Football, Spinning, and Net Browsing

Football playoffs are in full swing, which means the swearing at the screen and screaming at the defence is getting louder and more intense. And my special Pats' games socks are at the heel turn of the second sock and can't be knit at any time other than during the game lest I upset the delicate balance of the football universe.

I finished spinning and plying the green Fleece Artist merino/alpaca. I think it is about a DK weight, but it varries, not very good at spinning consistently. I have been trying to find a pattern to knit with it, and I'm leaning towards Foliage at this point.

Today I downloaded all the early eps of Lime and Violet (1-35) from before I started listening to it in the Summer. I've been listening to these all day (as I translated Middle Welsh). Once I got that done (it took all day, but I'm blaming that on the fact that I tweaked my neck and leaning over the table to translate was causing my neck great pain) I sat down, with L&V and got working on my second Bellatrix sock. And I was browsing the Loopy Ewe (as I am wont to do) and suddenly some new roving appeared. So I went back to the main page and oh.look. the Wollmeise had updated! So I managed to get a skein of Gewitterhimmel and also a pattern I've had on my wishlist for awhile. Wasn't planning to buy yarn for awhile, but - dude- when the knitting gods send you Wollmeise you do not spit in their faces! One good thing about ordering from the Loopy Ewe is that- given I end up paying duty on their packages - I am very restrained in my purchases so as to mitigate additional charges (yarn money going to the government is bad - better to spread the purchase out over time).

Just keep knitting...

Question:

Do I want Emerald, Plum, or Ruby zephyr or similar colours of the Elann peruvian baby lace merino for knitting the Mediterannean Shawl? (Now if I can manage to get some Wollmeise lace weight all bets are off... and if it rains blue cheese ...)

I've finished another dish cloth (of which I will spare you yet another picture), and the Baby Bobbi Bear and I've nearly finished one Phineas sock - I'm keeping it on the needles until I knit the other one (the first one is to the ribbing) so that I make sure I have enough yarn for both of them.

The bear will be a Christmas present and was knit with about 4 skeins of fingering weight Katia alpaca (double stranded) on 5.5mm. It is super soft. The pattern was fairly easy to follow though the head does end up a little oddly shaped, mostly in the back -my mom suggested it needed a hat...

In other news, the Crazy Knitting Lady brought me a present from Rhinebeck - the most beautiful lilac bamboo roving!! I am soo excited. Spinning has always fascinated me, but since I've really started to look at it, it has been the thought of spinning bamboo, silk, and flax that have excited me most. Ergo, much squee! I am saving it for the moment until I get a bit better, and trying to decide whether I might not try spinning it with some silk...

Also, I have my new swap partner for the next round of the Hand-dyed yarn swap. This time all the way from Australia - which is very exciting to me. I think given the icky wet cool weather we've started to have, I'll have to do the dying this week to give it time to dry properly, now I just have to figure out what my dad did with all my dying stuff when he cleaned the garage...

Done!!

The shawl - the purple monster- is done, blocked, and nicely wrapped in tissue paper and stored away for Christmas wrapping. I finished knitting it on Thursday and blocked it Thursday night (I left it soaking while I chatted on the phone... there was no water left in the sink when I got back!! NTS- wool is absorbant, if you don't want to be wringing water out of lace for hours don't abandon it in the sink....). I had to fold it in half to block it and then it only just fit on the towel/foam mats combo that I wanted to use.

Yesterday I started on my mitten blitz. I'm doing three pairs for my sibs - not really that big of a deal. But naturally I decided to try stranded colour work (which I rarely do and never do well) and that I wanted to do Norwegian style stars on them. Unfortunately the only patterns I have are for adults (one pair is for a 7 year old girl and one for a 3 year old boy - adult sizes not so much). So generic mitten pattern to the rescue... sort of... I used the template to create a scaled down template in excel and then did the design on that. Then I tried knitting it, first version too small... even for Bertie, so I frogged back to the ribbing and knit again using larger needles, which seems to have worked.

Last night, for some variety, I cast on the tea-cozy. The pattern was great, very easy, and I finished it last night before I went to bed. I really liked the picot hem, I've never done a hem before but this was easy and very smart looking. I think I may modify the pattern in future to make a toque.

Today, more mittens, and maybe working on the socks. Phineas is going slow, the needles are tiny!! So I've been leaving it to the side in favour of projects with greater instant gratification potential. I'm thinking maybe I'll cast on the Hedera for mom....

In my last KP order (which I was waiting for for my mitten yarn and sock needles) I also got the set of metal options. I have loved them, I actually knit the tea cozy on two cables and one set of 5mm tips (I had to switch tips at the end of each half row, but it worked really well anyway). I'm going to have to get more tips (and some doubles I think) and more storage and cables.... (obsessive compulsive much ....) I also got the Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning book. I really like it, though to my mind there is too much attention devoted to spinning novelty yarn. I'd have liked more space given to non-wool fibers (like bamboo), though I did like the sections on flax and silk, and to the properties of different fibers in general. The result has been, the plying of two spindles of singles that I had and pricing spinning wheels. Oh, how I want a Kromski Symphony...

*pout* My connection is being stupid so I can't upload pictures right now...

Two posts in one day... (or my afternoon in pictures)

So, I checked out some older spinning material on Knitty and found a link to a DIY lazy kate, which I modified.

I wound my singles onto 'bobbins' (aka straws on knitting needles).

And plyed it. I must have divided the original pretty evenly (or had the dumbest luck in the spinning) since I only had around a foot extra.

It looks a little like yarn barf, but oh well.

Then I skeined it around a chair.

Soaked it in my sink.

(Wacked the snot out of it against my shower wall - as instructed in Spin to Knit).

Now it is hanging up in the shower drying.

Once it is dry I have two things to figure out - 1. how much of it is there ('cuz, dude, I need that information to enter it into Ravelry) and 2. WTF am I supposed to make out of it?!

So, now if only I could spin something remotely consistent... (on the other hand, the current situation might prevent me from buying lbs and lbs of fiber...)

Spinning and Dr. Who

My most recent trip to yarn store also included a side trip to the bead store. Among the various things I picked up were some beads intended for use as spindle whorls. Last night I went to the dollar store in search of cheap wooden handled paintbrushes.

This is what I came home with (the paint brushes and eye hooks, everything else I already had).

And this is what I made. It spins pretty nicely, with only a bit of wobble at the end of a spin, the only real problem with it is that the handle is too short to hold what I was trying to use it for last night. I'm going to need to hit Curry's downtown to find something with a longer handle (and a wider circumference as the hole in the flat beads was too big). But over all I am pleased.

I spun all of the purple/brown/pink fiber yesterday, trying to do so according to the article on fractal self striping yarns in one of the Spin-Offs from earlier this year. This is what I ended up with.

Now I just have to figure out how to ply these singles...(and also to figure out if I spun one of them the wrong way... should I have done one S and one Z or do I do both the same and then ply them the other way... guess I should have checked that first huh...). I did spin some of the one with my DIY spindle, but ended up transfering the singles to the ashford and finishing it with that. It is uneven and wretched, but an improvement over the last time, so I count that as a small victory.

This week, knitting wise, I've been focusing on the Dr. Who scarf I'm knitting for my sister for Christmas. It is now significantly taller than I am... and I'm only about half way through. She is coming home this weekend so I won't be able to work on it then, but I should be able to finish it up next week. By which time the needles and yarn I need to move on to the next batch of Christmas things will have arrived. (If only my school work were this productive and well organized....)

Spinning... sort of...

Wednesday, I finally went and did it. I made kind of a mess of it. The first try (on the pencil in the picture) is really thick and parts of it took no twist at all. The second one (on the spindle) was slightly better, at least parts of it begin to approximate a useful thickness. It is a mess, but it was fun, and fairly simple.

My biggest problem (ergo question) is how one makes a smooth transition at the bottom of a batt when drafting (ie. the way I was going about it the fiber basically needs to be pulled out in strips and then attached - which is not the way it looks in any of the books!!)

My other problem is that I'm not drafting it thin enough, which will just be a matter of practice and chutzpha, because it is already drafted pretty darn thin and I just need to trust that it won't all fall apart.

Any recommendations or words of advice?

Also - I've frogged the first Christmas shawl - I didn't like how the colours were working, it was not the right feel, so I'll do up another colourway and try again. I do like the yarn, however, so I'll be saving it for something else, maybe socks for a guy.

I've cast on the second Christmas shawl, and it is looking really good. I worked on it a bit on the steps of the library at WLU yesterday and a woman, who teaches in my old department - but even when I was there I don't think ever knew who I was (*this is actually rather amusing, since our dept was very small and I was really well known, not to mention I carried all the graduating prizes they could bestow*) - walked by and commented (apparently she used to knit Icelandic sweaters, but doesn't have time to knit now).

Last night I knit a pair of Fetching, in a lovely blue, they will be given as a gift today (3 cheers for simple projects and stash!!)

During dinner, or well, started before, simmered during, I dyed up some more of the Knit Picks bare worsted I had in my stash (last one, guess I'll be needing to order some more....) in a mossy green. I'm going to knit a pair of Dashing for a friend. I was hoping to get started last night as it was super sunny and hot when I hung the yarn up - but I went downstairs for a few minutes and it rained :( - so now it is almost dry, and hopefully I'll get it started today.

Rather than read another article or book, I will post about knitting and yarn instead.

Kalamazoo proved particularly fruitful on the knitting front, as I finished the pirate socks and knit the other ball of hand-dyed into a pair for myself, which do indeed look like Christmas socks (and are already in the wash and therefore not available for photographing). I am also now approaching the half-way point of my lace shawl, I will hopefully have it done in a month or so.

This leaves me in the odd position of being a one WIP girl, I suppose I have sock yarn kicking around I could knit up, but still. I am thinking that I'll try and use up the stuff I botched the dying of last fall by designing a guernsey for my little brother. I have done the preliminary pattern planning, but still need to swatch, which is being held up by the fact that I have not decided yet whether to dye the yarn grey first or knit the sweater and then dye that. (Also, the yarn is all in skeins and needs ball-ifying before I can do anything with it.)

This project was inspired by reading (and inheriting) a book on the history and knitting of guernseys and jerseys. [The top book on the pile of inherited books]

No doubt the fair-isle book will have the same effect due course.

I'm also trying to see what to do with the yarn I inherited. This is the selection:
Three large cakes of a variegated purple/blue which I think is Fleece Artist and some darker purple mohair (one large one smaller ball) [these are the two back-centre purple things in the picture]. The texture isn't right for socks and it is a little too thick, I'm thinking some kind of lace/shawl, but I haven't found a patter that would show up the yarn to best advantage. There are 8 balls of the silver and 19 of the blue (Filatura Di Crosa, No Smoking), which I'm pretty sure will go into shawls or shrugs of some sort. The black blob in the front-left is boucle of some sort and there is a fair amount of it, I'm thinking afghan... The white off to the right is really nice mohair - sooo soft- in a natural colour, 9 balls worth; I have no idea what to do with it! The stuff in front is 100% alpaca, really soft, and a whole bag full, but the colour is - well - not something I'd have chosen... don't know what to do with that, maybe outer wear for a baby? (my sister suggested teddy bears) [Also, love that the picture captures the Icelandic law codes and box of Pop Tarts that are also on my bed right now...]

In other news, I learned over the week that one of my good friends knows how to spin (really who conceals that kind of talent?!) I will be making her teach me before the end of the year. To that end I've dredged up all my spinning links (from when I was looking into it after my masters) and have been ogling roving for the last couple of days.