Land of the Giants

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 Little Thrill

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.

Hand-Dipped Tappan Zee

(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. :)

Taking Her Out For A Spin

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.

Itsy Bitsy Things

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?

More Ketchup, Please

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

... 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. :)

Tour de Fleece Wraps Up

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.

Tour de Fleece Time

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. :)

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.

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!

More Snakes (or Noodles)

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!