KnitMe

Whazzup?

Not too much. Diamond Fantasy #1 is done. Apparently, since I found this such a soothing knit, I'm going to make another one. I have a couple of balls of Kidsilk Haze in the stash with beads to match that will make a scarf sized DF. It will be airplane knitting for the long journey to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I can hardly wait to meet up with cyber friends, old and new.

This DF was knit with handspun superfine merino in the Beach Stone colourway, fibre from our favourite source, Lisa Souza (see Good Shopping in the side bar). The pattern is from Sivia Harding.

In the picture below we have more of Lisa's superfine merino in the Wild Things colourway, and a pair of Fiber Trends felted clogs for my soon-to-be DIL. My family all love these slippers. For a preview of how the Wild Things will look all spun up, go see Kerry's beautiful handspun.

The Perendale is all spun up and now I have endless plying on the go. Endless. Plying. I have treadled so much that my arse hurts. I had at least 36 ounces to ply, and, as usual, I'm about half done. The picture below shows the difference between how the colours spun up with my combed fibre (on the left) and the processed fibre (on the right). The processing blended the colours and I made no attempt to do that when I combed.

Some day I am going to try a tensioned lazy kate. For the time being, I just use my fingers to (try to) control the tension. I think I may have overplyed some of this. The hand combed bobbins have been spun since last summer, so the twist has set. I'm hoping that washing the skeins will revive the twist in the singles and help to balance the two ply a bit. I sure hope that's not faulty logic. At least it's good rationalization.

Next up is a wee creamy-beige Cormo fleect that I got from Treenway Silks when their fleeces came in last February. It only weighs 1 kg. / 2.2 lbs. It's a greasy little devil that takes a few washings to get clean. Even then, some of the tips are still dirty. Here is the washed fleece ...

... being turned into this ...

Doesn't that just make you want to say "ahhhh"?

Join Up

All week I knit diligently on St. Enda, to the exclusion of all else, to reach this point:

All pieces knit to underarm. Time to join up.

Forty-five minutes later I had this:

It looks sort of like a kids' sweater, but that's because it's missing its entire upper third. It now takes about 20 minutes to knit a row, so 24 hours later it still looked pretty much like that. I am now following the calculations I had done on various scraps of paper, and trying not to re-analyze them on the fly.

I may regret this later, but I decided I would not try to make a design element out of the sleeve/body decrease line. There was no element of the existing pattern that presented itself to go up that line, just acres of sand stitch at the sides of body and sleeve. I decided - what the heck - we'll just try to ignore the decrease line, allowing the sand stitch to run into itself, and see what happens. Worst case - I hate this whole setup and I rip back to the armhole and knit it like a plain square saddle shoulder.

It took a couple of rows to get accustomed to how the stitches lie on the needles when knitting in the round. Because I wrap my purl stitches clockwise, I have to actually purl into the back loop of every purl stitch that is above another purl stitch. I was disoriented for a row or two, then got used to looking for the leading side of each stitch and now I'm fine. I don't want to change how I'm knitting the stitches and have the upper part look different.

That was my evening activity. In the mornings, I plyed a lot. If anyone has been mildly interested in spinning undyed tussah silk, I have to say, get more interested. This stuff is coming out amazing.

It has an amazing shine and it's so soft. These hanks are each a little over 3 ounces, and 225-250 yards or so. I have no idea what gauge they will knit to.

I hated to set the twist by plopping the stuff in water - I really hope it regains its shine and lightness. I wanted to put them on the pillow at night and pet them.

There is a bit left on both bobbins, so I can ply up a little more during the week before I start spinning singles again.

Administrivia: Within the next few weeks, we hope Pink Tea will have a makeover. We're going to change our looks, and our name, but probably not our URL, at least not right away. We'll post a little fanfare when it goes live.

I will most likely be away from the blog next weekend, I'm getting away from it all - someone else here at the tea will surely have something to post. I will be back in two weeks with pictures of the festivities at Maryland Sheep and Wool. Meanwhile, have some kitties.

Half Done

Half of a shawl, half of a sock, and half spun fleece.

About a pound and a half of silver grey pin drafted roving came back from the processor and I think I have spun about half of it.

The prep is nice, but it is nowhere near as nice as my own hand combed fibre. I have already spun and plied one bobbin's worth with some of the singles I spun last summer from my hand combed stuff. That's just over 1,000 yards of it resting on my half knit shawl, beneath my half knit sock.

The sock yarn is Socks That Rock in the Atomic colourway and the pattern is Evelyn Clark's Retro Rib sock from the winter 2004 issue of Interweave Knits. Kind of neat the way the colour is swirlin down the leg. I wonder if the other sock will match.

I signed up for Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy kint along and I'm using the yarn that I spun from Lisa Souza's lovely superfine merino in the Beach Stone colourway. I'm not too sure if the horizontal striping will detract from the design, but I'm going to finish it regardless. The striping might not be as noticeable after blocking. This is a nice soothing knit, and I love the way the border is knit right along with the shawl. Yes, those are beads in the centre of the diamonds. I seem to want to add beads to everything these days.

Now I have to figure out what would be good travel knitting. MDSW is almost here and it will take six hours of airplane time plus one layover to get there. Maybe another shawl - lots of knitting without a lot of yarn to take with me.

Timing

Just about in time for this

we had this

for someone who's been asking for it

St Enda looks the same pretty much as it did last week but we have these

Emily's are on the right - some Regia neon-rainbow yarn that I think Elka sent me. Mine are on the left - some superwash merino sock yarn I bought on eBay - I won't say from whom because I think I may yet kvetch about it. It looks quite different in the sock from in the skein - in the skein you have wonderful red, with turquoise and gold and green, and it looks very nice. In the sock you have a bright red spiral, but the other colors seem to be speckling over one another in such a way as to essentially muddy themselves out. We'll keep watch on this developing problem.

When I first wound the yarn I decided I wanted to knit the 'Canal du Midi' socks from Knitting on the Road - but I got about 5 rows into the twisted stitch pattern and decided I was insane to do them in this yarn, the pattern was totally lost. I settled on the Dublin Bay socks from Ryan, because they are simple but not dull (they have a cute little lace inset down the sides). (Speaking of Ryan, her Movable Type setup is hosed and she has not been able to solve the problem for a whole week - if anyone has MT wisdom, and wants to see if you can help, I'm sure she'd appreciate it, as would her million fans who are grumpy without their fix.)

Anyway - with weather like this

there wasn't much time for this

what with all the mowing and raking and mulching and digging and hauling, but at the end of it all there was this

What Flower Basket?

You still aren't going to see that poor neglected little Flower Basket. I haven't touched it in weeks. We've had a cold snap, so my dedication to St. Enda hasn't been discouraged yet.

I finished my Latvian Socks.

It's warming up this week so I won't be wearing them, but I'm pretty happy with them and how wonderfully the Sock! colors show up. They're nice and tall, too, well past mid-calf.

I had about 50 yards of yarn left, so I was not in danger but my margin of error was not that great. I have a much better sense now of how far I can push a hank of Lisa's sock yarn. I have found that I need to make my socks shorter than I would guess from measuring my foot - especially with a dutch or half-handkerchief heel like these socks have - otherwise, they stretch out when I'm wearing them until the heel looks like a little pouch sticking out the back of my clogs.

I'm back in my Nancy Bush books looking for my next sock. I'm having trouble deciding, but I should make up my mind in the next day or so because I need knitting for mindless moments such as bath time. I think it's down to "Canal du Midi," "Unst," and "Traveler's Socks" from Knitting on the Road, and the "Girl's Silk Sock" from Knitting Vintage Socks (I think that's what they are called... the sample is knitted in purple Lorna's Laces). I am also having trouble choosing my next yarn as I have about 8 hanks that are all calling my name. It's pretty loud in the sunroom when all the hanks get started up together.

I am assembling parts of St. Enda so I can embark on my shaped saddle shoulders.

I abandoned the front after 2 chart repeats and started making sleeves. As of last night I had completed the second sleeve so I'm going back to the front now. My goal is to do just what Janine did. I believe she knitted the entire thing in the round. I will join everything up at the armholes and knit just the upper part in the round. Here is my planning material.

I am knitting this yarn (Berroco Bluefaced Leicester) at a gauge that suits the yarn, which means that it is just slightly smaller than what the pattern calls for. I have knitted this yarn on size 8s before and was not happy with the result, so I'm using size 7 and getting a much nicer fabric. However, the pattern calls for 5 stitches and 6 rows per inch and I'm getting just a scootch more than 5 stitches, and a little more than 7 rows per inch. It means I will get a sweater that won't be hugely long, which is nice. It means I had to make a decision on the sleeves - stop after the 3 1/3 pattern repeats the design calls for, and take a chance on a slightly short sleeve, or make 4 1/3 and be positive they'll be too long. I opted for the former - I am so sick of sleeves that I have to keep pushing up. We'll see.

I finished a bobbin of my silk on Saturday. I think this is about 4 ounces of singles.

Jan-who-spins-silk-and-doesn't-blog confirmed my suspicions that this would NOT be a good thing to ply from a center-pull ball, so I've started a second bobbin and I have to wait to see what the yarn will be like. And so do you!

I got nuthin'

Not that I think anyone will mind... I'm just going to point you to the rowdiest and most extended genius of satire that I've ever run across, it just won a Koufax award for funniest blog post in 2005.