as well, and it is about 20 WPI, about a light sport weight by the time I got it plied. I had 4 oz of fiber to start with, it ended up being about 280 yards. I think this will be a lovely cowl, or perhaps some nice mitts or hand warmers. Or I might just keep it on my desk and pet it.

The next is the “ack!” part. I’m still working on that mystery electric baby blue thing. I’m at the point where I need to pick up a gazillion stitches around the edges. I sat down to do this while the sisters were here, and ripped out the picked up stitches about 4 times before I decided it needed a time out. The pattern as I’m adjusting it calls for picking up 128 stitches on each edge, I just couldn’t get this done without ending up with more or less than I was supposed to have. I suppose there could have been vodka involved, but still. This really isn’t a difficult task. I picked it up again today, and realized that instead of just wading in and picking up stitches willy-nilly, I should divide the edge in quarters with markers, it makes it easier to see when I’ve gotten off track. I got one side done at the salon today, and it should get done a little more easily from here. Here’s a teaser photo.

They just don’t make Cotton Ease in those great blinding colors any more.

I’m off to get a few chores done. We have tickets to a concert tonight at the Seattle Zoo, so I need to get it in gear. Later!

Sometimes The Spammers Are Right

I sometimes glance through the comments that get tossed in the “spam” folder, just to see what the latest is. The current batch was largely in Russian, so who knows. Here was one that got my attention:

Well made blog great at expressing yourself.. Now all you gotta do is update update update!

Well, no kidding. I guess I better do just that.

Let’s hit the weather first and get that over with. We had about 2 days of summer this past week, and it’s in the high 60’s today, though it looks suspiciously like it’s trying to rain. Crap crap crappity crap. So far the pattern is that if I’m working, the weather is great, if I’m off, it generally sucks. I have a boatload of relatives coming this next weekend, so hopefully we’ll impress them with some nice weather. My sisters and their spouses are coming Saturday and staying a week, so there will lots of laughs, shopping, drinking and eating going on. And perhaps a rousing Mexican train tournament if it rains and we have to stay inside.

Next up, spinning. Let’s just say I haven’t done much this week. I do have some photos of a couple of things, one done, one in progress. Here’s the done stuff.

The spun yarn will be knit into something for John. He laid claim to this when he saw it spun up. It’s one of the monthly fiber shipments from Spunky Eclectic, and it’s Targhee wool, the color is named Flannel. It is nice and squishy soft, and not scratchy at all. I haven’t gotten around to weighing this and figuring out the yardage, but it’s probably a heavy worsted weight. I’m thinking mittens and a hat, there might be enough left for mittens for me as well, there was 8 ounces of the fiber to start with.

Here’s what is on Seamus, the wheel.

Pretty, isn’t it? The fiber is from Wolf Creek Wools, which sort of cracks me up. The shop, Sweetgrass Wool, is outside Helena, Montana, about 3 miles from the house I lived in there. Of course it wasn’t a fiber or yarn shop then. And I was neither a knitter or spinner then, so it wouldn’t probably have made any difference to me at the time. The fiber is 75% Blue Face Leicester and 25% tussah silk, color is Wild Berry. This is spinning up beautifully. I have about 4 ounces of it, so it will be a little scarf or neck warmer or something girly.

On the knitting front, no photos. You guessed it, still the Electric Blue Imaginary Baby Thing. Poor little Jace will be unwrapping this at his grade school graduation at the rate I’m going with it. Maybe it can be converted into a backpack or something. And I’m not knitting anything else much at all, so nothing to see here. Move along.

I almost forgot, we went to a Mariners baseball game on Friday. It was part of a late birthday present from last year for John & I from his kids. I did take the sock to knit, and impressed a kid that looked about 6 or 7, and got a “cool!” out of him when I showed him it would be a sock. Unfortunately John was in charge of taking the sock-at-the-ballpark photo, and for some reason that escapes me, deleted it from his camera. The home team lost dismally, but it was a glorious evening, and we had good seats in the front row down the third base line, and it was all good. John’s son and daughter put together a terrific picnic lunch that was far better than the usual ball park food. Here are a couple of photos.

It looks like a good time was had by all.

That’s all folks, I’m off to work on the Imaginary Electric Blue Baby Grade School Gift.

March Wrap-Up

It’s a new month, which only means one thing. A Wrap-Up! No joke!

So how did I do? Here were my March goals:

I’m getting back to that True Blood Faery sweater. My goal is to get at least half of the cabled bodice done in March.

I am going to finish that lilac fiber, and ply it too. So there.

I now have two pairs of socks on the needles, so I need to finish one of them. The brown Sanguine Gryphon socks need to be done. I have one sock done and the cuff of the second done.

I have some fiber from Spunky Eclectic on the wheel that I’d like to finish, but that might be a bit ambitious since there’s a pound of it.

Finished!

My second favorite “f” word! This time it’s spinning stuff. I’m still working on Big Pink, I’m getting closer, closer. There’s been another impending baby announced in the family (different parents, another grand-nephew on the way!), so I better get moving. I’d like to finish this project before the next baby arrives. I tell you, these kids better stop multiplying for a little bit and let me catch up.

OK, the spinning. The first is a spindle project, and one of my February finishing goals. Here’s the finished yarn:

Click to embiggen, but remember these pictures were taken in the house in February, at the end of a very grey rainy day. The fiber was a batt from Butterfly Girl, and is a merino/bamboo blend, color name Blue Morpho. I spun this on a tiny stone whorl spindle, also from Butterfly Girl, and plied it on my Bosworth Midi spindle. This is a 2 ply. Here are the stats:

357 yards

96.2 g

This comes out to about 1684 yards per pound, or ypp. Here’s a web page that describes this, according to this, my yarn should be about a sport weight. That looks about right. It’s heavenly soft. I think it would be a great cowl or scarf.

Next is fiber from Corgi Hill Farm. This was a merino/silk blend with a little firestar sparkle, also a batt. The color was Raven’s Wing, spun and plied on my Schacht wheel. Finished weight was 4.53 oz, yardage 468 yards. YPP is 1671, which puts it in the sport weight category. The fiber was just divine, as is all of her fiber.

These are really hard to get photos of in February in western Washington, when it’s been raining all day. I might have to actually drag out my cheap lightbox and give this another try at some point. It’s gotten buried somewhere around here.

Last but not least is a very long term spinning project.

This one, I’m very proud of. Click on that photo to get a better idea of what it looks like. This started out last summer as 3 pounds of corriedale fiber from Louet, purchased from Paradise Fibers. The color is Pagoda Red, and isn’t quite as lipstick red as in that photo. I really will have to drag this out the next time we get sun and try another photo. It is more of a rust red than a ruby or garnet red. I wasn’t all that excited with the color when I got it, but now that it’s spun up, it is perfect for my coloring.

This was spun and plied (2 ply) on my wheel. It’s generally a worsted spun, as much as anything I spin is generally anything. I spun it with the wheel in Scotch drive. The finished weight of the yarn is 1315.7 grams, or 46.4 oz. The yardage is 2138 yards, giving me a ypp number of 737.2. This is pretty much a heavy Aran weight yarn. It is a little uneven in sections, but is way more consistent than I thought it would be for 3 pounds of fiber spun over 6 months. I think this will make a terrific sweater, which was my goal. It might even be next up in the queue, if I ever finish that True Blood sweater thing.

That’s it for the finished stuff. Oh yeah, I also finished sorting through all my yarns and fibers. After we got the closets done, I realized that I had a lot of empty space left over, so I dragged out all the yarn boxes and sorted through them. They desperately needed a little weeding out and reorganizing. I have one big box of yarn that is going on the for sale block at some point, I just haven’t decided how I want to do that. I’m not sure I have enough readers here to put it up on the blog, but if there’s enough interest I might be convinced to sell it off here first and then put the leftovers on Ebay or something. It’s all pretty good stuff, I just needed to get a little realistic about what I might actually knit up in the next few years. After I sorted it all out, it ALL fits in my closet, which makes me happy. If it’s out where I can see it, I’m hoping I’ll be more likely to shop the stash instead of those internet yarn stores that seem to be open 24/7/365.

Oh, OK, here’s a photo or two.

Yeah, I know that’s a boat load of yarn. John mentioned a business concept known as “just in time inventory“. I clearly need to take this under advisement, since I actually only finish knitting about three things a year.

Dorothy, now all the yarn is out of the guest bedroom, so you won’t be tempted any more when you come to visit!

And last but very not least, I now have room in my closet to do the sock laundry. Here’s proof.

That’s it. We’re off to the theater for the evening, then a late dinner afterwards.

FO!

This was absolutely the easiest FO in the world! All I had to do was let Dorothy and her husband stay here one night earlier this summer. As a “hostess” gift, she brought this. I’ve been quite remiss in posting about it!

Isn’t that gorgeous? The photo does not do justice to Dorothy’s perfect stitches. Click on it to get a better look. Of course the color is all off. It’s really more of a wine-colored red, not as orangey red as that looks on my monitor. The shawl pattern is Hidcote Garden Shawl, by Miriam Felton, the yarn is an unknown lace from Dorothy’s stash. Whatever it is, I adore it. Thanks, Dorothy! I like the pattern enough that I could see knitting one myself. Though maybe my plan should be to pack up all the lace yarn, send it to Dorothy, and then just invite her down for weekend visits.

Here’s another FO, this time my own. No, it’s not knitting. I’m still working on all the same stuff. Though I have actually been very slowly making progress on that True Blood Faery albatross. I can actually almost see little cables starting to appear, it just doesn’t look like it in a photo. No, this FO is of the spinning variety.

The fiber is from Spunky Eclectic, a merino-tencel blend. The official color name was “Walking on the Sun”. Every time I would spin, all I could think about was that goofy 80’s song “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina & the Waves. I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I decided to change it. I think it looks like a Tequila Sunrise, and I like that song much better, so there you have it. You have to put up with some crappy ads to get to that song by the way, but it’s worth it to watch Glenn Frey sing for a few minutes. Ahem. Yes, well, back to the fiber. It’s spindle-spun, on my Bosworth midi spindle. It’s not washed yet, but I figured I better get a photo up while I was thinking about it.

I ran across this rather grisly news story when bouncing around the internet this week. This is enough to get me to make plans to do a major dredging in the house. We did just that a few years back, hauling carloads of stuff to Goodwill and the local garbage dump. Somehow it always finds its way back in, though. We’re getting to that age where the reality is that someday in the not-too distant future we’ll need and want to downsize to a smaller place. I’m thinking it would be less painful to get rid of stuff in small increments rather than all at once when we are ready to move. Don’t worry, I’m not starting with the fiber and yarn stash just yet, though. I’m not that crazy.

Next time, I promise a photo or two of my own knitting!

Better

Finally. Read the last post if you’re not keeping up. I bagged up the camel blend fiber and put it safely away. I think my immune system is finally deciding that it’s OK to stand down at this point. To complicate the diagnostic dilemma, our pollen counts have been sky-high here, so I won’t get rid of the camel until my symptoms are completely gone, then do a challenge to make sure. It’s such pretty fiber that I hate to dump it if I don’t have to.

Here’s a better picture of the True Blood fiber:

That’s still a little pinker than what it really is, but closer. Why is it that red is so difficult to photograph accurately? It’s almost enough to make me want to buy a light box. And look at that cute little pin-weight on the underside of the whorl. Jonathan, the maker, carves these whorls out of naturally shed moose antlers, then adds a pin to balance the spin if needed. I think it looks like a beauty mark. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but the new spindle’s name is Bullwinkle, of course.

And I finished the Wensleydale from prior posts.

Project Details:

Fiber: Wensleydale top, from Damselfly Yarns, color Storm Clouds

Wheel or Spindle: Wheel

Yardage/Weight/WPI: 182 yards/16-17 wraps per inch/3.76 ounces

What I Plan To Make With It: Socks. The yardage is a little short, but I’ll look for a coordinating blue or possibly a black yarn the same weight and do ribbing, heels and toes with it to make it work.

What I Learned: This was my first attempt at a 3-ply yarn. I was aiming at a true sock weight, but figured I’d be happy if I got something that was consistently spun and sport weight or under. I actually did some sample spinning and plying before I waded in, which makes a huge difference in the consistency of the finished project. Basically I spun a sample single until I got something that made a 3-ply close to what I wanted, then wrapped the single around a card so I could compare as I went along. The Wensleydale is not the softest stuff in the world, but should make decent sock yarn. With commercial yarn for the heels and toes, I’ll be less worried about how this wears as well. Next time I’ll try to go finer and twistier!

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…

Finished Project

I’m going to start putting my finished spinning projects on the blog, mostly so I have a record of them. Here’s that golden yellow Cormo I’ve been working on over the past few weeks, all spun up, washed, and dried.

That’s just a little more orangey than in real life, but it’s more of a harvest gold. It’s difficult to get that color to photograph well with incandescent light and a flash, and it’s January in Washington, so a good outside sunny shot is out of the question. I need to build me a light box. Here are the details:

Finished Spinning Project:

Fiber: Cormo roving, purchased from Apple Rose Fibers on Etsy. This was 8 ounces of roving, nicely prepared. There was a bit of vegetal matter in it, mostly bits of hay or straw, easily picked out.

Wheel Or Spindle? Spun on my Schacht Matchless, using the Scotch tension set-up. I used the fast speed whorl on the larger groove, I think that would be a 13:1 ratio.

Style of Spinning: Style? Who, me, style? I spun this using a worsted style of spinning, mostly a short forward draw. Mostly. I’m still new enough at this that I occasionally get a little off track. It’s a two ply.

Yardage/Yarn Weight: This ended up being somewhere between a heavy fingering weight and a light sport weight.. I got about 850 yards from this.

What I Plan To Make With This: I think this would be a great shawl. It’s very soft and squishy, and would also be good sweater material, if I had several times as much of it. Though it’s a little soft for a sweater, it might pill like crazy. I have in mind this shawl. Rav link here, for you Ravelers.

What I learned: Well, how to answer that one. I’m so new at spinning that everything is a new experience. This was my first Cormo. I have another whole bag of this in a pretty bright aqua color, too. Every fiber has been a new experience to me. This drafts differently than the merino stuff I’ve mostly been working with. It’s not difficult, just different. It’s sproingier to draft, and either the fiber was well-prepared, or I’m getting better at drafting. I didn’t have to do much fiddling with it or pre-drafting at all. I just pulled it out of the bag and started spinning. The worsted style yarn I ended up with is lovely, but I’d like to try this fiber again using a long draw technique.

I also learned not to judge the yarn until it’s all done. This looked like a twisty overplied mess before I finished it, and I was almost tempted to run it back through the wheel to unply it a bit. I soaked it, snapped the hanks a bit, hung them to dry, and it all looks beautiful.

In case you’re roaming around my blog looking for something specific, I’ve started categorizing the new posts. There’s a drop-down box over in the right menu bar that will get you there. I’ve done this with all the posts since I moved the blog, and I’m slowly working through the older posts, moving photos and cleaning up links. “Finished Spinning Projects” is the newest category!

Not Cobblestone

Notice anything new in that photo, besides a new blue knitting project?

It’s a finished Not Exactly A Cobblestone Sweater!

I finished it over the weekend, though I haven’t gotten a chance to wash and block it properly. It’s very cozy, and I figured I’d get a post in before I go back to my work week starting tomorrow.

Project Details

Yarn: Classic Elite Skye Tweed, in the color Tapestry. This yarn is now discontinued, and very difficult to find for sale. It’s a little more deep red wine colored than in that photo.

Pattern: Jared Flood’s Cobblestone, from Interweave Knits Fall 2007. Sort of. The bottom up to the armpits is a Cobblestone, the rest is pure Elizabeth Zimmermann (see modification section).

Started: February 2008

Finished: November 6, 2008

For: Me

Needles: Knit Picks Options Circulars, size 7.

Modifications: I did the body as written up to where you attach the sleeves. I really didn’t want all that garter stitch on the top half, and I was pretty certain that the circular garter yoke would not be even remotely flattering on me. So I used the instructions for a raglan sweater from EZ’s Knitting Workshop for the top half and the sleeves. I made the sleeves narrower than the original pattern instructions, as the pattern as written for a man has fairly wide, baggy sleeves.

What I learned: See above. I’m gradually learning as I knit to analyze patterns as to whether they will be even slightly flattering, and to adjust things as I go if they’re not. This one fits well, and I predict will be worn often. This is the first time I’ve knit a sweater in the round like this, other than for a baby. It’s an interesting way to construct sweaters, but makes for a very unwieldy project once you get the sleeves attached.

The yarn is a bit weird, which might be why it was discontinued. The color is lovely, and it actually feels great once you wash it, but it has an odd stringy feel while you are knitting, like yarn that is treated for machine knitting.

Verdict: A successful sweater!

And what is up with that blue yarn, you ask? That is from a pile of very lovely Beaverslide wool/mohair blend, in the color Lake Josephine. It looks like a solid blue in that photo and on their website, but actually has very subtle tweedy bits in it. This will be a sweater for my sweetheart. After some dithering around, he decided on blue, and I narrowed down all the blue yarns from their website and let him choose. After another period of dithering, he’s decided that he wants it to look just like the Father/Son Pullover I made him previously out of grey Peace Fleece. Fortunately I’m completely happy knitting exactly the same sweater for him twice. What you see in that photo above is the beginning of a swatch, and I hope to start the actual knitting in a day or two.

In NaNoWriMo news, I’m up to 10,699 words, which puts me a little behind, but not far. So far I’ve killed off two drunk twin brothers, and started a world war. Not bad for only two chapters!