Fit to be plied.

In more ways than one. I feel like someone has gone and started twisting various strands within my reality - but that is neither here nor there other than it rather delayed my update!

When I left you last, I left you with some rather enticing photographs of my many yards of singles wound onto a book. I should warn you that andean plying this quantity of yarn is not for the faint of heart - it also requires a LOT of patience and care - especially since the singles are still energized. It may be easier to spin from the center and outside of a center pull ball rather than attempt to ply from a bracelet....with all that said, I apparently was not thinking of the potential fiasco that could have been in the making and proceeded anyway.

Here I've carefully transferred the singles to my wrist - this is done by carefully sliding the singles over my hand while ever so carefully working the spatula free of the singles in addition to keeping track of the two free ends. Once the yarn is wrapped, I tied both ends of the yarn to my leader and away we went. It was a bit touch and go a few times, and certainly this was probably not as fast or smooth a ply-job as it would have been had I been plying off a pair of bobbins. There were some times when I thought for sure I would have to break the yarn - there were other times when the singles threatened to snarl into an unruly mess....

It seems my slow and steady approach was to be awarded though:

here is the yarn, freshly washed, whacked and dried. Some areas were not quite as evenly plied - but thus is the nature of handspun.

here is one side, once wound into a skein....

and here it is from the other side.
If you are wondering just how big a skein this is, you can see my fingers peeking out from underneath here.

It is 8 ounces of lovely yarn (~635 yards) - a blend of Targhee and superwash merino wools plus bamboo and nylon fibers. I actually blended two different colorways from Hello Yarn to make this finished skein - Grim (superwash merino, bamboo and nylon) and Garland (targhee). The yarn is semi-fractally spun. First I split each roving half lengthwise. Then I took one half of each and split those lengthwise into eighths. When spinning the singles, I spun the large 2 oz sections first - one after the other, then I finished off the fiber by alternating the smaller pieces from each colorway.

taking a break

...from knitting...

...and based on the date of last publication, from blogging as well :P

In any case, I decided I needed to make some headway on the rather large pile of personal spinning fibers...so I grabbed a couple of bags from HelloYarn and split the fibers up for spinning, aiming for a thinnish single with plans to turn it into a 2-ply. After spinning, the jumbo bobbin was nearly full...and the singles, I thought, were rather lovely.

Normally when I make 2 plies, I wind everything into an andean plying bracelet and ply away until everything is done - I rarely ever split my singles onto two separate bobbins for plying, mostly because 1) I'm lazy and don't plan ahead and 2) I like making sure all of my singles are "consumed" and I honestly don't think I could balance my yardage out on separate bobbins. What I hadn't been thinking of, however, is the fact that I have never gone to the trouble to andean ply quite this much yarn before.

I at least had the foresight to wind onto something other than my hand - thanks to this post from Rosemary Knits that suggested the use of a book for winding on. As I was winding away in preparation, the foolishness of this idea began to sink in.

Behold: over 1200 yards of energized singles wound onto a book, ready to be transferred for plying. The sheer winding on process was enough to trigger some slight muscle soreness in my arms from holding the book out and the winding-on motion.

viewed from another angle, you can see the spatula I stuck into the book to take the place of my finger (had I been winding onto my hand). Clearly, if I had wound all this onto my hand, I would likely no longer have circulation in the hand, much less the finger....

stay tuned to see how it all turned out :)

Lucky me!

I've been meaning to get back to my wheel - it seems I always get distracted - so much to do in my spare time and spinning seems to get bumped easily. I had been contemplating some fiber from my HelloYarn fiber club shipment for a pair of socks for my husband but I'm not terribly good at spinning particularly fine - especially given that socks really should be knit from multi-ply yarn and not singles. It was a bit of a conundrum.

Kiki took pity on me and we arranged for a "spin" trade :) She'd spin my fiber for me, and I'd spin up some of her fiber for her! Her daughter wanted a thick squooshy chunky yarn - that I can do! So I spun this:

Becoming Art Love Love on superwash merino - 4 oz of navajo plied chunky goodness. While Kiki spun up my HelloYarn Loch into some stunning navajo plied fat fingering weight yarn!

I'm pondering sock patterns now, but I suspect the socks will be fairly simple in pattern to fully show off the gorgeousness of this handspun. Do you have any pattern suggestions??

Two Years

in the making....f new finished object is off the needles :) I can't believe it took quite so long. What is it you ask? come over here and find out!

Final bits

I adore this agave - I wish I knew what kind it was, as our large agave in the back yard is sprouting a huge stalk, which generally means it will be dying off soon. I adore this one for its contrasting edge on the foliage - it reminds me of a deckled tear on heavy paper.

I have no idea what these are, but they are tiny, and they make me happy.

These are a non-native cactus species - but the blooms remind me of sea anemones.

This is another look at a different type of agave -I adore the frosty leaves with spine impressions. That does it for the current round of macro photos...tho I have to admit to picking up a Lightscoop recently...and I've been chasing the cats around ever since...you know, to test it out! Photos of actual knitting, coming soon ;)

Macro-Mania continues...

I'm not sure what kind of plant this is with these neat white flowers - I didn't even realize the main stalk was a highway for aphids or some other mite until I was editing the photos!

These are a pair of Julia butterflies perched happily on some sort of sunflower.

Blanket flower - I love how the petals have a flame-like gradation

And lastly some pink owl clover puffballs.

Ode To Spring

continues over the next couple posts :) I hope you're not tired of the flowers yet!

Penstemon - I've always loved these flowers for their orchid-like shapes. This group looks like it's somehow singing :)

Globe mallow come in a variety of colors - though I haven't seen this golden hue in the wild before.

Nor have I ever seen golden hued lilies. The butterflies really liked these - but apparently their proboscis aren't long enough, since every time I caught a butterfly on one of these lovely flowers, it was busy trying to crawl deep inside, presumably to reach the nectar.

Also one of my favorites - Lupine

Spring

is here, and that means wildflowers! Here are some favorite shots I captured while playing with the macro lens. First up, a bloom from a hedgehog cactus - spring is short here in the desert southwest, and this photo actually reminds me of the blazing heat of summer that is on the way.

This is a fairy duster - in some ways it reminds me of the crazy crown of feathers on some birds :)

Claret cup Cactuses are also in bloom.

Pink Globe Mallow - with a bee :) I'm happy to see the bees out and about doing their thing. I worry over the bees what with not yet understood phenomena of Colony Collapse Disorder.

yes....

I chase butterflies...
what of it? :)
I recently had an opportunity to trot out my relatively new macro lens - I had a good time ogling flowers and chasing butterflies...hope you don't mind as the next week or so shall be an ode to spring via photos :)
This lovely is called a Malachite - I don't recall ever seeing a green hued butterfly before. There were also some really stunning lunar moths, but they were not sleeping in convenient places for photographs (apparently moths are indeed nocturnal and once they find a perch for the day, that's where they stay!)

The orange one in this photo is a Julia, the blue/black one is a Swallowtail, but I forget the specific variety.

Hope you all had a good Earth Day!

Spiketastic

Not only are the wildflowers making an appearance, it seems the cactus blooms are well on their way also. These are Strawberry (or Engelmann's) Hedgehog cactus - they are are quite common in the desert area that I live, and are amongst the first cactus to begin blooming in the spring.

I love them for their bright splashes of color - I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the desert blooms come to life over the next month or so!

Mother Nature knows Best

fiddleneck & lupine

or she sure seems to have a good sense of color! The wildflowers are out (and will probably be providing lots of blog fodder for the next month or so....) For some reason (in the desert anyhow), the hillsides seem to get covered with a combination of blue/purple and yellow flowers. These are generally complementary in hue, and as a result I think they photograph wonderfully together.

poppies, lupine and fiddlenecks cover a local hillside

lone poppy over a field of desert bluebells

The flowers that I'm happiest to see out are the poppies....well, the poppies and the lupine - together they just make me smile. Happy Spring, everyone :D

Undulating

Pre-blocking, lace always makes interesting topographies. As usual, I was amazed at how much this grew during the blocking/dressing process. For finished photos, pop over here.

Freshly Ruffled

with beads! Freshly bound off the needles is a brand new red lace shawl (because I apparently am still stuck quite firmly in my red knitting phase) - This was a relatively fast knit, and the edging is really quite lovely. Straight off the needles, the shawl is very ruffly, and looks more shawl-ette sized....it's got a date with the sink and some pins though, so we'll see how it all turns out once everything is all said and done :D

Spring Sprung

With the rather wet winter we've had here, the wildflowers are making a good showing this year :) these happen to be popping up in the neighbor's yard. I have to admit that while weeding, if it looks like a lovely wildflower, I leave it alone, figuring it'll die off soon enough and I'd like to enjoy the evidence of our short spring while I can!

Outdoor Exploration

The weather here is beautiful, though rapidly heating up. We've been spending some time outdoors enjoying the weather...

The Young Miss of the house sits nicely for a Portrait

The cats have been joining us outside while we try to take on weed control (at least picking weeds out of gravel/sand/crushed rock seems to be much easier than pulling em out of dirt like I did while growning up)

"Hey" she says, "You're not going to be happy when you see what Troy is doing"

And just what is our wee one doing?

Indulging. In a dirt/dead leaf bath. And he couldn't possibly be more pleased with himself. Sorry for the slightly blurry photo - he wouldn't stop rolling about. Not even when I tried to clean him off before letting him back into the house. Apparently this cat is statically charged for maximum dirt attraction!

Stay tuned, I've got a project fresh off the needles, with another closing fast :)

Spring surprise

So happy spring is here - and even more excited because we (or rather my husband) had a photo make it onto the cover of the March/April issue of Sierra magazine! Sounds like spring is finally on it's grand tour around the country - so I hope everyone has fantastic weather this weekend to go out and welcome in the First day of Spring in good fashion :) As for me, I've been eyeballing the wildflowers, trying to gauge when the best blooms will be out for a hike further afield.

There is knitting going on, it's just it doesn't look like much in its current state :) and I've been pondering new projects...so stay tuned!

Much Better

There is now a much better photo of that cabled cardigan over on the finished objects blog :) The buttons aren't quite affixed yet - but my designated criteria for completed was to have all knitting completed - I have a hard time pre-selecting buttons and prefer to drag any finished object into the yarn store to compare how different buttons look on the finished item. I plan on sewing the buttons by the weekend...hopefully the weather will stay cool so it can be worn before being packed away for the hot season!

Oh halp!

I'm becoming more and more attracted to these rich berry hues:
That would be Malabrigo Silky Merino - a lovely, shiny dk wt yarn....of all the yarn that has recently arrived, I've just been entranced with this colorway. I swear, I must be getting more girly as I get older.

I adore these little cases and stitch markers. How convenient is it that this one matches that stunning yarn so nicely?

If it isn't readily apparent, the shop has some new arrivals....and I'm currently running a Spring Cleaning sale :) head on over for a look!

Medalist?

So...the closing ceremony happened last Sunday....

...but I've been seriously behind and haven't had the time to write up the full details of my Olympic Knitting....
I am happy to say that I did finish - and before the closing ceremonies too! Though I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted (meaning I was hoping to finish off some other WIPs if there was time once the cardigan was done) :) Full details and photos (though it looks like I'm going to have to retake a whole bunch of them due to poor lighting) over here.