KnitMe

Quebec, Adam

There is just too much beautiful stuff this week. I'll try to cut down on the words to make up for the pazillion photos.

This is a "Quebec" Canadian production wheel made by David Paul at The Merlin Tree. It came to my house on Thursday evening. The first photo is a very accurate representation of the color - despite what some of the lighting has suggested, there is no red or gold in the color, it is true walnut brown.

The wheel is a replica of antique wheels made in the late 1800s in Quebec and used by women who were doing production spinning at home for woolen mills. This is number 47 of 50 that were made in 2005.

It is a double drive wheel through and through - it has grooves in the drive wheel to hold the two loops of the drive band.

It has a beautiful wrought iron treadle.

It has a tilt tensioning system made of wrought iron - to change the takeup and drive band tension, you unscrew the wing nut and tilt the mother to the left or the right.

It's big. (Six year old included for purposes of scale only.) The wheel is 30 inches across. It has other unique details too, such as the footman (which you can partly see in the second photo above) - it is a curved length of iron rod with hooks at both ends - no leathers to stretch out or creak. It's rustic - it has an oiled finish, not varnished, so I spent some time rubbing it down with orange oil, and the spokes and some of the turned pieces are not polished smooth.

It spins like the wind. When I was putting it together, I dropped the axles into the posts, hooked up the footman, and gave the treadle one push, and it started up like a jet engine. If I have scoped out the specs correctly, I have it set up at a ratio of 24:1. If I took the time to figure out how to run it with bobbin lead I could probably get it to go faster.

All I wanted to do was spin. Of course, that was not to be. But I hauled a pound of lovely white Shetland top out of the stash and it's the perfect fiber to start off with on this wheel.

This wheel is not meant to be versatile. I have the Symphony for versatility. This wheel is made to do one thing really well, and it's a thing I like to do - spin a fairly fine smooth single. And did I mention it's fast? It is so amazing to treadle SLOWLY with one foot and have so much spinning go on. I have heard people remark that this wheel just tugs the fiber right out of your hands, it's so fast, and the notes that came with the wheel said that if you try to treadle too quickly the footman will jump a little till you get the feel for it. But this wheel and I got along right away. It seemed natural to ride the treadle up until I could feel it reach the top of its arc. And I have the tension on the band set in such a way that I didn't feel the speed was unmanageable. Maybe we were just meant for each other.

Meanwhile, I had the great good fortune to get hold of one half of a champion cormo fleece! This is one half of Adam's coat.

Adam lives with Sue at the Cormo Sheep and Wool Farm in California. The photos were taken under incandescent light so they look a tad yellow, but let me tell you, Adam is NOT yellow. Parts of him were a little tippy of course, but he was SO white and fine. At Lambtown in Dixon, California, at the end of July, Adam was first in the Handspinner's White class, champion handspinning fleece, and grand champion of the show. What a guy. I just happened to be by the computer when Sue's email came out listing her winning fleeces for sale and so I got half of Adam's 8 1/2 pound champion fleece.

My little wool pig Daphne thought she must have gone to wool pig heaven. She and LilyBlue lurked around the edges of the fleece while it was spread out on the washroom floor, trying to take bites out of it, and when I'd stuffed half in the washer and the other half into a bin, they lay down on the rug and took a nice nap in the lovely smell.

Sue very thoughtfully included one of her little ribbons in the box to commemorate my first champion fleece.

I washed about half of it and laid it out to dry and so far the cats haven't been into it... I was intending to send this out to be processed because it is more fleece than I ever had hold of before, but looking at it now it almost seems I could spin it the way it is. I will have to give that a try before I pack it up to send.

I did knit this weekend despite the temptation to just spin and roll in fleece. I have almost finished the second section of the Bee shawl.

I haven't made much progress on the Widdershins sock but I have started a sock for Emmy - she picked out remnants from my sock yarn leftovers, the legs are going to be Sock! Merino from Lisa in St Valentine and the feet are going to be Sock! in Emerald City. I'm knitting garter rib and it's looking great in the yarn.

When I was thinking about sending out Adam for processing, I decided to see what else I had that I might want to send along. I made up a little set of samples from the fleeces I have in the basement, and combed them all.

I decided that there were a couple that would be less fun to comb, so they are candidates for being sent.

I finished another hank of the wool and alpaca that I'm really not enjoying. I had a little mishap with the hank when taking it down from the drying hook, so it had to go back onto the swift and from there to the niddynoddy. I still can't decide what will be the fate of this yarn. But at least once it's finished, it'll be DONE.

Well, back to daydreaming about getting home to spin on my big wonderful wheel....

Fun with Cormo, Beads and Silk

In the beginning, there was a dirty little 2 lb. fleece.

The little fleece had a bath or two,

and then it got combed.

And there were neps everywhere!

Grrrr!

I got some advice about neps from Denise and Joanne. Here is what I learned. Fine wools can have more of a tendency to neps than other wools, particularly if there are short cuts or weak spots. This little Cormo had neither of those problems. However, it was crimpy and springy. As crimpy fibres are passed from comb to comb, they stretch out and then recoil as they are released from the holding comb. The recoil lets some of the fibre curl back on itself forming neps. I think that the next time I process a fine wool, I will take Joanne's advice and flick card it.

I picked out the larger neps and spun the smaller ones in. They aren't really visible in the yarn, and I would have made myself crazy trying to pick them all out. I ended up with 820 yards of soft and springy 2 ply yarn, 14 w.p.i., about sports weight.

Beads threaded for a bead stew bracelet from Earth Faire

Here it is, hready to sew the clasp on. It only took a couple of hours to knit, and it was a lot of fun!

I knit a Shedir from one ball of Rowan Calmer for my MIL, who is having chemo. It's restng over an inverted plant pot, thus the funny shape; it doesn't really have a brim.

This is how the singles from the Blue Moon Sheep 2 Shoe kit looked. I don't know what colourway it is, perhaps Lapis? The fibre is superwash merino, and it was an absolute joy to spin. It just slipped through my fingers like butter. I was sorry to see it end.

The two outside skeins are three plies of Sheep 2 Shoe. I really like how the colours turned out even though I didn't get the top split evenly into three parts. There is 495 yards of fingering weight yarn in these two skeins. The small skein in the middle is one strand of the left over Sheep 2 Shoe plied with two strands of teal merino/tencel left over from another project.

Doesn't this look good enough to eat? Hand painted tussah silk top from the Silkworker in a colourway she calls "Invitation". Delicious!

Slow

It's that time of year. It feels like it takes forever to even walk across a room, and when I arrive I've forgotten something.

You'll have to be content with some previous photos because most of the new ones came out awful. Bee Fields and the afghan look almost the same as last week. The photo I have already posted of the one completed Hourglass Rib sock is better than anything else I've taken of the pair so I shall leave well enough alone.

I did just a wee bit of shopping, enough to have good mail.

In the back, two skeins of Lisa Souza's hardtwist merino petite, in 'Blue Flame' (I have been WAITING for this color!) and 'Giverny.' There is a lot of yardage there, and the yarn seems like it will wear really really well.

In the front, two skeins of 'Apple Pie' by Apple Laine, which I got from The Loopy Ewe - I about swooned when I read the fiber content, as it sounded like it was similar to Mountain Colors Bearfoot except with a little silk mixed in. I think these will be knitted on size 2 needles and handled like delicates. I forget the name of the colorway, something like sunset...?

I kept spinning wool and alpaca and am still ambivalent about this stuff.

I think maybe the commenter who suggested the cat bed was on the right track. This would felt quite nicely. And I think it would be durable enough to survive being dragged around the house, which Daphne is sure to do. When she gets hold of a skein of yarn or my cell phone cozy, she takes it under my bed. She also has the somewhat endearing habit of bringing me things while I'm sleeping - I often wake up in the morning and find a pair of Emily's scissors or a pen or pencil on the bed.

I also started another sock. This yarn is by Gypsy Knits (again from the Loopy Ewe) and is fingering weight bluefaced leicester. Well, of course I had to try that as it's my favorite fiber. The color is 'Lavender Blue' and is nicer than it looks in the photo.

The yarn is really nice, but the skein was 350 yards and about 91 grams. Can I whine just one second? When I pay $20 or more for a hank of sock yarn, I want to MAKE A PAIR OF SOCKS. I am likely to be able to do so, because I only wear a size 6 1/2 shoe, but most people would not be so lucky with this yarn. If not for the scant yardage, I think I would have wanted to knit it on size 0 needles, too, but didn't want to take that chance. So I figured toe-up was the way to go.

I took out the 'Widdershins' pattern from a recent issue of knitty.com, because I've heard so much about it, and I was somewhat nonplussed to see that it uses Wildefoot yarn on size 0 needles and gets a gauge of 7 spi. The sock is 54 stitches around AND CABLED. Now, I have a skinny ankle (I am happy with a sock of 56 or 60 stitckes on size 1 needles) but with cables, 54 seemed like pushing it. So I poked around on Ravelry and found someone who mentioned she'd upsized it and posted her instructions on a Knitty forum. I found them and tried to follow them - I think she intended that her formula be used to just make the socks bigger, because it didn't take the cables into account, but I'm trying that too, having upsized to 64 stitches. Worst case, I rip out the damn thing when I get to the heel because I can't figure out the shaping, and go back to the You're Putting Me On sock pattern that I have used several times before. Thank goodness knitting can be undone and redone.

Except for lace. A word to the wise: Knitting on a shawl that is patterned every row, while watching a movie, with stitches in your left middle finger, makes for LOTS of teeth gnashing as stitches are snagged and ... well you get the picture.

No E

There won't be many words in this entry, because I am having trouble typing the most common letter in the language.

I finished a skein of my purple and silver wool and alpaca. I'm still not sure I like it. Of course, Daphne is quite happy with it.

One second after I took the picture, she opened her little mouth to pick it up and take it away.

I almost have a second bobbin spun. I hate to not finish it, but what to do with it then?? We'll see. It probably would felt well.

I'm plowing ahead on the afghan. It won't be as big as the one in the magazine but it will be nice anyway.

And I'm nearly done with the first section of Bee Fields. About 8 more rows till I get to do the next thing, whatever it is.

And I finished my pink Hourglass socks but it has been too humid to put them on and photograph them. Maybe next week.

I am having fun at Ravelry. I put up one or two of my old projects every couple of days (except I haven't started on all my socks yet), and a few of my photos have been tapped for the pattern index because I have been the first person to put the design up. People particularly seemed to like the Cats sweater (from Norsk Strikkedesign) that I made for Emily in the fall of 2005. It's fun to get a whole second round of compliments!