Ready

Miraculously I don't seem to have that many active projects (though I suppose Ravelry would disagree...drat that evidence ;) ) Okay - in all fairness, I do not have any socks currently on the needles. In order to remedy that situation, I wound up this handspun and am ready to get to work! No particular pattern in mind, other than something that I hope will really show off the handspun nicely.

I recently received a couple books that might help with the inspiration and/or knitting process since I don't knit socks quite frequently enough to have heel turns memorized. The first is:

Toe-Up Socks for Every Body - this is the sequel to Wendy's original book: Socks from the Toe Up. While the socks in this book are really quite lovely - I especially like the wonderfully textured and patterened ones - none of them are really suitable for this handspun. I will likely use the book more for reference when it comes to knitting the gusset and turning the heel on these socks....but I'll certainly be back browsing this book when I have more subtly varigated yarn on hand for cast on. This book, unlike the first, is definitely more pattern focused rather than technique focused - though there are useful non-sock-specific notes included in each section. The patterns each feature a full page photo of the finished project and are charted appropriately. While there are a number of very feminine sock patterns included, there are also a number of patterns that will suit men just as well as women, in addition to some that are geared more towards children. In addition to the cabled and lace socks, there are also a number of patterns that feature colorwork - two of which I'm thinking of casting on for (the Norgwegian Rose socks and the Fair Isle socks).

The second book I received:
The Sock Knitter's Workshop - is definitely more of a technique book, featuring a number of techniques for different cast ons, cuffs, heels and toes. This book seems to focus on cuff down socks, though it does have a section dedicated to toe-up socks and modified instructions for various toe-up heel turns. In addition to the various techniques, there are tips to guide the knitter in selecting a specific style of heel or toe treatment for sock knitting given the intended wearer's foot peculiarities.

The book is full color and includes lots of clear photographs illustrating technique and showing the knitting in progress. The book finishes with a number of patterns varying in difficulty from beginner to advanced (all cuff down) - each pattern mentions which techniques it employs (in addition to providing a convenient page number reference). Although I have a marked preference for knitting my socks toe-up, this book looks like it will be a valuable sock knitting reference.

new sweater?

Well...not for a while anyway....but that is the plan for all of this loveliness:

it will be a color progression sweater - likely a cardigan, since I seem partial to those, and probably something simple, all the better to showcase this stunning yarn. It's a sweatersworth, spun for me by Kiki as a gift. I am mulling over the potential projects but will likely not get started on this until it starts cooling down again. This is a blend of Turtle Cove and Outlaw colorways from Lisa over at Becoming Art. She dyes beautifully (and I'm addicted, which is one reason I haven't felt terribly compelled to fire up my own dye pots of late)

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.

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??

Christmas Knitting....

After having spun up those two yarns recently, I had to wind em up into yarncakes...1) so I could see how they looked in cake form and 2) so that I could start knitting with them immediately! Yes, they've been transformed...but I can't say anything more until after the holidays ;)

Periwinkle.

or verbena. or hydrangea....

This is a wheel blended navajo plied yarn - just over 8 ounces :) It's a blend of BFL and superwash merino that I had sitting around in the stash - there was no reasoning for the blending that way other than the colors were similar enough to allow for nice coloring, and something that I could add to the other navjao plied yarn to get enough yardage for a semi-secret project.

This time round, I made a conscious effort to put enough twist into the singles to prevent breaking on plying, and it seems to have gone much better. I'm loving the bounce and squoosh factor of the navajo plied yarn....tho I need to start churning off finer singles if I want the finished yarn to be less chunky!

Moth...

...is not necessarily a four-letter word ;)


While this moth did bring a smidge of aggravation (eep - running out of yarn!), it was well worth all the effort at the end. Details and big photos and musings can all be found on the finished objects blog.

Corona, Anyone?

No, not *that* kind of Corona!


Sorry for the slightly blurry photo - apparently the Macro setting wasn't working quite right on the camera. This would be one of the numerous scallopy Coronas on the edge of the Wing of the Moth Shawl. I do believe in aggressively blocking my lace...so each of the Coronas got 8 pins each to make sure they were nice and round :) I'm looking forward to the unpinning. All told, I probably used a box and a half (that would be about 150) T-pins to get the job done...

And out of the extra yarn I spun, this is all that was left. Notice how you can just start seeing thru the "wall" of the yarncake. Keeping an eye on the quickly collapsing yarn cake during the bind-off process was making me think that I was going to be needing a Corona...that's for sure!

Knitting on Empty.

Or close to it anyway.


So I'm knitting along, keeping a close eye on my yarn, and I find myself 3 rows into the corona edging on the wing of the moth....and I'm going to run out. There is no way I'm going to make it without having to spin more yarn....

*sigh* I swore I had enough yardage...but apparently not. I guess I need to haul out the fiber and do a bit more hand blending. Thank goodness it's my own blend and I have more fiber on hand! I've pulled together about another ounce or so of fiber - I just need to spin it up - I may have a bit of a WPI matching issue, but that's alright, seeing as the yarn is thick and thin anyhow - ah the charm of handspun :)

Quality Time

I finally had some quality time with my spinning wheel this weekend - First I churned off some merino singles for the shop.

Desert Daybreak singles - merino & firestar
I keep meaning to increase the stock on hand of handspun singles in my own blended colorways, but somehow I keep getting distracted. It seems it doesn't take much to distract me these days - or ever for that matter :P I don't think I'd ever lack things to keep me entertained if I was able to retire from my day job immediately!

After spinning for the shop, I spent some more quality time with the wheel to churn off some fine merino angora singles for my Spun Stitches project.

The 2nd skein of yarn is now finished to join the first :) I now have 6.8 ounces of yarn, approximately 950 yards with which I plan to cast on for the Wing o the Moth. You can just see the sparkle of angelina fiber in the photo - it's terribly difficult to capture, I'm hoping I manage to capture it in the finished work. The difference you see in the yarns is due to the fact that the smaller skein is spun from a carded batt, while the larger skein was spun from the exact same fibers handblended at the wheel. The plan is to knit the beginning of the shawl with the more uniform skein, leaving the more variegated skein for the rest of the shawl where the color runs will hopefully not detract from the lace.

2/3rds there....

Well, I've slept on it...no $30+ shawl for me, no siree! Instead I had some quality time with my spinning - churned off 4.5 ounces / 608 yards of fine fingering/baby weight yarn...and it's been mumbling about being turned into a Wing o the Moth shawl - I need 300-400 more yards, so it's back to the spinning wheel I go - this time, I'll be spinning off a batt, rather than a bowl of hand blended (no tools used) fibers. If you look really carefully, you might see the sparkle in the yarn - I added sparkly angelina fibers to the yarn as I was spinning it. I'm really eager to get started, but I've decided to use this yarn for the outer portions of the shawl as I suspect it is more variegated in appearance than what I'll be spinning from the batt. I better get to it, if I want to get this thing cast on anytime soon!

Tropical Sea

While I've been taking my hiatus from knitting, I've been spending more time with my spinning.

I've always loved looking at tropical fish, with their bright colors and exotic looks - I think this yarn captures the gorgeous colors of a tropical reef.

A little more info and more photos can be found here.