KnitMe

From Fleece to Finished Object!

It's taken me some time to do it, but I'm finally finished with my sheep to sweater project. You might remember that it started out as this fleece that I won at our local spinning guild auction (a really good bargain at $10 for the whole beast - sorry for the somewhat blurry photo:

After scouring as much as was prudent, I moved onto the hand carding. This:

became this:

Next, I spun and plied:

and finally got to the finished yarn:

The skein on the left is unwashed and unset, and the one on the right, finished and set. I'm always amazed at how much dirt can still come out of a fleece, right up through the last stage of processing.

So, what to do with all that yarn? How about Alice Starmore's Flying Geese Gansey. Again, I apologize for the too-dark photos, but autumn has come to the NorthWet, and I live in a north-facing Bat Cave:

I believe that it's a good pairing of fleece to project as this Dorset lamb is very soft and yet, as a down breed, will be quite resistant to felting - a good trait for a working sweater.

It's going to keep me warm this winter!

North Country Fiber Fair

Last weekend I went to the North Country Fiber Fair in Watertown, SD. It was my first. I couldn't have picked a better one. There were llamas, alpacas, sheep and bunnies, an impressive lineup of workshops, fiber competitions, and a spinning circle. Vendors and shepherds from all over the upper Midwest and Northern Plains offered a tempting array of regional fiber specialties. Me? I succumbed.

My first purchase was a tote, which I soon filled with tools, a spinning book and fiber. My last buy was a handful of luscious goatmilk soaps from Prairie Comforts in my own state of North Dakota. In between came more fiber and an armload of fleeces.

First, the fiber.
Lisa Mendez of Carpool in Chicago (no website) was almost sold out of silk, so I was delighted to score this pair of fraternal twins: handpainted merino and tussah bumps that will ply together into a luxurious yarn.

From the heart of southwestern South Dakota's wool country, Navajo Churro dyed in sandstone brights by Joy Kammerer of Joy's Wool Bag in Rapid City (no website). Happily, I remembered seeing a Navajo spindle a few booths back. I raced back and snagged it. Here you see the fixin's for a bedside rug to warm a winters morning.

Also from southwest South Dakota came a truly rare treat: Teeswater/Cotswold roving.
Marilyn Clark Lucero of Black Hills Woolies in Custer raises these two rare English breeds, and crosses them to produce a fleece which is both lustrous and soft, with a good fiber length for handspinning. I bought a pound of gray/white bicolor at the show, and after spinning up a semi-worsted aran weight sample, I ordered enough more to make a sweater.

Another surprise came from Northeastern SD: airy spinner's web of half natural brown Wensleydale and half Icelandic dyed with real indigo, plus a little white mohair. Maire McClintic and Kelly Knispel of South Dakota Natural Colored Wool in Groton raised the two sheep and the angora goat that supplied the fiber, and they did the indigo dyeing. They had the fleece processed by a mill which uses an old industrial machine to make clouds of truly randomly oriented fibers. I spun up a little sample, by point of contact drawing from a delicately held tuft. I was so charmed by the spinning and the ethereal wooly yarn it made, that I ordered a whole bunch more.

It wouldn't be a fiber fair without fleeces.
There were some fine ones at NCFF.
Here is a quick look at the three lovelies that came home with me.

Alpaca from Southeastern North Dakota.

Shetland crosses from Western Minnesota:
A black ewe.

And her snow-white daughter.

I'll tell you more about them in a future post.

The big shows are rich and overwhelming and truly wonderful, but smaller regional shows are rich in their own way, with personal contact, abundant good cheer, quality fiber, and unexpected treasures.

Borderline

I'm knitting borders. And borders. And none of them are photographed here because they look just like they looked last time.

I finished the Bee in field chart on the Bee shawl and turned the page only to find out that before I can do the 13 rows of edging there are 12 more rows of Bee in field extended. Sigh. But I should be able to get into the edging in a few days. It takes me an hour now to do three rows.

I finished the seed stitch end of the afghan. But, having one more ball of yarn and having cut short the seed stitch at the beginning to ensure I would have enough yarn, I have picked up across the cast-on edge and I'm knitting one more 50g ball of yarn's worth of seed stitch on the other end now. Seed stitch is SLOW. Slower than the cabled rows, it seems.

I'm working on socks for Emily for this winter. She picked out two colors from my leftovers, so her socks are going to be St Valentine and Emerald City from Lisa's studio. I'm doing a simple garter rib and they are coming out nice and cushy. They are top-down, so I will be able to make them longer when her foot grows.

I finally finished spinning the annoying silver and purple wool and alpaca. Pardon the slightly blurry photos, I was trying to reproduce the color accurately and so I turned the flash off.

I have 4 2-ply hanks that are between 3 1/2 and 4 ounces each and about 160-170 yards,, which is sort of an aran weight. I also have that oddball skein at the top, which is what I couldn't cram onto the last bobbin - it turns out that the center of the bump wasn't blended as much, so there wasn't much alpaca, only wool. I guess you could use it to put an edge on a felted bag or something. That one is about 50 yards I think. The entire bump was a pound so the final heap is just under a pound.

I just can't love this yarn. I think it is because it was such a pain to spin. It would probably felt well. If you are indignant with me that I can't love it, maybe you would like to buy it from me for the cost of the fiber?? I don't know what I will do with it other than stick it in a bag. If you don't want to adopt it, do you have any ideas as to what use a pound of aran weight wool/alpaca yarn could be??

Look, kittens!

I don't have a lot of knitting to show this weekend. Things aren't looking very different from last week. The afghan should be done by next weekend and there will be absolutely no way to block it without cat intervention. Here's the latest sock progress:

This is one that seems to go on and on and on. The second sock is going to be tough.

I am nearly to the edging on Bee Fields - I have done 4 of 6 repeats of the butterfly border. Here is the whole thing.

You can see the bees and hives at the top, then the swarm in the middle, and the bees in fields border at the bottom. Here are 4 butterfly motifs stacked on top of one another.

I am really closing in on the end of this one, there are two more repeats of the bees and butterflies border and then 13 rows or so of edging. It's probably two more weeks of knitting.

I finished spinning my grey and purple wool/alpaca but haven't plyed it yet. Next week I should have the whole stack of skeins ready to photo and hopefully unload as I still am not in love with it...

To distract you from the lack of knitting and spinning here are some cute snoozing cats.

A time to ply

It was almost all about plying this weekend.

I finished a first bobbin of singles on Quebec.

It turned out to be about 2.5 ounces. I plyed it from a center pull ball. I ended up with 2.5 ounces and between 270 and 300 yards, sort of fingering weight.

I love this wheel. It makes me happy to spin on it. I am looking into the possibility of getting the faster whorl for it...

I finally finished the endless handdyed combed Rambouillet project.

I forget how much fleece it was to begin with, but it ended up being about 12 ounces of 3 ply, poofy yarn. Someone suggested the Elizabeth Zimmerman 'rib warmer' pattern from Knitting Workshop and I think it'll be perfect for that. I am so ready to be spinning something else on that little wheel. I bought 8 ounces of CVM/Romeldale cross roving after spin night the other night and I may try that out at our next spin night.

I also plyed the spindle-spun camel/silk that I've been piddling away on for a long time. I had two cops on two spindles - I slid them onto knitting needles and put them onto my lazy kate and plyed away. It came out pretty.

It's 1.1 ounces and about 150 yards. I was very lucky, there was only the teeniest amount of singles left from one cop. I have almost 7 more ounces of this fiber, which Melanie brought me as a hostess gift a couple of years ago, so I can spin on with this for awhile.

Some knitting did happen. The afghan will probably be done by next weekend, I have about 6 rows of pattern and then a couple of inches of seed stitch border to go. I got into the border on "Bee Fields" and started making the little butterfly motifs:

This is a very clever little thing that is not at all difficult to execute, despite looking like something funky with wrapped stitches is going on. It's built with increasingly long loops created by numbers of dropped yarnovers, which you then gather together with two knit stitches. The stitches slide back and forth on the loops, so the shape of this will depend upon having yarn that takes a good block. (The picture is shown the way the shawl will hang when worn, but upside down to how you execute it, so you need to look at that little thing in the middle and imagine it being knitted by the needle lying at the bottom of the photo...)

I also finished up the foot of my first Widdershins sock, following some very good directions on how to size it up for a yarn that knits at a smaller gauge. It seems to be coming out pretty well. I tend to like my socks with some negative ease in the length of the foot because otherwise the heels stretch out and stick up out of my shoes, and I kind of needed that in this case because of the short yardage in the skein.

So much fiber, so little time.