Flashy Feast

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.