Yarnstruck Cathy

Land of the Giants

2011-01-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

Part of me feels I oughtn't to be allowed to wear a new knitted project until it's been blogged. My bubbly-sister-in-law once told me she had a rule that she couldn't use a gift until she'd written the thank-you note. Maybe that's where it comes from.

In any case, it's cold weather, and I have a warm cowl I need to tell you about, so I can wear it!

It all started back in the fall, at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival, in Berryville, Virginia, where I was a volunteer helper this year at the fleece sale. We volunteers were there all day to talk about raw fleeces with spinners and interested passers-by and to take payments from anyone who'd found a fleece to his or her liking. Pleasant work, and, best of all, we were welcome to bring our spinning wheels and sit there and spin.

I had brought along Miss Muffet, my wee little portable Louet Victoria spinning wheel. I'd also brought some natural undyed wool to spin, thinking it would be good for demonstrating to anyone curious about what the natural undyed fleeces would be like to spin once cleaned and processed. Only -- funny thing -- there at the festival, surrounded by all the brightly colored wools and yarns, I began to feel just a bit dour about the good honest plain-colored wool I'd brought.

I cast my eyes around wildly and scurried across the aisle to the booth where the Barefoot Spinner, from Romney, West Virginia, had hand-dyed spinning fiber laid out. I found some Falklands wool, a breed I had not tried yet, and picked out an 8-ounce ball in soft, light colors, a change from my usual palette. Falklands wool comes from the breed of sheep inhabiting those self-same Falkland Islands that were at issue between Britain and Argentina in the 1980s. Their wool, I later learned, is considered especially "green" because the islands are free of the usual sheep pests and so the sheep are not exposed to pesticides.

With that, I repaired happily back across the aisle to spin the day away. It was lots of fun to spin and chat with people coming by, especially small children who were mesmerized watching the wheel go around and around.

I spun the wool as softly as I could, trying for a lofty yarn, with moderate success. The colors mixed and become more muted, as they often do, but were still quite pretty.

When it was all over, I ended up with 8 ounces of soft, bulky 2-ply handspun. Now for something to knit with it. I'd had my eye on a pattern from the Holiday 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting magazine for a while. In that issue, there was a feature with several giant loose cowls that draped around the neck and even the shoulders, by designer Cathy Carron.

One in particular, with a pretty cable and leaf texture, appealed to me. (It's called Cabled Cowl #12 in the magazine, and I understand it's since been published in the designer's new book, Cowlgirls as "Candy Wrapper.") And this cowl was big! It was loose and baggy, about a yard around - very different from the modest little neck-warmers I'd seen in past years. It hung around the model's shoulders and looked it might fit Harry Potter's giant friend Hagrid. It was shown in a strong, solid pink, but I thought it might look pretty in the variegated shades of my hand-dyed handspun yarn. I set to work and soon had it done. It was a pleasure to knit in soft, cushy handspun. Although the cowl is really just a giant tube, the cabled pattern was interesting -- varied enough to be fun but intuitive and not particularly difficult. It was fascinating watching the colors shift, and the changes were gradual enough to be compatible with the texture.

But the giant cowl really comes into its own when worn, bunched around the neck and shoulders, colorful and warm. It's a nice memory of the festival and an attractive piece with an offhand style all its own. I'm really pleased with the way it came out.

And now may I wear it, please? :)

A Modest Output

2011-01-18T02:15:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season. I did! In the rush leading up to it, I never know if I'm going to make it, but somehow just enough of everything all comes together just in time. And again this year, though I never seem to come close to matching the impossible dream in my head, I managed to get the tree decorated, cards out, presents bought and wrapped, and even a little Christmas baking done.

And in the midst of all of this, there was time for just a very modest amount of Christmas knitting. I didn't do a lot, but I did at least make a sweet little scarflet for my tall-elegant-mom, and a hat and neck-warmer set for Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest. The first was because I always try to make at least a little something for my mom, and the second by semi-request. (My trim-athletic-dad didn't fare quite as well; his as-yet unknit socks were bestowed on him in pristine form, as a completely untouched ball of yarn. :)

Time was rushing onward, and I knew I wanted to knit something for Mom, but I didn't know what. In the past I've made her stoles, scarves, shawls, gloves, hat, a sweater, and socks -- lots of socks -- all of which she makes valiant efforts to wear regularly. This time, I had no plan, but I did have a lovely skein of Jade Sapphire Mongolian Cashmere 6-ply squirreled away, in the Oceana colorway. I'd bought it on a vacation a few years ago in Seattle and never quite come up with the right little project for it.

I'd always thought these colors would be nice on Mom, but what to make? One skein of worsted weight, however precious, would be of necessity a small project. I hit upon the idea of a little scarflet that could give just a hint of warmth and color at the neck, where cashmere's softness would be most appreciated.

I ended up choosing a style that's often called a bowknot scarf. It has a built-in loop on each side, cleverly constructed by separating the stitches into two layers and then rejoining, so that either end can be tucked through the other, neatly and securely. There are quite a few patterns along this general model, but the one I used is Marci Richardson's version, from Judith Durant's 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders book. Like the others, it's in humble garter stitch (which does make it springy as to length and not prone to rolling), but it also has some nice refinements, like a simple eyelet trim along the edges.

I made some minor changes to make it suit my mom (I hope) a little better. I lengthened the two ends of the scarf by an inch or two to give it a more substantial look. I narrowed the band around the neck slightly so it won't bunch up or fold over and will be a little better for full-time wear, rather than just for venturing out into the cold. I hope she'll enjoy having a small soft accessory that's easy to wear casually. Cozy, but not so warm you'd hesitate to reach for it unless the wind is really howling.

As for the requested item, that one tickled me. Once, I made a pile of thick hats in cheery school-spirit colors, and gave them out to the Yarnstruck nephews (among others). Well, what do you know, they wore them, and it seems they quite liked having a warm thick hat to wear on really cold days. Two years later, Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest had moved on to college and needed a warm thick hat in a new color scheme. Well, no knitter on earth could resist the call to replace an appreciated piece of hand-knitting with another when the need arises. It was Auntie Yarnstruck to the rescue!

If the original hat fit Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest and he liked it, well, I wasn't going to mess with success. I was going to do my level best to replicate it, materials, fit, styling, and all. Everything would be just the same but the color. I ran right out for the same yarn as last time, Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick, to knit with big US size 11 boat oars.

The pattern was of my own concoction, but, no problem, I just needed to find the little scrap of paper where I had noted down the details. When I got a little time, I launched a search into the pile of little and bigger scraps and sheets where I've noted down lots of my original patterns but never written them up properly. There sure were a lot of scraps and sheets. This was taking longer to find than I thought. In fact, I couldn't find it. Uh-oh. I knew I'd written down the details on one of these scraps; I actually remembered transcribing them from an even smaller more tattered scrap of paper. But I couldn't find it anywhere. I went through books, notebooks, drawers, and dug down to the deepest darkest bottom of my piles of yarn. I spent a couple of hours turning the place upside down. I couldn't have searched more thoroughly if I'd brought a bloodhound with me. No scrap of paper. Oh, no.

Now mind you, my little hat pattern wasn't anything to set the world of hat patterns on fire, but I knew it had worked once, and I just wanted to knit it again. I could have picked a pattern from one of the many (really! *many*) knitting books on my shelf, and adapted it for the yarn, and it probably would have been fine. But it wouldn't have been identical to the original one, and identical is what I was going for.

Hard times call for tough measures. At least I had taken a good picture of the original hat, a complete side view, smoothed out flat. I reverse-engineered my own hat design from the photo, stitch by stitch, and used it to knit the new hat.

There was plenty of yarn left over, so I made a ribbed cowl/neck-warmer to match. I have to admit, this isn't quite how I pictured it being worn. (It actually looked quite nice pushed down around Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest's handsome chin. :) But, come to think of it, on a good freezing day, it's probably exactly the right way to wear it.

This time I wrote the whole thing down carefully. And put it... somewhere. I'm sure it will turn up.

Field and Fireside

2010-12-09T23:21:00.012-05:00

When I went tramping through the fields to the fiber festivals this fall, I had a pretty scrumptious new sweater to wear. It's the Fireside sweater pattern by Amber Allison.

There's a bit of a story behind this pattern. There was a cute little romantic comedy movie in 2006 called The Holiday. It starred Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett, as two strangers in the US and UK who, each unhappy and needing a change, swap houses for a brief vacation. The movie was lightweight and pleasant, but a buzz developed about the wardrobe worn by Cameron Diaz. One sweater in particular, extravagantly cabled and trim, really caught the eye. (It's the fourth one down the page on the preceding link.) Knitters ogled it, sighed over it, and tracked down the impossibly expensive source.

Amber Allison did more than sigh. She was so determined to have this sweater that she (dare I say obsessively?) studied pictures from the movie and recreated it as nearly as she could, stitch by stitch. She also, to the gratitude of legions of knitters, wrote out the pattern and adapted it for a range of sizes. It's remarkable, considering she'd never written a pattern before. On the other hand, I've never read a pattern written quite like this, either. There were a few directions like, "I suggest doing it this way, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life." Quirky.

I stumbled across the Fireside sweater through Chesley Flotten's Knitting Experience Cafe blog (named after her much-loved but now-closed knitting shop in Maine). Chesley, who has an immaculate eye for great sweaters and a welcoming heart, had picked out the Fireside and was preparing to hold a knit-along for her band of loyal knitters. I, despite living in Virginia -- far, far away from Maine -- decided to join in. It was the first time I'd participated in a knit-along, where lots of knitters work on the same pattern at the same time, in a variety of yarns, discuss their progress, and share their results. It was great fun.

Chesley had scoped out some suitable yarns for the sweater. I ordered some Cascade Eco-Plus wool in the Grape colorway, downloaded the pattern, and got to work. Eco-Plus is a heavy-worsted weight 100% wool yarn and was, I thought, rather lightweight for the gauge of 4 stitches per inch. To get gauge, I ended up with US size 10 1/2 (6.5 mm) needles, and the fabric seemed a little loose. But it worked out well with the heavy cabling. It shows those cables like nobody's business. And the finished sweater feels great.

I made some significant adjustments to the pattern. I checked out out a number of finished Fireside sweaters. (You can see some good pictures of one finished Fireside on the Posh Knits blog, here.) For sizing, I noted a few complaints about tight, skinny sleeves. I chose a fairly snug size but decided to make armholes and sleeves according to the next size up. I also used the length measurements of the next size up. Still, I felt the waist decreases and increases looked like they would be kind of abrupt (this may have been partly due to my row gauge), so I made them longer and more gradual.

For construction, I didn't much relish the recommended procedure of knitting the sleeves in the round and then fitting them into the waiting armholes, so I knit them flat and seamed more conventionally. There were also a few rough edges in the details of the pattern, and I changed some small things in the underarms and the back neck shaping to refine it a bit.

But the sweater came together well, and all the adjustments and changes worked out fine. And, let me be clear, I LOVE this sweater! It's a beauty. Warm, cozy, and cabled, but sleek. It looks great tramping around in the open with jeans or dressed up in a tailored outfit with serious earrings. I venture to say you might even get away with it, in this jewel-like color, as a funky companion for a big gathered silk sort of skirt, the kind of styling you might see in Vogue Knitting magazine. I love it from the top of its stand-up cabled collar to the tip of its purposely over-long sleeves.

And did I mention that it's sexy? From the back, without the bulk of the overlapping off-center fronts, you can see the overall shape, almost like a curvy jacket. And the way the cables swoop in and out with the waist and shoulder shaping.

It's a really good-looking sweater. When I wear it, I get a ton of compliments, some on the style, and some on the fit. And some, from knitters, impressed with the cabling (which, honestly, is simpler to knit than it looks). You couldn't ask more than that!

Oh, and thank you, Chesley. :)

A Little Thrill

2010-11-30T23:22:00.005-05:00

I've had an unexpected little bit of happiness recently -- seeing my yarn made into someone else's creation!

Here's how it happened. When I first got Miss Muffett, my little Louet Victoria spinning wheel (yes, I guess you could say I'm spoiled :), I immediately spun a few little bundles of hand-painted fiber. I didn't have anything definite in mind to do with the yarn. I was just spinning for the pure joy of revving up my new little hot-rod spinning wheel.

Of course, that didn't stop me from taking the yarns to show off to my knitting group friends. One friend in particular oohed and sighed over one of the skeins. It's the one in the front in the photo above. I'd spun it from two ounces of combed merino top from Fleece Artist, in Nova Scotia, bought a couple of years back at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival. It had long color transitions in muted shades of green and lavender, pink and blue-gray, and it really spoke to her.

She admired it and gave me fulsome compliments. Just being nice, I thought. But over the months, as the fruits of my spinning wheel came and went, she kept bringing up that one particular skein. "That was so pretty," she would say, "and so soft. I just loved those colors." I began to believe her.

In the end, I decided to wrap up that little skein and give it to her as a birthday gift. I was pretty sure she'd appreciate it. :)

And she did. When she opened that package, she recognized her favorite skein right away and squealed with happiness. She dashed around some of the neighboring offices to show it to people. Pretty gratifying.

But then a couple of weeks later, the really exciting thing happened. She showed up at work in a new scarf. I glanced and did a double-take. And a triple-take. And then a full-on stare. It looked very familiar. "Wait, that's my yarn! Eeeee! That's my yarn that's my yarn that's my yarn!" She just beamed.

I was so surprised. There were only about 200 yards of a fingering/sport weight yarn, and I hadn't thought she'd be able to do much with it. But she'd searched out a pattern and knitted it up.

And it's so pretty! She chose a pattern that works beautifully with the subtle colors and long transitions. It's the Susan Scarf, a free pattern by the talented Kristen Hanley Cardozo. And she did a beautiful job knitting it.

It was really exciting to see another knitter's vision of what could be made of my pretty yarn. We're both proud of that scarf. (You should see how great it looks when she wears it with her dark green sweater!)

It's as if I gave her a little present, and she turned around and gave me one right back. What a nice little thrill.

Bringing in the Fleece

2010-10-08T21:50:00.007-04:00

This year, I got to see another side of the lovable Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival, by helping out as a volunteer on the Fleece Sale.

A fleece sale, for those not familiar with the concept, is a chance for handspinners to buy a raw, unprocessed whole fleece, just as it comes from the freshly shorn sheep. Raw fleeces are full of all kinds of stuff: bits of weeds and vegetable matter that has clung to the sheep, fresh moist natural lanolin, pleasant ripe animal smells, and -- most of all -- possibility.

The SVFF fleece sale is juried, meaning the fleeces are inspected for quality by an expert judge before being admitted into the sale. It's a big job for the two experts, and so there are opportunities for willing volunteers to help with the physical labor, listen, and learn.

The day before the festival begins, the shepherds bring their fleeces to the judges to be evaluated and entered in the sale. Some bring just a couple of fleeces, and others bring half a dozen or more, each a large double-armful in its own plastic bag.

Now the volunteers swing into action. One writes up tags, noting down the shepherd and the breed or hybrid of the sheep that supplied each fleece, and often the individual sheep's own name. Others empty the fleece from its plastic bag onto a mesh table, loose debris falling through onto the concrete floor.

Spreading out a fleece so it can be examined is a careful job. A skilled shearer will have trimmed the fleece off a sheep all in one big piece that hangs together in the shape of the animal itself, a phantom sheepskin rug. It's easy enough to dump the bundled fleece out of its bag, but the mass of wool must then be gently picked open and fully unrolled on the table, without the loosely linked clumps of wool becoming tangled and breaking apart from the delicate whole-body shape.

After the fleece is unrolled, the volunteers check it over quickly for any bits and pieces that should come out. The shepherd will already have taken out the mucky parts and poor quality areas around the hindquarters. But still, there are smaller things to be removed, like second cuts (bits of short, unusable wool where the shepherd ran the clippers over an overlapping spot again), or burrs and noticeable bits of hay or weeds.

Then the expert judges are called over. They plunge experienced hands in to feel the fineness of the wool. They check the length of the fibers in the locks of wool. They test small clumps for soundness, both visually and by a good sharp lengthwise tug. They assign the fleece to a category, be it fine, medium, long, or double-coated. Sometimes the category is clear from the sheep's breed, and sometimes the judges rely on their own assessment, particularly for hybrids, which can vary widely from one individual to another. They write notes on the fleece's tag, commenting on such things as the quality of the wool, the color, the length, the cleanness, or appropriate uses, to provide guidance for buyers.

When the judges finish with each fleece, the volunteers fold and roll it into a neat ball, stuff it back into its bag, and cart it to its spot on the long table of fleeces for sale.

It wasn't glamorous work. The temperature hit 98 degrees that day. Each fleece typically weighed 4-7 pounds. The wool was full of dirt and grease, and our hands shone from the lanolin. We were grubby and hot. But it was fascinating, and I learned a lot. One thing I found interesting is that the judges actually did reject a few fleeces, for instance, if there was a weak spot in the length of the wool resulting from the animal having an episode of poor health as it grew. Truly, only good-quality fleeces were accepted for the sale.

And the day was at times poignant. I met shepherds who handed over a number of fleeces with obvious pride, shepherds who hoped their fleeces would sell to bring in some money to keep the flock fed, and one dear lady who shears her sheep with ordinary scissors and great care.

To a spinner's eyes, a fleece is just beautiful. Just look at that rich natural color, with the tips of the sheep's coat lightened a little bit by its year in the sun.

Lovely as they are, though, I resisted buying one the next day when they went on sale. I've processed one small fleece so far, and it takes some time. The lanolin and dirt have to be washed out in a series of hot baths, the fleece laid out to dry, and the sweet-smelling clumps of clean wool carded or combed, and put away ready for spinning. I'm game to do it again, but not just yet. I've got a lot of work to do first to clear the decks.

So it wasn't easy, but I held back from buying both there and the following week at the Fall Fiber Festival, where I strolled purely as a shopper.

I simply gave the fleece sale tent a wide berth and stayed as far away as possible from temptation. :)

Festival Season

2010-10-04T22:15:00.006-04:00

The bright crisp days are here, and that can mean only one thing: it's fall, and festival season! OK, only two things, if you want to be picky. :)

Yes, in my annual autumn frenzy of festival-going, I've been to two of my favorite festivals in the last two weekends. Of course, they all seem to be my favorites, but then, they're all wonderful in different ways.

The first, the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival, in Berryville, Virginia, was moved this year for the first time to late September (to avoid a conflict with the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair). And the Fall Fiber Festival, on the Montpelier Estate near Orange, Virginia, was held as usual in early October.

Both are quite small, relative to the behemoths that are the Rhinebeck, New York, festival in the fall (or so I hear, never having been) and -- oldest and biggest of them all -- the mighty Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in the spring. The tidy small size of the Shenandoah and Montpelier festivals, in fact, is one of their great virtues, as there's room to stroll around and browse without being utterly overwhelmed by crowds and overstimulation. And there's plenty to look at, between the shopping, the fiber-bearing animals on display, and at Montpelier, the sheepdog competitions going on all day nearby.

My experience with the Shenandoah festival this time was a bit different from past years, as I got a chance this year to help out in a small way by volunteering! Of course, that meant less time just strolling around shopping and taking pictures. So the visual souvenirs here are from the Montpelier festival. Rest assured, though, there were plenty of treasures at both festivals.

By the time the Montpelier festival rolled around, the weather had cooled, blessedly, to the point that festival-goers could actually wear some of their hand-crafted productions. I love seeing the knitters showing off their hand-knit sweaters, lace shawls, berets, and just about anything else that can be fashioned out of wool.

It was a jolly day entirely. World's-most-patient-husband was a good sport and chauffeured me on the beautiful but long-ish country drive to the festival. I browsed and shopped and wandered and chatted to my heart's content while he napped and read a book he'd brought along. I even parked myself on a picnic bench for a bit to spin some newly bought fiber just for the joy of playing with my new toys.

Oh yes, indeed there was some newly bought fiber. Some of it is here, braids of wool to spin in bright citrus colors and dusky subtle colors and whatever else was appealing. Let's see, the one on the left is a merino "pigtail" from Stony Mountain Fibers in Virginia. The two in the center are a wool-and-seacell blend from Creatively Dyed in South Carolina, and the one on the right is blue-face leicester wool from River's Edge Fiber Arts, here at the festival all the way from Michigan.

And then there were heaps of wool-mohair blend roving, which is lots of fun to spin. The orangey-tan roving on the left is wool, kid mohair, and a touch of sparkle, in the Bronze colorway from Steam Valley Fiber Farm in Pennsylvania. Charmingly, the label they provided tells me exactly which goats and sheep are responsible for the fiber, by name. So, thank you, TinMan, Neptune, and the rest. :)

The two pretty rovings on the right, one in rose and the other in a soft coffee color, are from Kid Hollow Farm in Virginia, which has provided me with many, many hours of spinning pleasure before. My tall-elegant-mom, my trim-athletic-dad, and I all have accessories or sweaters I've spun and knitted from Kid Hollow fiber. The rose colorway is called Puerto Rico, and the buff is called Chestnut. This time, I think I may spin a strand in each of the two colors and ply them together.

And that little twirly thing? Wait, how did that get in there? It's a Tom Dyak drop spindle from DyakCraft (formerly Grafton Fibers). I didn't really need another spindle, but those mischievous River's Edge ladies had it right there, where I couldn't help seeing it, with its cheery bright colors.

Really, what could I do? :)

Hand-Dipped Tappan Zee

2010-09-13T20:00:00.002-04:00

(Wow, she's really let herself go.)
No, I haven't!

(She just hasn't been taking care of anything.)
Yes, I have.

(She probably hasn't been doing any knitting at all.)
Have too.

(Hasn't.)
I can hear you, you know.

(___)
I have I have I have!

In fact there are finished objects strewn all around the place. Here's one now.

Amy Spunky Eclectic King had a pattern in the spring issue of Knitty that seemed just about perfect for some spinning fiber I had on hand in a pretty, pretty color. Amy is well known as a wonderful hand-dyer and is also the author of one of my very favorite spinning books, Spin Control.

The Tappan Zee pattern is casual and breezy, designed for handspun yarn, and -- most importantly -- made with only about 6 ounces of fiber, at least given Spunky's expert spinning technique. Allowing for the difference between her results and my, ahem, somewhat less expert spinning, I thought I might just pull it off with the 8 ounces of fiber I had. It's from the very nice and encouraging Kate Bostek of Roclans Farm in Fairfield, PA. The colorway is called Heartfelt (awww...), and it was one of my finds at the 2008 Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival.

Still a bit nervous about whether I could get enough yardage out of my 8 ounces, I came up with a back-up plan. At the same show, I had bought 4 ounces of another spinning fiber in a similar but slightly darker color, called Raspberry Whip. (I remember getting it home and wondering what on earth I had been thinking!) It was, if memory serves, from a vendor called the Brazen Sheep. I think I was dazed by the fact that it had 10% cashmere in the blend.

I decided to blend the two colorways in gradually varying proportions to spin a range of yarns that would shade from light to dark. I measured out by weight how much fiber of each color to spin together for each color gradation. Then I got busy spinning 12 ounces of fiber, aiming for sportweight.

Here's how the yarn came out. See how the color changes from the top of the picture to the bottom? That's not an illusion!

I adore it. I want to try this trick again.

Still and all, I wasn't entirely sure how my idea was going to work out in the actual sweater. It could either look like a really cool custom design, or like I ran out of yarn and had to finish the knitting in a different colorway that didn't quite match.

Or like I sat in something. :p

But there was only one way to find out. So I got knitting. The yarn was light and springy, a pleasure to knit with, and a relief after all the careful concentration that went into the spinning. And Tappan Zee is a nice pattern to knit, easy and straightforward. It's knit top-down, with enough decoration at the yoke to be fun but not fussy. I changed practically nothing -- a rarity. I only needed to add a couple of extra rows here and there to lengthen the yoke because my gauge was a bit off.

Actually, it's a miracle that the gauge was only a little bit off, because this was the first time I really tried to spin a sweater quantity of yarn to a specific weight for a specific pattern. Before, I've just spun whatever yarn the fiber seemed to make, and then found, adapted, or designed a pattern to work with it. For a first time spinning to order, I really didn't do too badly. :)

And look how it turned out!

Isn't it pretty? I had a hard time getting a picture that shows the color change. But look at the color striations in the main part of the sweater. That's one of the things I love about handspun. And, if you look closely near the bottom on the right, you can see how the color just blends imperceptibly into the darker shade.

Since the colors are so close, it does sort of look like a different dye lot of the same yarn. Or like I sat in something.

But I prefer to think it looks like a hand-dipped ice cream cone. So that's what I say it is!

Hand-dipped Tappan Zee. Delicious. :)

Baby Who Sweater

2010-06-07T20:04:00.010-04:00

One of the members of my broad-minded knitting group (includes an awful lot of quilters for a knitting group) is hugely pregnant. We only meet once a month and don't get a chance to see much of each other in between, so it took us a while to wake up to this fact. Once we did, though, we were pretty quick on the uptake. Hey, wait a minute, we knit (or quilt or whatever)! We could make her something!

To get a little extra time, we delayed our next scheduled meeting by a week on a flimsy but plausible pretext -- hoping she wouldn't surprise us by having an early baby -- and got to work. So, now to pick a project.

Our mom-to-be is a happy-spirited sock-knitter with a boisterous color sense. The colors in this cocktail napkin are in the ballpark, though there aren't enough of them and the whole effect is a little too quiet. (That should give you an idea!) I knew pale baby pastels were not for her. She and her husband had also chosen to be surprised, so there were no clues as to the pink-ness or blue-ness of the imminent arrival.

I wanted to make a little sweater, and after a quick mental inventory, I was certain there was nothing in the house to fit the bill. It needed to be colorful, washable, and worsted weight -- for speed of knitting! And I didn't have time for ordering on-line. I found myself near a new local yarn shop with a few spare minutes and dived in to see what I could find.

After a brief mental dalliance with some wildly colored (but not machine washable) Manos yarn, I came upon a basket of Mochi Plus, from Crystal Palace Yarns. It was a merino-nylon blend. *So* soft, washable, not babyish, and worsted weight. Clearly a winner. Though it wasn't violently bright in color, it had nice long-transition colorways. I picked out three different ones and hoped for the best.

Rooting around for worsted-weight baby patterns, I came up with Jimmy's Baby Gift Sweater Set from the nice people at Jimmy Beans Wool. It's a little top-down raglan that's perfect for multi-colored yarn. And, a great advantage when you're in a rush, no seams to sew! (It couldn't save me from buttons, since I did want to do a cardigan, but you can't have everything.) I needed to make the larger, 1-year-old, size, given the exuberant bloom of our sock-knitting mom-to-be. It was cutting things close, with the 285 yards of yarn I had, but looked like it could be done.

I puzzled for a while over how to combine the three colorways and decided to knit wide stripes of each in sequence. Though I wasn't sure how it would look, I needed to get started, and fast. It turns out that knitting a small sweater in a variety of pretty striping yarns is lots of fun and went quickly. And the wide stripe sequence of the three colorways worked beautifully.

As with most projects, I made a few adjustments. I replaced the garter-stitch hem and cuffs with ribbed ones, which seemed to live more comfortably within the gradually striping colors. I changed the neckband and button-band to mainly reverse-stockinette welts.

Knitting the cuffs at first as written, I thought they looked a little small for chubby baby fists. So I redid them adding a few extra stitches to the wrists.

I couldn't resist picking out some extra bright sections of yarn and using them for contrast color-tipping on all the cast-off edges. And I found some bright shiny red buttons.

I got the little sweater done in the nick of time, sewing on the last of the buttons at midnight the night before our knitting group meeting. It was a rushy evening entirely, what with getting a cake, finding suitable wrapping and card, and finishing a little sweater, but it did all get done.

And we did surprise her. I think I even saw some brimming eyes, before she blinked it away. Our little group came through beautifully, with a pile of handmade goods. A wildly colored pompom-adorned knit hat. A crib quilt and quilted diaper bag. A crocheted beanie. Sweet little appliqued t-shirts.

And a pretty fine-looking baby sweater. :)

Heat Exhaustion?

2010-06-06T19:58:00.011-04:00

Hey, I thought they said wool breathes when it's hot! That's what these little guys must have been thinking. Their mouths are hanging open a little, as they try to keep cool in the shade.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival was a scorcher this year. Each year, I hope for cool weather, so everyone can wear something hand-knit. But, once again, in gentle early May, the festival happened to fall upon a very hot weekend.

Late as I am in checking in here after the festival, I'll just blame it on the heat. And, incidentally, I do still make things. There are even some finished objects to show you, but I'll get to that next time.

So, casting my mind now back again to early May.... I tried to take a restrained approach to the festival this year, as I really am trying not to continue accumulating supplies faster than I can use them. Beautiful they may be, but logic says to have faith that, when the time finally comes that I truly have space for more, there will still be plenty of beautiful things to find.

The fleece sale challenged my fortitude, I have to admit, especially since I'd just taken a class on how to choose a good fleece. I wandered around in there for a while examining fleeces, appreciating their color and crimp, looking at the differences among the breeds of wool. But still I managed to restrain myself.

And I consciously managed my MDSW visit a little differently than in years past. I limited my strolling time to a couple of hours, and I focused on some of the events that I normally just go right on past, in my haste to trot from one vendor to the next. Also, as I now have a very portable spinning wheel, I brought it along in hopes of joining the evening Spin-In .

I stopped to watch and enjoy the kids (human) visiting the kids (baby goats from Kid Hollow Farm).

Look at those tiny little horns sprouting. and the ringlets of soft baby mohair. They're just adorable, aren't they?

I spent a little time taking in the sheep-herding demonstration, watching the expert dogs and their human handlers, and the obedient sheep, spooked into compliance .

I wandered over to see what was going on at the auction. Everything from boxes of magazines to spinning equipment was being disposed of with swift efficiency.

Of course I visited the vendors. It just wouldn't make sense to be there for that awe-inspiring assemblage and utterly pass it by. But I kept my acquisitions to quite a modest level. A couple of quarter-pound bags of fiber and some beeswax candles. Just enough to feel I'd partaken of the feast.

The fiber, from Misty Mountain Farm, is awfully pretty, too. In the foreground is Polwarth top, in a colorway called Forest Moss. In the background is super-fine Merino in Raspberry, a color I just seem to keep coming back to.

So, I still shopped and bought a little, but I tried not to make it such a central focus of my trip. Heck, if I keep this up, maybe one day I'll make it over to see the sheep-to-shawl competition. I've always meant to, but have been too busy loading up on supplies and inspiration.

Once the sun went down and the festival closed for the day, I retrieved Miss Muffet from the car and found my way to the Dining Hall (blessedly air-conditioned) for the evening Spin-In. There were about 65 like-minded souls there, spinning and chatting happily away, with wheels and spindles. There were two wonderful women serving as ringleaders and camp-counselors. They organized door-prize drawings, puzzles, and silly competitions. We had timed spinning races for distance, blindfolded, and with plastic bags on our hands. The latter two were, remarkably, not nearly as hard as one might think. In fact, I turned out to be something of a plastic-bag-hands specialist. That was the competition I came closest to winning. And there was a very entertaining 11-year-old boy challenging everyone to see who could make a spindle spin the longest.

It was fun enjoying the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year in a different way. I might do it again next time.... unless I can use up all the wool and yarn I have around the house by then. :)

Taking Her Out For A Spin

2010-04-25T22:04:00.008-04:00

Well, what's a tiny little new spinning wheel for, if not to hop in the car and go for a spin? Miss Muffet and I found ourselves a spinning event to go to and that's exactly what we did.

When we got there, she settled right in next to a Majacraft Little Gem. It's also a cute little portable wheel, but we all have our own tastes, and Miss Muffet is definitely my favorite flavor. The Little Gem's owner (whose name I'm sorry I can't remember) was also a brand-new weaver, and the scarf she's wearing in the picture was one of her first efforts, woven earlier that same week. It was beautiful and drapey, and I was quite impressed.

The event was kind of a small fair, with vendors from the local region lining the walls, selling yarn and roving and fleeces and patterns and accessories and lots of tempting things. It catered for knitters as well as spinners.

The spinning circle was set up right in the center, and it was a new sight for many of the knitters wandering by to shop. It felt a bit like being on display at a living history museum. Quite a few people stopped by to watch, talking in hushed tones to each other. With a little encouragement, though, they were happy to chat and ask questions. The woman next to me, with the Little Gem, was quite a promoter for spinning. She enticed several people to sit down and give it a try. I wouldn't be surprised if a new spinner or two was born that day!

When I got up for breaks, there was also another "exhibit" for me to gaze at and ask questions about. Near the spinners was a group having a rug-braiding class. It looked like fun, too. Though I'm afraid this isn't the clearest photo, you can see how there's a clamp attached to the table, and the rug-maker is braiding together strips of roving in different colors. The rug-making is not a one-day process, though. Students were to take the braids home, felt them, and come back to the part two class, to learn how to sew them together.

Meanwhile, there was lots of shopping going on, too. You don't need a giant festival to have plenty of things to entice a spinner. I think practically everybody went home with a few more things than she brought -- some more than others. And some just couldn't contain themselves. This big newly purchased pile of fiber was trailing directly from its bag onto an enthusiastic spinner's wheel.

Of course, I also walked around and window-shopped to see what the vendors had brought. And of course I had to get myself a few goodies. :)

These are some of them. The two balls of roving are Cormo wool from Wallys and Frank Peltier at Mt. Airy Farm, in Marshall, Virginia. I just adored the colorway and bought all 14 ounces they brought. It probably won't make a whole sweater, but maybe a vest. I believe I must have been talking to Wallys. She told me that they hadn't dyed the wool in roving form before, only as yarn, because they'd been worried about whether it would felt. But she was pleased with how this had come out. And so am I. :)

The braid in the front of the photo is Superwash Bluefaced Leicester from Spirit Trail Fiberworks, Jennifer Heverley. Jennifer -- in addition to finding wool of fascinating rare breeds to offer spinners -- is a master dyer with an absolutely lovely color sense.

This braid is a one-off; not one of her regular colorways but just the result of a session playing with the dye-pots. I could just drown in these colors. But there's only 4 ounces of it, so I'll have to think about what I can make from it.

All in all, a very fun day. Miss Muffet and I went home tired and happy.

Meet Miss Muffet

2010-04-18T22:55:00.006-04:00

I've been beset with a raging case of spring fever. Why? Of course, there's the bright sunlight, and the longer daytime hours, and the balmy breezes. Those do their share in setting off plenty of cases of spring fever, that's for certain. But I'm talking about my spring fever, and that's spring spinning fever. For that, there just might have been one more factor that came into play.

Look, over there -- what's that twirling daintily in front of my ankles? It isn't Rastro, my trusty and beloved Lendrum spinning wheel. It's something a bit smaller. Positively petite, in fact. Yes, it's an adorable little Louet Victoria, my wonderful Christmas present this year from world's-most-patient-husband. I feel like the most spoiled girl on earth. :)

Much as I've always enjoyed spinning on my Rastro, I had started daydreaming about also having a second wheel that would be a little easier to cart around, to take outside, to carry off to spinning events. Maybe even to take on a plane, if my spinning mania ever comes to that. :)

I saw the Victoria at a fiber festival back when the model first came out. I was fascinated by how small and light it was. At the same time, it had a decent range of ratios, and the woman showing it off assured me that it spun like a serious wheel, not some little plaything. At the time, I really didn't imagine having a second wheel for myself. But as time wore on, the thought slowly seeped into the back of my mind, eventually taking shape and filling out and becoming a full-fledged wish. Finally I started hinting and hinting to world's-most-patient-husband who -- while he still no doubt thinks it's nuts to have one spinning wheel, let alone two -- loves to do things that make me happy.

And when Christmas rolled around, there she was, Rastro's new little sister, Miss Muffet. She came with the greatest little case, too. She folds up and fits in there like a puzzle, and then I can throw the strap over my shoulder, and off I go.

Miss Muffet is actually only the second wheel I have ever spun on. I've heard all the good advice, of course, about trying out different wheels before you buy. I'm just not very good at following it. :) Both times, I've made up my mind on the wheel I want without ever having sat down to give it a try. So it's been very interesting for me to note how different Miss Muffet feels to spin on. All the skeins I showed in the March 31 post were spun on Muffet. While Rastro feels solid, comfortable, and smooth, Miss Muffet is a tricksome little thing, with the jittery, jouncy feel of a fast dune buggy. Now that I've got the hang of it, it's great fun.

So the spring fever is a little aggravated this year. Rastro sits in the prime spot, right next to my giant supply of spinning fiber, and gets plenty of action. Miss Muffet perches here and there around the house and gets popped in the car for an outing when I come up with any excuse. Rastro does the yeoman's work on big projects, while Miss Muffet spins frivolous little braids of fiber for fun. Did I mention that I must be the most spoiled girl on earth?

Itsy Bitsy Things

2010-03-31T21:46:00.011-04:00

I've been in the mood to spin. I didn't have a real project going, but sometimes that urge to spin is well nigh unstoppable.

I wanted to spin so much that I began spinning the beautiful little bits of stuff that I'd felt were too nice to use up. Or maybe that I wasn't a good enough spinner for. It didn't matter.

I had some braids, from the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival of 2007, of hand-dyed fiber by Fleece Artist, of Nova Scotia. Only 50 grams of each. I think I loved them for their beauty just as they were. Those colors! But their time had come.

First was the braid in the upper right corner, merino top in soft lavender-grays and greens and pinks. On the bobbin, the colors somehow separated and strengthened.

I spun it just to spin, not worrying at all about the thickness. After plying, it came out somewhere in the range of fingering to sportweight. And the colors fascinated me again as they combined. The finished skein is stronger and greener than I'd expected, but complex and subtle. And the yarn, my first pure merino, is bouncy and lofty. What a pleasure.

That was so much fun, I had to have another. Next, I spun the braid of Bluefaced Leicester wool in the lower right corner, the one in pink and gray-blue and creamy vanilla. I spun it at a fingering-to-sport weight again. I enjoyed watching the colors draw out, emerge, and mix, and liked the result so much that I wondered how I could have waited so long to spin the fiber.

It seems like it must be tiresome listening to me rhapsodizing fuzzily about one fiber after another. So about the last braid of Bluefaced Leicester, I'll just say that I kept thinking of tangerine and raspberry sorbet as I was spinning it. It made me hungry for dessert. :)

The plied skein is a little darker and stronger, but still, it surprised me when a friend commented, "that's a good autumn color." Of course, she's partial to the brightest of the bright, so perhaps that had something to do with it!

Incidentally, the finished yarn of Bluefaced Leicester wool turned out a little differently from the merino. Still fluffy, it has a bit less bounce and more drape. And both were nice to spin.

So I have 50 grams each of yarn in three colorways, and pretty much no idea what I will do with these small quantities. (Although I must say that a friend has been admiring that merino skein so vociferously that I might just decide to make a gift of it to her.) They're not enough even for a scarf. I need some itsy bitsy projects to make with my itsy bitsy skeins. I think the longest one is about 150 yards. Though I'm a bit short on the yardage, there's a pretty cowl in the latest issue of Spin-off magazine made with about two ounces of sport-weight handspun that just might work. Perhaps I'll make a wardrobe of fine-gauge cowls!

But the question is, what on earth gave me these wild spinning urges?

Eloise Gets Out

2010-03-28T17:07:00.005-04:00

Eloise is a charming and inquisitive little girl, in a beloved series of children's books from the middle of the last century, who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Eloise is also the name of the pattern I've just finished knitting. It's a little cardigan from the book, Noro Knits, by Jane Ellison. The sweater is designed for Noro's Blossom yarn, a nubby textured silk blend in a chunky weight. I, however, had a couple of bags of Debbie Bliss Soho yarn and was looking for a suitable sweater to knit. Soho is a thick-and-thin wool singles yarn, multi-colored with short, busy color runs. (It's now discontinued.)

I searched for a long time for something to make with this yarn. With so much going on in the yarn itself, it doesn't suit an elaborate design. I swatched some cables and some openwork stitch patterns and, with few exceptions, it swallowed them alive. The Debbie Bliss patterns I found designed specifically for this yarn did include a few simple cables, but, honestly, you can barely even see the cablework. So, clearly, it needed to be something fairly plain. But I didn't want to bore myself silly.

I stewed over it, looking at patterns, thinking about designing something, for a long time. Months. At the same time, I'd admired the Eloise sweater regretfully every time I leafed through my Noro patterns looking for something to knit with a Noro yarn that wasn't chunky weight. It's a simple reverse stockinette cardigan, with a deep bottom ribbing and a knit-in edging. Finally, on the relieved and carefree day after Christmas, I put two and two together -- chunky simple pattern with no yarn? chunky multicolored yarn with no pattern? Why not give it a try? Ready, after weeks of gift-knitting, to start on something for myself, I went right ahead and cast on.

I actually don't know why I liked the Eloise pattern so much. You can't see much of it in the pattern book -- there's only one photo, and it's one of those artfully posed ones that, while stylish, leaves much of the sweater to the imagination. But like it I did. And, lo and behold, I like the finished sweater a lot, too!

I knit it on US size 9 (5.5 mm) needles and knit the pattern pretty much as written. I did decide to knit the small size for a snug fit, but using the lengths from the medium size so it wouldn't be too petite. I also added a couple of extra stitches when switching from the ribbing to the stockinette section, but as it turned out, it really didn't need them.

One of the things I like is the reverse stockinette surface that mixes and blends the colors in the yarn. I was surprised, though, by how little effect the thick-and-thin texture of the yarn had on the appearance of the stitchwork. You really can only see the variation in thickness in the ribbing.

There is one thing about the pattern that I would definitely change if I knit it again. It has no back neck shaping at all. Notice how that makes it bunch up in the photo? Maybe you can get away with that in the Blossom yarn, which probably has more drape from the silk and mohair in the blend. But Soho has more body than drape, and so it sits up there instead of hanging. It's not a big deal, and I have yet to block the sweater, which may help smooth it out. But I'd definitely add some shaping if I had it to do all over again.

My choice of buttons also gave me some temporary worries. I went hunting with my swatch and was happy to find buttons in the perfect color. (This was not a foregone conclusion, by the way, for a sweater knit in fuchsia, purple, and rust yarn.) The only hitch was that they did not come in a large enough size. I kept looking at other options, but I had fallen for these buttons and no others would do. As expected, they were too small, and, once on the sweater, wouldn't stay buttoned. But in the end, I was able to tighten the buttonholes up with an overcast stitch around the opening, so all is well.

So little Eloise has gotten out of the hotel, perhaps taking a taxi, and gone to Soho, where she has had a little adventure, been looked after fondly by everyone she meets, and then made it safely back home. I only wish she'd managed to use up about five more balls of yarn. (It was sale yarn -- I had a lot. :)

Knitting on the Darkside

2010-02-24T21:12:00.006-05:00

No, I haven't suddenly gone moody on you.

It's just that I made a quick project on impulse called the Darkside Cowl, by Sarah Fama. It's a simple and straightforward free pattern, available here.

I had almost a full skein of Malabrigo worsted weight yarn in colors a friend had admired, and I'd been looking for a pattern to make her a little something nice with it. A single skein of yarn didn't give me a lot to work with, but I'd seen lots of nice cowl patterns that don't require a lot of yardage, so that seemed like a good option.

The challenge was to find something that would work well with the contrasting multi-colored yarn while not being ho-hum and plain. I've certainly found that to be a tricky balancing act many times when trying to find an interesting stitch pattern for a beautiful skein of sock yarn in a busy colorway. I spotted this cowl looking soft and cushy in a solid color on Beate's Cloudberry Knit blog and tracked it down.

The yarn has short color runs of strong greens, purples, magenta, and a more muted plum. (The colorway, which I think is discontinued, is called "239 saphire magenta.") The Darkside Cowl uses a zigzagging rib/welt pattern, identical on both sides. Squinting appraisingly at the stitch pattern, and comparing it with my yarn, I thought it just might work. I was hoping it would highlight the color changes in interesting ways without making a muddled hash of the whole thing.

I crossed my fingers and cast on. (This complicates the cast-on process unnecessarily, however, and I don't recommend it. :) And wonder of wonders, it worked! The colors mix attractively and weave and dance around each other without tripping over their feet.

And, as I've experienced before, Malabrigo is some of the most unbelievably soft yarn to knit with. It's really hard to imagine what kind of secret could make wool feel like this. It's luscious, and combined with the textured stitch pattern, it made a cowl that I just wanted to squeeze like Mr. Whipple with a roll of Charmin'.

All that fun for only a couple days' work. It almost doesn't seem fair.

A Snowy Realm

2010-02-13T13:30:00.007-05:00

Snow on top of snow. It's been quite a winter. Beautiful to look out upon, though a little challenging to keep cleared.

And when you're snowed in, there's lots and lots of time for indoor hobbies like knitting. I took a little blizzard break and knit myself a new handspun hat!

When there's a good deep snow on the ground, it's fun to bundle up in hats and boots and go out stomping around. When the novelty of shoveling wears off, there's plenty of entertainment to be had in watching the plows, taking pictures, or just playing.

Somewhere along the way, I noticed that, for an enthusiastic knitter, I have a distinct shortage of hand-knit hats. In fact, only one: a petite little beret with a coordinating ruffled scarf. But everywhere lately, I've been seeing oversized, slouchy berets. And though big hats are sometimes not a good look for me, I thought I might not look so much like a mushroom in one that droops down. I suddenly wanted one.

I decided on a heavily cabled slouchy hat that I'd been admiring in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of knit.1 magazine. It's called the Relm tam and was designed by Jared Flood. On top of liking its tweedy good looks , I thought it would make a good handspun project for one of the smaller quantities of spinning fiber I have on hand.

I settled on the fiber from Puff the Magic Rabbit that I bought last fall at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival. When I visited Puff's site just now to make sure of the link, I got a surprise. While I thought -- and said in my last post -- that the fiber was her Electra Blue colorway in merino and mohair, from the photos on her site it's pretty unmistakably For Erika, instead. So what I have here is actually natural dark gray Border Leicester with a little silky mohair in pale blue and lavender!

It's beautiful stuff, either way. I spun it into a light worsted weight two-ply, trying for a decent amount of twist. It's not quite as twisty as I was aiming for, but I didn't do too badly. This was my first time attempting to spin exactly the yarn I wanted for a particular pattern. Up until now, I had just spun the fiber however it seemed to work best and then figured out what to knit it into.

The pattern calls for 100 grams of a yarn that adds up to about 300 yards. I thought I would be safe, since I had more than 150 grams of fiber. Well, I must have spun a much denser yarn than the one called for, because I ended up with only 230 yards of handspun. I crossed my fingers, hoping for the best, and pressed on. It was a big slouchy hat, after all, and if I ran short I could always regroup and make it into a smaller, less slouchy version.

The handspun yarn worked well in the pattern. The fiber's color variation gave it a heathery look that suited the cable pattern, and the mohair in the mix gave it some drape. The cable-work doesn't show up very clearly, because of the fuzzy bloom of the yarn, but it looks thick and furrowed and handsome nonetheless.

The pattern is elegantly designed, showing the signs of a perfectionist in the careful choice and placement of decreases as the cables narrow into the center. But it is big. As the knitting progressed, I did end up making it smaller. It wasn't for lack of yarn (though I actually do think I would have run out). No, it was because the way it was shaping up, it would have made a really giant hat. Enormous. Beyond slouchy. I think it would have been lounging on my shoulders.

I ended up leaving out two repeats of the cable pattern to shorten it up considerably. And it's slouchy, warm, and big without being overwhelming. I am all set now to venture back out, find a cafe, and park myself at a table with a book and a steaming double espresso.

Snow? What snow?

More Ketchup, Please

2010-01-31T17:09:00.007-05:00

Er, Catch-up, that is!

One of the things I've been meaning to do is show you some of the goodies I got way back at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival last October.

First up is this delicious ice-cream sundae. No, wait, that's not it at all, though I think it may be just as delicious.

It's actually three of my festival finds. The bowl is a ceramic yarn bowl, by Elisa Dasher of Honeysuckle Pottery in Keymar, Maryland. I've been curious about these yarn bowls for a while, with the notch to feed the yarn through while the ball rests in the bowl. After trying it out, I can attest the the fact that they do work. The ball of yarn stays clean and in one place, instead of rolling off the couch and all over the floor. And the bowl is a beautiful piece of handmade stoneware, enjoyable in itself. Elisa won't be at the Shenandoah Festival next year, but it appears she's planning to be at the marvelous Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in the spring.

That fluffy confection in the bowl is not ice cream but a one-ounce ball of pygora spinning fiber. It came from one of the farms participating in a Loudoun Valley Pygora, it seems, is a type of goat, a pygmy version of the angora goats who give us mohair. I believe it's a fairly rare breed, at least so far. My reading tells me that these little guys produce different types of fiber. Depending on the individual, it can be mohair-like, cashmere-like, or a combination of the two. And just look at this stuff! I'm looking forward to spinning a sample to see what it's like.

The "spoon" is actually a hand-made miniature nostepinne, carved of mulberry wood, from Terry Selser in DeRidder, Louisiana, via the Lagniappe Fiber booth. It's just a wee little thing for winding small balls of fine yarn. While this isn't a challenge that I've had very often, how could I resist it? The carving at the top kind of reminds me of an old-fashioned clothespin.

Also at the Lagniappe Fiber booth, my fiber-sampling curiosity led me to buy some Cheviot fleece from Nightsong Farms, in Dry Creek, Louisiana. This is a strong, springy type of wool. I'm not sure what I will do with it, other than get acquainted, but it may be a good wool to blend with other types to give them that springy, lofty quality. And I did love these rich colors. The one on the left is natural, and the one on the right is dyed.

One thing I do know exactly what to do with is this sweater quantity of roving from the lovely and accommodating Dalis Davidson at Dancing Leaf Farm in Barnesville, Maryland. This is the Briar Patch colorway, which I'd been looking for and hoping to find at her booth for the last couple of festival seasons. I'd once seen a sample of it spun up at a shop and loved the colors. I finally got smart and contacted her ahead of time, whereupon she dyed a batch just for me and brought it along to the Shenandoah Festival.

And last, but not least, while our friend Puff the Magic Rabbit was not at Shenandoah, some of her fiber most certainly was. Look at this gorgeous stuff. It's a merino/kid mohair blend called Electra Blue. (I wonder if Electra is one of the goats?) I came home with six ounces. This will have to be spun and knitted into something delicate and beautiful, worthy of such fiber.

And people wonder why I love these festivals. :)

Wait, I Just Blinked

2010-01-28T15:23:00.007-05:00

... and now it's January, for goodness' sake.

I really can't explain how that happened. Perhaps like Snow White I pricked my finger on a spindle and fell into an enchanted sleep. Well, if that's the case, let me show you a few of the things that have been going on all this time in my dreams.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving with a crowd at the home of my bubbly-sister-in-law. I was delighted to see my trim-athletic-dad wearing his sweater. He'd only been waiting for cold enough weather. And I'm so happy with how well it fits!

As you can see, the poochie knows who the soft touch is. She's rightly judged that any treat my Dad has, she will soon get to share.

Like half the East Coast, we got buried deeply in snow, a week before Christmas.

I'm glad to say this is not my car buried in a snowdrift, but this is what it was like. We weren't going anywhere for a few days.

That took a real bite out of my Christmas shopping time and I had to run hard from then on to catch up and be ready in time.

We had a lovely time celebrating the holidays, though. It's always wonderful when the frenzy of preparation is over and we can just relax and enjoy some time together.

And, though I didn't have time to go all-out, I did manage to eke out a few knitted presents.

After the Fall Fiber Festival, in Montpelier, I got busy right away on spinning my finds. So as the holidays approached, I had half-pound batches of worsted-to-chunky weight yarn spun from two beautiful colorways of a 50/50 wool-mohair blend from Kid Hollow Farm, in Free Union, Virginia. The dark one is Northern Lights, and the gray-lavender one is called Violet-Turquoise Spot.

I knit each colorway into a scarf, one for my tall-elegant-mom and one for my trim-athletic-dad, using a simple mistake-rib stitch pattern. Those scarves turned out to be nicer than I could even imagine. Before I had six inches done, I was noticing what a beautiful drape the knitted fabric had, thick as it was. The mohair in the blend really gave it a lovely fluid quality.

Unfortunately, in my rush to get them done and wrapped, I neglected to take pictures of the finished items. I have high hopes, though, of seeing them in use at some point. If so, I shall immediately pounce with my camera.

I also knit a hat and gloves for my Mom, in Noro's Cash Island. It's a double-knitting weight yarn of wool with 30% cashmere, strengthened by just a bit of nylon. And of course, it has those amazing color transitions that make Noro yarns fascinating to knit. The hat is a simple beret, which I also forgot to photograph, but I did get a picture of the gloves.

That was exciting; it's the first time I've knit a pair of gloves, with all those little fingers. I was relieved that they actually came out the right shape. In fact, I was unsure enough that I wrapped them and put them under the tree without first weaving in the ends. That was just in case, once they were tried on, I needed to ravel the ends of the fingers to adjust the fit!

And I knitted the wool I dyed with Kool-Aid into a bright, cheerful scarf for my little niecey. This is the first project for which I dyed the locks, hand-carded the wool, spun the yarn, and designed and knit the scarf. And when she wears it, she can point to the stripes and say, "this is Tropical Punch, this is Kickin' Kiwi-Lime, ..."

I really had a good time with it. But don't say anything, it will just encourage me. :)

Almost Opulent

2009-11-21T20:46:00.004-05:00

Sleeve adjustment completed, I now have a finished sweater to smile over.

It's almost but not quite Wendy Bernard's Opulent Raglan, from the Fall 2008 issue of KnitScene. I made the sweater in Patons Classic worsted-weight wool, in a color called Cognac Heather. I made it in a size with a little negative ease. As usual, I changed a few things. The original sweater is 3/4 sleeved, a longish length, and has a hemmed bottom. It's very attractive, but it isn't quite me. So I shortened it to hip length, added a ribbed edge at the bottom, and made the sleeves full-length. And changed the cuff design. I did very much like the big scrunchy central cable flanked with textured cable twists, so I left that alone. :)

I also like the square neckline, though that was the cause of some worrying. In the magazine, the neckline is so deep that it reveals a bit of cleavage. It's an attractive look, but it does limit a sweater's versatility for my daily working life. And for most of the time while the knitting was underway, it looked like it was heading in exactly that direction. I figured I would just have to wear layers under it.

This was my first time knitting a sweater from the top down, in the round, so that it could be tried on practically from the beginning. As soon as the neckline and armholes emerged, I was poking my head and arms through them to have a look. I threaded the stitches onto a really long circular needle cable and pulled the sweater on. (I still lost a few stitches off the ends each time and retrieve them, sputtering and grumbling, but that's another story. Eventually I learned that it was worth the bit of extra time to put stoppers on the ends.) The neckline looked voluptuously deep, and I wondered if I might actually have to worry about its falling entirely off the cliff, so to speak. But I did know that adding the ribbing would firm up the edge and would probably close it up a little. If not, well, layering.

I tried that sweater on over and over as it progressed. (I found that, for me, the good thing about trying on a top-down raglan in progress is that you can. The bad thing is that you might feel you must. Again and again.) I was especially careful about trying on and measuring to gauge the length for the long sleeves I wanted, since that frontier was untrodden by the pattern instructions. I made them longer, in fact, after a first try. I fussed over the cuffs as well, since the version in the pattern designed to be worn just under the elbow was a more dramatic look than I wanted to see at my wrists.

Finally, I had everything just the way I wanted it, and I picked up stitches and knitted on the neckband. And guess what that did? It tightened up the neckline. It tightened it a lot. Suddenly it was quite a ladylike neckline. I'm not sure why it's that much higher than in the pattern photo. It's the same number of stitches, but I must have knit the ribbing significantly tighter than the designer did. But that was fine; it worked in my favor and preserved modesty.

I wove in all the ends and tried it on again. Happily declared it done. Admired it in the mirror. Wondered why those shrewdly judged sleeves were an inch too short. Sighed deeply and realized the neckline's connected to the shoulder, the shoulder's connected to the sleeve... and the tightened neck must have hiked the whole thing up. So I unpicked all the carefully buried ends, ripped out those poufy cuffs, and added an inch to both sleeves. It was aggravating, but it's done, anyway.

And now I have a finished sweater that I like very much. It dresses up or down. For work, it looks good under a jacket, which frames the cable texture nicely. Those big cuffs peek out of the jacket sleeves and feel just slightly romantic, without drawing too much attention to themselves.

My verdict on the top-down, in-the-round construction is mixed. It's interesting to try a sweater on as you go, but, ahem, there could still be one or two little hitches. I've generally had pretty good luck with the fit on traditional pieced-and-sewn sweaters when I measure at the beginning, make a plan, and hope for the best. And I quite like that "ta-da" feeling you get when you seam it up and suddenly, pouf, there's a whole new sweater to try on. One other observation is that the sweater seems to want to twist a little bit. I've had seamless commercial t-shirts that do this, too. I think perhaps if it had the structure of seams, it would stay straighter.

So I'm not quite a convert to the method. But I know more than I did before, and it's another technique to use when it makes sense. And I love the sweater. And that can't be bad.

And Besides...

2009-11-08T14:44:00.008-05:00

So what if my knitting has a little setback? It has its ups and downs. It's all part of the bargain.

And one of the ups is festival-going. A couple of weekends ago, I got to enjoy the last event of my annual fiber-festival season: the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival. I love this homey little festival. It's been growing each year, but it still has an endearing small-time flavor that makes it special.

There are all kinds of fiber-bearing animals -- sheep, llamas, goats, alpacas, and fluffy rabbits -- to visit.

This little fellow seemed as curious about me as I was about him. He was probably wondering if I'd brought him any treats.

There are yarn shops, and spinning fibers, and knitted items, and felters, and weavers, and guilds, and farm goods like these beeswax candles, and Boy Scout cider.

On the d rive to the festival, in late October, there was foliage afire with autumn color, and roadside pumpkins like this monster. 741 pounds, the sign said, and at the stand where I stopped there was a whole row of others like it. There was also barbecue that had been smoking outdoors since 6:00 that morning.

Saturday, the day I went, was an intermittently beautiful fall day, between downpours. And who cares about a few puddles? When it was raining, I sheltered in buildings full of vendors of magical fiber goods. (What was the problem again?) This display, for instance, of bright hand-painted boucle yarns from Dancing Leaf Farm couldn't help but dispel any gloom.

I wasn't a bit gloomy. And did I find myself some treats? Oh yes, you bet I did. This is why I've been concentrating on using up some of the yarn I already have stockpiled, so I can enjoy finding myself some new treasures.

My only regret? I didn't win the spinning wheel or the loom in the raffle. Guess I'll have to try for another year. :)

On the Bright Side

2009-11-08T13:13:00.006-05:00

I do this because I love it. I do this because I love it. Just a couple more times, and I'll be convinced.

For our recent road trip, I needed some knitting to do. I was in a rush and needed to pick out a project quickly. (After that, I packed clothes. Most essential things first.)

I've been trying to use up some of the yarn already sitting around the house, and I had a pile of Patons Classic worsted-weight yarn in a pretty heathery color. I needed a skein of something basic to do homework for a class at Stitches last year, grabbed it from a local big-box store, and found I liked it. Rather than waste what was left over, I bought several skeins more so I could make something out of it. This seemed as good a time as any.

After a hurried flip through a couple of books and magazines, I settled on Opulent Raglan, from the Fall 2008 issue of KnitScene. That issue had several beautiful sweaters that are on my want-to-knit list. The particular one I picked is a top-down raglan by Wendy Bernard, with a big cable decoration down the front and 3/4 length sleeves with ruffled cuffs. I decided to make it with long sleeves instead.

Things went along smoothly as we drove around western North Carolina. It was pleasant, easy knitting for the car, and I had this much done by the time we got back.

I've generally knit sweaters in the typical bottom-up-and-seam style in the past, and it was interesting seeing a whole sweater emerging in my lap as I knit.

Since we got back, amongst spinning and sock-knitting and festival-going and a quick overnighter out of town, and Halloween, I've managed to get the rest done.

Taking full advantage of the top-down construction's try-on-ability to check the fit, I made some adjustments, and did some re-knitting here and there as needed. This morning, I confidently wove in the last of the ends, feeling very pleased to have it done, tried it on one more time in preparation for getting a good photo, and...

The sleeves aren't long enough. This isn't a knock on Wendy Bernard's pattern, of course, since I was modifying it for full-length sleeves. It was my own doing. I adjusted the sleeve length carefully as I went. I'm not sure trying it on while in progress worked in my favor. At that point, the neckline was a lot looser and deeper. What I failed to take into account is how much the last step of adding the neckband would tighten up and raise the whole works, sleeves and all.

So I'm not done. I have to rip out the belled cuffs, lengthen the sleeves, and re-knit them. On the bright side, the rest of the sweater is very nice. It could be worse. It's just the sleeves, after all.

I do this because I love it. I do this because I love it....

In the Mountains and Clouds

2009-10-23T23:15:00.015-04:00

World's-most-patient-husband and I were in the mood last week for a quick getaway and decided to take a driving vacation. I, though, was a little anxious about losing a week of spinning time. I'd just added all that new spinning fiber to my stocks at the Fall Fiber Festival and there was another much-anticipated fiber festival coming up very soon. World's-most-patient-husband, unprompted, bless his heart, said "why don't you bring along the spinning wheel?" I took him up on that one like a shot.

So we packed up and drove south through Virginia and right on out the bottom. Then we turned west and headed for the North Carolina mountains. The weather was cold and rainy; often the mountains looked something like this. But that's beautiful too, in its own way, and we were happy to be wandering. We played it by ear, deciding each day where to go the next.

We spent one night in Boone, the home of Appalachian State University, which turned out to be full of small, unexpected pleasures. It has antique shops and a crafts gallery and an honest-to-goodness old-time drugstore counter where you can sit and have a meal. It has a shoe store that also serves as a yarn shop, a combination I've certainly never seen before. It has a hundred-year-old general store full of knitted goods and hiking clothes. Having come on the trip well supplied with handknits but without anything for such wet and cold weather, I was grateful to find myself a warm waterproof jacket there.

It has an excellent cafe for breakfast and lunch called Melanie's, a little funky and full of character, with bright colors and interesting art and fifties dinette tables. Everything, but everything, there is home-made, down to the granola and the yogurt on the fresh fruit cup.

Then it was onward. The foliage was just beginning to change, and the views were occasionally breathtaking. We took a small and very scenic road that wound its way circuitously among the mountains, past Blowing Rock, a beautifully situated town with lots of shops and restaurants.

We made our way on to Asheville, a place I've always wanted to visit, but had somehow never made it to before. It turned out to be a bigger city than I pictured, a little bohemian and artsy in personality, and rich, it seems, in brewpubs. We spent an afternoon at Biltmore, the enormous mansion built by the Vanderbilts at the turn of the century. It is quite something. It's just a bit reminiscent of Versailles (though bigger!) Almost as impressive as the house are the grounds, designed by Olmstead, who is also responsible for New York's Central Park.

We wandering around afterwards in an area nearby known as Biltmore Village, where all the shops and restaurants are built in a quaint German style -- even the couple of fast-food chain outlets are in character. There we chanced upon this inviting sight: the aptly named Yarn Paradise. And what would a trip be without a little yarn-shop tourism?

But, perhaps luckily for me, it was already closed for the day. After all, I'd packed the essentials with me on the trip: four knitting projects and three batches of spinning fiber. I didn't want to chance running out.

The shop did look awfully appealing when I peered in through the leaded panes of the front door, with gorgeous sample projects, beautiful yarn displays, and what looked like a warm, welcoming atmosphere.

Back in downtown Asheville, we had a top-notch dinner at a stylish spot called Posana. Oddly, it seems to be more of a coffee-shop with light food during the week and only serves dinner on a couple of nights. I get the feeling it may be a brilliant new place just on its way up. In any case, I can't stop thinking about the trout with sun-dried tomatoes and capers I had there, and the walnut cake with orange-and-tea-flavored cream. It was a happy find for us.

After a couple of nights, we turned and started working our way back toward home, searching for barbecue along the way. I realize that, ironically, I was leaving Asheville just days before people gathered there for the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, but sometimes a near miss is what comes of impulse traveling. I will just have to put it on my list for some future visit.

Oh yes, Rastro the spinning wheel did get a work-out in several hotel rooms. With the wheel, and a duffel bag of accessories, and a giant tote bag of fiber, and a separate large knitting bag, I was quite a cumbersome traveler. But it was a lot of fun to sit and spin here and there along the way.

If I'd brought a stool and the weather had been better, I might have set it up who-knows-where. Scenic overlooks off the highway?

Maybe next trip. :)

Oh, Nothing

2009-10-16T11:40:00.000-04:00

Or, just what was that under that new shawl pin?

Oh, this, you mean? Well, why on earth didn't you say so?

Just my new Noro sweater that I've finished and am absolutely thrilled with, that's all. It's knit in Noro Silk Garden (silk, kid mohair, and lamb's wool) in color 221 on US size 9 (5.5mm) needles. It took ten 50-gram skeins -- a bag I'd bought from the Woolstock booth at the 2008 Stitches East event in Baltimore, Maryland.

It's a distant cousin of sweater number 1 in the Fall 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting, by Coralie Meslin. I borrowed the neckline and armhole shaping, but made a few changes. Just to the collar, ribbings, surface design, length, and silhouette. Nothing much.

Since every sweater needs a name, I'm calling this one Sassafras. I am so happy with this sweater, I can't even tell you. It fits beautifully, and the cut is flattering. I made it slightly a-line in shape so that it would hang instead of clinging. The colors somehow seem to go with every pair of pants in my closet. I love the drama of that big, extravagant collar.

When I got it done and sewn together, I knew I liked it, and I thought it looked pretty good. I went ahead and wore it before I had any way to fasten it. But with the overlapping fronts and collar hanging slack, it still wasn't quite what it could be. It needed a beautiful closure to reach its full potential. So I suppose I went to the Fall Fiber Festival seeking closure. :)

I really wanted to wear this sweater at the fiber festival itself, to wear my handiwork among fellow knitters. And maybe show it off, just a little, I admit. As it happened, the day was just too warm (and beautiful), so it stayed in the car. But the thing is a knitter magnet. I've worn Sassafras several times now, and wherever I go, knitters approach me and ask about it.

What more could I ask? A sweater I love to wear and get to talk to other knitters about!

More to Love

2009-10-10T12:19:00.006-04:00

There were a few more things I haven't mentioned yet that I really enjoyed about last weekend's Fall Fiber Festival. One big one was a chance to see a blog friend in person! (Hi, Puff :) There might have been a couple more, but Robin has moved far away, and though TheQueen was there, I didn't spot her. Most likely, my eyes were on the fiber.

Ah yes, the fiber. This year I barely visited the animal tent, the skein and garment competition or the fleeces. I had eyes only for fiber. I'm trying to be good, really I am. After all, I already have far more yarn and fiber at home than there's any sensible reason for. I've sworn off buying sock yarn until knitting down a bunch of what I already have. In fact, I've mostly sworn off buying finished yarn in general until I knit down the stocks a bit. For now, I'm buying only spinning fiber. And I'm trying to limit even that to less than replacement quantities for what I spin, knit, and use up.

I didn't do too badly. I've finished two sweaters lately, so I was able to pick out a few treasures at the festival without guilt. Let me show you what I found!

First is the deep plum-colored roving (from the last post right after the doughnuts). It's a cloudy day today, so I can't quite capture its true personality, but this is luscious stuff. It's a blend of wool, mohair, and alpaca from Karen at Avalon Springs Farm, in Mt. Airy, Maryland. She's a first-time vendor at the festival, and I'm glad I caught her while she still had a nice big bin of this fiber. I bought a sweater's worth.

There's a small twist, for me, in that it has just a bit of sparkly Firestar blended in. I have never worked with that, but I could not resist these colors. I'll be interested to see how much the sparkle shows up in the finished yarn, and I'll think carefully about what sort of a sweater it will suit.

From Pat and Steve Harder's Kid Hollow Farm in Free Union, Virginia, the source of last year's fluffy brushed mohair, I bought some wool and mohair roving in two colorways. This one is called Violet Turquoise Spot. It looks quite subtle and grayish, which is lovely in itself. But I think it will darken when spun and show more of its violet and turquoise nature.

This is the other one, Northern Lights. I seem to be stuck on the violet and turquoise theme, don't I? It also has hints, though, of a strong dark pink that isn't really showing in the picture.

I picked these out and bought a half-pound of each with the assistance of the wonderful Puff, who helps out in Pat and Steve's booth. But why only half a pound? Well, as I said, I'm trying very hard to be good. It takes me about one and a half pounds of fiber for a handspun sweater. I figured finishing two sweaters got me roughly three pounds of allowance for buying more fiber. Between the plummy roving and these, I had kept it to two and a half pounds, for extra credit.

So I went ahead and bought a couple of ounces of this combed Shetland top from The Flock Bransonas, in Staunton, Virginia, in the colorway Aurora.

I actually already had some of this. I bought one little ounce a couple of years ago to sample Shetland wool. I spun some of it laceweight on a handspindle and loved it. Last year I bought another ounce. Adding another two ounces gives me about 110g, enough for some sort of a lacey scarf or shawl.

Later, out of idle curiosity, I calculated the actual weight of yarn and fiber used in my two recent sweaters. The commercial yarn used up, it turned out, weighed less than my rule-of-thumb quantity, and that last two ounces of Shetland put me over my replacement weight. Oh, well. I blew it, but it's worth it.

My last find, thankfully not subject to my self-imposed limit, was this shawl pin of wenge wood from Knitting Notions in Nashville, Tennessee. There were dozens of them, in different domestic and exotic woods, all unique, as handcrafted things are. I loved this one, which reminds me of a chess piece.

Oh, what's that it's stuck into, you ask? Just never you mind! (I'll tell you later.)

And of course, I bought those delicious apple cider doughnuts and gobbled them on the spot. And that makes more of me to love, too. :)

On the Meadows of Montpelier

2009-10-07T21:48:00.007-04:00

Such delights to be found.

Last weekend was the Fall Fiber Festival on the grounds of James Madison's Montpelier mansion, in Orange, Virginia. This festival has become one of my favorites. I'm not very selective, perhaps. All three of the fiber festivals I frequent are my favorite, in one way or another. But it's not a bad state of affairs, to be always enjoying a favorite, every time.

I love the drive out through Virginia's rolling countryside. World's-most-patient-husband drove with me this year, making the drive that much more enjoyable.

I love getting into the town of Orange, the excitement building as the destination nears.

I love how the tents are spread out upon the meadow, making it feel like a country fair.

I love strolling the relaxed, grassy midway, and occasionally coming upon calm, sociable animals wandering through to be admired.

I love the tents stuffed with fascinating goods for spinners and knitters and browsers of all stripes, and the many good-natured, hospitable vendors.

I love the displays and the sample skeins and the knowledge- able shoppers, judiciously evaluating their selections.

I love the sheepdogs and the shepherds, and their amazing joint skill, and the serious competitive trials unfolding alongside the festival tents throughout the day.

I love the famous cider doughnuts that I'd heard of but only found for the first time this year. (Delicious.)

I love bringing some of it home with me.

That Elusive Stopping Place

2009-09-20T23:12:00.004-04:00

I'll put the knitting down and take care of a few other things, as soon as I get to a stopping place....

First of all, thank you, everyone! for saying such nice things about the Chanel-ish jacket. I'm very happy and very relieved that it turned out so well. And as for a photo with jingly necklaces? Well, even if I piled on all my various necklaces, I'm not sure I could achieve quite the right jingly effect, so that may have to wait a while. :)

So what did I do to entertain myself once the jacket was happily finished? I knit. Yes, I pretty much immediately grabbed some yarn and got to work. The knitting urge is strong this time of year. I had a bag of 10 skeins of Noro Silk Garden yarn, of mohair, silk, and lambswool, and I just really wanted to knit it.

I settled in one morning with a cappucino at Starbucks and stitched away contentedly. To be honest, I wasn't even especially clear on where I was going with it; I just wanted to be going. That's kind of rare for me.

I don't think, generally, that I'm what people refer to as a "process knitter" at all. I do enjoy the actual knitting very much, but I don't do it just to enjoy the motion and the beautiful yarn running through my hands. I do it to be able to create pretty things.

That's assuming, of course, that all goes well. But after all the hand-wringing and problem-solving are over, I usually do come out the other side with something I can feel good about. The out-and-out failures are, thank goodness, few and far between.

This time, I was impatient with mapping things out carefully ahead of time. I had seen a pattern in the current issue of Vogue Knitting that I thought might adapt well to the Noro striping and my 10 skeins of yarn, and I had a loose idea of what I was aiming for. (It's "Long Coat," by Coralie Meslin, pattern number 1 in the Fall 2009 Vogue Knitting, if you happen to have a copy handy.) Of course, the pattern is for a long coat with a fitted waist, and a giant sunburst design in the stitch pattern on one side, none of which I wanted. But I was quite attracted to the neckline, collar, and asymmetrical closure, and I pictured the characteristic Noro striping running along the collar and making a nice diagonal contrast to the body.

I plunged in, making decisions as I went. I decided on a cropped, high-hip length. It evolved somehow that it would be an a-line silhouette. I changed the ribbing style and depth. I left out the short-row sunburst. (It's really rather nice, but wouldn't have been the easiest to adapt to the truncated length -- and with the striping yarn, there would already be enough going on.) At least the gauge stayed the same.

The last couple of weekends, I had a number of things I really needed to get done, though. House things, and pants-hemming things, and thank-you note things, and what-have-you. I planned to put aside the knitting. After all, I'd just finished a sweater. I did pick it up a couple of times, just to knit a row or two. Or maybe a couple more. Maybe just far enough to see the next color transition. Maybe to the top of the ribbing. Or until it's time to start the armhole shaping. Oh, I'm so close, I might as well finish off the back.

Yes, I'll put it down, just as soon as I get to a stopping place. Really.

... And Pulled Out a Plum

2009-09-08T21:42:00.003-04:00

The Chanel-ish Cardigan Jacket is done, and everything has turned out better than I could have hoped.

Yes, I stuck in my thumb, all right. It all began with some dubious wool bought in a triumph of bargain-hunting over judgment. I'm stubborn, though, and the colors were pretty. So during last year's Tour de Fleece spinning event, I forged ahead and spun it into an attractive but not very touchable 3-ply yarn.

Though from humble beginnings, this yarn was eager to put on airs. Its nubby, tweedy look reminded me from the beginning of those thick, hairy, multicolored tweeds that are made into boxy Chanel-style jackets worn by polished-looking women with jingling necklaces and freshly touched-up lipstick. While the polish and jingling are not my typical style, the yarn did seem like it would work well in that kind of jacket. It told me so from the very first skein, once I saw the plies of charcoal, turquoise, and lavender twisted together.

I knew exactly the pattern I wanted to use, too. It is a trim, nice-looking design by Mary-Heather Cogar, published in Greetings from Knit Cafe, by Suzan Mischer. Mary-Heather's design is in worsted weight yarn, worked in a two-color stitch pattern reminiscent of a houndstooth check.

The Yarnstruck version, on the other hand, needed to be in a bulky weight yarn, on US size 11 (8 mm) needles, in one busy color. Just a bit different. A minor obstacle. I swatched and charted and converted, decided on a double moss stitch for texture, and launched the knitting.

(In the photo, you can see the eye-popping pocket lining peeking out. Christina suggested giving the whole jacket a lining, which is an interesting idea, especially as it would free me from always wearing long sleeves underneath for protection against this somewhat itchy wool. But that's more work, and, for now, I just want to declare it done. So for the time being, following the suggestion from Puff, I'll just consider it whimsical. :)

The bulky-weight knitting ate up the skeins of handspun at an alarmingly fast clip. After a while, it looked as if I wouldn't have enough left for the long sleeves. After knitting the body , I weighed the yarn that remained for the sleeves, and things did not look optimistic. OK, three-quarter length sleeves? Or even shorter? The only way to find out was to dive in and knit the first sleeve. Well, so what if the second sleeve has to be shorter. Asymmetry is in! Fashion magazines are trying to convince us to wear one-shouldered tops. Ha!

I was nervous, though, I'll say that much. As sleeve #1 grew longer, and the remaining skeins dwindled, I started thinking fondly of 7/8 length sleeves. I started the shoulder cap shaping a couple of inches early, hoping it would help just enough to let me eke out the other sleeve. And what a relief when it did. Barely.

I sewed up the seams (with other yarn, less bulky and more plentiful), and tried it the jacket on, holding my breath. What do you know? It fit, and it had full-length long sleeves! My theory is that there's enough spring in that stitch pattern that the fabric lengthens a little once it relaxes a bit. Whatever it is, it works for me.

With a light heart, I went ahead and worked the edging in a contrasting color of worsted weight yarn. (Lamb's Pride, from Brown Sheep Company, in Deep Charcoal. Lovely, lovely, single-ply wool with a touch of mohair, left over from a successful and happy past sweater project.)

It's all done, almost exactly as I pictured it, and I'm just waiting for cool enough weather to wear it to work and show it off.

And I had all this yarn left over. Three rags and tags. It would have been enough, I estimate, for about one more entire row across both sleeves.

What, me worry?

Up to My Armpits

2009-08-25T23:58:00.006-04:00

... in nubby, tweedy knitting.

I've been busily working on the Chanel-ish Cardigan in bulky-weight handspun. It doesn't look like much yet, but on the whole I think it's coming along fine. My gauge seems to be pretty much as predicted from the swatch I knit, which means the jacket will be more or less the size I'm aiming for, all good news.

The jacket is knit from the bottom up in one piece until it splits to make the armholes. I've just about reached the splitting point now. There are pockets knit in along the way -- you can see the pocket flaps in the photo. (To help sort out what you're looking at, other than a generally messy blob of knitting, the north of the jacket is the upper right of the picture.)

The pockets did pose a minor dilemma along the way. They are not anchored like patch pockets to the inside, but hang loose inside as separate pouches. I'm guessing this is to keep from interfering with the way the jacket hangs smoothly in the front. But it does mean that where each pockets is, there are three layers of fabric -- the jacket front itself, and two layers of pocket lining. With a bulky-weight yarn, I thought this would add up to quite a thick wad, which might in itself interfere with the smooth line of the jacket.

After pondering this for a while, I decided to make the pocket linings out of a lighter weight yarn to slim them down. Since the pockets are knit in instead of sewn on, that meant an interesting little challenge of changing stitch counts to match the width at the opening, but all worked out, thank goodness. Of course, there was not the ghost of a chance of finding a worsted-weight match for this crazy tri-colored marled handspun yarn. So I used a contrasting but (I hope) sympathetic solid color left over from a long-ago sweater project. I did think about using black, especially since the plan is to finish the sweater with a contrast edge in black or charcoal. But where's the fun in that?

Still, I hope the jacket won't gape open too much at the front, because a glimpse of that wild pocket inside could be eye-popping. :) Back to work now.

Into the Woods

2009-08-14T21:48:00.004-04:00

World's-most-patient-husband and I got away from our normal haunts for a weekend recently. We journeyed to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. What a beautiful place. So distant from the bustle of our daily life. Only the rustle of the brush and the rush of the water.

The falls are powerful, and the water is stained "black," evidently, by tannin from ancient trees.

On the way to the park, we saw signs of energy production old and new: coal mines and windmills. I didn't realize that we had windmills already in operation in this part of the country. Yet here they were. These things are enormously tall.

Later, as we drove around, we had dramatic views of a whole bank of them along a ridge against the sky.

Once we arrived at the park, we got to the falls by a hike through dappled woods, with moderate terrain, lots of mud, and even a bit of scrambling up and down rocks. It was only a mile or so each way from where we began, but harder work and a longer time than I expected.

I don't know why I forget that ferns are a woodland plant -- I know they didn't evolve simply by living in pots -- but here they were in profusion. The path grew iffy at times, and we missed seeing the yellow blazes that marked it. The beautiful surroundings seemed almost spooky then, when we looked around and saw trackless woods in every direction. But we knew we weren't far from the road into the park and could have clambered across to find it if we had to. That didn't turn out to be necessary, as we managed to backtrack and find the path again each time.

If I were a skilled dyer, I would have been inspired with lots of new colorways. I saw them everywhere, in the mosses and barks, in the stone, and sometimes in strange red mushrooms.

As we left the park, tired, hungry, and ready to head for the town where we would stay that night, expecting to settle for fast food or a chain restaurant for dinner, we spotted a surprising and welcome sight: a brewpub. World's-most-patient-husband slewed the car around instantly. I don't think we squealed the tires.

And Blackwater Brewing Company is quite a good brewpub, with the brewing equipment right there behind the bar, excellent ales, and a specialty in good German food. I had a very nice porter, most fortifying after my afternoon walking in the woods.

We were even more surprised, as we drove away later, to see a second brewpub beckoning within a few miles. We really hadn't expected such a rural area to have so much quality beer to offer. We were ready to make a beeline to our hotel, though, for showers and relaxation, so we didn't stop and can't vouch for that one.

It was just an other-worldly and refreshing day and the kind of thing we should do more often.

Summer Knitting -- What Else?

2009-08-07T00:10:00.007-04:00

What Else But Socks?

I've finished off a few socks that I haven't shown off properly yet. Some of these were actually knit in the spring, but socks do make good summer knitting. They don't demand too much attention, and are small enough not to block too much sun when I'm outside basking in the warmth. And of course, in the torpid summer weather we get around here, they're a lot more appealing than a big woolly lapful of sweater-in-progress!

First up were my good-humored-brother's Christmas socks. (As I recall, I joked that I expected to be finished with my Christmas knitting by about the 4th of July. Some joke, it turns out!) These socks are my own design; I call them Sidecar Socks. They're knit with Trekking XXL on US size 1 needles. My brother seemed to want something pretty plain, so I kept them as simple as I could stand. Even so, I couldn't resist giving them a little ribbing down the front and clocks to their sides. They're with their owner now, and I hope they fit. But in the hot weather, I didn't have the heart to demand that he try on his new woollen socks.

The bad news about knitting large men's socks is that they take more than the standard 100 grams of yarn and I end up scrambling for more. Some yarn-shopping day, maybe I'll remember that large men's socks are best knit with yarn that comes in 50-gram skeins so I don't need to buy so much extra.

The good news is that I tend to end up with plenty of leftovers. Which means... more socks for me!

This is another pair of my own design. I call these my Blackthorn Socks. It's the same Trekking XXL yarn, of course, and US size 1 needles again. I really like the color variation in this yarn. It's brown, but there's a world of purples and greens and golds in there if you look closely. I entertained myself with a little more decoration and a few slightly tricky features on these.

And bringing up the rear are these. This is the Dublin Bay pattern, knit in Socks That Rock lightweight in the Scottish Highlands colorway. Clearly I have some sort of pan-Celtic thing going on here. I enjoyed the colors, and thought of gorse and bracken, heather and brooding mountains as I knit. The high-contrast striping was entertaining and created a particularly nice effect in the eye-of-partridge heel that the pattern called for.

Of course, with a high-contrast striping yarn and a standard gusset-heel sock design, there are hazards. When you turn the heel and pick up the gusset stitches, you change the number of stitches in each round. And as you gradually decrease back to the original stitch count, the color repeats that create the stripes are drifting around, until almost inevitably -- eek, a splotch!

Well, phooey. Why get excited about it? Just bring on some more iced tea and summer reading, and we'll all be fine.

Tour de Fleece Wraps Up

2009-07-27T22:20:00.003-04:00

Well, the astonishing Tour de France bike race is over, and with it this year's Tour de Fleece ends as well. What a feat of athleticism that is, to race thousands of miles over three weeks, over mountain and flat, all over France and spilling into neighboring countries. All propelled only by legpower, and fueled by implacable will. And I imagine, by some pretty hearty evening meals.

Best of all, Lance Armstrong returned this year to the competition, and I was spellbound. I dreamed of the absolute fairy tale, seeing him once again on the podium in first place. But after three years of retirement, a late decision to compete, a broken collarbone, and the happy distraction of a brand-new baby, and at an age among the oldest of any of the competitors, he performed an astounding feat to return straight to the top ranks, where he finished in third. With the competitive fire in his heart, he adds immeasurably to the excitement of the race. For me, no doubt, this was the most exciting Tour to watch in years.

Maybe that accounts for why my Tour de Fleece output this year fell a little short of my goal. I was cheering Lance on, celebrating when he rode well, quaking when he fell behind, and only casually doing my own peddling and drafting. I spent more time pulling for Lance than peddling my wheel.

But I didn't do too badly. I'm a better and faster spinner than I was last year. I am able to just let go and trust my rhythm and end up with pretty good results. Here's what I ended up with for Tour de Fleece 2009.

About three hundred yards of soft, soft worsted weight merino and alpaca in three coordinated colors. It might make a nice vertically striped scarf, but I'm thinking of another possibility or two as well. Regardless, it's a travel memento that reminds me each time I see it, of exploring the yarn shop in a delightful town in New Zealand.

Two plies of the planned three for a sock yarn in Lisa Souza's hand-dyed Blue-Faced Leicester fiber. Since the Tour proper has ended, I guess you could say I'm a day late and a ply short. That's OK; I'm thoroughly enjoying this wool. This was my first time spinning Blue-Faced Leicester. I've heard spinners rave about it, and I think I'll have to join the chorus. It's really nice to handle. This particular fiber was utterly immaculate, with practically nothing in the way of little grassy bits to pick out. And in such pretty, deep blues.

I guess really when you come down to it, I did well in this year's Tour de Fleece compared to last. If I added up the yardage spun, I'm sure I did more than last year -- that sock yarn is probably in the range of 400 or 500 yards per ply. I'm certain the quality and consistency of the spinning is better. And, this time, I escaped without injury. Last year's tendinitis in my drafting hand kept me from the spinning wheel for about a month after the race. So all in all, it was a pretty successful Tour this year, for me.

And besides, Lance has announced he'll be leading a new team next year. Woo-hoo! Live Strong, indeed.

Dog Days of Summer

2009-07-25T21:03:00.001-04:00

Why is it that, by late July, it sometimes feels like summer is already on the wane? Perhaps it's because the summer solstice in June is the longest day of the year, and the warm bright evenings shorten, a bit at a time, from that day onward. And yet we have almost two months of summer still ahead. Thankfully!

What's a girl to do but knit socks, indulge in some summer reading, keep an icy drink close at hand, bask in the sun, and enjoy the dog days of summer? The doggie is only visiting, but summer is made for socks.

Knitting them, not wearing them, that is -- at least in our climate!

It's Done, It's Given!

2009-07-15T22:44:00.007-04:00

And it fits!

Yes, at last, my trim- athletic- dad's Cabled Jacket is done and in the hands of its rightful owner. And gratifyingly appreciative hands they are, too.

Why did I never think, all these years, to make my dad a sweater? (Other than because of the obvious hole in my head, that is?) I guess it just never crossed my mind that he would like to have a handknit sweater. Thank goodness he eventually dropped a mild hint or two, and the light dawned.

I'm so glad that it came out all right and that Dad is pleased with his custom- made sweater. It really is all his own. I used the Cable Jacket pattern in Rowan's Knitting for Him book as a jumping off point, but changed a *lot.* The original pattern is a blazer with notched lapels, set-in sleeves, and an asymmetric cable design in wildly different scales on the left and right sides. I did use the same aran-weight Rowan Scottish Tweed yarn and basic rope-and-moss-filled-diamond cable motif. But my version is a button-up jacket with dropped shoulders, fold-over collar, and a tidily symmetric cable design. So it's one of a kind, just for my dad. Being able to do that really is one of the beauties of our craft, isn't it?

I used US size 9 (5.5 mm) needles, going up a notch as usual to get gauge. I think I used about 10 skeins of the Scottish Tweed, as I have a little more than 2 skeins left over. The yarn in the aran weight has recently been discontinued, I believe. It's a shame, because it makes a nice rustic, masculine sweater without being too heavy (not that I expect to see my dad wearing it in the hot July weather around here, still).

I also used the commod- ious inset pockets from the original pattern. I like those a lot, though I agonized over the placement, given all the changes I was making in style, length, and sizing.

In fact, when I make major changes from a pattern, I pretty much agonize over every decision. I don't know why the stakes seem so much higher then. After all, even if I follow a designer's pattern faithfully, it could easily go wrong in some way and not fit or not look right. Ah, but then it wouldn't be entirely my own fault, would it?

But when I muck up a pattern or dream one up on my own and it goes right, there's nothing to beat it. And this one? It's done! It worked! It fits!

And don't I feel clever. And relieved. :)

Tour de Fleece Time

2009-07-07T23:52:00.005-04:00

It's July, and that can only mean one thing. It's one of the highlights of my TV-viewing year. The spectacular Tour de France bicycle race. Three solid weeks on the edge of my seat, especially now that Lance Armstrong is back in the saddle -- hooray!

Last year, I discovered the spinners' companion event, the Tour de Fleece, and that just added to the fun. So Rastro and I are off again and running. Now that we have another year of experience under our belts, the spinning doesn't take as much concentration, so I think it's going to be an easier three weeks this year. And no tendinitis this time, I hope! Once again, my spinning challenge goals are a little loose and slapdash, but who cares, as long as I'm spinning every day and enjoying it?

For the first few Tour de France stages (days of racing), I'm spinning this lovely stuff. It's merino and alpaca that I brought back from New Zealand. Can you tell how soft and lovely it is?

It's actually the first spinning fiber I bought, other than a little Brillo pad of coarse fiber for learning with my spindle. A little later on, there was the practice Coopworth wool (that eventually became the Cannonball sweater) and a sweater's quantity of Finn wool (still waiting for me to feel I'm ready) that I bought right along with my spinning wheel. And later still came the excitement of all the amazing fibers to be found at the festivals. But when I wandered into this shop, I was still just getting the hang of the spindle and only beginning to dream of having a wheel. It was very novel then, when I came across a bin of spinning fiber in a yarn shop, to think, "Wait a minute; this is not something only for other people. It's something I can buy, because I'm learning how to spin!"

Feeling ready to actually spin it was another matter. I didn't feel worthy of such nice fiber for a long time. Now that I'm confident that I can do a decent job with a soft, pretty fiber and not risk botching it, it's a real pleasure to dive in and play with it.

I've also started a sock. Because I've gotten over a recent spell of being kind of tired of sock-knitting. And because a sock on the needles is just generally a good thing to have. This is Socks That Rock lightweight, in the Scottish Highlands colorway. In the skein, it's really beautiful. But in the wound-up ball, it got a little circus-clown looking, I thought. I wasn't at all sure what to expect when the knitting started. It's working out to be a hearty, regular stripe, with no pooling. Not a subtle look, but pleasant, and entertaining to knit.

The pattern is Dublin Bay (available free on-line from Mossy Cottage Knits, here.) It's a nice pattern, mostly plain, but with a simple lace pattern down the sides to give me something to do every couple of rows. The lace doesn't really show up as openwork against the bold stripes, but it does create a visual break. So, full speed ahead.

Yes, I am also still working toward starting on the Chanel-ish jacket with my 3-ply handspun. I haven't abandoned it; I'm not that fickle! Besides, it's the Tour de Fleece yarn I spun last year, so it seems entirely appropriate to get it started now. I'm hard at work with sharp pencil and graph paper, mapping out the pattern stitchcount by rowcount, plotting increases and bind-offs, so that I can recalculate all those little counts for much bulkier yarn. This is not a particularly photogenic process, though. And somehow, it always seems to go so much faster when they do it on TV.

Good thing I have the Tour de Fleece spinning and the new sock, for when I need a break. :)

Flashy Feast

2009-06-30T22:33:00.006-04:00

Sometimes my enthusiasms crowd each other out for a while. Something has set me off lately, and I've been having tremendous fun taking an interest in a bunch of silly, frivolous things -- more than I have in a long time. Hair! make-up! music! shopping! All things I've loved and devoted plenty of time to at other times, but that seem to have been pushed to the back for a while. (Wait, could the non-stop knitting and spinning have had anything to do with that? No.... :)

Anyway, let it be said that I am not an entirely serious person. And I love girlie things. I have been leafing through the mags, checking out clothes and looks, wearing mascara, and not forgetting to accessorize. People who see me in person probably wouldn't notice all that great a difference, but secretly it makes me extremely jolly. All this research and craftsmanship, though, do consume a certain amount of time, time when I could have been making diligent knitting progress. A wet manicure and a knitting project, for instance, do not mix well at all.

Maybe it's just a summer fling. But, for now, all too often, knitting must wait. Of course, all this is by way of explaining why things are creeping along at a snail's pace.

I can at least tell you about a decision made. I've decided the next project will be from the turquoise/purple/gray handspun. It seems to be calling to me now. After all, I've always pictured this yarn in a Chanel jacket, so there's a fashion connection. :) And it's suitably bright to accord with my current urge for self-decoration.

I've gone ahead and done some swatching. The handspun turns out to be a bulky yarn, best knit with US size 11 (8 mm) needles. It's interesting how a fairly organized looking yarn, with the three colors spiraling in a barber-pole effect, becomes a crazy every-which-way mix when knit. It's hard even to tell where the stitches begin and end.

Can you tell the swatch is three different stitch patterns? The bottom third is in moss stitch, the middle bit is in double moss stitch, and the top part is in a sort of improvised diagonal twill. In the picture, it all looks like a fine old mess, but in person, I think maybe the double moss stitch has the right balance of nubbiness and chaos.

For a Chanel jacket, luckily, texture is good. This yarn all by itself is a wild party of texture. (Note for later: with this yarn, a row counter might be a very, very good idea.)

What I'd really like to knit with it is Mary Heather Cogar's Chanel-ish Cardigan Jacket (there's a pretty one, slightly modified, on Koolsheep's Knit Blog, here). The pattern is in Greetings from Knit Cafe, by Suzan Mischer. Of course, it will have to be a loose adaptation of Mary Heather's pattern. Hers is in two colors of worsted weight yarn in a stitch pattern reminiscent of a houndstooth check. With this yarn, I somehow don't think it's going to need a colorwork stitch pattern, and I'll have to adapt the gauge to bulky. But I think there's a good chance it will work out.

I'm going to give it a good try, anyway. With enthusiasm. And the right accessories. :)

Who's Next?

2009-06-12T23:11:00.006-04:00

The knitting has been slow lately. I do have a little something finished that I'm looking forward to showing you. But it will have to wait just a bit, as I don't have a photo to use yet. Until it was done, to break through procrastination on doing the scary finishing work, I had to ban myself from casting on any new projects.

Of course, somehow I did still manage to sneak in spinning and dyeing the Black Cherry sock yarn. After all, I have to get tuned up for the Tour de Fleece, don't I? (Don't answer that.) But no knitting.

So here I am with nothing at all on the needles. Well, virtually nothing, anyway. (There is one unfinished object that's been pushed deep into the back of my consciousness, but that one will keep.)

I'm in that delightful state of uncertainty and anticipation, daydreaming over the possibilities. I think this time it must be a sweater for me. I'm feeling greedy. :) And I'm longing for color.

Here are the leading contenders. All are in the worsted to chunky weight range, and I have a sweater's quantity of each.

On the left is some Debbie Bliss Soho yarn, in reds, pinks, and purples. I found it in a sale bin at Stitches East, marked down to half price. It's a loosely spun singles yarn, slightly thick and thin, nice to the touch. And the colors really reached out and grabbed me. I've done some desultory swatching with it, from time to time, and most of the fancy stuff is swallowed up and overcome by the colors and texture of the yarn. It is no respecter of stitchwork. It will probably need to be treated fairly simply, in a design that won't compete with the yarn's surface interest. I don't know what that is yet. The Debbie Bliss patterns I've seen for this yarn tend to be turtlenecks, some of them accented with cables that seem honestly, even in the professional photos, to disappear right into the maelstrom of the yarn. So something fairly plain, perhaps with an interesting shape.

In the middle is the candy-striped yarn in turquoise, lavender-purple, and charcoal gray. This is my handspun 3-ply yarn, the progeny of last summer's Tour de Fleece spinning marathon. It's reasonably nice-looking, which is amazing, because I spun it from some pretty ratty fiber. (A poorly chosen impulse buy of a "bargain" at last spring's Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. Don't get me started. :) It's a rather hard and nubby-feeling yarn, but it's undeniably colorful. I actually think, though, that those attributes would work really well in a Chanel-style jacket. In something like a moss stitch, I think it might create much the same effect as the nubby, highly textural, raucously colored tweeds often used in Chanel jackets. And the yarn's hard firmness might be an asset, as a jacket like that needs some body. I thought it might look good with a solid charcoal edging. I'd be delighted to triumph over a bad purchase by producing a good sweater.

Last up, the yarn on the right is Noro Silk Garden, a lambswool, silk, and mohair mix, with a slightly crunchy feel. This too could be a vindication of sorts, over a past experience with Noro. On that occasion, I was surprised by some jarringly contrasting colors showing up unexpectedly in the signature long repeats of the yarn. (This was not a happy discovery. Again, don't get me started. :) This time, though, I'm wise to Noro, and the skeins have been thoroughly probed and investigated. These colors truly are the ones I wanted. Because of the fascinating long color changes, this too will probably do best in a simple design. I'm picturing it as a longish but sleek cardigan, perhaps with inset pockets.

So, I wonder... who's next?

Black Cherry

2009-06-05T21:42:00.006-04:00

When last heard from, my first handspun sock yarn looked like this. It was a pretty color, but just a bit sober and practical. It looked nice with jeans. I think our Puritan forefathers would have approved.

I, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. I was pleased with how well the spinning had come out, and I liked the fiber, a blend of Blue-Faced Leicester and mohair. Somehow, though, I couldn't get excited about knitting it into a pair of socks. Maybe a pair of denim-colored socks just seemed too much like something I'd go to the store to buy because I needed them. Ho-hum. Oh, excuse me, I nearly dropped off to sleep there for a second. :)

I thought a first pair of handspun socks ought to be more fun than that. I started toying with the idea of overdyeing the yarn. Overdyeing can produce nice results, depending on how the old and new colors work out together. Of course, there's a risk of coming up with something muddy-looking instead. But I happened to have several packets of Kool-Aid drink mix on hand in Black Cherry, a flavor I hadn't tried dyeing anything with before. (Let's be honest; I certainly didn't buy it with any real intention of drinking pitcher after pitcher of Black Cherry Kool-Aid this summer.) I was feeling adventurous, and I decided to give it a go. I resolved to love the result no matter what it looked like.

I consulted my latest favorite book on the subject, Teach Yourself Visually: Hand-Dyeing, by Barbara Parry, the colorist behind Foxfire Fiber. (Wonderful book.) I made a simmering potion with four packets of Kool-Aid and the nice blue yarn and hoped for the best.

And it worked like a charm. It came out like this, not muddy at all, but a deep purplish cranberry color.

In fact, everything went much better than in my earlier experiment a while back dyeing unspun fiber with Kool-Aid. That first time, the loose locks of wool didn't want to take up the dye and were still shedding color in the rinse-water afterward. I concluded eventually that the mostly-unprocessed wool still had a lot of lanolin in it that interfered with the bonding of the dye. This time, by contrast, the wool seemed to vacuum up intense color as soon as the water hit the right temperature. It made me feel like a pro.

The new color has agreeable variations that you can sort of see here. In the original blue color, I had noticed that it looked like only the wool had been dyed, while the blended-in mohair fibers had been left a natural off-white. I think that's what gives the new color its depth. It's a truer dark cherry red where the Kool-Aid dyed the natural-colored fiber and a purply cranberry where it struck the blue.

I find it ravishing. All of a sudden, the thought of knitting this yarn into socks seems a lot more interesting to me.

I'm just not so sure how well it's going to go with jeans. :)

Almost Like the Real Thing

2009-05-29T23:42:00.001-04:00

All that outdoor spinning (but no sunburn, please) has done its magic. I've managed to produce something very like a skein of three-ply sock yarn. It's far from perfect, but for the first time spinning sock yarn, I have to admit it's not bad.

It looks like I will actually be able to make a pair of socks from it. I counted 338 yards, though I haven't finished the yarn yet by washing it. When it goes in the hot water bath, that yardage may well shrink down to 300 or so.

But if I knit the legs on the shorter side, it should be enough. And I do still have a little fiber left over. I do my best to divide the spinning evenly among the bobbins. But somehow when I ply, one always runs out first, leaving some extra singles left on the other bobbins. So in a pinch, I could get a few yards more out of what's left.

I'm also happy with the weight of the yarn. Once I got used to spinning those skinny little singles, and they weren't falling apart, I managed to spin the yarn a little finer than my initial samples. So it may even work for inside-the-shoes socks rather than scuff-cozily-around-the-house socks. I can't say what the wraps-per-inch are, since I haven't measured them. (When I try to, I'm never confident about whether I'm squeezing the yarn together too tightly or letting it spread out too much. So I confess, that tends to sap my enthusiasm for collecting that particular bit of data. Wondering if the number I'm getting is complete nonsense just seems to have that effect on me. For some reason.) But just by holding my newborn yarn up to some commercial skeins of sock yarn, I can tell it's in the right sock-weight ballpark. When I get around to knitting it, the gauge will tell me for sure.

Here you can see that it's not actually as highly twisted as one might like for a strong, durable sock yarn. With this spinning project, I definitely learned more about assessing how the twist is going to come out. I was testing it by letting a little strand double back on itself once in a while during the spinning, but it turns out I have to be a little more careful about how I hold it to get an accurate reading.

It should be okay anyway, though. This fiber (it's called Sockables II, from Little Barn) won't be like 100% merino wool that has to be very tightly spun for socks to stand up to moderate wear. It's is a blend containing 25% mohair (the yarn has a touch of fuzziness if you look closely) and 75% Blue-Faced Leicester wool. Mohair is supposed to provide a lot of strength in a sock yarn. It should go a long way toward compensating for imperfect twist.

So I'm proud to have done reasonably well in my first attempt at spinning sock yarn, but there's one thing that still does bother me a little. It's the color. It's not that it's a bad color. It's a nice denim-y blue, and my friends have been telling me how well it will go with jeans. To me, though, it just seems a little blah. It seems like after all this, these socks ought to look a little more special than "goes with jeans." Especially my first-ever handspun pair.

Never mind. I've got some ideas. :)

A Golden Day

2009-05-21T22:26:00.007-04:00

Yesterday was one of those gorgeous days that come along in the spring when the flowers are in bloom, the grass and trees are a fresh moist green, the sky is clear and blue, and it isn't yet hot. It was just about perfect.

Work still loomed, but deadlines and problems seemed less consequential, and I got home while it was still bright. Rastro and I were lured outdoors to bask in the soft air and slanting sunlight.

This was a first. Portable or not, Rastro hasn't wandered much and had never been outside before. We may have to make a habit of this. Spinning in the outdoors was lovely, in the strong light and the gentle breeze. The birds chirped, and the world went entertainingly about its business. And on the practical side, I didn't have to worry about catching the little flecks of debris that fall from the fiber as it's drawn out to be twisted. I just let 'em fall overboard. If I had a dog again to lie alongside me, it would be just about perfect.

There was only one cloud to mar my day. What could it be?

American Idol.

Oh, I know I haven't mentioned it, and I usually just talk about the knitting and the spinning. But now and again I quite like a good swig of singing talent and merciless judging. We all have our quirks.

This season, I came late to American Idol and only watched for the last few rounds. But from the moment I woke up and started paying attention, one singer had me riveted. Adam Lambert. The assured, powerful voice that swelled and rose and never faltered. The fiery laser-blue gaze from eyes fringed in black. The one-man glam-rock revival. He survived all the way into the finals as one fell after another. The foreordained winner. Or so I thought.

And the winner is... yes, yes, YES? Kris Allen. ... Kris Allen? Nooooo!

OK, I realize that Kris is talented and likable and his singing style is very popular. Lots of people love him. It's a nice thing that he won.

But, as for me, it's just one of those things. I'll be waiting for Adam's album.

It will be just about perfect.

Take Me To The Fair

2009-05-17T19:40:00.010-04:00

Yesterday, world's-most-patient-husband and I took a jaunt to a historical site called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, in McLean, Virginia. The park shows life on a tenant farm in 1771. Among Virginia's many historical sites, this one provides a different view of colonial times than Williamsburg's townspeople or Mount Vernon's rather well known wealthy landowner.

This was the weekend of a Colonial Market Fair, when people would have gathered from across the countryside to buy and sell their wares, take a break from their labors, and socialize a bit. What an unexpected pleasure it turned out to be. I might just have to add it to my annual calendar, in the long dry spell between Maryland Sheep and Wool and the Fall Fiber Festival.

There was a pub.

There were market stalls with all kinds of handmade items, like furniture, and jewelry, and toys, and clothing, and soaps, and mobcaps and sewing trinkets. There were well- costumed and engaging interpreters everywhere, mingling with the modern-day visitors.

There was lunch rotating on the spit. And there were no outside vendors, with sodas and fast food. The lunch offered to visitors really was what was being cooked here, offered along-side sausages, and butter-cake, and all manner of authentic fare being prepared on the spot.

There were turkeys roaming around, calmly picking their way hither and yon at a stately pace, minded by a patient turkey-herder.

And, what do you know, there were spinners. And very chatty spinners they were, too. From them I learned that wool from Hog Island sheep is a favorite of re- enactors, since, rare though it is now, it's an authentic breed raised commonly at the time. That's what they were spinning here, and the roving had a nice bouncy feel.

(World's-most-patient-husband's comment on seeing the spinners? "Now I know why we had to come." But I didn't know they would be there, honestly! It may have crossed my mind that it might be a possibility, its having been a necessity of colonial times and all. But it wasn't a plot! Not really. :)

I found a couple of irresistible things for myself at the stall with the sewing supplies: a sheep molded of beeswax from right on the farm, and a needlecase simply wrought from warmly rich-looking wood. And from the full-time giftshop out front, a jar of local honey.

I'm not sure what to do with a beeswax sheep, but I loved him, so home he came. He looks alarmingly like something edible, though, so I think I'd better keep him out of the kitchen and out of danger.

I thought I'd use the needlecase to hold the tapestry needles I use for knitting projects, to seam up and sew in ends. It would be a nice change from the plastic tube that the Chibi needles came in. Unfortunately, I hadn't reckoned well; the needles were a half-inch too long to fit. My cross-stitch and needlepoint needles, on the other hand, fit quite nicely. So I'll still use and cherish my little holder.

Just not as often.

Shaggy Start

2009-05-10T22:30:00.004-04:00

I need to get in training. Star Athena announced a little while ago that the Tour de Fleece will be on again for 2009. Tour de Fleece is an event for the biking-mad and the spinning-mad. Spinners set themselves a personal challenge and commit to spin every day of the three weeks or so in July when world-class bike racers are toiling their way through the thousands of miles of the Tour de France. The combination of the two is irresistible. And Lance Armstrong is supposed to race again this year!

I don't know if you'd call me either biking-mad (I love to watch the racers, not be one) or spinning-mad (it's sometimes an on-again, off-again affair when other things compete for attention). But I'm in. :)

Someone said she would be spinning for socks this time, and I lost my head and said I would too. Now, mind you, I've never spun sock yarn yet. It's tiny, and it needs to be even. I imagine a big bump in the yarn might give you that feeling that you need to take off your shoe and shake it out in case there's a little stone in there. Hence the need for training.

I suppose it was bound to be sock yarn some time soon. I've somehow collected four or five batches of fiber intended for socks. They're waiting anxiously, and I needed to dive in and get the hang of it.

I've started the attempt with the Blue Face Leicester/Mohair fiber from the Little Barn, that I bought at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last week. I had read some advice from the respected spinning teacher Judith McKenzie McCuin saying that sock yarn needs to be 3-ply, as it's smoother and more rounded than 2-ply. OK, that means the individual strands have to be spun a little finer, then. I looked at my spinning gauge tool that shows the width to aim for to spin various weights of yarn. For a strand to go into a sock-weight 3-ply, the width was narrower than anything shown on the tool.

Gulp.

OK, then. Let's just give it a go.

On my first try, I came up with a few yards of the fuzzy, uneven blue yarn you see in the picture. It's laid over a skein of Socks That Rock lightweight for comparison of the weight. It's a little thicker than the Socks That Rock, not the thinnest of sock yarns itself, but it's in the ballpark.

My maiden sock spinning also produced a noticeably shaggy yarn, with a lot of halo from the mohair in it. While I do think it's cute, I'm aiming for something not so hairy-looking. For the next little sample, I'll try changing my drafting method, and smoothing down the fibers as I go.

I tried to put a lot of twist into it. I've read somewhere that sock yarn needs to have a lot of twist to wear well. Well, I cranked my spinning wheel down so the flyer would whir the most per revolution of the big wheel, and I held that yarn back for more twist until it tried to wiggle out of my hands. When I got done, it was really pretty twisty, I felt. And yet, it looks like the Socks That Rock out-twists it by far. Interesting.

I knitted my little yarn sample into a little swatch on little needles. With US size 1 needles, it knitted to about 7 or 8 stitches per inch. So t is definitely lin the ballpark of something the size that reasonable socks could be made of, although it's too dense and stiff at that gauge. It might need bigger needles, or it might need less twist. Or more.

I can see I'm going to need a lot more training before July. I'm off to a shaggy start. But it sure is a cute little thing!

In the Penalty Box

2009-05-04T23:45:00.010-04:00

This weekend was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. And that can't be bad.

Right?

Well, right. Maryland Sheep and Wool is a wondrous thing. I don't think anything can change that. But this year I took only a small, tantalizing sip from that deep, deep well. Leading up to the weekend, I was trying to decide on which day best to go. Each day has its charms: Saturday with its well-stocked excitement, and Sunday with its more relaxed pace and room to breathe.

I was leaning toward Sunday. But as Saturday wore on, I found I couldn't wait. Even the weather was right. The record-setting heat wave of the previous week had abated. Cooler sweater-friendly weather had set in. I wheedled world's-most-patient-husband into going with me. I donned my handknits and packed the essentials -- a big tote bag, my camera, and a small knitting project for the car. And off we went.

We arrived and found a spot in the lush grass of the parking meadow, then world's-most-patient-husband set a time to meet and headed off to watch the sheepdogs, while I made a beeline for the shopping. I dove right into the main barn to have a look around. The time went faster than I imagined. I ended up just managing to browse my way through the indoor vendor areas, not even visiting the sheep or shopping the outdoor vendors before it was time to go. I had only made a couple of small purchases (including this Blue-Faced Leicester/ mohair blend for sock-spinning, from Little Barn.)

No matter; Sunday was still ahead, and I could come back on my own and spend as long as I wanted to. I knew Joanne Seiff would be there on Sunday signing her book, Fiber Gathering, and I thought it would be fun to meet her. I was also still hoping to spot some blog friends I knew would be there (though my lackadaisical planning had forestalled any prearrangement of meeting times and places).

But a funny thing happened Sunday morning. I thought of all the piles of yarn and spinning fiber already in the house, some of it even from Maryland Sheep and Wool days of years gone by, still waiting its turn. I thought of how little I really need, however much I might like the pretty things for sale there. I thought of the other festivals I hope to go to in the fall. I thought of the sweater project that was sitting waiting for me to gather the gumption to do the hard work of finishing and put it together. It was looking rather like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz lying forlornly without his stuffing until Dorothy put him back together. I thought of how it would have to wait longer still if I spent the entire weekend up at the festival. I thought of how being a grown-up sometimes means doing what you ought to do before what you want to do. I stayed home.

But I'd only bought a couple of small things! I hadn't even gotten out my camera! I'd been so confident that I'd be back!

Well, that's OK. I still have wonderful memories. Watching the antique sock-making machine crank out a short-row heel. Receiving a compliment from a stranger on my handspun vest. Seeing yarn and fiber everywhere in glorious colors. Chuckling at festival-goers knitting even in line for the restroom. Finding something wonderfully unexpected (like the fiber in the picture: rare Hog Island sheep's wool blended with alpaca, from a gentleman at the Fingerlakes Woolen Mill booth who had a Hog Island ram). Seeing every kind of spinning wheel I've ever heard of, all there for the looking and touching and trying out. Hearing Maggie Sansone of Maggie's Music absently tapping lovely rhythms on a traditional Celtic bodhran drum in a quiet moment. Seeing craftsmen who already have long, long waiting lists, sharing their wisdom with new enthusiasts. Seeing a pen of little goat kids tumbling and romping. Hearing a couple of young voices singing soft harmonies in a bluegrass band.

Aaahhhh. Come to think of it, it was a wonderful visit. As always.

And, since I stayed home on Sunday, my Dad's sweater finally started growing a collar.

And that can't be bad.

Eater of Stitchwork

2009-04-26T23:46:00.007-04:00

It looks so harmless just sitting there, doesn't it?

Needing a knitting project to while away the idle hours on my Parisian flight, I turned to some expendable yarn. I once saw, in the KnitPicks catalog, a sock yarn called Dancing, each bright, summery colorway cutely named for a different type of dance. It was a cotton-wool blend, with a bit of elastic added. It was clearance-priced. There must have been a photo of a finished sock that showed it off nicely, as well. Some deep bargain-hunting instinct must have kicked in at that point. I think I ordered it in five different colorways.

Since then, I've been knitting all those socks in their relentlessly cheerful colorways for what seems like forever. I was finally down to the last colorway. Well, I needed something to keep me occupied on the trip, and I didn't want to take one of my serious projects. They're not that portable, and there's always the remote chance that I'll lose something important and not be able to replace it.

So the last of the Dancing it was to be. I packed it up. I'd flipped through some sock books, but nothing had jumped out at me. The short, sharp color changes of the yarn pose a challenge. Adding to the fun, the yarn is marled, with a contrasting white ply wrapped around the bright colors.With so much going on, the yarn would be well suited for a plain and simple sock, but I wanted something more entertaining to knit. I'd brought along some hasty notes of stitch patterns that I thought I'd like to play with and that I hoped wouldn't be completely obscured by such an assertive colorway. Sitting in the airport, I worked out a design and got going.

As it turned out, I stayed so busy that I didn't get all that much done on the trip, maybe half of the first sock. So I still had a lot yet to do when I got home. But I was determined to get them done. Not only would I be able to finally say "bon voyage" to the KnitPicks Dancing yarn, but the socks would forever be a reminder of my trip. I'd never forget where I did some of the knitting.

I showed sock number two in progress to a friend. She was at a loss for words at the pink and purple and green and yellow and orangeness of it all. Well, I can't say I blame her, really. But I wasn't making it as elegant haberdashery; it's destined to wear with blue jeans on sunny days.

I actually rather liked the sock design I'd come up with. It has lace and cables and meandering ribs and some straight lines in the back to tamp down all the commotion. Really, it's a bit of a wild melange like the colorway itself.

But how did all that fancy stitching work out? Mostly swallowed up, as one might have expected. When the light is right, the cables down the sides stand out pretty well, but the lace pattern on the front mostly just looks like chaos.

I had a more high-falutin' name in mind for the pattern, but I think that will have to wait. Maybe one of these days I'll knit it again with a yarn that's a better partner for it. Then it will seem right to give it a fancier name. Until then, I'll just call this version by pretty much what it looks like: Fruit Salad.

That's OK. By now I'm actually rather fond of these silly, frivolous socks.

Fruit Salad it is. It'll do.

Where Wanderlust, Unchecked, Can Lead

2009-04-19T22:03:00.009-04:00

To Paris!

Yes, to gilded, beautiful, Paris, France. We had something of a big family occasion that needed celebrating, so economy be darned, we girded ourselves and went.

For me, it was a week of much gawking and taking in the major sights -- the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Versailles. I also had ample chances to take my schoolgirl French out for a spin. It was once reasonably respectable but is now, after years of neglect, rather rusted out. (I once knew verb conjugations other than the present tense. Sigh.)

No matter, the people I tried to communicate with were commendably tolerant of my lapses, and often ridiculously helpful.

I stayed too busy sightseeing to do much shopping, and so I have something of a consequent dearth of fiber-related news to report (this despite the temptation offered by one guidebook that for mysterious reasons takes the trouble to point out a shop where whatever wool one might need can be had).

I will say, though, that among three women in our party who embarked on the airplane, there were five handknit garments being worn. Not a bad showing.

And, based on my observation, Parisian women do wear scarves with unmatched style. They make it look so good, it's really inspiring to try it out at home. I may have to think about adding a light-weight scarf somewhere not too far down in the knitting queue.

And of course I had to have a small portable knitting project for the trip. I did have a couple of books for the plane, but it's nice to be able to switch between reading and knitting at whim. So I also carried along some yarn from home.

I was reading Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, about his years in Paris, so that I could catch references to places that we might see. But honestly I am no great fan of Hemingway. Those stark, stripped-down sentences that he strives for -- searching self-consciously for "one true sentence" -- don't paint much of a picture for me. And his descriptions of other writers seem rather cruel. I wonder what they thought of this arrogant newcomer.

So now I have a very well-traveled sock-in-progress.

You'll have to take my word for it that these are the stones of the pavement beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

They are.

Magic Carpet of Another Kind

2009-04-07T22:58:00.001-04:00

I'm having quite a bout of armchair travel.

So many people seem to be on Spring Break this week; I've been roaming without leaving my seat. But I'm back now from mentally flying around the streets of exotic destinations in a Google-winged Barcalounger. I've found travel daydreams nearer to home.

While loitering in a bookstore the other day (world's-most-patient-husband being elsewhere in the shopping center on another mission) I came upon this wonderful book. I really should not be loitering in bookstores. It leads to nothing but trouble. :)

Truth be told, the title didn't sound that exciting to me. But the pictures on the cover beckoned, "come inside, come inside." Those colorful skeins of yarn! That row of sheep weathervanes! And the subtitle touched all the right bases: knitting, spinning, and festivals.

Opening it up, the first thing I saw was the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. OK. Done. Sold.

It really wasn't fair. It's almost time for Maryland Sheep and Wool, the kick-off of the festival season, and I've been trying to damp down my excitement. Not enough to skip it entirely, mind you, but just to go and soak up the scene, and keep the acquisitive urges to a minimum. With all the supplies in my house as yet unknit or unspun, what I really need is to bank the fires, and just let the hot coals burn down for a while.

That was the plan. And then I opened the book, and its pages fanned the flames back to life. What the book does is profile the major fiber festivals around the country, starting with my familiar and beloved Maryland Sheep and Wool and moving on to the festivals I have only read and daydreamed about -- Rhinebeck, the Black Sheep Gathering, the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. On and on. Photos and descriptions of each one and what makes it different and special. What it looks like, smells like, what you can find there. Oh, my.

Never yet have I traveled farther than a few hours in a car for a knitting or spinning-related event, but if I manage to hold out for another year, it will be no thanks to Ms. Joanne Seiff, the author of this insidious book. Nope, she's no help at all. Imagine, though, the dream assignment she got in creating this book. Go to all the fiber festivals. Seek out and enjoy the most wonderful things about them. Talk to the exhibitors and customers. Capture some trophies to bring back. And write about it all afterwards and savor the memories.

The book offers more, though, than just the festivals. It has short sections on lots of topics related to enjoying the fiber arts: the food of the festivals; improvising your own knitting and spinning tools; spinning for speed; hooking a rug from wool scraps; multicolored yarn dyeing; helping on shearing day. And it has a number of very appealing patterns for knitting and crocheting. I'm finding myself particularly drawn to the Fishtail Vest, a restrained design with a lace pattern decoration representing the salmon of the Pacific Northwest. The vest design is by Terri Shea, the author of the book on the Norwegian Selbuvotter mitten tradition, and quite a few other talented designers have contributed.

In my mind, I'm now swooping from one corner of the United States to another, visiting all these events, taking it all in, riding on a flying carpet of dreams called Fiber Gathering.

Magic Carpet Ride

2009-04-06T23:25:00.003-04:00

Lately, we here in the Yarnstruck household have been thinking yearningly of distant parts. World's-most-patient-husband and I like to travel and it's been a while since our last vacation. So we've been wondering about destinations. Or maybe I should say wandering about destinations. Because travel planning in the modern world is a whole new experience.

It used to be that to find a hotel in a faraway city, much depended on luck. You could rely on a travel agent (hoping you'd picked a good one), you could choose one of the very few hotels (among the city's very many) lucky enough to be listed in a guidebook, you could consult friends and family, if you were lucky enough to have any who knew the place well or -- hitting the jackpot -- lived there and could give you a place to stay. Or you could arrive at an airport or railway station and trust to your luck with the local tourist information office or the last-minute hotel discount touts. I've tried just about all of these options, with reasonable success. The one thing I never have done is to go the backpack-and-hostel route. I like my comforts.

Now, I can conjure up hotel websites, look at photos of the reception areas and bedrooms, check booking sites to see how many rooms are available at what rates, and look at a slew of chatty reviews by recent guests, greatly reducing the uncertainty about whether the hotel will live up to its carefully chosen description and pictures.

And then, what about the environs? Is it on a busy road, or is it leafy and cafe-lined? Well, to top it all off, I can take a magic carpet ride and see for myself. With the Streetview feature of Google Maps. My magic carpet. What an amazing tool it is. Oh, I've used it before when I'm driving to an unfamiliar address, and I've looked at the streetscape ahead of time so I can recognize the building when I get to it. That's amazing in itself, of course, but in a mundane, workaday-ish sort of way.

Flying my Streetview carpet to a hotel destination is a whole different kind of transport. I float along up and down the street to locate the address. I peer around, looking at the adjacent buildings, craning my disembodied eye up to the rooftops and back down again to the street. Eerily, I fly onward, hovering just above the road. I follow the nearby streets looking at the nearby neighborhoods and businesses, getting a feel for the area. It seems kind of quiet; oh, maybe it's early morning -- there's a street cleaner and the light is still pale and gray. And all this is endless miles from where I sit.

What an astonishing world it's become.

(Try it! Look up a hotel somewhere in London or Rome or New York. Or perhaps in Tacoma Washington, the Hotel Murano, remarkable for its art glass collection, that just recently played host to the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.)

Bandying About

2009-03-31T23:28:00.005-04:00

Things are rolling again on my trim-athletic-dad's Christmas I.O.U. sweater.

I'm glad about that. I feel the need to hurry, as the trees are showing this suspicious white stuff. If it were really spring, I'd say they were alight with drifts of blossoms. But since I require it to still be mid-winter, when sensible people knit heavy sweaters, perhaps they're frosted instead with snow.

I was actually driving, this afternoon, down a fairly nondescript stretch of highway that just happened to have cherry or pear trees flowering along both sides of the road. For an instant, perhaps because of the way the late afternoon sun was lighting them up from behind, I honestly got the impression of a snowy day. The trees looked as they sometimes do the day after a snowfall. Not the heavy kind that weighs down the boughs, but a light snow that leaves them glinting and refreshed in the brilliant sunshine. It was a beautiful illusion.

Luckily, things are moving along again. I'm beginning to see the finish line up ahead.

I found some good hearty buttons that work well with the tweedy wool.

I also got busy and swatched the technique for knitting the bands on vertically. While it was a little persnickety, with much pulling up and tightening of loops, it did produce a nice well-fitted band with hardly any exertion of the little gray brain cells and nary a vestige of a seam on the back. With virtues like that, it was clearly a winner.

So I buckled down and got back to work, and got both the front buttonbands done, complete with buttonholes on the correct masculine side. All that remains to be done is seaming, knitting on a collar, finishing the pocket-tops and slip-stitching them down. And sewing on the buttons. And weaving in all the ends. And blocking the whole works.

Well, I guess there's a lot yet to be done after all. But as long as I'm moving again, we'll soon get there!

What Else To Do When Not Knitting

2009-03-28T22:55:00.005-04:00

Occasionally, knitting and I need to give each other a little distance, just for a short while. It's good for the relationship. And when this happens, there's more time to indulge one of my other loves, reading.

But, this time, I can only conclude that I'm pining for the one I've set aside. For what have I been reading about? Sheep.

More specifically, the book I've just read is one described as "a sheep detective story," a genre strangely neglected by most mystery writers. Thankfully, though, we have Leonie Swann, who has written Three Bags Full.

I had seen this book mentioned in the knitting and spinning magazines over the last year or two, and it sounded interesting. I was bursting with curiosity but had reading material already stockpiled like yarn and spinning fiber. I really didn't need to buy another book to add to the teetering pile on my nightstand. So I did the next best thing. I gave it to a knitting friend as a Christmas gift. She, once she had read it, turned around and lent it to me, bless her heart. Clearly, resistance had been futile.

In this very original tale, a flock of sheep near a village in the British Isles discover that their shepherd has been slain. Leaderless, they are at a loss and don't know what to do, but they eventually resolve to find out what happened to him. For the rest of the book, they do what they can to sort it out. But these are not anthropomorphized little people in woolly coats. They are sheep, who think as sheep might, about the things sheep care about. They long for succulent grass and herbs and sweet smells. They are skittish and uncertain if separated from the comfort of their fellows. They understand human speech rather well (their shepherd used to read aloud, of an evening, you see), but they really don't understand much about people and their ways. The story follows them as they puzzle out what they can about the humans, who the people are, why they act as they do, and what really happened.

The quality of the writing is enjoyable. Though written in German and translated into English, seldom does anything strike the ear as odd. The author also seems quite familiar with details of life in barn and pasture that I know little of, but that seemingly ring true. The central mystery of the story was enough to keep my attention, though it's not really suspenseful. And I confess I still found myself a bit muddled at the end when all had been explained. But maybe that's in part a reflection of the complexity of people and their messy affairs, especially as viewed from the simpler perspective of the sheep. And, in fact, it's the characters of the sheep that are the real joy of this book. Each is an individual, and one comes to know them well as they struggle with their own weaknesses but still try to do right by their shepherd.

All in all, it's a delightful book. I'm glad I was on time-out from the knitting for long enough to read it.

More Snakes (or Noodles)

2009-03-26T23:09:00.011-04:00

Sometimes I rush headlong through my knitting, and sometimes I get stuck. Right now I'm stuck.

I have buttonbands to do. It's not that there's anything that difficult about them. I have a little uncertainty about whether to knit them on horizontally, picking up all along the edges and knitting just a few long rows, or vertically. The Rowan book seems very fond of a technique in which you knit a very long strip a few stitches wide and then sew it onto the edge. I'm not at all fond of this idea, myself. It seems like asking for trouble. But I found an interesting technique in Judith Durant's book, Never Knit Your Man A Sweater, for knitting a band on vertically, picking up the edge on every other row. That looks as if it would create much the same effect. So, as I said, I'm not sure about the best way to go. But that would soon be remedied with a good determined session of swatching. It's not really the uncertainty. It's really more that I just need to work up a good head of steam to do button bands.

I'm distinctly deficient in that kind of steam locomotion at the moment. Here's a pretty good indication: on my last couple of airline trips, I haven't brought any knitting along. I even have a pair of socks underway that would be good travellers. But there they sat wistfully at home wondering what it's like to fly on an airplane. Those buttonbands were looming, and I needed a break from knitting until I'm ready to tackle them.

Spinning, on the other hand, has no such baggage. And I had more of those roving snakes -- or noodles -- whichever one wants to call them. Either way, a sampler's delight. I've had no project in mind, I've just been playing. Here are a few of them. I suppose they do look a bit snakey, but in the most cuddly possible way.

What I did generally was to choose two or three snakes in what looked like compatible colors. I split each one lengthwise into four parts, and then I used them to make matching bobbins with long repeats. One from column A, one from column B, one from column C, repeat. I thought they might make Noro-like color changes. And if it didn't really turn out that way, that was OK. No garment depended on it.

That particular combination of colors in the last photo made these interesting-looking bobbins.

And plying and skeining made them look like this.

I was having so much fun, I did it a few more times.

Of course, when I finally finish making interesting yarn out of all the snakes, I'll have to figure out what to do with it. I have somewhere between 50 and 150 yards in each skein, in a loose interpretation of worsted weight. The yardage depended on whether one, two, or three snakes went into the colorway. That apple green, for instance, looked too startling combined with any other color, so it got a whole skein to itself.

So, what on earth, I'm wondering, will I be able to make out of small amounts of so many different colors without ending up looking like a jester?

Well, I'm not sure, but I guess I'll worry about that another day. After all, I've still got two snakes left. Fiddle-de-dee!

A Welcome Burst of Color

2009-03-18T23:23:00.007-04:00

I've been working lately on quite a parade of neutrals -- two gray sweaters, a pair of brown socks. No wonder that, after the first gray sweater, for my tall-elegant mom, a brightly colored handspun vest burst out of nowhere. Now I've finished knitting all the main pieces of the second gray sweater for my trim-athletic-dad, and the urge for color has struck again. I do love the neutrals -- they're classic and often just what a sweater should be -- but between a long stint of neutral-colored knitting and a short spell of dull drizzly weather, a shot of boisterous, jangly color is most welcome.

So I turned back momentarily to spinning. I had some "snakes" of rainbow-dyed wool I bought a festival season or two back from Delly's Delights. Why snakes, you might wonder. Well, as I recall, it's actually what they were labeled as, for one thing. But in fact I think that was because they were 30-inch-or-so lengths of roving heaped and swimming in a bin. I could say writhing, I suppose, but that's an unattractive image, and I assure you they were most appealing. They remind me more of the buoyant foam "noodles" that young children use as a swimming aid than of snakes.

Whatever you call them, they were perhaps not the most sensible purchase. I think they're actually intended for felters rather than spinners, as the ends are bluntly chopped in a slightly wince-inducing manner. The cut short fibers at the ends are unusable waste for spinners, but must not be of concern for felting. Nevertheless, I couldn't stay away from the bin. The short lengths of roving gave me a chance to sample lots of color variations while -- if carefully chosen -- offering opportunities for harmonious blending. All that at nominal cost and without major commitment of spinning time. And all at a time when I was just getting started spinning and hadn't tried anything but natural undyed colors. Well, it was just irresistible, that's all.

I braided some of them together to get an idea of how their colors would work together (tucking the cut ends carefully out of sight, of course.)

How did they look? They looked gorgeous.

They spun up into beautiful bobbins. I prattled and cooed with pleasure as I spun them.

I stayed up way too late.

And once plied, they made a skein of devastatingly pretty yarn.

Aaahhh. That hit the spot. I'm refreshed and ready to start thinking about the button bands and collar and seams to finish a classic gray sweater.

I'm happy to say there are more noodles where those came from. For the next emergency. :)

Spring Plays Its Tricks

2009-03-12T20:54:00.006-04:00

The weather around here has fluctuated wildly in the last week or so, from 10 degrees Fahrenheit and inches of snow to short-sleeves-and-sandals temperatures, sending my attitude toward knitting ricocheting back and forth in turn.

On an unexpectedly warm, bright day, I start feeling foolish stirrings. Sitting on the couch with knitting needles and a hot lapful of wool begins to seem like a chore instead of a pleasure. I hardly know what to do, whether to persevere stubbornly or rush outside and run madly in circles on the lawn, kicking up my heels like a springtime lamb. Or limber up for an energetic burst of spring cleaning, giving a bathroom a scrubbing of unexceeded thoroughness. Or some of each.

I start thinking restlessly of other crafts. This is not unprecedented. After all, I've never been exclusive about knitting, though I guess I've been closer to it lately than ever before. These days, it's easy and fun to stay focused on knitting, with a whole on-line community of excited people cheering each other on, giving encouragement, showing off their feats, unearthing or creating interesting patterns.

Nevertheless, I've also in the past enjoyed sewing, crocheting, cross-stitching, needlepoint, and what have you. (And, of course, lately, there's the spinning.) I love to learn about this and that and try things out. Crafts as-yet-untried beckon still. There are plenty of unexplored frontiers. I'm curious about bobbin lace, and tatting, and lucets, and who knows what all else. Even the knitting bloggers tempt, from time to time, with other crafts. (If I end up experimenting with rug-hooking, Robin, I'll lay that directly at your door!)

So it's a good thing for me and for dad's sweater that the weather has lately taken another swing back toward winter. Tonight's prediction is for freezing temperatures and a possibility of snow.

With a nip again in the air, I've been moving along again briskly. But last night, as I was finishing up the second sleeve, I noticed that something didn't seem to be adding up quite right. Compared to sleeve number one, number two seemed to be taking a few extra rows past the last increase to get to the same point in the pattern. I examined and compared them carefully, mystified, meticulously counting the rows between increases.

Finally, I spotted something. Do you notice anything strange about the second diamond in the picture? That's right, it's smaller than the others. I'd gotten over-eager and turned the corner before it reached its full size. The mistake was 13 inches down the sleeve. 13 time-consuming inches of cabled knitting. Well, no matter. There was no help for it. I wasn't going to leave it that way. Even if I could live with a visible mistake (and often not), I couldn't do it on a sleeve. Sleeves must match.

So back out it came. But that's okay.

Unlike the groundhog, I'm hoping for a few more weeks of winter.

Slowly Taking Shape

2009-03-06T22:12:00.006-05:00

Well, Christmas is coming right along. An early start? Oh, no, no, would that it were so! It's last Christmas that I'm still working my way through. My tall-elegant-mom's fluffy mohair sweater is finished and delivered (to satisfyingly happy effect), and my good-humored brother's socks-in-progress have been rescued from the fate of contrasting toes by the lucky find of a matching skein. But it's my trim-athletic-dad's sweater that I'm mostly clicking along on lately.

It's been slowed down by the occasional interruption; here an urgent hand-spun vest, there a knit-less trip out of town, and even a few days of stomach bug (yuck; that one temporarily took the charm right out of knitting). But it's still chugging along.

Here, have a peek. After a couple of all- stockinette sweaters, I'm really enjoying these nice chunky cables. The yarn is a hearty one, Rowan's Scottish Tweed, in the Aran weight.

Dad's sweater is not going to be any one particular pattern. I had him look through a couple of books at Christmas-time to show me what kind of sweater he would like. After I got an idea of his preferences, what I came up with is going to be a distant cousin to the "Cable Jacket" pattern in Knitting for Him, by Martin Storey and Wendy Baker. (That's a lovely book, by the way, with a lot of nice, masculine sweaters that are classic but with interesting details. And, as in any Rowan book, you could lose yourself in the photographs, set in this case against the rugged seafront backdrop of a small town in Devon.)

It's a distant cousin to the sweater in the book because I'm departing from the neckline, collar style, shoulder style, cable layout, and a few other things. Though you can't see it in the photo I linked in above, the original has an asymmetric layout of cables that is just not the look I'm going for. But I love the basic cable pattern (a classic) and the pockets!

Of course, after making all these changes, I'll have only myself to blame if the end result doesn't measure up to what I'm envisioning. Or more realistically, I could end up doing some re-knitting and re-styling to make things work out, because I really want it to be nice.

I'd hoped to be further along by now (in March, for heaven's sake.) But I'm making good progress. I've got the back, both fronts, and part of one sleeve done.

At this rate, I shouldn't keep trim-athletic-dad waiting too much longer for his sweater. Or myself, anxiously waiting to see how it turns out.

Oh, the suspense!

A Stroke of Luck

2009-02-25T21:48:00.011-05:00

First of all, thank you so much, everybody, for the nice comments about the handspun vest! It's great fun to chew things over with others who understand what it's like getting through the little challenges and hurdles of a knitting project to a happy outcome. :)

And, as for spinning, well, I'm with you, Amy. It's still hard to believe you can really go from what's basically a wad of animal hair to something pleasing to wear. It makes me feel like a pioneer woman, who could scratch sustenance from the land and fashion clothing from raw materials, instead of from a shopping mall. Maybe one of these days I should try my hand at building a sod hut. Oh, I don't mean to make light, of course, of the hardships that people went through in settling the Plains of the western United States. It's just that making things by hand gives an interesting feeling of self-sufficiency that's sometimes hard to come by in modern life.

The handspun vest, fun as it was, was actually just a temporary diversion from the real knitting business at hand. I'm still at work on Christmas I.O.U. knitting projects. The sweater for my trim-athletic-dad is coming along steadily.

But the socks for my good- humored brother have hit a snag. It seems I have yet to learn that it takes more yarn to knit socks for a tall-ish fellow than for an average-sized woman. You'd think that might be obvious, but it's not. Apparently.

In my defense, when I first ran into this life-lesson, last Christmas, it was with Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Socks That Rock Lightweight yarn. That yarn's virtues are its creative colorways, and firm bouncy texture, rather than exceptional yardage. A skein of Socks That Rock packs 360 yards. It's an ample amount for socks for me, but I wasn't entirely surprised at running short before completing a pair for my good-humored brother, who is indeed a tall-ish sort of fellow. So after some hand-wringing and whatever-shall-I-do-ing, I ended up ordering another colorway and knitting a contrasting toe.

This time was different. This time, I was using Zitron's Trekking XXL, a yarn of bountiful yardage. At almost 100 yards more, 459 yards in a 100 gram skein, surely it gave me a great safety margin. And I may have been unduly influenced by the many posts on Claudia's blog on socks knitted for her husband from Trekking XXL. That gave me a nice comfortable feeling. Of course, if I'd paid closer attention, I might have noticed that she says she's a loose knitter and only uses 64 stitches. I, on the other hand, am not and don't.

I knitted along, quite enjoying the soft hand of the Trekking yarn and its subtle color shifts, until I noticed that I seemed to be using up yarn faster than I ought to before the first sock was finished. I grew nervous. I began weighing what was left in the skein as I went along, calculating how many knitted rows I was getting per gram. The skein dwindled to 53 grams. I had to concede the awful truth. My illusions fell to the floor. Clunk. This skein was not going to finish two socks.

Oh, for heaven's sake. Not again. Recently, I'd watched with pity as, in the same local shop where I'd bought the yarn, a customer pleaded for an extra skein of Trekking XXL to finish a not-quite-done pair of socks. The owner was sympathetic but afraid she might not be able to order that color any more. Thank goodness that wasn't going to happen to me, thought I.

Ha! Now here I was, in much the same pickle. I'd bought the yarn months ago, and I needed more. Maybe if I was lucky, there would still be a skein left at the shop. If it was a different dye lot, I could always work it in so it wouldn't be obvious. I ran back to paw through the shelf. It wasn't there. It seemed even to have disappeared from the shop's order book. Gulp. Was it discontinued? Now I was not sure I could get any more of my colorway at all, let alone in the same dye lot.

I looked on-line at Webs. There, promisingly, it was still listed, though shown as back-ordered. I watched like a hawk, checking daily. As the days wore on, I grew a little despondent. Would it ever come in again? Or was it really gone? I tried to resign myself to looking at compatible yarn options for a contrasting toe.

That contrasting toe idea was a good dodge the first time, but if every pair made for my good-humored brother has a contrasting toe without the corresponding heel and cuff accents, it begins to look suspiciously like a sisterly lack of planning. Which, of course, it is. I had to try to find it.

A chance mention by the Yarn Harlot reminded me of the Simply Socks Yarn Company, run by Allison, where I'd browsed happily before. I rushed there, and -- Eureka! -- it showed my colorway in stock! Two days later, I held a second skein in my grateful hands. Thankfully, it looked like the dye lot was going to be a pretty good match.

On a whim, I checked the labels. What? It wasn't just a pretty good match, it was the very one. Good old dye lot 8230 itself.

Can you believe it? Months later, bought from a site based a thousand miles away from the shop of my earlier purchase, and it was the same dye lot.

Lucky.

Really lucky.

Now, to do my penance. I shall write it out 100 times:
1. I must plan ahead and buy more yarn when making men's socks.
2. I must plan ahead and buy more yarn when making men's socks.
3. I must...

This could take a while!

... And Out Pops a Vest

2009-02-22T19:10:00.011-05:00

After last weekend's spinning workshop, I was so excited that I kept right on spinning that night and the next day, until a tired thumb on my drafting hand told me it was time to stop. But still I could think of nothing but spinning and handspun. So I set to cataloging my handspun skeins and counting up the yardage. I just needed an idea of what could be knitted from them.

Lovely Dalis at Dancing Leaf Farm pointed out a little book called Noro Designer Mini Knits, by Jenny Watson, as a good source of small projects that could be adapted for handspun.

This yarn in particular was a pretty thing I'd been wanting to make into something nice. I'd tried starting a shawl with it, some time ago, but it just wasn't right. This was some of the first of my handspun that I'd ever knit a stitch of, and I was frightened of making a mistake. After I backed away from the shawl idea, it just sat on my coffee table looking decorative. For a long time. A long time.

I spun the yarn over a year ago, from this luscious hand-painted roving. Of course, I suppose more precisely it's wool top. (For non-spinners, that means it's been prepared by combing instead of carding, so that the fibers are more smoothly aligned.) I know some people are very unhappy with those who refer to any kind of thick rope of prepared fiber as roving. But roving is such a nice word, and I suppose I'm a bit of a carefree phillistine about the difference, at least for now. After all, I'm still pretty new to all of this. It seems a bit like expecting someone to speak of cars as coupes or sedans when he's just getting used to the idea of a wheeled motorized vehicle. I expect I'll get better about my terminology as I go along.

Anyway, I had 10 ounces of the wool ...top. It was from Lorna's Laces, in the Watercolor colorway. I had bought and spun it simply for the fun of working for the first time with a pretty hand-painted ...top. I was still practically a novice, and this is the ...top that taught me how to spin softer yarn.

It was such pretty fiber, and I spun it happily, expecting a beautiful yarn. I didn't split the fiber; I just enjoyed the colors and the long transitions I got by drafting from the entire thickness of the ...top. I was also working on spinning consistently at a heavier weight, and aimed for a thicker yarn than my beginner efforts. But when I plied the first skein, I was disappointed in the result. The yarn was kind of dense and firm. Even the colors seemed flat. I had enough experience by then that I had developed some ability to control my spinning, so I decided to try putting less twist into the yarn, hoping it would be softer.

What a difference that made! You can see it in this photo. The skein on the left is the first one I spun, about worsted weight and, sadly, a little hard. The one on the right is what I got with a lot less twist. It was bulkier and much softer.

I was much happier with the yarn after that. But the evolution in the yarn made for a challenge in coming up with a suitable project. I had about 500 yards, about 2/3 of it in the soft bulky yarn, and 1/3 in the firm worsted weight.

Nevertheless, this time I was gung ho and ready to try something. Looking at projects in bulky yarn from the Noro book, I found a simple pullover cropped vest that looked like I could make it with plenty of yardage to spare. I was in the mood to just dive in, so off I went.

I knit merrily along and soon had this. Although the long color transition was interesting, I did not love the overall effect. The pattern was written for Noro's Blossom yarn, which has a lot of textural interest (and maybe some bits of leaf and twig, from the looks of it). But in my handspun, a smoother yarn, it was a bit blah and seemed to need something. So out it came.

After a little more swatching, I decided to loosen up the gauge and add some bands of moss stitch.

That did the trick.

It even worked out so that I could use the soft yarn for the body of the vest and the thinner yarn for the neckband and armbands.

I ended up using about 450 yards of bulky handspun, with US size 10 (6 mm) needles. In addition to adding the stitch pattern, I lengthened the vest a couple of inches, made the scooped neck deeper, and made the neckband and armbands narrower.

It went so fast, I had it done in six days flat. I couldn't wait to wear it right away yesterday, not even holding off to block it first. World's-most-patient-husband and I were out and about and stopped by for a visit to the Yarnstruck niecey and nephews. Showing impeccable taste, my little niecey immediately spotted my vest and complimented it. I might have attributed that to tact rather than taste, had there been so much as a hint that it was one of Auntie Yarnstruck's projects. No, clearly little niecey has excellent taste. :)

And I'm tickled that finally, in hardly any time at all, the pretty yarn that waited so long after I spun it has turned into a pretty vest that I can wear and enjoy.

Whoosh!

Rastro Fulfills His Destiny

2009-02-16T20:42:00.004-05:00

This weekend, in the midst of the hearts-and-flowers of the romantic holiday, my spinning wheel, Rastro, and I had a Valentine's Day treat. We packed up and went to a spinning workshop! (I rejoined world's-most-patient-husband later for a nice dinner, of course. :)

But earlier in the day, I folded Rastro up, and stowed him in the trunk of the car along with bagsful of way too many different choices of wool to spin. I didn't know what to expect, and I didn't want to come up short!

Of course, I needn't have worried.

There was plenty there for anyone who might have run short. Or just become entranced by another pretty fiber to add to the collection.

When everyone got settled, we had a great circle of companionable spinning. (Some of the owners of those wheels were off browsing the tables of spinning supplies.) It was wonderful! There were people to compare notes with; to talk about sheep and wool and techniques and twist with; to ooh and ah with over things spinners care about. And, being self-taught, I've never before spun with anyone else. It turned out to be great fun.

We had a fascinating talk from Jennifer of Spirit Trail Fiberworks, who does beautiful hand-dyeing of yarns and fibers. She specializes in seeking out rare, endangered, and little-known breeds of sheep, finding farmers with remaining flocks, buying fleeces, and offering their wool to spinners, in natural or gorgeous hand-dyed colors. I had no idea of some of these small, isolated populations and their history. She'd brought along wool from several virtually unknown breeds for show-and-tell and to buy.

I'm afraid that, like an over-excited child at story-time, I may not have sat and listened quite as quietly as I should. Jennifer took it in stride, though. It probably happens all the time. :)

We also had a talk and demonstration of spinning silk from caps. I'm not sure I'll be rushing to try spinning silk. When the silk fiber in cap form was passed around, I was very startled by the way it felt to the hands. There was something about it that made me shiver uncomfortably. And there's an awful lot of lovely wool in the world. But it was really interesting to see and learn about.

There was a great variety of different wheels. I think in the whole group of 15 or 20 wheels, there was only one pair of twins. Just in the picture there, clockwise from the left, we have an Ashford Joy, a Bosworth Journey Wheel, a beautiful antique wheel, and a Schacht Matchless. (At least I think so; don't hold me to it.) And my Rastro.

Rastro is the handsome blonde down in the right-hand corner. He's a Lendrum double treadle. When I first got my wheel, I tried calling him a fancy, girly name that I thought would suit a spinning wheel. He would have none of it. He wouldn't answer to that name. He's lean and eager and straining at the leash to get to work. Naturally, he didn't care for a frilly name. When I started thinking of him as Rastro, it immediately stuck.

When I picked out a wheel, I specifically selected one that would fold up for travel. I was indulging in castle-in-the-air fantasies of carrying it to spinning gatherings.

And now they've come true. :)

A Real MacGyver of Fiber

2009-02-13T21:31:00.007-05:00

I have to say, I was very entertained by the idea of myself as some knitting MacGyver, on the strength of my high-tech nail-file and wax-paper solution to a broken bamboo needle.

For anyone who somehow missed it, MacGyver was an American TV series in the late 1980s. I only remember seeing it a couple of times myself, but even so I quickly grasped the essential premise. Here was a guy who, when he found himself in a tight spot, through resourcefulness and wits, would build just the clever contraption needed to get out of a sticky situation and save the day. Out of something like toothpaste and pocket lint. I may be exaggerating, but according to this list of MacGyverisms, not by much!

All right, I may have some mild MacGyver-like tendencies. I may do some improvising once in a while to save the day when the chips are down.

Or maybe just to save the chips when the day is done. Here's an example of my amazing resourcefulness. I was finishing up a meal at a sandwich place and realized I wasn't hungry enough to eat my whole bag of delicious kettle chips. But how could I take them home when the bag was already open? I had no bag clip or rubber band! I'd have chips strewn all over the car or the inside of my handbag. The soundtrack started to swell and I looked around in desperation, starting to sweat. Would the bad guys really win?

Then, with no suitable tools at hand, inspiration struck! My brilliant solution?

I tied up the bag with the empty wrapper from my drink straw. My afternoon snack was saved. My car and handbag were safe. MacGyver would be so proud.

Still not convinced? OK, then, how about this?

Improvised ruler on the back of my knitting pattern when stuck on an airplane flight without a measuring tape?

Or this?

Eyeing the bamboo kitchen skewers covetously because they sure look like you could knit a big pile of socks on them if you sharpened the other end?

OK, I admit it. These are MacGyver-like tendencies only in a small way. A very small way. As a MacGyver, I've got a long way to go. I'm not really cut out for it. I actually like to have a nice array of proper knitting tools.

But if you want to see a real MacGyver of fiber, have a look at Rosemary Knits. Check out the spinning wheel made of a bicycle wheel, pieces of soda-bottle-plastic, and scraps of 2x4 lumber. Watch as the woman spins cotton from a cotton ball. Nothing is as humbling as the real thing.

I bow before her.

Milkweed Fluff

2009-02-08T18:47:00.005-05:00

My Christmas I.O.U.s are coming along nicely. One is done, and the other two are underway.

Today, I sewed in all the ends to finish the soft brushed mohair sweater for my tall-elegant-mom. It's so light and soft, it reminds me of the white fluff, drifting on currents of air, from the seed pods of milkweed, beloved of monarch butterflies.

This sweater, like the last one I made for myself, is knit from hand-dyed Kid Hollow brushed mohair yarn, purchased at the 2008 Fall Fiber Festival in Montpelier, Virginia. This colorway is almost a solid silvery gray, with darker streaks here and there making it a semi-solid and giving it depth.

And, like the last sweater, I knit it using the Kid Hollow Mock-Neck sweater pattern designed by Puff the Magic Rabbit. It's a nice simple stockinette pattern, to keep the focus on the soft texture and the hand-dyed color. It's a worsted gauge pattern, but because the yarn is so fluffy, I found I needed to use US size 6 (4mm) needles.

This time, though, I made some modifications to suit my mom's more classic style. I changed the rolled edgings to a restrained ribbing, and I knit a crew-neck instead of the mock-neck in the pattern.

The yarn has a lovely fuzzy halo. I actually think the halo will continue to develop as the sweater is worn. I think a lot of the long fibers are still caught in the stitches and will work their way out over time.

I'm happy to say that I think the sweater will fit tall- elegant- mom just fine. I did a better job of knitting to gauge on this sweater than on the one I made for myself, so it didn't come out oversized like the other one. With her height, I think it will actually look better on her than it does here on me.

After knitting two sweaters with this lovely yarn, I've learned some useful lessons about working with brushed mohair. First, I don't need to baby it. To get gauge consistently, I need to knit it with just as firm a touch as any other yarn. But when unraveling, it's time to be very gentle with it. At the tricky spots like ends of rows where it's apt to tangle, tugging the yarn tail to try to pull the stitches out is asking for trouble. (Believe me, I know!) It responds much better to having one stitch lifted off another with lots of slack.

And all that fuzz makes it hard to count stitches. Stray bits of fluff often look like extra stitches. I wasted quite a bit of time looking for mistakes when I saw phantom stitches. But eventually I figured out that it was much more reliable to count the stitches from the back, with the reverse stockinette side facing me. Somehow, the little purl bumps on the back were much easier to distinguish. That saved a lot of grief. So I've learned to manage the yarn better, and knitting this second sweater was a much more relaxing experience than the first.

Now that this sweater is done, it's amazing how different it is from the last one. Small changes in the edge treatments, gauge, and color transformed the same sweater design in the same yarn from a funky hippy shirt for me to wear with jeans into an understated classic that my tall-elegant-mom can wear with tailored slacks and heels. It came out very nicely. I really think she will like it.

So now, with gusto, I can exclaim, "one down, two to go!"

Jingle bells will soon be ringing. :)

Minor Bumps and Bruises

2009-02-05T22:48:00.009-05:00

Aside from the neckline of my tall-elegant-mom's Christmas I.O.U. sweater, now happily re-banded and resting tidily, I've had the occasional little mishap lately. Nothing too terrible, just mildly alarming.

This was one.

Over the holidays, I finally wore my Feather and Fan socks of the much-lauded Socks That Rock yarn. We went to a party. I showed them off proudly to anyone who would hold still long enough and collected good-natured acclaim.

When I got home, I took off my shoes with a contented sigh. Aaah. But something didn't seem quite right. What on earth was it? I did a double-take. It looked a little fuzzy in the back....

Here, have a closer look.

Noooooo!

Yes, that's right. A great big hole in the heel. The first time I'd worn them. I'd only admired and patted them until then.

Well, that was certainly an unpleasant little surprise. I still don't know what caused it. It clearly wasn't just ordinary wear and tear. After one wearing? No. But I don't remember snagging it on anything or even noticing any rough spots in my shoes. Maybe there was a weak join in the yarn, I don't know.

I'll get it patched up. The good news is that I have leftover yarn. I have a darning egg. And I know how to use them.

But did I say mishap? Mishap? I should have said mishaps. Plural.

This was the other one.

Although metal needles are my favorite, I sometimes use bamboo for socks, especially if there's any travel on the horizon. I figure wooden needles are less likely to excite X-ray machines, airport security staff, and fellow passengers than shiny little metal spikes.

Honestly, I also figure that if they got confiscated, I'd be less upset about losing them. But, shhhh, don't let them hear me say that! They serve me well when called upon, and I don't mean to be unkind.

So I wasn't very pleased with myself one day recently. I got distracted from my knitting, carried off one little needle that happened to be in my hand, sat down to rummage for something, and got up only to find I'd sat on the poor thing. Snap.

I remember clearly having thought beforehand, "you know, you really should put that back with the other needles before you walk away; you're liable to put it down somewhere and lose it if you carry it off on its own." Of course, in the end I broke it instead of losing it. But, nevertheless, I smelled trouble coming and ignored my own good advice. That happens more often than I'd care to admit.

Now I was in a minor fix. I had a busy evening, a sock to finish, and stores closed next day. What's a stubborn person to do? I took the longer piece of broken needle from the wreckage, sanded down the jagged end with a nail file, and rubbed it with a piece of wax paper. So it would glide, you see. :)

I ended up with a perfectly good four-inch one-ended double-point needle and knit the rest of the sock with it. That is, I used the undamaged pointy end to knit the stitches onto, and the blunt misshapen end to knit them off of. This wasn't particularly comfortable, and maneuvers like decreases were tricky to do with that blunt end serving as the left-hand needle tip, but I managed.

It somehow felt like proving a point. I know, stubborn. But then, why not keep on using that stubby little excuse for a needle? It got the job done, didn't it?

Nope. Nobody's that stubborn.

Buck Up and Get On With It

2009-02-01T23:52:00.010-05:00

When last heard from, the neckline of my Kid-Hollow-mock-neck-converted-to-a-crew -neck was looking sadly messy. I was searching for a clever cast-off technique that would tighten it up enough to look neat but still stretch out enough to fit over my head. (Well, my tall-elegant-mom's head, actually, since this is a gift.) I was piddling around, looking at books and web pages, desultorily knitting inadequately-sized samples, and just generally fussing about it.

Certainly there are lots of clever cast-off techniques out there (and thanks for the good suggestions!) But in truth, I was pretty sure I knew what was the real root of the problem. Sometimes I outsmart myself. I've noticed that the little knit-stitch columns in ribbing tend to sprawl open and look loose in comparison to the ones in the body of a stockinette piece. I had gone down to quite a small needle size to to keep the ribbing stitches from loosening. But I'd gone too far in trying to prevent that problem and created another. Those small needles had created a too-small neck opening. I'd re-done the cast-off to make the neck edge bigger and wound up with giant sloppy stitches. I'd been trying to fix that by finding a cast-off that could be knit more tightly and still stretch like a rubber band. Deep down, though I didn't really want to admit it, I had a feeling I knew the cure. It was to rip out the entire neckband and re-do it on not-so-small needles.

But every time I looked over at it, I saw a scary little monster with sharp knitting-needle teeth grinning back at me. I had only recently had the character-building experience of ripping out an entire sweater in the same fuzzy mohair after being off on my gauge. Even though the neckband was only a few rows, I wasn't eager to do any more fuzzy-mohair-unraveling. I worried about whether the solution would work. I worried about whether it would put noticeable wear and tear on the yarn's fuzzy surface. I worried about whether I ought to go all the way back to picking up stitches again. Mostly I just put it off.

Finally, I decided to take the excellent advice of Christina, who encouraged me to just buck up and get on with it (though she, of course, put it much more gently and diplomatically. :)

So this morning, fresh and determined, I sat down, teased open the fuzzy stitches, and off it came.

I got it all undone and re-knit, with a needle a couple of sizes larger than before -- and still one size smaller than I used for the main body.

It looks a lot more sensible this time, doesn't it? And the ribbing isn't sprawling too much. I didn't even have to bother with an especially elastic cast-off this time. I just used an ordinary cast-off, with a bit of a light touch to keep it loose. The finished neckline fit over my head without a struggle.

The fuzz didn't suffer unduly either (though it doesn't photograph well in a head-on shot.)

All's well, the impasse is broken, and I got most of the way done today on sewing the seams. It will just take a good session of darning in ends and tidying up to get it done.

So what on earth was all that fussing about? It wasn't so bad! :)

Things I Wish I Didn't Know

2009-01-27T22:31:00.006-05:00

(Or Hadn't Found Out)

This pretty snowfall will soon be covered with sleet.

Not all wool is superwash.

Tea stains worse than coffee does.

The paper that books are printed on is very absorbent.

Pants that aren't yet hemmed will trip you.

Complex late-night knitting has poor odds of being mistake-free.

Carpets do a good job of cleaning the bottoms of shoes.

Dribbled toothpaste is hard to wipe off the front of a sweater.

The neckband of my Kid Hollow Mock Neck sweater is going to have to be redone.

Oh, well.

Casting Around

2009-01-25T23:16:00.007-05:00

For an answer.

The sweater I'm knitting as a Christmas I.O.U. for my tall-elegant-mom is coming along nicely. All the pieces are done and ready to assemble. I'm using the same Kid Hollow Mock Neck pattern that I just finished making for myself in a different colorway. It's knitted in the Kid Hollow Farm brushed mohair that's just handfuls of soft fluff; it feels so light it might float away.

I made a few changes in the pattern this time to suit my mom's more tailored style. I changed the let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may rolled neck and hem to a ribbed edging, and made it a crew-neck rather than a mock-neck.

Everything was going great as I got the shoulder seams done, picked up the stitches and knitted the neckband. Everything, that is, until I tried experimentally pulling it over my head. Not a chance. No how, no way. It was not going over my head, and that was final.

It was my fault, of course. There is nothing wrong with Puff the Magic Rabbit's nice pattern. I had gone down in needle size for a neat ribbing but hadn't thought very hard about what it would do to the circumference of the neck opening. And I'd just bound off normally, without making much special effort for looseness or elasticity, other than going back up one needle size.

So I just admonished myself inwardly and set to undoing the bind-off. Then I bound off again, taking elaborate care to handle it loosely and not pull anything up too firmly. It worked, and I got a looser edge. This time, it went over my head without a problem, and I even tried it on world's-most-patient-husband for good measure.

So everything's fine, right? Well, there's just one thing. When the neckline is relaxed, that loose edge looks a little messier than I'd like. If the sweater were for me, I could shrug it off. But since it's a gift, it troubles me. I want it to be as nice as I can make it.

What do you think? Is this neckline noticeably messy? It seems to me I have these choices:

-- Try to bind off again, slightly less loosely to make it look neater. (But this risks making it too small again.)
-- Rip out the whole neckband and knit it again on larger needles. (That's not a prospect I relish, though I'll do it if I have to. But then would the ribbing itself come out looking too loose and open?)
-- Look for some extra-stretchy bind-off method and re-do it.
-- Leave it as it is; grin and make the best of it.

Not being quite ready just yet for the last of these options, I've spent a little time hunting around for stretchy bind-off techniques. Binding off loosely seems to be an issue of great concern for knitters of lace and toe-up socks. I've found several techniques and have tried out a few on my swatch. But if you look past the flim-flam (all that together-knitting, through-back-looping, left needle-returning, pulling-or-slipping-without-dropping), most of the techniques seem to boil down to one of two things: making the loops bigger or adding extra stitches between the original ones in the bind-off row. The former is what I've got already -- albeit with loops not necessarily of such nice uniform size -- and the latter can cause an edge that buckles when unstretched.

I haven't given up yet. Weebleknits has a page here that describes some interesting ideas that I may need to try out on my swatch. And I still haven't consulted Montse Stanley's comprehensive tome. The woman has 40 cast-on methods in that book; she must have an answer! (Perhaps I should have gone there first, but, honestly, her prose is a little stuffy.)

Oh, wherefore art thou, cast-off of my dreams?

New Beginnings

2009-01-20T22:09:00.009-05:00

Today, I stayed home from work to glue myself to the TV and watch, raptly, our democracy go through its quadrennial renewal, the peaceful periodic handover that has endured for the last two centuries. It is a wonderful thing. First, the solemnity of the ceremony, in the open, witnessed by cheering multitudes. Then the progress toward the White House and reviewing stand. Along the way, I am struck anew by the beauty of our nation's capital. Then the inaugural parade, a glorious jumble of brass bands, floats, and groups from every corner of the land.

I have to admit to some momentary frustration with the news announcers, breaking in, overshadowing, congratulating themselves on their technical trickery, looking for interest in bars and in crowds and in metro stations, in on-the-street interviews and in studio experts, pushing to the background the proud procession of our national celebration. The parade participants have traveled and waited eagerly, nervously, to represent their states in the nation's eye until, faces chapped from the cold, they have their chance to march by and salute our new President. They have donned their best; fine uniforms, fancy hats, sashes, plumes. They have practiced and polished their instruments and routines. Many have carefully chosen musical pieces symbolic of their states, some traditional, some waggish. Proud friends and relatives are no doubt watching the screen carefully for when they will pass by and be briefly visible back home, to clap and cheer. But in many cases, on the major TV channels, for naught.

Thankfully, I found the broadcast on C-Span, the public service cable channel, where the parade was shown unadulterated. Where there were no cutaways to spoil their big moments. Where I could revel in the whole untidy variety of high-school bands and flag twirlers, joyous dancing and high-stepping. Horseback riders, lion-dancers, mariachi music, Native Americans, bagpipes, and military units. I was touched when one marching band, in front of the reviewing stand, lowered their instruments and raised their voices in a patriotic hymn. And I was bemused by the Lawn Rangers, a unit of masked men pushing lawnmowers, who it seems, oddly, have been fixtures in past inaugural parades. I enjoyed it right up to the last moment, when a lunar vehicle representing NASA rolled down the parade route. Seriously, how could you beat that?

Closer to home, a day of TV-watching is of course wonderful for knitting. I've now finished all the main pieces for my tall-elegant- mom's Christmas I.O.U. sweater. The Kid Hollow brushed mohair yarn continues to be lovely stuff. I'm enjoying its soft halo more, as I've adjusted to working with the long fluff with neither entanglement nor over-carefulness. It now needs only finishing and a neckband, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes together.

Still, in the spirit of new beginnings, I couldn't resist starting the swatching for my dad's I.O.U. Christmas sweater as well.

Having them both going makes for a nice variety. :)

A Good Night for Wool and Staying Indoors

2009-01-17T23:23:00.006-05:00

Last night, the temperature headed emphatically downward around here, with bitter winds blowing. By the time I turned in for the night, we had made it below 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12.5 Celsius) and it still hadn't hit bottom.

This may be nothing remarkable for anyone who lives in more northerly climes. But here in the mid-Atlantic, where we only see single-digit temperatures a few times each winter, we watch in chilly amazement.

I went to work yesterday bundled in wool and silk long-johns under my wool slacks, and I was glad to have them. And in the evening when I got home, I tucked myself on the couch with a lapful of warm, fluffy, silky kid mohair to work on, never to budge for the rest of the night. Yes, it was a good night to be wearing wool, and a good night to be knitting with it. Of course, it's not so bad for me in my nice heated house; I wonder how the creatures out in the woods keep warm?

I was working on the Christmas I.O.U. sweater for my tall-elegant-mom, with the light gray hand-dyed brushed kid mohair from Kid Hollow Farm. I'm using the same Kid Hollow Mock Neck sweater pattern as in the sweater I just completed in a different colorway of the same yarn for me, just making some small changes. It's coming along nicely. By last night, I had the back and front done, and a start on the first sleeve. It's going a lot faster than the last sweater, the one for myself. One reason is that I've been concentrating on just one project, instead of going back and forth among several things. But it also helps to make sure I get close to gauge from the beginning, instead of knitting the whole sweater once for practice and then having to rip the whole thing out and redo it! So, this time, the sweater seems to be progressing much more smoothly.

And it's a good thing, too, because the yarn for my Dad's Christmas I.O.U. sweater has arrived.

I've got some serious swatching to do!

Married Life

2009-01-14T23:58:00.004-05:00

Work has been pressing most inconveniently this week. I must figure out a way for knitting to take precedence. I'll just add that to my to-do list.

But I do have something to show you.

Wait... there! Could it be?

I think I spotted something among the presents.

I think it might be.

Let's just take a closer look. Yes, it is! It's the Eyelet Shruglet!

It's a pretty little thing knitted in alpaca, silk, and merino, as a just-in-case bit of warmth for a wedding day. It turned out not to be needed over a gown (after all, what bride is going to feel the cold, in all the excitement?)

But it has a life after the wedding layered over a long-sleeved tee -- hooray!

And I think it looks awfully cute on her, too.

Wishful Thinking and I.O.U.s

2009-01-08T22:14:00.006-05:00

Well, speaking as someone whose summer tank tops are finished not a minute later than mid-winter, I could hardly have expected my Christmas preparations to be done in December, could I? Or January either, I'll warrant. There was a fair amount of knitting-good-wishes-exceeding-grasp in this household this year. But when the knitting needles won't fly any faster, I can still lob a well-placed I.O.U.

There's the yarn-destined-to-be-a-sock I.O.U., for my brother. This is Trekking XXL, in a nice varied brown, though it looks mysteriously orange in this photo. This I.O.U. was boxed and wrapped like a regular gift, instead of a gift-to-be. Though I'd still rather have had the socks made in time for Christmas, at least this way, I can ask him if he'd prefer them to be plainer or fancier.

There's the dolled-up-in-a-pretty-gift-bag I.O.U. Here it's gaping open so you can see inside, but by Christmas morning it looked prettier, all tucked in and dressed up with tissue paper. The yarn is another big skein of Kid Hollow brushed kid mohair, in silvery gray, due to metamorphose before long into a sweater for my tall-elegant-mom.

Then there's the present-that-weighs-so-much-nobody-could-ever-guess-it-was-yarn-related I.O.U. This one is a sort of pick-your-own exercise for my Dad. For him, I wrapped up a few knitting pattern books. Not that he would want knitting books, of course! No, they were for browsing, so he could show me what sort of a sweater he'd like me to knit for him.

In fact, I feel I've been sadly remiss over the years in knitting sweaters for others. I did once knit a sweater for my Mom. It was an argyle -- a monumental undertaking for me back then. But it's been a very long time. And I've never knit one for my Dad at all. So it's about time! This will be the Christmas of hand-knit his-and-hers sweaters. I expect they'll be ready by about the 4th of July.

So those are the I.O.U.s. And the wishful thinking? That would be this tidy little pile of skeins. It's the Dorset wool that I dyed with Kool-Aid last summer and just finished spinning on December 21. At that point, I had to face facts. I hadn't even figured out exactly what I wanted to make with it, and it surely wasn't going to magically transform itself into who-knows-what lovingly knitted gift in the four days remaining before Christmas. Especially with everything else that needed to be done in every waking minute. So, for the time being, it's still sitting here cute as a button, waiting its turn.

So, here's the view these days looking down from my forehead -- where the camera was steadied -- into my lap. As soon as I finished the Kid Hollow mock-neck sweater for myself, I started on a gray one for my Mom. Incidentally, also as soon as I finished it, I wore it to work. The next day, my friend bought a knitting book of patterns for mohair sweaters. Coincidence? Sure. :)

And now, I'd better get back to knitting!

Launching the New Year

2009-01-04T22:30:00.010-05:00

With two finished objects to make it even happier.

Happy New Year, everyone! The holidays have rushed onward until, pouf, here I am in the New Year without even having observed all the proprieties. I have an appointment for a little make-up session with some oysters and some black-eyed peas that are going to need to be attended to if I'm to have a lucky year. So I haven't started the new year properly yet, but I'll just ignore that for the moment and act as if I have.

So, herewith, my resolutions for 2009:
-- Write thank-you notes promptly
-- Get to bed earlier for more sleep
-- Knit more yarn than I buy
-- Don't forget the eggnog.

That knitting one shouldn't be all that difficult, since I have piles and piles of beautiful yarns and spinning fiber already here in the house awaiting my pleasure. But, then, that's what I thought last year, too. Hmmm, we'll see.

To celebrate the old year's passing, here's my last finished object of 2008! The day after Christmas, when the rush to knit presents and cook and wrap and decorate and celebrate was over, I settled down to knit again. I got out a pair of half-done socks and knitted with zeal, with abandon, around and around, until they were finished. And, after knitting for others for the last few weeks, I greedily knit these just for me. :)

They're plain stockinette socks, but the yarn makes them fun. It's Colinette's Jitterbug sock yarn, in the Kingfisher colorway. I love the way a black background brightens other colors, and I thoroughly enjoyed these.

They're knitted on US size 1 (2.25 mm) needles, and mostly just lazily following the simple sock pattern on the yarn label. I did depart from it by replacing the smooth stockinette on the heel flap with a slipstitched heel stitch for variety. The yarn was a pleasure to knit with, soft bouncy merino, with those ever-entertaining Colinette color changes. (One minor note of caution, though: the skein does not have a huge amount of yardage, so if you're knitting for a larger size, you may need two.)

I also recently got around to buying a couple of pairs of shoes sized with enough room for socks, so I'm finally getting in the habit of wearing my handknit socks, not just admiring them in the drawer. I'm looking forward to adding these to the rotation.

And, even better, here's the first finished object of 2009, the Kid Hollow Brushed Mock-Neck Sweater, Hooray!

This is knitted of brushed kid mohair yarn from Kid Hollow Farm in Free Union, Virginia. It was a gorgeous hand-dyed skein that I bought at this year's Fall Fiber Festival, in Montpelier, Virginia. The yarn is so light and fluffy that the whole sweater only takes one skein of 8 ounces or so. (And I bought another skein that will soon be heading for mock-neck-sweater-hood, too.)

The design is by Puff the Magic Rabbit, who raises angora goats (more mohair yarn!) and angora rabbits in the Virgina countryside and who is lovely and encouraging. No wonder her goaties love her. :)

The fuzzy mohair is wonderfully warm and comforting to wear, and just look at those gorgeous colors!

The sweater is knit at a worsted weight. But I actually had to go down a size -- unusual for me -- to a US size 6 (4 mm) needle to stay close to gauge. Something about knitting with this delicate fluffy yarn seems to make me drift into holding it more and more loosely, treating it gently and solicitously. There, dear, can I plump your pillow for you? Bring you a cup of tea?

So, it still sprawled a bit, but it's a great sweater. It's a little loose and slouchy, and it has a relaxed slouchy neckline to match. (World's-most-patient-husband calls it my "hippie shirt.") I find I'm already reaching for it a lot. It looks terrific with jeans, and I have a feeling it might dress up well, too, with the right outfit. I'm pretty pleased with it. :)

I painted my toenails purple in its honor.

Hope your New Year has had as good a start!

A Handspun Gift

2008-12-30T22:50:00.010-05:00

I've come a long way from my earliest tentative days of fashioning wiry, scratchy, overtwisted yarn (albeit with a great sense of excitement!) My spinning has come along to the point that I feel comfortable enough to give something made of my hand-spun yarn, at least to an indulgent and tolerant family member.

At the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival this fall, among other treasures, I picked up this little ball of hand-dyed Romney roving from Catoctin Creek Farm, near Frederick, Maryland. (I have to think kindly of people who care enough about a humble ball of roving to tie it up with a satin ribbon.) I hadn't spun wool from Romney sheep before, and the colors seemed bright and kid-friendly. I thought it would be fun and might make a cute scarf.

Spinning the Romney wool was a real pleasure. It's a long-wool breed, with long, luscious fibers that drafted out so smoothly that they made me feel like a more skillful spinner than I really am. It felt cottony and flossy. The preparation was immaculate, a very welcome change from some of the fiber I'd been working with over the summer.

For spinners, who may care about such things, I split the rope of hand-dyed roving lengthwise and spun the two halves onto separate bobbins. The plan was for the color changes to occur in more or less the same place so that the colors would stay mostly pure when the strands from the two bobbins were plied together.

When I began plying, though, I found that either my splitting or my spinning was uneven enough that the results were unpredictable. The colors blended and softened and became surprisingly complex. It was prettier and paler than I'd imagined. The colors began to remind me of my grandma, who's always looked pretty in pastels. I started thinking that just maybe I could make something for her.

This was no small matter. I'd only knitted from my hand-spun twice before. Of my earlier efforts, another relative had said, "hmmm, it's kind of scratchy." That hadn't exactly encouraged me to think of it as gift-worthy. (And I have to admit that, while I do love the two hand-spun sweaters I've made thus far, I wouldn't be anxious to wear them against bare skin.)

I was reading something at the time that gave me a notion that fulling the yarn might make it a bit softer and woollier, so I decided to give that a try. When all the yarn was spun, after consulting my spinning books, I took my latest fiber processing tool in hand. (Yes, a plunger.) Ignoring the yarn's cries of protest, I shocked it cruelly in hot water and cold, and commenced to beating it senseless.

I didn't like doing it, but it was for its own good. I also learned a couple of lessons myself. One is that enthusiastically agitating yarn in a large sink of water is a very splashy operation. Less water next time. Or a raincoat.

Despite a certain skepticism I still harbored about the wisdom of all this, the yarn survived and even bloomed. The strands lightened and loosened, but bound together more as a whole, and developed a fuzzy halo. I think this may have been an experiment worth repeating.

I worked out a design for a scarf and got to knitting, thinking of my grandma all the while.

It was entrancing, watching the colors shift and merge as the scarf grew from the needles. And nothing really repeated. The color patterns were unique the whole way through. It was a lovely experience, from one end to the other.

I'm still worried about whether it's soft enough. For myself, I wouldn't mind a slight cold-weather scratchiness at all. But this is for my grandma. I think I spun it as softly as Romney can be spun, with low twist and plenty of air. But it is simply a coarser wool than the aristocrats of the woolly world, like merino. So I wish I could give it that buttery feeling, but it has its own nature. If it's not perfectly comfortable against her skin, maybe she can wear it outside a coat collar. Or not wear it at all, and just show it to her friends, and say "my granddaughter made this."

So I wrapped it up tenderly and shipped it off for Christmas, hoping that it will be nice enough. At least she will know that I wanted to make her something that I spun myself.

I hope she likes it.

Under the Christmas Tree

2008-12-28T21:51:00.007-05:00

I hope everyone has had a warm and lovely holiday with family and friends. I know I have!

It was a rush to the finish, but I managed to get things together in time for a Christmas with most of the trimmings. Oh, some of the decorations are still in their boxes, but we had a beautiful tree, Christmas lights, wrapped presents, a bit of Christmas baking, good meals, happy times, and music.

And a few little knitted gifts that made it by the skin of their teeth.

There were some knitted sweater ornaments for family Christmas trees. After all, a tree isn't really properly dressed until it has a sweater!

These little sweaters were adapted from the adorable Egg Cozies designed by Kristin Nicholas in Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting book. The yarn is bits and pieces of leftovers, in various weights, from bygone sweaters and baby booties. The pattern is very cute and makes a good jumping-off point. I made my own personalizations, of course. I also thought, though, that the arms were hugely extra-long as written in the pattern, so I shortened them quite a bit.

There was also this little number, the Coffee Mitt from Judith Durant's One-Skein Wonders book, designed by Leanne Walker of KnitWit Yarn Shop in Portland, Maine. It's knitted in some Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride I had around the house. It's a yarn I really love, a single ply of wool and mohair. Some people seem to think of it more as a felting yarn, but I think it makes a beautiful sweater.

The Coffee Mitt looks like a homely little item -- it drew a chuckle when the present was opened -- but it really comes into its own when stretched around a tall black coffee or grandé latté. Then the handsome stitch pattern shows, the insulating wool and mohair feel cool and comfortable to the hand, and the world is spared another discarded cardboard sleeve.

There was a warm scarf in wonderfully soft Malabrigo Worsted baby merino.

This is the Cross-Stitch Scarf designed by Margaret Halas, from the Designer One-Skein Wonders book. This scarf has an interesting texture that has always caught my eye every time I've leafed through the book.

The one in the book is done with Manos del Uruguay yarn, a heavy worsted weight that knits in a larger gauge, but, like the Manos, Malabrigo is a single-ply kettle-dyed yarn, so I was pretty sure it would work well in the pattern with just an adjustment in the number of stitches.

The picture in the book shows off a dappled watercolor-like blended colorway, so the effect is different. I used the Malabrigo "saphire magenta" colorway 239. Its more contrasting and abrupt color changes give the scarf more of a sporty look.

I think it's quite pretty, and I was happy to see that the colors seem to suit the family member it was made for.

There was one more, of handspun, that I'll tell you about in the next post. I wish there could have been more, but I was really skating on the edge and lucky to get this much done.

And I was able to bestow the beautiful airy Cherry Leaf Shoulder Shawl, in Malabrigo laceweight edged with seed beads, on my tall elegant mom, who couldn't have been more thrilled.

And so here I am, moderately frazzled but now relaxed and happy. It's been a jolly good Christmas.

On Kool-Aid, On Dye-Pot, On Spinner and Twister!

2008-12-17T23:33:00.005-05:00

On Foolish, on Headstrong, and Too-Optimistic!

Or, how the time does fly when it gets to be December.

This year I decided, with just a twinge of wistfulness, that I would not try to knit any Christmas presents. I didn't want to put myself under a lot of extra pressure in a season that's bustling with so many pleasant, but time-consuming, tasks as it is. This decision felt strangely familiar.

Right around Thanksgiving, though, I started getting urges. If I didn't have time to wrap my loved ones in hand-knits, maybe I could just knit a little token offering here and there. That, too, felt strangely familiar.

I begin to sense a pattern.

There have been other years when I sensibly decided I didn't have time to knit any presents. And in those years, too, a little knitting crept back into my Christmas ambitions. Or maybe a little crocheting. One year, I remember deciding to use up some yarn that, though well-loved, had been hanging around the place for a very long time, as "ribbon" to wrap presents with. First, though, without really meaning to, I crocheted it all. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Some single-crocheted, some double, some scalloped. Don't people do that?

So, late in the game, my mind started bubbling over with all the small things I could be making. And then I thought, wouldn't it be nice to make something for someone out of my handspun, now that I can produce respectable yarn?

I had some wool I thought might make something cute. Remember those Dorset locks I dyed with Kool-Aid? When last heard from, they were spread out all over the kitchen table, tickling me with their cheerful colors.

Over the summer I was gradually working my way through hand-carding it all. It took a while; at my level of hard-carding experience, 10 ounces is a lot of wool!

But it made the cutest little balls of roving. :) Needing to reclaim my table, though, I'd put the rest of the uncarded wool away, to work on other things for just a little while. I blinked, and here it was December. Well, there wasn't that much left to do. Wouldn't it be fun if there might be a little Christmas present that could come out of it? Surely it would be just the work of a moment to finish the carding. And spinning it up wouldn't take long at all, would it?

Well, maybe it would. I spun away, enjoying myself immensely, and thinking diligently all the while about how to organize the other tasks, the shopping, the wrapping, the decorating, so that I could get it all done in time without any last-minute panic. But..... I might have been a little too optimistic. I have to admit to myself that there may not be a Christmas present in it. At least not this year.

I have made an enjoyable little pile of candy-colored skeins, but with just eight days left until Christmas I now must get serious. The malls and the wrapping paper and the ornaments await.

But I might manage to knit one or two little things. :)

Summer's Sun Shines on Me Still

2008-12-06T20:43:00.013-05:00

Or so it would seem.

After all, apparently it's tank top season. Oh, the sunshine may be watery and weak on this cold December day. And there may be a dusty trace of snow outside. But that's just quibbling. In here where it's warm, the Crossed Laces tank top is done!

The poor thing had languished when I, an inconstant lover, dallied for a while with new fiber festival yarn. Back in August, I wanted nothing more than to fly through this project and wear it in the last weeks of the summer. But I found myself stymied by a back-ordered wait for the yarn in the Toscana colorway that so entranced me. By the time the yarn arrived in September, I loved it still, but the urgent wish to knit it was tempered by the likelihood that I would have to wait through the long months until spring before I could wear the result.

I forged ahead anyway, my ardor only slightly cooled. I knitted away and watched the pretty colors with delight. But then our relationship reached that ticklish stage of maturity when the carefree joy of knitting gives way to the workaday responsibility of seaming and picking up stitches for neck and armbands. And that's just when the fiber festivals came along, where my wandering eye lit upon other beautiful yarns, and I fell for the cheap lure of casting on another project for a new fling.

Still, the day came when I was ready to return to Toscana. There really wasn't so much work left to do. It just took a little commitment. I sewed in the last of the loose ends in the waning days of November.

And that nonsense about not wearing it until next spring. Am I so easily discouraged? No, I am not.

How could I have been so blind? All it took was a little creative thinking. A high jewel neck and a jacket over the top are perfectly sufficient to hide a thin long-sleeved knit top layered underneath for warmth. Secretly long-johned, I'll be able to wear it no matter the weather.

I wore my new top to work this week, eager to share with the world a love that's true.

The pattern is the Crossed Laces tank, designed by Beth Whiteside, from the Summer 2008 issue of Knitter's magazine. I knit it in the yarn called for, Colinette's cotton tape yarn, Wigwam. It's an interesting yarn, with cotton's weight and drape and with added stretchiness from the knitted structure of the tape. It feels to me a bit like knitting with rolled-up strips of t-shirt jersey. I went up a notch on needle size to get gauge, as I often do, and ended up with US size 11 (8.0 mm).

It's a fairly simple design. The tank is done in twisted stockinette stitch for an interesting all-over texture, but mostly it just stands aside and lets those glorious Colinette colors shine forth. And, after knitting it once before in the Pharaoh colorway, I could attest from experience that it's a flattering top that hangs beautifully. I chose to knit it with a couple of inches of negative ease, and that counters the weight of the yarn with just a slight figure-skimming cling.

I knit it this time in Toscana, the same colorway photographed in the magazine, which was what drew my eye so compellingly in the first place.

I don't know what it is. There's just something irresistibly appealing to me about this particular combination of colors, like a green apple with a spreading pink blush.

I only know that it makes me happy. I don't have to know why.

Blessings Instead of Sheep

2008-12-01T20:23:00.007-05:00

Judging from the sympathetic responses, my last post must have sounded pretty pathetic. Do not be deceived. Despite the occasional momentary fit of frustration, it's not that dire. I've got it pretty good and well I know it.

I have a rewarding job and a comfortable home. We have plenty of everything to our needs.

I have a loving family who were happy to drop everything and rush over for Thanksgiving together, even if my plans emerged a little late. I've had a good meal and stuffed myself like a toad into somnolence.

I've had another visit from a favorite extended family member. Doesn't she look cozy in her quilted bed and striped sweater? (But a commercial sweater? What kind of auntie is that, not to knit her one!)

I have the leisure to enjoy this favorite hobby that threatens, more and more, to take over everything, if not subjected to some sort of discipline. I have an indulgent husband, who's been remarkably tolerant as knitting and spinning supplies and paraphernalia creep in and make ever-larger encampments here and there around our living quarters.

I have an abundance of yarn and spinning fiber awaiting my whim, with visions of the possibilities of all the projects it will become.

I've got all the pieces re-knit for my kid mohair pullover, which now awaits only its collar and seams. Oh, I may have carped about all the ripping out, but, really, how bad could it be to be elbow-deep in these soft billows of mohair a while longer?

(And dear Puff-the-Magic-Rabbit, if you're listening, do not feel guilty! If I should be silly enough to knit my way blithely through your whole sweater pattern before measuring the result, that's hardly any fault of your favorite yarn or you!)

If I've heedlessly knit onward without checking gauge often enough... If I've preferred to stay in some happy knitting fugue state (A finished row -- oh look, how pretty! Another row -- oh look, how pretty!) ... until I finally realize that I'll have to rip it out and do it all over again, well... That just means I'll be enjoying all that entertainment for twice as long. And with the anticipation of a beautiful sweater at the end. If that's my biggest problem, then I'm just not doing too badly.

And on top of it all, it seems I've just won a lovely yarn prize, after entering a drawing by showing a photo of a mattress-stitched seam, on Susan's blog, I'm Knitting As Fast As I Can! Thanks, Susan!

So, though I may once in a while look for some friendly commiseration, it's all in good fun. I actually have a very long list of things to be grateful for. In the words half a century ago of Irving Berlin, if I'm worried and I can't sleep, I'll count my blessings instead of sheep.

And I'll fall asleep counting my blessings.

A Puny Little Swatch is No-One's Friend

2008-11-24T22:30:00.007-05:00

The fiber festivals were awfully fun this year. I came home all in a lather to sink my hands into this luscious brushed mohair. I had bought the pattern right along with the yarn, so, for once, there was no plumbing of the archives and agonizing over what to make with it.

I couldn't wait. I just wound it up into a ball and got right to work, prattling about its fuzzy softness to anyone who would listen.

Of course I knit a little swatch and got it over with. It's the done thing, after all, isn't it? Now, granted, it was a smallish swatch. And I didn't take it terribly seriously. I spread it on my knee, but I didn't pin it out to measure. And I certainly didn't launder it. It couldn't be that critical.

I dived right in, beginning hem-upwards on the back of the sweater, knitting eagerly, watching the colors flicker as they pulled out of the ball and worked into the rows. When I had an inch or two done, I eyed it critically. It looked a little wide. Spreading it carefully over both needles, so it could extend to its full width, I measured. It was a little wide. Hmmm. Well, did I want it to be big and loose? No, I really didn't. I wanted this one to be comfortable, but neatly fitted, not over-sized. So, grumbling mildly, I ripped it out, and started again, a size smaller this time. At least I felt clever for having double-checked before losing too much time.

Then I knitted away contentedly for weeks. Miles of stockinette can be very pleasant for me sometimes. It's nice to just enjoy making the stitches, pulling them through, feeling the yarn, admiring the piece as it grows, and chatting or watching TV or just relaxing all the while.

And, really, most fancy stitchwork would be lost in the fuzz and the color changes of this yarn. It really just needs to speak for itself. The sweater pattern, a simple mock turtleneck, is one designed specifically for this yarn, and wisely follows that philosophy.

I handled the yarn delicately. It was, after all, from a baby goat and surely deserved a little extra care. So, after a while, here I was, with all the pieces done and ready to assemble. A soft, fuzzy kid mohair sweater in beautiful colors that I was looking forward to wearing. The only thing was, it looked kind of... wide.

I measured. It was kind of wide. I hadn't gotten gauge. It was probably from babying it, not wanting to pull the loops tight. But come on, I had swatched! I had measured! I had started over and adjusted the size I was knitting! Nevertheless, there it was, stretching out widely in front of me. Where's the justice in that?

It just lay there blinking at me, caring naught for all my protestations. Still, wanting my neatly fitted sweater, I decided there was nothing for it but to rip it out. The whole thing. The basically completed sweater.

Sigh. It was a test of my character, that's what it was. And in mohair, too. I think I mentioned before that ripping out mohair takes extra patience. Oh, yes, indeed it does. Ripping out knitting should be something like stripping off a Band-Aid. Painful, but over quickly, so you can put it behind you. Not with mohair. Oh, no. Not only does it have to be done slowly and gently, but it gets downright argumentative and stubborn at times.

I'm an expert at ripping out knitted mohair, now. I've had lots of practice. I don't want to think about how long it took. I did it in stages, ripping out a piece, and starting to re-knit it on smaller needles before mustering the will to rip out another piece. I mostly avoided looking at clocks while all this was going on. I did get curious, though, before it was all over, and noted the time for the last piece. It took me two full hours to unravel just the back of the sweater.

I wish I could say that I remained serene through this whole process, doing what was necessary without letting it get to me. But I can't. I have to admit that, at times, I got frustrated with teasing apart the little hairs until they would let go. Once or twice, defeated, I actually yanked hard, hoping to break the thread. But it was too strong for that, though the tangles eventually did give way and let me pass.

It made me glum for a while, and I didn't really want to talk about it. But that chapter is over. The re-knitting is well underway. Once again, I'm enjoying the simple pleasures of endless stockinette, this time, I hope, in the right needle size. It does seem better. With the smaller needles, it has some life and body that it lacked. Before, it was a little slack and sprawling. And it seems to be coming out more my size.

This time, it doesn't matter. Whatever size this sweater turns out, I'm wearing it. But I may be a little more particular next time about the size of my swatch!