Persistent Knitter

Sucked into the time-sink called "surfing the internet", I must justify the time I spent by posting you these links for some really cute (free) hat patterns:

Simple Fair Isle hat with a few colors: http://magknits.com/Mar06/patterns/Amber.htm

Mother/Daughter sized fezzes with Tassels: http://magknits.com/Mar06/patterns/G8.htm

Intricate Fair Isle hat and sweater: http://www.magknits.com/Jan06/patterns/timon.htm

Not a hat, but who can resist Thing 1 and Thing 2: http://www.magknits.com/Jan06/patterns/nbat.htm

Yes, all of the above patterns come from MagKnits, a free online magazine. While not offering the formatting finesse of Knitty, it still offers some good patterns that look fun to knit. I haven’t actually knit any of these patterns; but will bookmark them for future reference when looking for that perfect baby gift to quickly knit.

Enjoy!

I am not the one who knit these (although I did write the pattern for them), my mom did! These were her FIRST pair of socks she’s knit:

The yarn was a cotton fingering weight yarn, and she used 2mm DPNs to knit them.  She had to re-do the first heel twice, and said the heel on her second sock was much better than the first. She also decided to make them a tad bit longer after they went through the wash the first time, so she’s got good experience with doing the toes on them.  Yay for a knitter who isn’t afraid to rip out when something isn’t quite right!

I talked to her today and you know what she said?

"I just couldn’t go to bed last night until I cast on a new sock"

She’s hooked!

——
(For those of you looking closely, see the pattern on the wall on either side of her feet? That’s the wallpaper in the kitchen/dining room of the house I grew up in.  The cabinets were the same light blue. The blinds for the sliding glass doors matched the Kelly green in the wallpaper.  The carpet for the dining room used to be dark dark blue. Gotta love the 70’s.

Before you shudder too much; she’s in the process of getting rid of the wallpaper and current out-dated color scheme. I suggested anything but plain white!)

A fluffy batt of a Lincoln cross fleece, and the singles peaking out from underneath on the bobbin:

And after, plied up, but still on the bobbin:

The batts are like beautiful fluffy soft clouds. The lincoln has some crimp to it still.  Two runs through the drum carder is more than enough to prep it. Very few neps (or are they called noils?) and it spun (for the most part) wondefully.  i plied up as much as humanly possible onto this one bobbin. This gives a nice idea of how the WooLee winder evenly fills a bobbin.  It’s in the sink now getting the rest of the Lanolin out of it.

I have been knitting. Here’s proof:

The pattern (in case you can’t remember) is a sweater from the Gathering of Lace book.  The yarn? A wonderful, oh so fab to knit with fingering weight yarn from Shelridge Farms.  They have tons of colors – this one is Azure.  (You can buy the yarn direct from them, but I bought mine from theknitter.com)

The cables are hard to see and you can barely see a bit of the lacy ribs. It’s better in person and my horrible photography skills don’t really do this justice.

You saw a hint before, but here I show you the finished product:

The buttons are so cute – they are small daisys. Just right for a little girl.  I don’t have a pic of Emily wearing it as it was about 80 degrees when we had the party and she opened it. I’ve asked her Mom and Dad to do their duty and take a picture of it on her for me.  Let’s hope they remember when it starts getting cold.

(There were two other sweaters that Emily received that day. I think mine came in third place.  An adorable purple fair isle and an amazing sweater with a castle, beads and ribbons took first and second place. No pictures because I seem unable to take my camera with me when I leave the house.)

Ha – you were worried there wouldn’t be a part two, weren’t you?
Well, here I present my new Spindle, complete with dragon breathing fire around the base of it:

It needs a name (Spindle of Fire?), and I think it completely appropriate that the first thing being spun on it is bright red roving. 

Acquisition #3

The roving is a superwash merino from Bonkers.  Not having spun anything superwash before I expected the fiber to be pretty dead and without any discernable crimp. Not so. This stuff is super sproingy and a joy to work with. Pity I only got 2 four ounce skeins of it.  Once it’s spun up, it’ll go to make Katie’s doll a scarf and a hat and a sweater and a bag and a whatever else she’s dreaming up at the time. In theory this is her roving that she picked the color of.  Mommy just really needed a good excuse to buy it.

What are those green things?

Those are little rubbery bandy-type grommet things. The man who made the spindle, Tracy, showed me how you can roll the rubber band over the start of your yarn. This avoids needing any sort of a leader (yes you have to spin a bit of the fiber first, but that’s not hard) and is really cool.   It’s a bit wierd when you’re plying to not have a leader, but you just overtwist the first bit, then let the twist run back down to where the yarn is anchored by the grommet thingy.

These green things are also good at fixing spinning wheels – last year (2005) at Sheep to Shawl, Judy had something fall off hers, and we used one of these green things to hold it together. The green thing was still on her wheel this year.  I think she’s on to something.

Speaking of swatches (yes, we were just yesterday).  I recently knit a few.

Nevermind the hideous green towel underneath.  This is three swatches of the purple yarn I’ve been spinning.  Estes Park has a handspun yarn contest and has different classes you can enter your yarn into. One of those is a project swatch section.

I knit these swatches thinking I’d enter that category in the competition. The swatch needed to be 6" x 6" ; and only one of them qualifies. The other two I stopped knitting before I even got that far.  The purple yarn is super soft, and therefore lacks any kind of defintion knit up.  The picture here isn’t the best (sorry) but you can see how you can’t see anything at all. The swatch on the right? It’s got cables in it. Really.  Would I lie?

Ended up I didn’t like any of the swatches enough to entere it in that category, so I just put a whole big ole skein in. I didn’t win, but my score was pretty good. Phooey on the judge that circled my gauge of 5 stitches to the inch and put a question mark next to it as if in disbelief.  Did she knit the swatches? No. I did. and I measured them.  Guess she didnt’ believe me.

Lacking for time and blog fodder these days, I thought I would share with you some recent additions to the stash-that-is-known-as-mine-hands-off-dammit:

Yarn is from Brooks Farm Yarns.  This yarn waited three years to come home with me, since I first saw the Brooks Farm booth at the Wool Market three years ago.  I thought they colors would work well together. I hate variegated yarns when knit up but love them in the skein. What’s a girl to do?  So was thinking fair isle with the variegated as the ‘color’. 

Then I realized the solid yarn is a TWO ply, and the variegated is a THREE ply, and each of the individual plies is about the same size. So the variegated is thicker than the solid. Will it matter?  A swatch might tell me.  Or it might not. Those pesky swatches have been known to lie to me before.

The yarn is interesting to look at, it’s got one or two plies surrounded by a third ply. That’s the shiny bits you see in the photo. They had samples of it knit up at various gauges, and it looks very nice knit or woven.  They had a Clapotis (which wasn’t as heavy looking as I might have thought), a very lacy garter stitch shawl thingy, and a couple of ribbed scarves and a woven bit (scarf) that used variegated for both warp and weft.

More acquisitions later this week, and other fun things to look at. Why don’t you go buy some software while you’re waiting? *grin*

• Today I saw a woman hemming her pants on the bus. While wearing them.
• I still have not received my refund from Federal or State taxes
• We won 2nd place in the Sheep to Shawl contest yesterday
• I’m tired
• I have used up one full ball of yarn in making my Gathering of Lace sweater
• I have pictures on my camera I haven’t posted yet
• I bought enough yarn yesterday at the Wool Market to make another sweater plus some
• The two yarns I bougt to do that are not the same thickness
• I may not care

Pictures soon. hopefully!

My spinning group met today; and for the first time in a long time, all five of us were present!  It’s our last official spinning get together before the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Estes Wool Market. 

I love this group because in addition to being a bunch of fairly like minded women that range in age from 30ish to grandma age; there is an incredible wealth of knowledge that they have. I’m probably the newest-spinner of the group; having only been spinning for 3 years now.

Topics of discussion included:

Q: How should I spin this batch of fleece I have? 
Answer: just like you did your sample.  I have aboue 1/2 lb of this beautiful fine fleece (I don’t know the type , probably Rom/CVM cross), and I have carded up 3 batts of it using my new drum carder.  It wants to be fairly fine; but it comes out a tad bit fuzzy when spun long draw woolen style.  It was determined that I should get over it and spin it because it looks just fine

Q: How many treadles does it take to ply your yarn?
Answer: As many as you need.  One of our members likes to count the treadles even while spinning the  singles, and also uses a fairly large whorl even though she spins a beautiful thin yarn.  Most of the rest of us prefer to ‘wing it’ when spinning the yarn; and then only worry about counting treadles on plying. 

I like a fairly round yarn, so I tend to add quite a bit of twist while plying. To counterbalance this, I add a tad bit extra twist when creating the singles.  I still like to create a fairly soft yarn though – esp when the fiber is a soft yarn.  The treadle-counter in the group goes by the 1/2 the number of treadles you used in the singles is the amount you use when you ply.   It’s been interesting to see how different each of our yarns come out based on our own personal spinning preferences.  It’s amazing that we can all spin like each other enough to create a beautiful shawl in the Sheep to Shawl contest :)

Q: Are we ready for the contest?
Well, we hope so! A quick run down of the things we needed to bring; and who was bringing what ensued. We’ve all been on the team for the two years prior; so we feel like we’ve got a handle on what we’ll be doing on contest day.  The only difference this year is we’ll be two plying instead of navajo plying.

Q: What should I enter in the Handspun Yarn contest at Estes (or the county fair following shortly)?
Various strategies were discussed – entering just the yarn, or knitting up a 6" x 6" sample for the project category. Who the competition would be in each particular category.

Last year was the first year I had ever entered a handspun yarn contest. I’m not sure why I did – I was certainly in no danger of winning.  It was interesting to receive the comments from the judge and to find out what they look for.  In a way it gives me something to spin better for; although that’s happening naturally over time. I still have plenty to learn (hence the "how should I spin this fleece" question above). It remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to get the form to fill out ahead of time, have time to knit a 6" square swatch. Debbie has graciously agreed to tote the yarn up there and turn it in at the appropriate time and place for me since she’ll be on the premises for some workshops.

And just to prove that Rebecca actually attending, here’s a horrible picture* taken with my cell phone/camera (She’s the one on the right waving):

* The only reason I posted the picture is because one of our regular group members couldn’t be there today due to a sick kid – although she was spinning with us in absentia and she requested I take a picture.