Surprise!

Wow - okay. So last night was my last time going to the Thursday night knitting group (Needles & Angels) and everyone surprised me with a party and presents. I don't know how my Mom kept it from me - she's usually a bad lier. Of course - I probably should have guessed something was up when she was stalling last night before we left... but oh well, clearly off my game.

This is the group that we did the Dye days with and I've really loved knitting with them and hanging out. I'm going to miss everyone when I leave. I got yarn & cards and a t-shirt and dye and rubber gloves and candy and gift certificates for yarn and pie and cookies and...

Anyway - it was awesome. I am a little embarrassed and a lot honored and flattered... And yeah.

I'll miss you guys. Thanks so much for everything!

Something Old & Something New

I am pretty well a slug when it comes to taking pictures of things, but since I'm sort of involved in packing up a lot of stuff (especially things that qualify as winter wear... like... say scarfs) I managed to snag pictures of some older FOs that I'd never gotten around to photographing.

First that Clapotis Scarf I was working on in WM yarn. I loooooooveee it. Its prettier in person. Seriously. And completely my colors. On the downside, wearing it like a scarf around my neck activates my "AAAAHHHH WOOL GET IT OFF GET IT OFF" instincts somewhat (somewhat equaling - I can last with it for about fifteen minutes before I start scratching). Which sucks. A lot. But its wide enough to wear like a mini-shawl and pretty that way. Proof all over again that animal fibers that touch my neck are bad, m'kay? So no, self, even if the rest of you is just fine with it you're still not making any wool sweaters.

Not that I could wear one in Austin anyway.

My most favoritest scarf that I made is this one - it was the first thing to ever come off the loom and its the awesomeness. Also, desipte being made from panda silk (which does contain a percentage of wool) it doesn't inspire my "GAH WOOL!" reaction. I am not sure if its the low amount or the nature of woven fabric but there you are. Its full of mistakes and has ugly, crappy selvages, but the color matches everything and its soft and warm.

There is also more recent stuff to show & tell:

My Kai Mei socks from last month. These won me free yarn in the April Sock Innovation KAL which is so awesome. Also, the socks are pretty nifty too. I'm passing on this month's KAL since they're doing the Kai Mei pattern (or Pomatomas... which I actually want to do but don't have the presence of mind of deal with this month), but I'll probably do one of the KALs next month with the prize yarn. :)

And finally, I finished this scarf just last week! It was my Mom's present for Mother's Day. It is crazy soft & delicious - bamboo & malabrigo lace merino. Mmm.... I hemstitched the ends, which was new and probably not done correctly (it is holding together just lovely and looks fine to me though... so whatever. Its a design feature).

Steam pressing made a world of difference on this one also. So far I've just been pulling stuff off the flip and giving it a wash, but I pulled out the iron on this one and it really cleaned up the selvages and evened out the weave. Even before that it was a pretty big improvement over what I've been weaving, but the pressing... really polished it up. I will have to do this for all my woven stuff now.

There is a bunch of stuff on the needles right now also - two sweaters (because I'm weird and yeah I've been afraid of starting one so of course rather than just doing a sweater I'm working on two of them now) some socks that I'm not completely sure about (Panda Soy is... interesting yarn, shall we say... more on that when I've gotten far enough to decide if I'm finishing or frogging) and I'm working on a woven band for my laptop bag.

Also there is carbonized bamboo on the wheel that may want to become a Whisper cardigan and yellow blended superwash merino that I am sort of not loving as much as I want to that was going to be socks. It may be going into the pause file soon. Perhaps I will get around to finishing that SW Merino/Tencel finally instead. Or else I will ignore both projects and go dye up some more Brown Sheep superwash. Because that makes awesome sock yarn. Seriously. And I like spinning it.

One track knitting

So the really good thing about being in a rut is that I seem to be accomplishing a lot within that rut. Last week I finished a pair of "Rick" socks (from Sock Innovation) in Campari Orange Wollmeise (80/20). They're pretty awesome. Very nice and loud. I am into loud socks right now.

The 80/20 is a little thicker than the 100% WM I've used before but it wasn't that noticeable until I tried to stuff the finished socks into my clogs and they bunched a little. -1 for finishing these just in time for the weather to warm up at last as well. Full length wool socks... even lacey ones, kinda much for summer.

I am 85% done with a pair of ankle high "Kai-Mei" socks (also from Sock innovation) in Panda Silk and they're looking to be a bit more weather appropriate. Panda Silk is yummy. It is all I can do not to go out and grab up more of it, because working with the stuff always make me want more of it. But really... I have at least six or seven balls of the stuff at home already that I should probably use first... We'll see how long my resolve lasts on that. Especially seeing as there are some new colors out....

When those are done my sock count for the year will be up to 5 pairs... 6 if you count as one the two singles that I gave up on getting pairs out of in January.

Did finally swipe a pic of puddle's Art School socks that I finished in February (I think it was February), which is only a month late and honestly pretty timely for something I was knitting for a gift (lousy gift knitter me).

A variation of the Bellatrix sock pattern in Cascade Heritage Paints which is a loverly yarn also. I have a couple of skeins in red and blue that I need to use soon. It was very pleasant to knit with, nicely squooshy and I'm told it wears pretty well (other people will need to be the judge on that one until I get a pair finished for myself to abuse).

The wheel has been kind of idle still. I'm able to spin again after the knee injury but not for really long periods of time. I did finally finish the soysilk I started sometime last year and its nice and soft and drapey.

Bled like all hell when I went to finish it, but I think that's somewhat the nature of the beast with soy. I do have some undyed roving I picked up at the Woolery to try my hand at next so maybe I can work out some way to limit the rivers of excess dye from seeping out of the finished yarn. The final yardage is a bit over 400 and its closer to a light fingering than a true laceweight. I'm guessing a lot of the added fluff is due to spinning it from the fold.

Not yet sure what it will be - if I got up over 500yds I was going to make an Aeolian Shawl, but its not quite enough for me to feel comfortable with that. I may weave with it instead.

There's some other things on the table right now - some yellow bling-y sock yarn being worked up on the wheel and another attempt and a first sweater, but I'll save those for when I have pictures and progress to show.

Woolery

Sometime around the start of the year it came to my attention that The Woolery was moving to Frankfort (Frankfort being the little known capitol of Kentucky where there is pretty much a grand total of nothing). This meant that there would be a major source of wheels/looms/fibers within a 30 minute drive of me - no more having to special order bobbins or spare wheel parts (which reminds me that I need to pick up a spare drive band and some wheel oil come to think of it).

Anyway, for a few months the opening day has been "sometime this spring" so I was pretty surprised when a ravelry post this week highlighted an ad in the Frankfort paper proclaiming they were now open. Since I had a free afternoon Monday I drove out to check it out.

The shop is located in downtown off of main street - you basically take 64 or Leestown (to 60/Versailles) all the way out and then get on Main until it turns into a one way street. The shop is the second one from the corner at the intersection of St Claire & Main. I got a little turned around finding it - the shop sign is pretty small but its fairly obvious when you've gone too far and it wasn't a big deal to loop around.

Inside is a big display of drop spindles and wheels along with some specialty goodies - I noticed they had some lux fiber samplers and some more unusual spindles - Navajo and kick plus some bowls for smaller support style spindles.

Most of the sample wheels were set up in the window - but there were also a couple of Lendrums on a table in the back. There was a pretty substantial supply of needlefelting stuff over there as well.

I didn't take any pictures of the knitting yarn they had - the selection there was pretty basic - I saw some heritage sock and the usual Cascade 220 but it in terms of knitting supplies it was just the basics - CP needles and general notions but nothing especially expansive or unusual. They did still have some empty shelves up around that part of the shop, however, so its possible they plan to expand on that.

Most of the best stuff was spinning or weaving though - the back half of the shop is shelves and shelves of weaving yarns with books lining the walls - there are bobbins and flyers in the area behind that and shuttles, hand cards and smaller tools (swifts, rigid heddle looms, ball & bobbin winders) between the back half and the front.

Separating the shop from the offices are a wall of mesh shelves stuffed to overflowing with spinning fiber. Spinner's paradise there - bags of just about anything you might want - there is some colored cotton in this pic, along with yak, cashmere, soysilk...

Anyway - grand sum being that its awesome. I managed to escape with only a spinner's control card (YES! Finally!) and some soysilk, but it was a close thing. I can see it being very easy to get carried away there.

I'm a little unsure as to how much longer I will be in Lexington - now that I'm done with school I'm worrying about working and there just isn't much here (not to mention I really want a job I can be at for 4+ years and I'm just not sure I want to stay this far north that long). But its a nice resource to have for however long I have it.

And I'm trying to keep all my options open for as long as possible - on way or another.

Otherwise - I finished my Misti Alpaca socks:

They're quite soft and comphy but I think I'll stay away from this yarn for socks in the future - ignoring my annoyance with all the breaks in my skein its handwash only and I'm probably too lazy for that most days. Gotta love how neatly they striped though :)

socks, socks, spindles and more socks

So pretty much what I've been working on since January is socks.

I kind of got off on a knitting jag where all I wanted to do was stockinette. Just plain, non-complex stockinette. No thinking, no counting, no charts.

The upside to this is that I had some very pretty handspun that I had been working on that was finally finished (oh and how fabulous was it - 4ply fingering weight superwash wool. Dyed by me, spun by me, and finally knit by me and let me tell you do I feel accomplished when I put these lovlies on!) and nothing shows off handspun like good old stockinette.

^ - Mmm, pretty handspun

I think some of my desire for brainless knitting stemmed from being in my last quarter of school and between work and 5 classes and then my knee...

Oh yes, my knee. I have not been able to spin in TWO MONTHS because of my knee (I have not been able to walk particularly either), this past week is the first one since the beginning of February where I have been able to sit at my wheel and work (the walking without a limp will hopefully come soon also). I won't go into the whole drama of what happened, but basically Ice + Me = Torn Collateral Ligament.

I suppose this should have been a knitter's dream injury, but mostly it was just an injury and it adversely affected my ability to knit about as much as it adversely affected everything else.

So I knit stockinette socks and played video games a lot (because interestingly video games seemed to require less coordination than knitting, and hitting 'reset' was somewhat less agonizing than frogging). Besides the handspun ones I finished I'm a cuff away from being done with a pair in Misti Alpaca sock. I also finally managed to finish the socks I promised Amanda for her birthday. Luckily for her most of what was left on them was the stockinette foot.

Anyway, this last weekend Cookie A's new book Sock Innovation came out and it finally shocked me out of the stockinette jag (being done with classes helped too) so I'm also working on some Wollmeise socks using the "Rick" pattern. I liked the description as much as the look of these. Someday I'll wear them to an autocross and they will make me go faster :D

Also this weekend I found a new kind of shaft to use for my drop spindles.

I had a gorgeous Mother of Pearl donut that I got in Austin back in December. It was too light to put on a regular chopstick but its a great fit with this pin. I was finally able to use some of the sterling wire I got as well for the hook. I really love this spindle (Its mine and you can't have it!), the shaft is only about 6" long so its about the same length as my favorite Turkish drops and it spins very well.

I'm considering trying to get more of these pins to make up drop spindles for etsy. I just really like the smaller size and I'm not sure many people are making shorter ones - it seems like this would be a great traveling spindle since its shorter shaft means a longer spin when sitting down. Not sure if there's a big demand, but it might be worth finding whorls for a dozen or so to try out.

January doldrums

Somehow my holidays came and went without me paying attention and then school started back up (5 classes plus working does not leave much time for... well, anything really). I haven't blogged in awhile, not because I haven't had anything to talk about, because I haven't been able to get my brain, my camera and my knitting to all coincide in the same location for more than 30 seconds.

I sort of still haven't since all the pictures I managed to take yesterday were of spinning, but oh well. I'll talk about spinning stuff now and save my knitting accomplishments (rather unimpressive anyway those) for another post.

So I took my wheel down to Texas with me over the break and managed to finish the 2 oz of baby camel I've been messing with while there.

That's 270yds of slightly thick-thin 2 ply laceweight. I probably could have gotten another 30 but instead of winding the left over into a center pull and plying it back on itself I saved it for some experimenting and cable plied it with some organic cotton.

The camel was interesting to spin - it seemed to respond pretty well to a hybrid long draw, sort of a semi double draw I guess. It was hard to get a really consistent single from it, but I'll have to try more of it at some point to see if I can't improve on my technique. Possibly on a Charkha since I did run into some problems with getting a reasonable speed even on the fastest setting of the Sonata's faster flyer. (18-1 I believe). Alternately, I did pick up 4 oz of baby camel and silk roving to try out so perhaps I can get away with spinning that slightly less fine (and thus needing less twist) and have it still hold together.

I abused the hell out of this yarn in finishing. Camel does not appear to felt, no matter what you do to it, which is rather too bad since it goes back to that needing excessive twist to hold together thing. Still, all the whacking did soften it back up.

I spent most of the rest of my wheel time over the break working on my skein swap yarn. One of the groups on ravelry is doing a handspun swap of yarn and so I dyed and then spun up about 4.5oz of superwash wool (think its merino, but I'm not positive of that). My swap partner said she liked green and rich vibrant colors so I hope its to her liking. I used a combination of spruce, emerald and kelly green on the roving with a few splashes of a gold/orange tone thrown in for variation.

The finished yarn is something like 430yds of 3ply light fingering weight. I forgot to write down the yardage before I sent it off, but it was A LOT. Its also the most consisten 3ply I've spun to date. I was sort of sad to see it go, but I'm sure it will have a good home ;)

Although I am currently somewhat sick of green now, I really loved the way that roving in particular spun up and when I got back from break I pulled out another 6 oz of it and dyed it up for me.

Saying the resulting colors are a little psychedelic is something of an understatement. On a normal day I would never spin anything that edged so closely into the realm of pink either. But I need something bright right now and this is nothing if not bright. I'm about 2/3rds done with the singles and thinking the finished yarn with be 4ply (I'd like a heavy fingering-light sport ideally). its going to be interesting to see how the colors end up after its plied. I'm a little worried of loosing some of the intensity, but if it starts looking bad when I get to that point I suppose I can back off and just chain ply instead.

I also came back from Austin with a really unreasonable number of donut beads. Don't ask me why. I intended to come back with like... 2 and I think the final count was more like 10 or 12. I'm slowly putting them together as drop spindles. Some of which I'll keep and some of which I'll probably trade or give to spinning friends.

<- tiger's eye 30mm whorl on ebony chopstick with a hand bent brass hook.



Red Jasper whorl 45mm on chopstick. This is the last one I'm using the eyehooks on I think. Impressively its the best spinner I've made yet ->

<- Some kind of jasper on a lightwood inlayed chopstick. This one stays with me. Its just lovely and a great spinner. I haven't put a hook or carved a notch into it and may just keep it as it is. The chopstick I used is on the grippy side and it doesn't seem to need a hitch notch.

I'm not sure what this stone is, but its very bright and shiny. This one will recieve a hook once I get around to making a hole. The wood I used for the shaft is too hard to just use a screw like I've been doing ->





Other than the stone spindles I also came home with a new Jenkin's Turkish for some reason. Probably because one of my favorite shops has them and they were there and pretty.

Its 2.2oz and made of Kingwood.

Really, how could I say no to that wood grain?

I haven't done more than play with it so far, but its probably going to be my new plying spindle. If I ever actually finish that superwash merino I've got on my beeswing nara delight this is what's going to be finishing it up ;)

FAIL

Okay I am a huge bum. I actually have a lot of things I've been meaning to blog but because I am lazy and spent my entire break either asleep or beating up aliens (apparently I've hit one of my two annual video game binges) instead of knitting or spinning or dyeing or at the very least taking pictures of things that I've been working on... yeah. I am a bum.

In between naps I did finish a hat and mittens though, and sometime this week I will find the time and functionality to photograph them. The mittens are awesome. They're my first handspun FO and I love then.

I got a monstrous order of fiber from Sheep Shed this week. About 2 pounds of mill ends and a pound of superwash. Its nicer stuff than I expected, though as anticipated its probably too scratchy for me to use next to skin (the mill ends anyway - my feet are rather less opinionated than the rest of me so the superwash is good and sock worthy). But anyway, its good stuff to practice with and I have many ideas for how to use it.

I did find the functionality to try dyeing a few ounces of it. I would like to say this went well, but it was only half successful. I overdyed a length of the mill ends (its a streaked black/white so the white took up color) which worked reasonably well and then dyed some of the superwash. The superwash did not want to take up the dye. I'm still not sure what happened. I finally gave up on it this morning when after re-heat setting, two vinegar soaks, a dozen regular soaks and at least three sythrapol baths it was STILL BLEEDING. I am used to a little extra color coming out of the superwash because I always put in a bit of extra dye (superwash being fussy about taking it up evenly), but this was ridiculous.

I have no idea what went wrong. Which is sometimes just the way of things... but still. Very annoying. I'll try another go at it this week. Wish me luck.