KnitMe

This human is a natural product

Much as I wish I could spin perfectly uniform yarn, it seems to not be possible for me. I know that many spinners think it's inappropriate to try to be too perfect. However, at the same time, having been sort of burned by my 3 ply cormo fiasco (yarn is marinating to see if perhaps it, or I, will evolve), I'm constantly aware that if I actually want to make something wearable with it, I have to be able to get an approximately uniform gauge, so I try to be attentive to consistency.

So how did I manage to spin 3 almost perfectly consistent hanks (4 ounces/300 yards each, more or less), and spin the 4th hank so differently (4 ounces/240 yards)?? Sigh. Here are the 3 that match up. The 4th is in timeout and tagged with a white string so I will be able to single it out for special treatment.

I had a little over 2 ounces left and got this much out of it.

How did it turn out? 2 ounces/150 yards. So I CAN do it. I just FAILED to.

Anyone want to swap 240 yards of pretty nice worsted weight 2 ply emerald bluefaced leicester for 4 ounces of unspun emerald bluefaced leicester, so I can try again?? No, I didn't think so. Well, I'm already strategizing where I can use the heavier yarn in my project with least detrimental effect.

My toe-up socks are done. Last week, I had one sock.

This week I have a pair.

So Emmy and I can match for one season before she totally outgrows hers. (The yarn was from the eBay seller 'lotusblossom'. It's not superwash; she now has superwash sock yarn but I haven't tried it yet.) The color is named something like 'Pink Pansies' but I like to think of it as 'Sky Blue Pink.'

I found after completing my sewn bindoff that the legs were just a tad different in length (see entry title, above). It's hard to lay down a sock on needles next to a sock off needles and be sure you're the right length! Oh well, they'll be hidden under pants anyway.

I liked this pattern very much; as you can see from this shot, though, the heel is short. See where the little short gusset starts on the instep? If you are someone who tends to find that you have a long heel, this might not work for you. It fits me fine.

Since I showed the front of Emmy's cat sweater last time, here's the back, just an inch or so shy of the neckline.

This yarn is very soft, and also very elastic, so it puckers like mad no matter how loosely I strand. It's going to need a really good block. Since it's superwash, I'll be able to run it through the washer and either put it on the wooly board or just lay it out flat, and it ought to relax pretty well.

I meant to wind up green yarn and start swatching for Chicknits Cutaway last night but got preoccupied looking at my Nancy Bush books picking out my next socks. I have so much wonderful sock yarn and I want to get to wear it all, so I have to knit. I ended up winding a skein of Lisa's 'Sock!' in Mardi Gras and casting on for 'New England' from Knitting on the Road. It starts with a double-start caston with the long tail being a doubled strand, and it makes a really beautiful top edge. That was as far as I got, so it's not very photogenic yet.

I finished a second hank of the handcombed Shetland last week when I had my plying frenzy.

The second one (on the right) came out much nicer, I think partly because I did a better plying job.

Meanwhile, I lost my head last week and bought this for $30:

Eight ounces of 60% merino/40% cashmere fiber. It is quite yummy, and it's the color of maple walnut ice cream, a sort of pale taupe. It's very open and airy, it was packed in a little priority mail bag and it's been expanding and expanding ever since I took it out. I think I'm going to have to start spinning this soon. The eBay seller of this was 'wind4934', also known as Winderwood Farm in New York. I thought it was reasonably priced for so much cashmere. I hope to spin it fine and get good yardage for a shawl. I was disconcerted to find that it had just the teeniest whiff of cigarette smoke to it, but given that it will be getting a hot soapy bath as soon as it's spun, I'm not concerned.

Happy Halloween, and more treats than tricks, to everyone. Next week: a blue clock with a 4 year old inside.

Less than meets the eye

I usually post on Mondays, so last night I ran around like a nut and took a bunch of pictures and stuffed the camera in my purse so I could pull off the photos when I got to work and post them. Today for the first time I find out you're not allowed to bring cameras into this agency's buildings. Who knew? I've done it before, but this time someone was paying attention to what showed on the xray machine. So, we don't know why, but my nice photos of my spun yarn are sitting in the car. Maybe I'll be profligate and post twice this week.

Meantime, you get to see week-old pictures. At the end of the day last Monday I finished Arches.

This was one heck of an interesting knit, as you can tell if you've followed any of the entries on the knitting of the sleeves or the construction of the neckband. It has lovely details.

It also fits very nicely.

I found one pattern error, which I've added to our errata page in the sidebar. Also, I shortened the sleeve one inch. I have LONG arms, so I would think that almost anyone would find the given measurement too long. Shortening the sleeve is easy, as you just knit plain all the way down from the end of the underarm gusset - the shaping is done entirely by decrease rows above the cuff.

Also you might want to raise the level where the lace pattern starts, to be a little further above the underarm level. I'm going to have to experiment with appropriate colors to wear underneath it - right now I'm thinking black is the best of the options I have on hand, as it will not stand out. The whole point of a cozy cotton sweater is to be comfortable, so I really want to avoid an additional layer.

I did really have other pictures to show you, but they will have to wait. Meantime, I can recycle some past pictures in a new way. I finished spindling the green Wensleydale so I now have maybe 100 yards of it. I figure if I combine it with the spindled Cotwsold (about 120 yards) that was my first combing project, I could make a really pretty hat - green brim and white top. What do you think?

Spinning Saturday, Knitting Sunday

This blog entry is brought to you by Bonnie, who says that she is MUCH more beautiful than Toby and has also progressed farther in her lap-cat training.

Saturday was for spinning. Emily and I drove down to Liz's house to see Elka, and we spun. It was the first time I'd ported my portable wheel (the Mazurka) anyplace, so I thought it was way cool.

Doesn't Liz's big Jensen wheel look lovely in front of the fireplace??

Elka brought her Lendrum with her on the plane all the way from St. Louis. She said it was her only luggage, all her clothes and everything were rolled up and stuffed in with the wheel. Now that's a spinner speaking!

I finished a bobbin of grey Shetland while we were there, and then Sunday I finished my third bobbin of bluefaced leicester and will ply this week.

The big knitting progress this weekend was made on Arches. The sock is done but looks the same as before, just without needles. Emily's sweater looks the same, only longer. Arches, however, now has two sleeves and a neckband. Doing the short-row shaping on the sleeves was interesting; the neckband, however, is unlike anything I've ever done before, and tremendously clever.

The neckband is knitted in a long strip. It has a selvage stitch down one side - a stitch that is slipped at the beginning of every other row. When the entire strip is knitted, the directions say to hold the band stitches, except for the selvage stitch which you drop and slip out of the loop below. I had no idea how this was going to work, but look what happens: each little stitch pops out of the one below it and just sits there nicely waiting to be picked up.

The stitches on the neckline are picked/knitted up just as you would if you were knitting on a neckband, but once you have them all knitted up onto a circular needle, you stop. So, you have stitches picked up on a circular needle, and the little side stitches of the neckband on another circular needle. The process of joining them together is almost exactly like a 3-needle bindoff, except that you do not have a working strand of yarn, just the stitches themselves.

In these pictures, the neckline stitches are on the grey needle and the neckband is on the black needle.

To start, you put your crochet hook through the first neck stitch and pull the first band stitch through (taking them both off their needle). Now you have a working loop on your hook. Then, you put your hook through the next neck stitch and the next band stitch.

You take them both off their needles so they are sitting on your hook - one band stitch, one neck stitch, and your working loop from the last maneuver.

Finally, you pull the band stitch through both of the other two loops, once again leaving you a working loop, and making a lovely chain effect where the band joins the neck. Brilliant!

Along the straight center front and center back, you take two neck stitches instead of one every once in awhile, to make the band fit properly. At the end, you just graft or sew the live end of the band to the caston end, and you're done.

It dawned on me that I was just doing a 3-needle bindoff without yarn, when I started using one of the needles to assist in pulling the loop through - Cotton Fleece splits like mad and it was much easier to slip the stitches over than to try pulling one through.

If that wasn't clever enough, the non-selvege edge of the band is a sort of imitation I-cord. That edge has three knit stitches running up it, and every 6 rows, on a wrong side row, you slip those 3 stitches instead of purling them, with the yarn to the wrong side of the band, and when you turn and start knitting back, you are pulling the yarn across just as you would on an I-cord. It makes a lovely finish. You might be able to see the edge in the first photos of the band, above.

Now I just need to attach I-cord to the bottom of the sweater and this one will be done. I'm not sure if I should get yarn and go around and pick up stitches at the caston edge, or just start the cord and lever up a caston loop with my needle for the joining. We'll see.

BFL? There's no BFL here...

My second bobbin of BFL is spun. Here it is.

You can't see it? That's because it's been hidden to protect innocent eyes from the horror. The reason it is sitting on a Priority Mail bag is that it is packed up to send to Sam The Disentangler of All Tangles. About 3/4ths of the single is wound nicely into a center pull ball. The other 1/4 is sitting on the bobbin, somehow snarled beyond all rescue (at least by me). So inside the bubble wrap is a ball of singles with a piece of cardboard stuffed through the center, connected to a bobbin. Sigh.

I couldn't make myself start another batch right away so I finished combing the rest of my grey Shetland before lunch. This is my favorite holiday of the year, because SCHOOLS DON'T TAKE IT.

On a slightly happier fiber note, I finally washed the 26 ounces of Corriedale I bought in May at MS&W. It's totally gorgeous, so silky I can hardly believe it's what it says it is.

Emily's Cats sweater (from Norsk Strikkedesign) is starting to look like something.

It turns out that the yarn (Norwegian Sport Wool I bought from Elann a couple of years ago) is exactly the same color as our new cat Toby.

There he consorts with the other critters on Emily's bed. Here he displays an endearing attachment to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The feline territorial negotiations are proceeding well here. Despite frequent yowling and snarling and putting of the newcomers into their place, this also occurs more and more often:

Off to determine the best use of my remaining 2 1/2 hours of free time....

Green

But first, blue.

I should be able to get this done in a couple of weeks. The sleeve is easy. After that, I have to apply I-cord to the bottom edge, and I'm on my own as to how I choose to do that, that pattern doesn't say. Then I have to make the neckband, which is actually somewhat complicated - you knit a long strip of the 3-stitch cable, with YOs at one side that you then drop somehow and turn into live stitches to knit onto the neckline. We'll see how that one goes. I'm all ready to wear it.

I'm working on a toe-up sock, from yarn from the eBay seller 'lotusblossom' (Over the Rainbow). I need to get this done because Emmy has socks out of the same yarn that will not fit her after this year - we need to at least match once.

I'm using the pattern from here for a toe-up sock with a heel flap and gusset. I once tried a toe-up sock with a wrap-and-turn heel and hated how I had all these little holes I couldn't close up. This is much nicer.

I finished a hank of my green bluefaced leicester this weekend. It's yummy. Sorry for the big photo - I accidentally saved the wrong one while editing photos at home - but I'll leave it because it's so scrumptious!

It's incredibly hard to photograph, too, I tinker and tinker with the color balances and it still doesn't do it justice. I got just about 300 yards to this 4 ounce skein. I'm shooting for about 1200 yards, it looks like I might make it.

I sat down and started another one before this was even dry.