Finito!

I've been working through a little over 2 oz of Baby Lama fiber this month as part of a Ravelry SAL. I had grabbed the fiber kind of randomly when I first started spinning but wasn't sure what I would do with it until this month.

I started by dyeing it up in blue green and gold. The color take up was really interesting - I used more dye than I thought I needed and though it sucked it all up the end colors were much softer than I'd expected. If I dye llama fiber again I'll have to keep this in mind - larger batches want dye swatches and I should expect to use more dye than I would for a comparative sheep wool.


Spinning it was fun - I found myself using a lighter than usual spindle for the single weight (I was probably averaging a light fingering weight single - 16-18WPI). The home-made one in the picture is .9oz and I also spun some of the braid on my new Turkish Delight. Its a pretty long staple fiber, but its got a very loose crimp and is quite slippery. It was a bit of a trick balancing spinning it enough to hold it together without over twisting it and ruining the soft fluffiness.

And oh boy is it sooooooft.... If I had not already promised the finished skein to my Mom I think I might just keep it as a pet. ;)

The finished yarn came out to a light worsted (12WPI avg) thought some of that is because of its furryness (I spun semi-woolen and its got a moderate halo to it). Somehow I managed over 150yds out of the 60g or so of fiber at that weight.

I finished plying it all up last night. Just barely fit it all on the Ashford (I think if I ever take it into my head to ply so much on it again I will invert the arms and use it as a regular bottom whorl - it occured to me as I was cramming the last bit of yarn on there that things might have gone faster that way).

Pretty damn happy with the finished yarn. Its soft and its a pretty even weight. The color spun up really well and I can just picture an airy sort of scarf or cowl made up from it. :)

Bigfoot wuz here

Its getting cold enough here that the house is being frigid at night (that annoying point where its not quite cold enough to justify the heater but too cold to be sitting without sweats and slippers) and so instead of suffering loss of toe sensation like usual this year I decided I was making me some felted slippers.

Now, I've never felted something before and I have assurances that yes, they are supposed to be enormous before they get all shrunk down so I am going to trust that just because these sock things are in fact sized for a Yeti they will (maybe) shrink down to fit my feet when I get around to felting them (sometime around Sunday maybe... or Tuesday if I take advantage of the brief break in gas costs and wander to Louisville on my day off).

Also at the end of last week I got my new Turkish Delight! She is pretty and light and cuddly and I love her very very much.

I was on the waiting list for a Canary or Quilted Maple when I got an email asking if I would like this baby instead. She is made of Oregon Myrtle and weights in at a svelte .9oz. I'm playing around with some Carded Pima at the moment, which is easier to get away with on a drop spindle than expected - though I think after this little sample I'm saving it for a wheel.


And with my trusty Beeswing Nara. They are being good and friendly and only sort of fighting for attention just now. And yeah, that rope of merino just ain't getting smaller lately.

Fun with Swatching

So I've been saying for... oh three or four months now, that I am going to attempt a sweater/vest/top clothing-thing. I've actually bought yarn for one before (Tip: don't get yarn online unless you can play with it in person first... or at the very least don't buy a whole sweater's worth unseen and unswatched). My hang up is that for all the 200+ patterns I've queued since joining Ravelry I always get to the yarn shop and start looking around and then wind up having something that closely resembles a panic attack regarding either price, color choices or OMG I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING! And then I have to leave and go outside and sit in my car and breathe for awhile until I calm down.

Plenty of helpful shop owners have tried to assist me with not panicing, but for some reason it never works.

Usually I get home (with the 40$+ of sock yarn I just bought to make myself feel less like an ass for having a panic attack at the LYS, and also because sock yarn makes me feel better) and pull out my reciept and think - sheesh the cost thing was a stupid thing to be freaking out about since I just spent enough on socks I could have come home with that Merino/Cashmere blend which was just perfect except that it was the wrong color and because I was having my dumbass panic attack at the time it didn't even occur to me to write down what it was so I could look up if it came in the right color online.

Yesterday I did it again. I stopped at one of my LYS on the way home because I'd heard they had the fall/winter stock in and ho-boy did they. I was POSITIVE I was coming home with sweater yarn this time. I mean - silk and merino? bamboo and alpaca? merino and cashmere? And what did I do? I spent an hour carrying skeins around the store trying to coordinate colors and weights and...

After I finished having my meltdown I went back to the gorgeous new sock yarn they had (and that was right where I came in and crying 'pick me!' the whole time I was there and generally being distracting) and grabbed up 2 skeins. Oh it was pretty. Happy dreams of knee-high entrelac socks danced in my brain. It was so soft and wonderful though... perhaps I owed it to the yarn to do some lace? But then I would have to pick a color, and I liked both and I didn't want to choose!

When I got home and took the yarn out to pet I was looking at it thinking, this is a pretty fine fingering weight and I need a DK weight gauge for that vest I was thinking about... hmm. And as it turns out my hoard of panda silk is just about the same WPI... And well, its not going to hurt anything to swatch....

Gauge? Spot on.

AND because I am a wacky artist type while knitting it it enters my brain that using 2 strands at a time means I can do some colorblending! Whee!

So I finished my swatch of color choices last night. Its pretty and soft (and bonus - all superwash!) and now I'm carrying it around to ask people if they like it, because this would not be the first time I came up with a Brilliant Idea that was only brilliant until I worked on it for awhile. But anyway... I firmly believe this is either the most clever knitting thing I've done in months or the silliest.
This is what my vest might look like (imagine the shape to be less crappily drawn - I wasn't awake enough this morning to fish out my tablet and I have zero talent drawing with a mouse).

Hottie or Nottie?

Like... in case I have a sock emergency or something

I brought some yarn in today for a friend at work who wants to try socks. We were talking about it and she didn't have any DPNs to use yet so I offered to let her borrow some (I have at current what is a moderately terrifying collection of sock weight needles) until she can swing by the LYS to get her own.

Me: Let's see... 1 & 1/2 or 2?

Her: What do you recommend?

Up until now this has been totally reasonable.

Then I whip out my knitting bag and retrieve my tubes of sock needles.

Me: 1 1/2s are always a good bet.

She looks a little startled. Possibly the sudden pile of sticks on the desk is at fault. I wonder if I should try to explain myself (<- This right here is where I should have stopped)

Me: I always like to keep my socks needles with me just in case I have like a sock emergency. *pause* Like... I need to cast on a sock right away for some reason. *awkward pause* I mean, I might need to and then what if I didn't have them? Or what if I needed the 2s and I only had the 1s? *really awkward pause* That sounds kind of crazy doesn't it?

Lesson Learned: When you feel a need to explain how you're not a nutcase, chances are you are actually about to explain why you are a nutcase.

Share the obsession love

So the answer to "what do you do with a bunch of random drop spindles?" - you teach someone else to spin.

Last weekend I showed a new friend the basics and this week she came back with not only 2-3oz of spun wool but a finished neck warmer!

I really have to get a better camera to haul around with me - the camera phone just doesn't do this justice.

Will Dress Up For Knitwear

So last night in a fit of frantic knitting I finished my Butterfly Moebius scarf. I've been knitting on it in little spurts for about 3 weeks now and I picked it up yesterday and just decided it need to be finished now.

This was one of those strange knits where I loved the pattern and I knew exactly what yarn I wanted to do it in, and then I got that yarn and in the most perfect colors and I started working on it.... and somehow it wasn't turning out quite like I expected. My red, purple and gold sea silk seemed to be blending into an overall shade that was approaching fuchsia. This was sort of depressing so I let some Wollmeise distract me for awhile and just let it sit in the knitting bag for a week.

Eventually though, sticking my hand in the knitting bag and brushing up against the silk got to be too much and I knew I had to finish it. If it turned out *blech*pink*blech*, well then I could give it to my mother. She likes the color (I am sure if she is reading this she is wishing that that had been the case in the end).

Which brings us to last night. I was ready to be done. There was still about 15g of yarn left on the skein but I was starting to think that there was a perfect width to the scarf and that I was just about there. Since I know from experience that I tend to talk myself into shortcuts about an inch before I should be considering them I forced myself to do four more repeats of the stitch pattern before finishing it off (since I had clocked myself earlier in the day at 30mins a repeat that was a real bit of penalty there).

I tossed it over my shoulders and... it was beautiful. It might be the most wonderfully gorgeous thing I've knit to date. Its not pink. Its all those great shades of fall leaves. Its soft and warm and feels like its giving me a hug when I wear it. It makes me feel pretty.

I went to bed thinking happy thoughts of how wonderful the scarf was and how fabulous it would be to wear it the next day.

This morning as I was getting ready I set the scarf out and started rifling through my closet. I needed something that would look great with the scarf. It should be black ideally, to offer the best contrast, not be suffering from any fading issues and simple - sleeves, scoop neck. Yes, that would work just wonderfully.

Or it would if the top in question wasn't the one I'd worn yesterday.

But its OK, I have other things that go with the scarf. A red top that matches one of the reds in the scarf itself. It looks good, but the lack of contrast takes some of the punch out of the initial impression. Its pretty and I should wear the two together someday... but not today, not on the first day I'll wear my scarf. There is a black tee that is cute and fitted, but it has short sleeves and even though the weather would be accomidating I balk at wearing a scarf without (at least 3/4) sleeves. I briefly consider my black silk shirt, but I'm going to work and to class - not the Symphony. It occurs to me with terror that I may not have anything to wear today. I consider the possibility of washing yesterday's top, but there's not enough time.

At this point I have to pause, because I've just spent 20 minutes trying to dress myself. Me who's idea of fashion consists of jeans and t-shirts and on rare occasions a jacket. Me who doesn't always remember to comb her hair and frequently doesn't bother to look in the mirror on the way out the door.

I AM HAVING A FASHION CRISIS OVER A SCARF.

After I finish debating how much of a crazy person this makes me I fish out my remaining black top. I don't wear it very often because, well... it has cleavage issues. But hey - its black and has a scoop neck and the scarf falls right where the problems start so you'd never know that this top is a few milimiters away from flashing people. And OK, its still too short for my torso, but I have a black cami that I can wear underneath and tucked into my jeans that will contain the midriff show.

As I leave the house I consider the possibility that I need to go shopping. Clearly I do not have enough to wear with my scarf and this is a real problem. And that may still mean I'm crazy, but at least I'll be a well dressed crazy person.

Red Hot Clap

I failed to finish my Butterfly Moebius before giving into the temptation to start up a Clapotis. But seriously. It was Wollmeise and it was sitting in its pretty balled up self and crying every time that I walked by it without taking it with me.

It was all 'Knit me! Don't you love me? You loved the other sockenwolle - why don't you love me too?' And I was like "I'm not listening. I'm going to finish something. I love you plenty, but I can't pet you right now."

And then it whimpered all sad and lonely like and I lost all my resolve. Seriously.

I'm about 1 repeat into the straight section and its soft and purty and gorgeous.

And the yarn? Totally preening at its wonderful self. It knows its awesome and seductive and that its won.

I am so weak.

Spindles Ate My Brain

Perhaps its a common failing of spindlers to get a little obsessive with their spindle collection. Maybe its because unlike wheels they're small and (comparatively) inexpensive. Maybe its because they're easy to make (Its somewhat harder to make them *well* but that's a post for another day).

I think it might be related to that knitting phenomenon whereby suddenly you wake up and have sixteen sets of size 1 DPNs (and five circulars) and its not entirely clear how that happened.

Like yesterday I was staring at some blue and green roving I dyed a few weeks ago and it was staring back at me and just wanting to be spun. I had no appropriately weighted spindles that were not otherwise engaged which is why it made perfect sense to me to make a new one.

Now, I am not a talented spindle maker. My abilities with wood working consist mostly of being able to sand something (and have it wind up only slightly lopsided for the treatment). But I have superglue and chopsticks and dowel rods and whenever I am in a craft store I wind up with odd things to be used for whorls that I take home and occasionally they turn into something that makes yarn (Occasionally they even make yarn well).

The hang up with making your own spindle(s) is that just about everything you use to construct them comes in sets of at least two - sometimes more like 10. Partly this is a good thing because, especially when it comes to the shafts, I'm pretty good at screwing them up but more often than that it just results in half a dozen spindles. Of which, if I am very, very lucky, perhaps one is the right weight and style for what I needed it for to begin with.

Since it can take me a week or two to put all these various attempts at spindle genius together the fact that it meets the weight requirement is frequently inconsequential by the time all the spindles are finished. By the two week mark I've often given up and ordered a new spindle (usually very pretty and at least twice what I originally told myself I could spend on one) or, more rarely, finished whatever was on the spindle I wanted to use originally.

Which leaves me with a heck of a lot of random drop spindles that I have no idea what to do with.