02/28/2006
yay an FO!
Last week I was going a little crazy, being on break from student teaching, having nothing to do, and not doing any knitting...So I decided to knit something very simple, that I could pick up and work on in short spurts, just to see how my hands were doing. I wanted to knit a scarf with my handspun yarn - I had two mostly blue skeins, and two mostly red skeins, and not too much yardage, so I decided on 8 stripes, 2 with each yarn, alternating blue and red, and trying to use about half of a skein for each stripe but not really being too careful about the stripes all being the same lengths. I used size 15 needles and garter stitch. It's about 6-7" wide and 6' long - this is longer than I expected. I was planning on adding fringe, but with all this length I'm not sure! I've been wearing it and liking it without fringe for now. It's been especially helpful in the cold in the past few days!
I think I love it. It's chunky and kind of loud and kind of not loud. I love the light blue with the red - it looks especially good nice and crazy against a long, plain black coat.
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01/23/2006
purple-y
I plyed my first skein of the purple merino from Kendig Cottage.
I joined two smaller hanks of the single ply, from back when my skeins were much much more uneven and a significant amount shorter, then I plyed that with my latest attempt, which I had tried to make thinner than usual. It came out to 63 yards, in a heavier weight than I expected - worsted weight maybe?
I can't believe how soft this hank is! I'm seriously in shock over it. Merino is amazing. I'm a little nervous to get more of it - I want to stick with dyeing roving, and I've never dyed Merino, only Corriedale. Then again, I can't keep getting the same exact fibers from Kendig Cottage from now on...I did some price comparisons last night and it's definitely not the cheapest place around. I'll have to look into this more in the near future.
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01/20/2006
I choo choo choose you
After falling so hard for my first complete two-ply, I wanted to do more plying. Well, I wanted to run out and buy a new, heavier spindle, more roving for dyeing, and maybe even a spinning wheel, but for now plying more yarn had to suffice. Introducing, Valentine:
42 yards of bulky two ply, handdyed and handspun with Corriedale roving.
I also spun up my new longest skein ever, 65 yards with my purple merino. I tried to make this yarn a lighter weight, and was mostly successful. I could have spun for longer but was too excited for plying. Besides, I can ply this purple yarn with the 30 and 37 yard skeins already spun from that roving. Yay! This weekend I hope to get to the yarn tree to scope out better spindles.
21:18 Posted in finished objects , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/19/2006
tasty delight
So I spun up all of the Manhattan roving and wasn't so impressed. The colors are really washed out - I could definitely do better. The hank was still so pretty though, and so so soft. I wanted to actually try plying it. There were only about 54 yards of yarn, and ending up with 27 yards if I spun it to itself seemed depressing, so I put two white hanks I made a while ago together to make one hank that could be plied with the Manhattan one. White was too boring, so I dyed it Ice Blue, and plied my little heart out.
Yay! My first finished hank that doesn't suck. The plying isn't great, but I think the spindle is partially to blame. When I made that 54 yard hank initially, it was the most I'd ever made at once on my little crappy sprindle. Plying was kind of a nightmare - there was twice as much yarn, plus I'm just not that good at plying in the first place. It was miserable by the time I was halfway through...I'm definitely going to need a better spindle, both for plying and for making longer skeins.
Still, I'm thrilled with this finished hank. 56 yards (I don't know how that happened - maybe because the Manhattan yarn was a bit overspun and maybe curled up on itself in places?), bulky and super soft. It makes a good necklace. I don't know what I'll do with it (besides showing it off to everyone I know) - can I make a hat with that little yardage, if the yarn is so bulky? I doubt it. Oh well!
09:45 Posted in dyeing , finished objects , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/17/2006
haven!!!
Friday afternoon I finally finished the 5 ft long belt for Haven. Misery.
11 stitches, ribbing with a garter/moss stitch edge (it's hard to define when it's 1 stitch wide). The pattern called for the ribbing to be done through the back loops but after over an hour of knitting and only a few inches, I decided that to preserve my sanity, I'd be knitting plain ribbing for the rest of the way. The belt loops were much easier - thinner and of course so much shorter - although having to knit 6 of the same things was pretty lame. By Friday night, though, I was ready for washing and seaming, and by Saturday night it was completed.
Haven, from Rowan Denim People
20 balls Rowan Denim, Nashville
Started July 2004, finished January 2006(!)
The set-in sleeve worked out great - definitely my best yet. I kind of figured out how to deal with the corner of the top of the sleeve, so it becomes rounded. I'm so so happy with the final result! I still haven't sewn in the belt loops so I can use the belt, but I'm overwhelmed with all the seaming that happened this weekend so I think it can wait. Plus, it looks good without the belt for now. I'll try for some modelled shots sometime soon.
09:45 Posted in finished objects , haven | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/13/2006
odd fellow and a refinished hat
Knit as soon as I received Jess Hutch's fabulous booklet. I used leftovers in Jaeger Shetland Aran (light blue), Patons Classic Wool (brown) and an unidentifiable acrylic (tan). Next time I think I'll work on not overstuffing the arms and legs.
I also finally refinished a hat I knit for my sister for her birthday...last summer. It was a little too small so I frogged all the decreases at the top, knit an extra 2-ish inches, and redid the decreases.
It's knit with Rowan Polar, in Smirk. I've been so sad that Rowan discontinued this yarn. It's amazing to work with - really easy on my hands, the stitch definition is great, and the finished product is so soft...On the plus side, now I can get it cheap ("cheap" for Rowan, which isn't necessarily saying much) online.
The "design" is my own - decide how wide around it should be, use my known gauge to figure out how many stitches around it should be, ribbing for an inch, knit until I think it's the right height, and try to decrease nicely (in this case it was something like *K9,K2tog* for one row, K one row, *K8,K2tog* for one row, K one row, and so on). I tend to overshoot or undershoot the height of the first part, although I think with this hat it was just a case of not having the same taste as my sister does.
09:30 Posted in finished objects | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/05/2006
first handspun project!
I've finished my first project using handspun yarn. It's extremely exciting!!
I got my spindle, and a spinning lesson, from Mind's Eye Yarns two summers ago. The spindle is a little wooden top-whorl guy ("little" because it's cute, not because it's actually small. I couldn't imagine if it's bigger or smaller than most spindles, or what it weighs.) that seems to work well enough. I also got 3 or 4 oz of undyed Corriedale roving (batting? I don't know what the difference is between the names of fibers. It was in a long snakelike piece.) to work with. I was frustrated working with it that summer, mostly because of the heat/wool combination, but also because I was so awful at it. I tried again every several months, to no avail.
Finally, a few weeks ago, I took out the spindle and went online to read more directions. There had to be something I was missing! I would spin the spindle, pull at the roving exactly as I was taught, but I just couldn't do it fast enough. I finally found the key to my newfound success - "parking" the spindle. Instead of spinning the spindle and letting it drop, while frantically trying to keep up with it as I pulled the roving, I would pull the spindle, hold it between my knees, and take my leisurely time pulling the roving and letting the spin enter the triangle-thing. Drafting triangle? I don't know about these spinning vocabulary words. Anyway! This process made spinning Way easier, and now I was able to spin the rest of the roving in the next day or two.
By the end I was making reasonably not awful singles, maybe DK or worsted weight. I soaked them to set the spin, and then plyed them - which may or may not be a major spinning faux pas. The plying was miserable. I couldn't imagine plying white on white, so I found some thin orange mohair yarn in my stash to ply with. It showed up well but...I still sucked. I was getting better by the end - my biggest issue was that the white was wrapping around the orange, and I really wanted the orange to wrap around the white. Big chunky white handspun yarn looks a bit silly wrapped around lacey orange mohair. Eventually I got better at letting more orange than white spin into the yarn, and it all turned out ok.
I soaked my yarn to set the spin, which is a silly thing to say because I think I mostly failed at setting anything, and my yarn looked so sad in hanks so I knit it up right away. 8 stitches of garter stitch across, size 15 needles. The scarf is about 5 feet long when I hold it up, but of course it's garter stitch so when I wear it it shrinks back a lot. I haven't tucked in the ends yet because I'm not sure if the yarn will stay like this but for now, I'm very happy with the results. Very soft, very squishy. I ordered a pound of roving from Kendig Cottage - half a pound of undyed carded Corriedale, since it worked so well the first time, and half a pound of multi-colored Merino top, because I wanted to try something prettier. I can't wait for it to arrive!
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01/02/2006
Finally!
After finishing my summer classes in July, I had all of August off and a new project all picked out. The knitting was finished by the end of the month but it's taken me till now to buy the one button I needed to call it a finished object. I think my loss of focus so late in the game, after being able to work solely on this project for a month straight without starting anything else and without losing interest, was because the sweater fit exactly as I expected. That is, it looked good when it looked good on the model in IK (unbuttoned and/or from the back and/or while hunched over) and bad when it looked bad on the model in IK (from the front, buttoned). I have the same problems with how it looks on me as I had when I look at the pictures in IK. The armholes are so low, and it hangs funny when buttoned. But. It's fine! I'm done, and ready to show it off:
One-Button Cardigan, from Interweave Knits, Summer 2005
Knit with 6 or 7 balls of Jaeger Shetland Aran, acquired from Jannette, size 7 needles
I loved the Shetland Aran. It was soft enough to work with, and my stitches looked so nice before and after blocking. (In fact, I liked it so much that my next major yarn purchase was more Shetland Aran in green to make Freida from Debbie Bliss's Alpaca Silk book! But more on that some other time.)
The pattern was extremely fun as well. The two sides of the front were funny shapes to keep me interested, the sleeves went fast because they're just not that long (since the collar takes up part of the shoulder, and the cuff isn't knit until the rest of the sleeve is complete). The sleeve cuff/border pattern was fun, some lacey rib stitch, and even though it seemed to take forever it was addictive. The top part of the collar, around the neck, is worked with short rows, which gave me a good excuse to keep knitting on and on, since stopping would mean putting my work down in the middle of a row. I also loved the crochet loop bind off. All in all, this project was very different from any other I've worked on, and I'm super proud of it!
Here are some action shots, taken in my bathroom mirror in such a way that nothing I dislike about the fit is noticeable.
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