Chugging along

I have two rows left on the neckline of my sweater, and then it’ll be done.  I’m not sure if I’ll want to lengthen the body and sleeves or not.  They are just skimming where they need to be.  Maybe I’ll block it first and decide afterwards.  It would only be probably 5 rows for each sleeve and maybe 10 rows for the body.  Not too much.  I’m anxious to be done, but I don’t want to be frustrated that the sweater keeps riding up.  Also, when I knit it, I didn’t go down a needle size for the ribbing on the body, but I did go down a needle size for the ribbing on the sleeves.  And I’m not sure I like the look.  The ribbing is deep, and it pulls in very visibly on the sleeves, but not on the body.  I may unravel one or the other so they match.

Anyway, I’m inspired to knit more.  I brought my knitting to work today, and I ordered some yarn from Knit Picks to make a summer top.  I’m going to stripe it with these two colors:

They are a little warmer than what I like, usually, but they aren’t unduly warm.  They look summery to me, so they should be perfect.  It’s a cotton blended with Modal, which I think is just a brand name of rayon.  I think it should work for a summer top. 

I should have pics of my sweater in a day or so (unless I end up unraveling it).

The fog is lifting

I don’t know if you picked up on anything awry, but if you notice, I posted frequently in May, and then the frequency dropped off considerably.

I, gentle readers, have been in a funk. Aside from the socks I started with my handspun, I really haven’t been knitting much at all. I have a sweater languishing with one sleeve almost done and the neckline needing picked up, then it will be done.

I haven’t been in the mood to knit or spin.  I was perked up briefly by the Black Sheep Gathering, but I haven’t even taken any spinning or knitting with me to do during breaks at work. I wasn’t going to fuss about it, because I know it’s common, and it would resolve itself soon. Although, if I am being totally honest, I was freaking out a bit. I looked around at my rubbermaid containers full of yarn and fiber and thought, “Oh my God! What if I never want to knit or spin again? This has been my life for the past 6 years! Ack!”

Well, the fog seems to be lifting. I feel inspired to finish some UFO’s, and I started a new project…Elizabeth Zimmerman’s garter stitch blanket. I have her book, “The Opinionated Knitter,” which is where I saw it, but I never thought of making it because it needed to be sewn together. Blech. But when I saw this one, I knew it was something worth making, even though it needed sewing up.

So, I bought some yarn and almost have the first piece completed. It’s a fast knit because it’s 2 stitches to the inch on size 17 needles for me. I must confess, though, that I am using synthetic yarn. Gasp! Horrors! I know. I swore fake yarn would never enter my house. I have a good reason, though. I plan on using this blanket a lot. It will have a permanent residence on the back of my couch, which just so happens to be the sleeping spot for my cats. This blanket will be covered in cat hair within five minutes of putting it on the couch. Actually, it’s probably covered with cat hair right now while it’s in progress. And a blanket of this size is going to be a real pain in the ass to handwash and lie flat. So, I needed something machine washable and tumble dryable. Tumble drying will get out the cat hair.

I’ve also been working pretty steadily on the sleeves for my third sweater. I wrote about it here. That was November of last year! I’m determined to knit a sweater within a month one of these days. It only takes about 60 hours. Hmm, maybe I’m reaching too far. Maybe I should say three months. After all, my current average is about nine months. Gaah.

I don’t really have the desire to spin, but at least my desire to knit is coming back. I want to make a summer top, but probably the summer will be over by the time I get it done. Maybe I should just stick with finishing the sweater and then make the summer top in the winter.

So, I should have some pics soon of a finished sweater and blanket.

Baa Baa Black Sheep…Gathering, that is.

Where your intrepid blogger hits the mean streets of Eugene and meets some famous people at the Black Sheep Gathering, buys more fiber, and meets some woolly creatures, in no particular order.

It’s nice to live in the area. No fuss, no muss. I took the bus to the downtown station. I could’ve taken another bus to get closer to the fairgrounds, but it’s really only about 5 or 6 blocks or so.

Almost there. I can’t see the actual festival, but there are campers in the background.

Well, there’s something going on, at least. I suspect it is the Black Sheep Gathering.

It is!

First, the sheep and goats. You can click on any image to enlarge it.

And this guy deserves his own picture…

I’m assuming this is a male, eh? At first, I thought it was his tail. Then I realized.

I am a city girl at heart, but I love being in the country, and I love going to farms. I take to all the farm animals pretty easily. But sheep and goats always seemed kinda weird to me. I finally figured out why. They have horizontal pupils! All other animals that I’m familiar with have round pupils or vertical pupils. Once I realized that was the deal, I was able to overlook it and get down with the sheep and goats.

On to the famous people. Amelia from the Bellwether had a booth.

She was really nice. I bought two spindles and a one-yard niddy noddy from her. I love my niddy! I was using my two-yard Kromski niddy for my spindle-spun hanks, but I only get to wind it a couple times around and I’m done. The one-yard is perfect.

This is Connie Paulsen of Spindlewood.

She’s so nice to talk to. Steve was at lunch, so I didn’t get to meet him. He makes a damn fine spindle, though. I saw someone spinning with a square spindle. I asked, “That’s a Spindlewood spindle, isn’t it?” When she answered in the affirmative, I asked, “Are they here?” I had to have one. I just had to. I mean, it’s a Spindlewood spindle. They are gorgeous. Here’s mine.

Ain’t it a beauty? I think this has become my favorite spindle. It’s small enough to twiddle with my fingers…no thigh roll needed, and the wind on is easy because of its size. I’ve gotten to where I prefer smaller whorls. I think they spin faster. Since I do a lot of spinning sitting down, I don’t mind if I don’t get a long spin. It doesn’t bother me to reach down and spin it again.

This spindle does spin really long, though. What I like is the thin shaft, so that I can really get a good twiddle going.

Oh, and the best thing? If I spin on the bus and drop it? It doesn’t roll away!

I think this one and my two-inch Golding are my favorites. Although, I am quite fond of the one I made with a toy wheel and a knitting needle. It spins pretty well.

I didn’t see anyone else famous. I thought I saw Ed Jenkins. Turns out he was there. So, it was him. There were some bloggers whom I read regularly who were there, but I didn’t see them.

Here’s the fiber I bought.

1- merino/bamboo

2- colonial

3- cotton

4-alpaca/silk

Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought the cotton. Well, yes I do. I was thinking that I needed a new challenge. I bought a tahkli and a bowl to spin it with from Woodland Woolworks, who had a display there, and for the record, when people talk about cotton having a short staple, they don’t mean “short” in the normal sense of the word. They mean “short” as in pull-your-hair-out-by-the-roots, cuss-until-you’re-blue-in-the-face, stick-pins-in-your-Gandhi-voodoo doll short. I totally need to take a class or something. Spinning cotton is crazy hard. And I’ll probably have to spin the alpaca silk from the fold because it is just so slick and it flies away (but it is scrumptious).

But I had a blast. Every year, I know this thing is coming, and every year I fail to plan for it. There was a lot more fiber (and spindles) I wanted to buy, but I was constrained by funds. Next year, I’m doing it right. Each payday, I’m going to put 20 bucks away for the Black Sheep Gathering. That way, next year, I can buy anything I want without worrying. It’ll be great!

The opening act

Yes, the Black Sheep Gathering was awesome.  But I’ve got a lot of pics to upload, crop, rename, etc. so in the meantime, I’ll keep you tempted with a couple pics of pre-Black Sheep Gathering stuff.  Remember in my last post when I mentioned dyeing some fiber with grape kool-aid?  Here it is.

I love the effect of the not quite complete uptake and the splitting of the color.  It’s quite interesting.  I like this type of dye job because it’s all basically the same color, so when you spin and ply, you don’t have to worry about a color coming into contact with another color and making it muddy.  Plus, it’s not completely solid, so you don’t get bored while spinning.

And speaking of fiber that’s the same color, but not quite, remember the lovely sock yarn I made?  Well, the socks are in progress.

Check out the subtle striping the yarn is making.  Isn’t that scrumptious?

You know, I wonder if I’ll be able to bring myself to wear these socks.  I wouldn’t want to wear them out.  They are pure wool, no nylon, so I wonder how sturdy they are.

Everytime I take those socks out to work on them, I get giddy.  Woo hoo!

Fiberific day

Well, today I had some fiber fun.  I had a couple packages of grape kool aid, and on a whim decided to try dyeing in the micrwave.  I don’t think I used enough.  It’s not dark purple, more like a lavendar, and the color separated out in a few places, but it’s neat.  I used a long length of something called New Zealand sliver.  No breed is mentioned.  It’s reminiscent of BFL or Corrie.

So, while that was cooling down, I filled my backpack with my Golding .9 oz tsunami spindle, a couple bobbins from my spindler’s lazy kate that I got from Spinsanity,

and a couple lengths of the purple top I bought recently.  I can’t remember what breed it was, but it must be a fine wool, like Merino or Targhee, because it is so sproingy.  In fact, it’s a bit of a pain to ply, because it keeps twisting on itself.  I had to spin it fine, and it’s really acting up.  But it’s beautiful.

Anyway, I threw all that in my backpack, grabbed my bike, and my ipod loaded with some podcasts, and I rode over to the river and spun on the riverbank.  Ooh, luxury.  So much nicer than spinning in my boring old livingroom.

I was listening to a medical podcast.  Dr. Harry Heimlich was being interviewed.  Did you know he’s never given anyone the Heimlich maneuver ever?  And despite what the Red Cross and the American Heart Association says, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation should NOT be used on drowning victims.  You use the Heimlich.  After all, how is the air going to get into their lungs from the m-t-m if they have water in there?  It’s like they are choking on water, so use the Heimlich.  And also, Dr. Heimlich is doing independent research (i.e. not funding by the government or a drug company) on Lyme disease.  He’s testing his hypothesis that intentionally giving patients malaria will cure them of Lyme disease once it’s moved past the stage where antibiotics will cure it.  Fascinating stuff.  Look into it if you’re interested.

Fe, Fi…FO’s

Dessert socks

Remember when I mentioned working on these socks?  I finished them about a month ago but never thought to take a picture.  Here they are.

I like the pooling.  They are very pretty.  I made them ankle socks, because, well, it’s getting to be warm (although you wouldn’t know it in Oregon).  I put off finishing them because I had to graft the toe, but I can do grafting pretty well with Lucy Neatby’s sock toe chimney.  It took a few tries, but I got it.

I’m not too fond of the heel, though.

It’s a little wide for my taste, even though I used half the stitches.  I think that toe-up gusset and heel flaps are just different enough from the cuff-down version that I’m not entirely pleased.  Although I have to keep reminding myself that this is a journey, not a destination.  it means that i get to experiment with more heels until I find one that’s perfect.  Or maybe I never will find the perfect heel, but that doesn’t mean i can’t enjoy the process.

Punkgrrl fingerless gloves

These are awesome!  I just love gloves.  They are almost more fun than socks.  They are a quicker knit, that’s for sure.  For future reference, if using a patterned yarn, I won’t knit the first row with tail and yarn together.  It’s too weird.  But they fit perfectly.  Everytime I put them on (yes it’s still cold enough for fingerless gloves in the a.m. here in good ol’ Oregon), I stare at my hands and marvel at how amazingly clever I am to have figured out how to knit gloves.  I am besotted with them.

Startitis

Remember the sock yarn from the previous post?  I started a pair of socks with it!  I am knitting something with my own handspun!  How awesome is that.  I forgot to snap a pic while I was snapping all those others, and I’m too lazy to get off the couch and do it now.  Another time, then, when they are further along.  But it seems to be working out great.  I am using size 1 needles and they are nice and firm, so i really and truly spun the yarn to fingering weight.  How cool is that?  I am pleased as the proverbial punch.

Marcy learns a new trick

Apparently, there is something called “plying on the fly.”  It involves spinning a length of singles with a spindle, and then navajo plying them.  Wind on that length, and then spin a new length, navajo ply it, and then wind it on.  it is a little fussy, and sometimes it’s a pain to keep the loop open so you can chain up a new loop, but I got it to work.  I spun just a few yards.

This is fresh off the spindle…not finished or anything.  Not too bad for my first attempt.  I have navajo plied on a spindle before (and a wheel, too), but this is my first time doing it “on the fly.”  I like it.  It’s an awesome trick.

Handspun sock yarn!

This is about 60-75 yards of approximately fingering weight yarn that I spun on my spindles. I used my Golding, my Bossie, and my Spinsanity spindles. I plied the yarn by winding the cop onto the bobbins of my Lendrum lazy kate. I just put my finger on the top of the bobbin and turned it while it was on the kate. I used two bobbins, and I put two copfulls on each bobbin.

Plying is a bit of a pain on a spindle. I’m still searching for the best method for me. I’ve done andean plying, which I like, works well, and I can do it, but the drawbacks are that it ties up your arm until you’re done plying. I supposed you could put it down if you carefully slipped the bracelet off your wrist, but I wouldn’t want to chance it. Also, andean plying doesn’t work well with a large amount of fiber. Traditionally, the native Peruvians would use the plying bracelet to use up the remainder if they didn’t have the same amount spun up on each cop.

I’ve tried plying from both ends of a center-pull ball, and since I’m not a masochist by nature, I gave that up after my first attempt. I don’t have the patience to wait several days for the twist to go dormant, and when you have active twist in a singles, a center-pull ball is just sheer torture.

There are two methods I haven’t tried, which I think seem promising. One is Priscilla Gibson-Roberts “plying sticks” method. You slip the cop onto a knitting needle and ply from the center of the cop. You need a contrasting leader yarn for this method. If I have a hook on my spindle, I don’t use a leader. I’ll have to remember to put a leader on if I want to try this method. And the other method is using non-center-pull balls of yarn and put them in or under something (think flower pot), so that they can rotate freely without going all over the place. Using this method I can wrap both strands together on the ball and then ply them together. It is recommended to wrap the singles around something, like a felt ball. How does one get/buy/make a felt ball? I’m thinking of just buying a tennis ball, or a small nerf ball or something.

I’m also thinking of buying a lazy kate for my spindles. Greensleeves has one, and Golding has one, but they are both pretty pricey. With the Golding kate, I am guaranteed that my spindles will fit…my Golding ones at least. It would give me an excuse to order a couple more Goldings. They are awesome! I’m not 100% sure that my spindles would fit the Greensleeves kate.

I have a couple ideas for homemade spindle lazy kates, but I live in a small apartment, and I don’t have very many tools. That’s one of the drawbacks of simplifying your life with fewer possessions. It means being more dependent on having to buy things. I’ll keep searching for the Ultimate Plying Method.

I just realized it has been approximately a year since I started spinning. Here’s my first skein:

Wow! What a difference! My first yarn oftentimes wouldn’t go through the orifice. Now I’m spinning thin enough to be one ply of a fingering yarn. Yay for me! You know how sometimes people come on to a spinning forum and say they’ve just posted a pic of their very first skein? So, you go and click on it and not only does it look better than your first skein, but it looks better than what you’re spinning right now? I think those people are lying. That’s right. I’m calling them dirty, rotten, filthy liars. There is no way that their very first skein is perfect right out of the gate. Those people should be banished from the spinning community for being the liars they are. And what’s worse is when they show false humility and say, “I know it’s terribly uneven.” Meh.

But here’s to spinning progress (raising glass). Salute!

The tail end of my spree

I finally got all the rest of the stuff I ordered this week. I got some delicious merino/alpaca/silk blend that drafts like butter. I got it from Squoosh. The colorway has blue, purple, and yellow. I figured I could stand a little bit of yellow since it would be in amongst the other colors, but when I saw it in real life, it had way more yellow than I thought based on the picture. So, what I might do is just break off some of the yellow as I’m spinning, so there won’t be so much. But the fiber itself is so damned scrumptious.

Remember in a previous post, I mentioned having a spinning project in mind for a friend. Here’s what I bought:

Black and pink Corriedale. I am making fingerless gloves from the Punkgrrl colorway from Happy Fuzzy Yarn. My friend liked the black and pink parts, but didn’t care for the blue parts. She mentioned particularly liking it when there was a stripe of black. There is some pooling with the yarn, but there are occasional stripes. Hmm, what if I made her some yarn that was black and pink with long color repeats so that it striped? I initially thought of dyeing some yarn, but I’m not real proficient at dyeing, and to get long color repeats you have to wind your skein into a looong skein, like something the length of your livingroom. Too much trouble. So then I thought, what if I spun up some yarn? Actually, I saw the black and pink fiber, which gave me the idea to spin up something. I can make the color repeats as long as I want. This will take some planning and mucho experimenting. But it’ll be fun, I think.

And I got more spindles. I LOVE spindles. I really love them. I walked to the store the other day, which is a 20-minute walk and I got a lot of spinning done. Walking and spinning is in some ways easier than walking and knitting. You can’t do that with a wheel. With a wheel you gotta be by the wheel all the time. That’s why there’s the saying that you spin more with a wheel in an hour, but you spin more with a spindle in a week.

Anyway, since I’ve stopped the top-whorl embargo, I’ve been getting some yummy spindles. I finally got a Bosworth. And I gotta say, the hype is completely true and well-deserved.

This is a purple heart midi Bosworth spindle. It weighs 1.1 ounces. It spins like it’s fulfilling its destiny. You don’t need to roll this off your leg to get a good, fast spin. It’s great.

And I also got a couple of handmade spindles from Spinsanity. Both the 1 oz. and 2 oz. flower spindles. Here’s the 1 oz.

You can sort of tell from the picture that the shaft is painted green with a stem/leaf pattern carved into it. It’s very pretty. For some reason, I value things that cost less more than expensive things. I think this is probably the prettiest spindle I have, and it spins quite well, too. I can get a good thigh roll with it.

What I find fascinating is how my Golding (.9 oz.), my Bosworth (1.1 oz.), and my Spinsanity (1 oz.) are all different sizes, with different whorl diameters and shaft lengths, but they all weight basically the same (and I can get the same size yarn with all of them. Spindles are simply fascinating. You know, humans are quite clever to have figured out this whole spinning, weaving, knitting thing out in the first place. What a clever lot we are! Too bad we have to act like assholes so much of the time.

Belated pics

Here are the pics I promised I’d post once I got fresh batteries in my camera.

Knucks…

It’s not in focus, because I used the self-timer function. But I think you get the idea.

Remember that perfect skein of yarn I spun up?

Ain’t it a beaut? I love how rounded a three-ply looks. It looks like commercial yarn (since a lot of commercial knitting yarn is three-ply). The downside to three-ply is that you have to spin three times the amount of yarn you want to have. Either you spin three bobbins and end up with one bobbin after plying, or you spin one bobbin and end up with one third of a bobbin when you’re done plying. Bleh. But it’s so g*dd*amned gorgeous that I can’t resist!

Im in ur innernetz…orderin fybur.

Well, I had myself another spree.  Whee!  I ordered a bunch of stuff on Friday, and on Monday the packages started rolling in.

Check out this beautiful sock yarn.

You may be thinking to yourself, I don’t recognize that sock yarn.  Is it Regia, Opal, Trekking XXL? Why no, it’s not.  It’s my own handspun!  Whee!  i made sock yarn.

I used this lovely spindle from Golding Fiber Tools…

with this lovely blue Falkland top from Fat Cat Knits, colorway “Maxine.”

These two get the Early Bird prize for quick shipping.  Yay!  I ordered on a Friday, and by Monday I was spinning away!

I love my Golding spindles.  My new one is less than an ounce (.8 or .9) and I can spin a singles that when plied gives me fingering weight.  That little spindle spins like a hummingbird on coke.  I was so addicted that I took it with me while running errands yesterday and spun at the bus stop, on the bus, walking to the haircutting place, etc.  It’s awesome!

And I’ve never used Falkland before, but I like it.  Based on how it feels, I’d classify it with Corriedale.  It’s a little less soft than BFL, but about the same as Corrie, I’d say.  I like it.  It drafts well.

Yesterday, nothing came in the mail. :-(  But today, I got more fiber.  Something I’ve never spun before…silk hankies!

I got these from Woodland Woolworks.  I got another bunch in a similar colorway, but I tired of taking pictures.   I actually can’t believe I’m taking time out to blog about this instead of diving into those scrumptious hankies.  Am I an idiot?  Ooh, I can’t wait to see how they spin up.

And I got some more fiber.  This is some Corridale from Red Barn Farm.  Whoever started Etsy was a genius.  There are so many awesome sellers on there.  Handpainted fiber out the wazoo.  Mmmm.

Here’s the Corrie…

Do you notice a pattern here?  Yeah, I like purple.  I used to be all about blue, but I like purples, too.  Lavender, violet, lilac, plum, etc.  All cool colors, really.  And gray.  A purplish gray?  Oh. My. God.  I can change the colors of my monitor at work, and I have a lovely colorway that I call “heather” which is a muted purplish gray color.  Mmm.

Anyway, i have more fiber coming.  A merino, alpaca, silk blend, and some solid-dyed Corriedale for an attempt at spinning up something special for a friend (more details later).  And I have a Bosworth midi spindle on the way, and two handcrafted spindles (1 oz. and 2 oz.) from another Etsy shop.

I think this ought to tide me over for a while, eh?

*sigh*  Fiber.  My friend who is a product knitter keeps telling me she doesn’t see the allure of spinning.  I’ll bring her over to the dark side, yet.  You wait and see.  I’m nothing if not a fiber enabler.  There’s nothing more miraculous and addictive than watching twist travel up fiber.