KnitMe

Show 'n Skeins

The three silk scarves in my last post went to our local fiber guild show, and a fine time was had by all.

Although I am partial to Rose Lace (left), the far-and-away favorite of all who passed by was Gumball machine (right). Those cheery stripes are irresistable.

The show was more for show 'n tell than for sales, and there were no prizes. The atmosphere was relaxed and welcoming for exhibitors and onlookers alike. In the company of an eclectic mix of beautiful spinning, knitting, beading, crochet and weaving, my three scarves did their part to make new friends for lace.

Ever since the show I've been back at the Little Gem, spinning Silkworker tops and blends. Here are the three most recent ones: Nostalgia, Charisma, and Racing Colors.

Although silk they all may be, they are very different from one another. I had fun spinning them so that their differences would be evident in the character of the yarn.

Racing Colors is 448 yd from 63 gm. It's a carded tussah top. The website photo showed purple with flashes of gold and copper. When I opened the shipping envelope, out poured 6 batts of liquid blackberry gold. I split the batts crosswise and then lengthwise to bring random highlights to the purple depths.

Because of the carding, the yarn is finely heathered, with an even, gentle
halo.

Charisma is 586 yd from 63 gm. It's from a handpainted tussah top with large regions of
plum and raspberry. The yarn is smooth and lustrous.

Charisma's colors are closely related; color shifts are subtle. I think the yarn will knit into distinct color blocks, but without the sharp boundaries of a space dyed yarn. I don't know why it wanted to spin up so fine. Now I'm glad I didn't argue.

Nostalgia is 235 yd. from 40 gm. It is one of Carol's 50/50 silk n'cashmere blends. In these batts the cashmere was ever so lightly carded with silk on top and bottom. I spun the yarn with a very light tension on the wheel, but with a definite pull that straighted out the drafting triangle, much as you would do for merino. To my surprise, the character of the silk dominated the spinning, requiring a looser twist than I would use for pure cashmere.

Nostalgia is the color of a newly-opened heirloom rose. The yarn is translucent, shining and utterly airy. I can't keep my fingers out of the skein. Here...take this and rub it against your cheek...

Yikes!

I'm a day late and way behind - I had jury duty yesterday and everything here is just nuts. I have some pictures but not much time for description. But I'm sure you won't mind.

One Panopticon sock - Upstream architecture, feather and fan leg and i cord bindoff.

This is just a WEE tad snug around the arch, I guess in this yarn I need to go up to a 60 stitch foot circumference. But it will be acceptable, no ripping planned.

It is so funny to me that the same increase pattern works upside down or rightside up - this is an inversion of the Sky architecture, where the increases fan out in a triangle on top of your foot from a point at the anklebone - so, a triangle that widens down from the top over the arch. Upstream is a triangle where the increases fan out in a triangle on top of your foot from a point at the bottom of your arch - totally upside down from Sky. For my money, Sky fits better, but that could just have been my slight mis-guess on the gauge.

Garnet is finished. I took just about all of 7 skeins of Noro Lily. It fits perfectly and I love the fabric I got on size 5s, it isn't going to sag. Sorry about the orange shorts, I wouldn't ordinarily wear it with orange shorts...

That's all gotta run!

Hello again

I have quite a bit of accumulated stuff to show today. I was too crazy to post one week, then Melanie posted her beautiful stuff last week, so now I have to catch up.

I finished two skeins of yarn. The brown is suri/merino and I got it out of a traveling stash box. It is interesting to spin - not easy to make uniform, so I'm going for a sort of chewy yarn. The blue is the colonial top that I showed the other weekend - it made a much nicer yarn than I was expecting, so I'm spinning the second bobbin with a little more respect!

Each skein is around 4 ounces and about 225 meters. The blue skein is a little heavier, somehow I managed to jam about 4.3 ounces onto one bobbin.

I made progress on Garnet and have the front and back done. I sort of stalled on the second sleeve, because I got wrapped up in my sock (see below), but it will be done by next week. This is the body.

To prove that Jared Flood knows what he's talking about, here is one taken with natural light falling across the fabric. On the Sticks and String podcast, David asked Jared how he gets such lovely photos of his knitting, and he said he likes to photograph it indoors but near a window, so the light falls across the surface of the piece and brings up the texture.

Moral of the story: quit pointing directly at your knitting.

The socks I got wrapped up in were my Master Upstream socks in the new colorway of Lorna's Laces: Franklin's Panopticon. Ordinarily, these are NOT my colors. But Franklin posted a photo of a piece of William Morris wallpaper that inspired it, and the wallpaper sang to me for some reason so I had to try the yarn.

This is hard yarn to photograph. Maybe next week I will try it with my super-cool new camera and see if it comes out better.

In real life, the sky blue is less dominant, and there is a thread of celadon green that runs beside the yellow, which is less lemony and more limey. But it is a neat effect.

I spent so much time on these socks because I got the heel turned and then decided I should really have made the foot half an inch longer. So, I ripped all the way back to the beginning of the arch increases and started over. This time I decided I didn't want to be boring and just have the Vee up the top of the foot, so after about half my increases I sent back to increasing from the center again. It sort of made a neat effect, maybe you can see it. After I got above the ankle, I increased to have 64 stitches and started a feather and fan pattern.

What I would like to do with this particular architecture is find a way to imitate laces criss-crossing up the segment formed by the increases. I am so not creative though, I'm going to have to spend some time noodling around with a pencil and paper. The other thing I thought would be fun would be to run baby cables up the center and along each side of the Vee.

I finally got back the processed fiber from the fleece I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool. Wow, I feel totally vindicated for taking a chance on this beast. It doesn't look like there was much waste, judging from the size of the bag, and the fiber is even nicer than I expected. It has the feel in the hand of some targhee I spun once - springy and not as silky as merino. Here is a wee sample I spindled up on my purpleheart Bossworth midi (I still love that spindle best of all).

It is going to make lovely yarn. It appears that the fleece has the spring of the CVM ancestry, plus some of the strength of the coopworth and a little of the sheen of the bluefaced leicester. Very very nice.

Where have I been?

I don't know. I must have taken a wrong turn in Ravelry and couldn't find my way back.

Cooper says "Mommy, are you in there?"

I've been knitting baby sweaters and many, many soakers. This one is knit side to side all in one piece with short row shaping for the yoke and cuffs. The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in the Blue Lagoon colourway. The pattern is in Baby Styles by Beehive, bought decades ago but still available.

This is the Leaf Lace sweater, an old family favourite, from Paton's #111 Nursery Styles for 3 to 12 Months by Beehive. It's knit in Louet Gems fingering yarn (2 skeins).

I don't have any pictures of the soakers. They've been put to use as soon as they're off the needles. I tried a few different designs, but the favoured one has turned out to be Curly Purl's pattern.

I've been doing all this baby knitting because of this little fellow.

This is Jonah Samuel, my grandson, nestled in my arms, sucking his thumb, aged 3 hours. He's six weeks old now, getting bigger by the week, and needing lots of soakers. Oh boy.

Here is Sivia Harding's lovely Norwegian Woods shawl, knit with Malabrigo Lace (2 skeins) in the Bobby Blue colour, probably the softest yarn I have ever used. There is a single row of hex cut beads along the scalloped edge - a bit hard to see, but they're there. I love the shawl. It was one of those "I just can't put it down" knits, and those are always just the best.

In the "what was I thinking" department, I bought some merino-bamboo fiber in so not me colours at Madrona last February. Clearly, after another drab grey winter, I was desperate for a colour fix. This is Merino/Bamboo 60/40, in the Electric Serbet colourway from Dragon Fibers. Pretty bright, eh?

But it turns out that I kind of like the finished yarn, and it was very nice to spin. 2 ply, 4 oz., 496 yds.

The last time I popped in I was spinning some Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino in the Under the Boardwalk colouway. Here's how it turned out - 570 yds., 2 ply yarn.

It has been knit up into my favourite 3 by 1 rib socks. Not identical, not even fraternal, but they sure feel good on the feet.