Spinning Update: A sweater for the husbeast

For the longest time, I've been avoiding posting about my spinning because it's been so boring.  I mean, when your husband starts asking when he'll get his own handspun handknit sweater, it's such a happy moment.  I had so much fun with the first one!  Washing the fleece, immersing myself (literally) up the elbows in the processing of what comes off the sheep into a wearable garment.  That thing is my go-to sweater for beach parties.  It all sounds like so much fun, until you stop and think about all the knitted items you've made for yourself that never get worn, or get worn so infrequently that it hardly seems worth the effort you put into them in the first place.  You begin to realize that you'll just kill yourself if you make something that he wouldn't wear, so you have to start asking him about clothing preferences.

Let's just summarize a few facts here.  The husbeast is the kind of person that A) doesn't like anything too fancy (no colorwork) B) naturally runs a little warm and thus C) owns precisely one other sweater.  Oh, and this is the sort of sweater I want him to feel comfortable wearing around the home, so nothing too tight.  Did I mention that the man is also 6 feet tall, and has extra-long arms for his height?  This is going to be one huge sweater, and if I was going to spin for it, that meant a major commitment to spinning a solid color. I started spinning the singles during last year's Tour de Fleece, and haven't gotten anything new on the wheel until last week! 

That's why my fleece (Blake, the one I got washed by Morro Fleece Works) was the perfect match for the project.  First, I have a TON of fiber. Ok, not an actual ton, more like 4+ pounds.  I tend to spin yarn that is denser than commercial yarn, so I knew having a large amount was important for a big sweater for a grown man.  Second, it's all one color.  Further to that, the beautiful chocolate brown is a color I know the husbeast won't find objectionable and since it's the natural color of the sheep's wool, it won't fade over the years the way something dyed might do.  Third, it's a really heavenly preparation from Morro, which means very little predrafting and overall faster spinning.

The challenges have been keeping myself motivated to keep spinning the same dark brown merino wool over the months, and to keep myself spinning consistently.  I made a few choices in designing what type of yarn I'll spin to help with consistency.  I'm doing a 3-ply yarn (a true 3-ply, not a chain or navajo 3-ply) and spinning six bobbins in a row before plying.  That's truly the most boring part, spinning 24 ounces of brown wool singles without the quick break of plying in between.  Having six bobbins allows me to mix & match my plies to help even out the yarn a little bit.  I label the bobbins 1-6 in the order in which I spin them, then I ply 1, 3, and 5 together and 2, 4, and 6 together.  My yarn is ending up in the heavy-worsted-to-aran-weight range, which is quite plump. Having a thicker yarn means that small inconsistencies won't be quite as noticeable. 

The color boredom I've been getting around by letting myself spin a bag of Hello Yarn fiber in between each "batch" of 6 bobbins, so right now I'm spinning my "Curiosities" superwash merino.

Hopefully getting to play with a little color will help me stay motivated.  We'll just try to ignore the fact that I've already got one dark brown sweater on the needles (more on that later) and am preparing to knit a second, larger, dark brown sweater. 

Beginnings!

I'm excited about starting three new things right now. First, on the spinning front: Yesterday was the first day of the 2011 Tour De Fleece, and although I didn't make a strong start, I have big plans for today and the rest of the tour. Here's my progress from Day #1:



I spun as much as I could yesterday morning before we had to leave for a wedding. I'm making up my TDF goals as I go along, and I might only get to this one.



The husbeast has been hinting that he'd like a sweater. It's a little bit funny because normally he never gets cold, but I think he'll need one if we ever end up on another camping trip like the last one. Since I've got more than 5 pounds of fiber in there, that will be plenty for a large man-sized sweater. Goal #1 is to spin as much of this fleece as I can before going crazy-bored out of my mind. If I have to, I'll sacrifice a bobbin or two for my sanity and spin some Hello Yarn fiber.

The second thing I'm excited about starting is exploring sewing. The quilt, as I hinted earlier, is finished:



I hand-stitched the binding to the backside of the quilt during the drive to and from Yellowstone, and finished it up when we got home.



It was a fabulous first project, and made me realize that several guidelines that I like to tell beginning knitters hold true for beginning seamstresses as well. A simple pattern executed with beautiful materials and solid tools will be far more pleasing than a project done with cheap tools or materials that you don't love. The simple rectangles were very forgiving when my cutting was less than perfect, and although the quilting lines tend to meander a bit, I can't resist running my hands over the smooth surface and smiling at the tiny owls on the underside of the fabric.



We put the finished quilt on the bed immediately, and it hasn't come off since. I can hardly wait to make another one.

The third thing I'm super excited about starting is this:



The book arrived on Tuesday, and the yarn was formerly a very ill-fitting cardigan. I've read through about one-third of the introductory material, and I've already learned a great deal. I think the first sweater I'm going to swatch for will be Cria, the short-sleeved version.

What have you all started recently that you're excited about?

Three things

First things first. I can now finally blog about this project:





Two knitting friends are both pregnant (and are due pretty close to one another), and the various knitting circles all banded together to make them collective baby blankets. We threw them a lovely BBQ lunch baby shower this past weekend, where they got to have all the fun of arranging the blanket squares and none of the stress of seaming. Two of the more motivated knitters (myself not included) made adorable matching cardigans out of the blanket leftovers.



I got put unofficially in charge of the seaming, since I wrote up the pattern we used for the squares. It's not difficult to figure out, just garter stitch mitered squares. The only difference is that most of the patterns out there are written so that you start by casting on a small number of stitches and increasing out, while the pattern we used starts with a large circular cast on and then decreases as you go in. I'll be writing up the pattern and posting it for free on Ravelry later in June.

I'd like to say that I haven't been posting because I've been working on this secret project, but it wouldn't be true. I have been working on the secret project, but that's not really why I haven't been posting. I haven't been posting because the end of this semester has been utterly brutal. Brutal hours, brutal workload, brutal anticipation over the fall schedule, brutal on my coworkers, brutal on me. Things have mostly settled down (and I still have a job come August), but I've had what feels like about 48 hours to catch my breath. I managed to have one lazy weekend morning:



and then it was finals week, and second finals week (I know. I had two finals weeks this spring. Like I said, brutal), and then Memorial Day weekend and far-flung friends in from out of town, and then we had to drop the cat off at the in-laws' place. In the meantime I somehow managed to spin some yarn (Polwarth dyed by Dicentra Designs):



and knit a pair of socks (Toe-up Jaywalkers in Sheepaints Sock'n Go in the Wunsch Brunnen colorway.



I'm very glad to use up this yarn, because it is from truly deep in the stash (circa 2008 I think?). Plus, I'll be able to wear the socks this week while we're camping in Yellowstone. It's supposed to be cold there... so I'll be knitting hats on the car trip out there.

A New Verb

So I know I've mentioned Verb's new store a few times already here. I can't put my finger on precisely what quality it is that draws me to Kristine's yarns and fibers. I do know that, even when I'm not looking for anything in particular, I always see something I like. Every time. Maybe it's the subtleties of the color palette she gets from natural dyes, or the huge variety of fiber bases she dyes ranging from super-crunchy wool to the most luxurious blends of silk, yak, and cashmere.



Aside from the products, there's also the mentality of the shop that I really appreciate. Perhaps it's the fact that Kristine taught me how to choose and wash a fleece. Or it could be the way she supports local farmers by carrying wool from their sheep in her shop. There is always something new to learn when I walk into the shop. I've been wanting to take the rigid heddle weaving and natural dyeing workshops for a while now.



So let me tell you about the party on Saturday. It was fabulous. First of all, you walk into this amazing space. And I mean SPACE. There is enough room to wander around (and you don't bump elbows as much as you did in the old shop), big windows to let in the light, and tall ceilings to let the air circulate.



There's a central table for sitting and crafting, and a side area with a gallery space around it.



I'd forgotten how much I love Sonya Philip's work until I saw it in the shop.





There was even a yarn cake:



and a familiar friend:



I couldn't resist telling a few knitters (including Kristine's mother) that they were petting and oohing over my wedding shawl. I'm so stinking proud of that thing, even though the beads were a royal pain.

The funniest part was how I felt tempted by so many things throughout the day, and resisted. But I wasn't really tempted too much by anything in this corner:



I don't own a sewing machine, although I know my way around one from growing up with a mom who sewed everything from Halloween costumes to my senior prom dress. Every few years I think about getting a machine, but sewing has never been something that stuck with me like knitting has. So it was absolutely hilarious to me when Kristine called my name in the raffle to come claim this:



A quilt kit.

It's going to take some willpower to work on holiday knitting instead of this. We'll see how it goes. For now, I have a borrowed sewing machine hanging out in the living room and another reason to visit the shop, take a new class or two, and add another verb to my repertoire.

A Journey

That's what this has been.



So, right before Sock Summit my favorite enabler and fiber guru Kristine announced a contest on Ravelry. The challenge was to enter a mitten (or, later, a fingerless mitten) knit out of Verb yarn (at least 50%). This could either be a published pattern, or you could make up your own pattern.

I needed a challenge during the second part of summer before the semester began, so I jumped into the deep end of the pool without so much as a backwards glance. I was SO sure I knew EXACTLY what I would do! Two-color mittens, handspun fingering-weight yarn, reminiscent of an arts and crafts tile. It would be a small, practical piece of art.

First came several 8-hour days wasted on internet image research. Picture after picture after picture, flower after leaf after tree all flashed before me. Finally, I found something I loved, and that (seemingly) matched the color palette I had in mind: either Hollyhocks (scroll down a bit) or Lilies. Images bookmarked, it seemed a simple next step in my mind to transcribe the colors onto a multicolor mitten chart. When I sat down to actually do this, I realized that I wouldn't really be able to pull off the kind of design I had set my heart on with only two colors. Dark brown or black outlines and multiple shades of pink and green meant that, at best, I would be knitting five-color mittens, not two-color. Frustrating me further was the insistence of the pattern to use more than two colors on any one round.

The design languished, August ran away, and the end of September crept closer. The deadline for knitting the mittens is November 1, so I needed to get the design down on paper if I wanted to leave myself enough time to knit the darn things. After three weeks of not even looking at my mitten charts, I decided to chuck the whole idea and start fresh. In the meantime, I spun up my Hollyhocks fiber (Falklands wool):



And some corriedale in the colorway The Candle's Nimble Flame:



I didn't really have any intention of using the corriedale for the mittens. In my head, I was starting to doubt that it had been a good idea to sign myself up for yet another commitment at this time of the year. So I brought the handspun to my knitting circle, and we all talked about it.





I asked about what people liked in a mitten. Did they prefer a thumb that protrudes from inside the palm, or on the side? With or without a thumb gusset? And there, surrounded by like-minded fibery friends, the idea hit me. I needed a mitten I could knit pretty fast if I wanted (because at this rate, I'd probably have about 48 hours to do the actual knitting after figuring out the pattern). I had some chunky yarn spun so it would make subtle stripes, in a colorway with little variation in contrast and saturation. Cables would pop, but they also couldn't be too complex or they'd get lost in the color. On top of all this, I was keen to make my design something that I perceived as unique. I'd seen lots of cabled mittens where there's an awesome intricate pattern going up the back of the hand, leaving the palm smooth. I said: what about cables on the side?

That sounded interesting to enough people, and after a few really really bad ideas about mitten construction (hint: there is such a thing as too unique), I settled on a basic game plan. I'd knit one mitten and make it up as I went along, keeping notes. The first test of the pattern would occur while I knit the second mitten, using the notes as a guide and trying very sincerely to not just make the second one up as I went along too. Here's what that looked like:



It was EXCRUCIATING to knit so slowly! So tough to stop myself every few rounds and update the notes. You can't hold a pen and keep your yarn tensioned at the same time, did you know that? Well, at least I can't. And when knitting the second mitten, I went into a mini panic every time something didn't come out the way it should. This time, I couldn't just knit 2 together and forget about the extra stitch that popped up out of nowhere. I knew in the back of my head that I wanted to write up the pattern, and other people who knit these mittens would obsess over that extra stitch. Incidentally, I also learned how to correctly count rows/rounds. I still had plans for the Hollyhocks yarn, but it went on the back burner.

And now they're done. After getting washed, it took me another two weeks to get out on a sunny day for a photo shoot. This morning I had some fun in the park with my mittens and the timer on my camera. Here they are, my Snow Chains mittens.









It's a good thing I waited a while to take the photos, because I was pretty sick of the design when I first finished knitting the mittens. We needed a break from each other. I am now working on writing up the pattern, but I'm gonna be honest here, because it's my blog and I can. If you hate them, don't tell me. I won't force anyone else to knit them, I promise.

Stash Toss (and some old photos)

After getting through all the post-Tour de Fleece spinning, I realized that my stash had kind of grown in an odd way. I didn't anticipate it, but in retrospect I probably should have seen this coming. The growth necessitated some repotting, splitting what had become one huge plant into several smaller, more organized and easily tendable specimens. But in doing all this gardening-type work, I discovered is that the root structure of my stash is drastically different from what it looked like two years ago, let alone five years ago.

I first started knitting while in college (and thus while perpetually broke). A stash was not a luxury I could afford, and it wasn't until I started making projects that produced leftovers of more than a yard that my stash began. But even so, when I moved out of my college dorm room for the last time, my stash fit into one large wicker basket, along with all my needles and swatches and my drop spindle.

Grad school was a sort of back-and-forth with the stash. I starved it periodically, but thanks to my new teaching assistant income I was able to buy yarn for projects that would not go on the needles immediately. Here's a few pictures summing up my stash as of August '07, at the start of my final semester of grad school:



This is the main stash, and the basket it all lived in (sorry for the blurry picture, this was also my first foray into digital photography). It's still about 85% leftovers, along with these two little stashlets:



The ever-present mitered squares blanket stash. At this stage, I had about half the yarn and maybe a quarter of the squared knit.



And finally, my handspun stash. All four skeins of it, all done on drop spindles. The pink skein was actually also leftovers (I'll never know why I didn't just knit a longer scarf that time).

Having a real (i.e., non-student) income was what finally did it. I had real money to spend, and spend it I certainly did. My stash outgrew the basket, even after I moved all my knitting tools to another part of the apartment. The stash wasn't changing though, not really. It was just budding, sprouting little paper shopping bags with a sweater's worth or a few skeins of sock yarn. But I had begun to buy yarn with no project in mind or even a tentative idea of when I'd get around to knitting it. I managed to snag one of Mrs. B's fabulous Taste of Germany yarn packages. But it was still all yarn, and it mostly ended up in the same little stashlet bags, next to the big basket in the closet. Six months after I took those stash photos, everything changed.



With the arrival of my wheel (and subsequent ability to eat through spinning stash about a kajillion times faster than on my drop spindle), the stash began to evolve. It found a new light source, and started to move its tendril-y bits in the direction of that source. I should have seen it coming, because about a year ago I reorganized the living room so I could have a dedicated spinning corner, surrounded by my books, tools, fiber, and handspun yarn. Last week, I dug everything out for an overhaul and realized that my handspun stash now rivals what I used to think of as the "main" stash, the yarn in the basket. I don't have any pictures because it was a little embarrassing, but you can just about double the stash in the previous photos for the yarn & blanket bags, and then add one basket's worth of handspun as well. I have enough handspun to separate it into categories (dyer, project, leftovers vs. fresh)! I guess this was just another way for the universe to remind me of the law of stash conservation:

Spinning does not use up stash, it merely changes fiber stash into yarn stash.

13 out of my last 15 projects have been of handspun. What I'm curious about is whether I'm thick or if this is normal, the way the stash snuck up on me. Has anyone else (spinners or not) experienced a dramatic shift in their crafting habits, and not noticed until 18 months later? Inquiring minds would love to know.

Parade of FO's

Here's what happens when you have two and a half weeks off with no blogging:

Fingerless Gloves
Pattern: Toast
Yarn: Handspun Wool/Seawool/Milk Protein from Creatively Dyed


Another Cowl
Pattern: Loose Interpretation of Dolores Park Cowl
Yarn: "Night Sky" Hello Yarn Fiber Club handspun superwash BFL


Yet Another Cowl
Pattern: Same as above
Yarn: "Manka's Thicket" Verb Fiber Club handspun black BFL plied with purple silk hankies


Finish Line #1: Tour de Fleece


I didn't finish my Tour goals, but this is how far I got. I had a plying party when I got back from Vancouver, so the all the balls of singles are now finished skeins waiting for a soak. I did some more spinning over the last two weeks to bring myself up to my goal level. These are both Hello Yarn, the first one is "Five Plum Pie" Falklands and the second one is "Illuminated" Wensleydale.





And finally, Finish Line #2: the Halcyon


It's so close to being done I can almost taste it. The neckline needs a tubular bindoff, ends need weaving in, and then the whole thing gets a good dunk. I can hardly wait for fall so I can wear it!

I'm starting to miss knittting...

But I don't think I can stop spinning yet. I'm pretty sure I won't hit my goal of spinning half the stash, but I'll get close to spinning all the fiber I set aside a month ago. The problem is that I didn't take into account that at the end of the tour, I would simultaneously be inundated with grading (it's the last week of summer session) and getting ready to attend a wedding in another country that takes place on the second-to-last day of the tour. I did get quite a bit accomplished last weekend, though. I finally got sewing thread to ply the Sanguine Gryphon wool/silk yarn, and I've got all six bumps of Pigeonroof Studios fiber spun into singles. I'm inspired by this yarn, so the singles are rather fat and low twist.

I'd planned on having a marathon plying session last night for the challenge day, but it was all I could do to not fall asleep in my dinner plate after class. I managed to stay awake long enough to get the singles off the bobbins and into center-pull balls, but not long enough to take photos. The spindle project will be coming with me on the weekend, but even if I finish the plying tomorrow (our flight leaves in the afternoon, and I still have final exams to grade! See how my brain loves to torture me?) and the spindling in transit, I'll still be falling about 8 ounces short of my goal. Once we get back, I'm off for two weeks until the fall semester begins so I'll have time to baste up my sweater and gasp wash some more fleece!

Tour in Tahoe

We spent the weekend up at a friend's cabin near South Lake Tahoe, and although I didn't have a very large amount of time to spin, I did get a few things off the bobbins before we left and squeezed in some more spindle time while we were up there.

These got wound off and washed last night:



Here we have two singles yarns: the Ripe Olives Merino/Mohair from Hello Yarn, and 2 ounces of Dew BFL from Tactile Fiber Arts. They're both going to remain singles, so we've got 6 ounces of fiber to cross off the list! Since I've finished one spindle project, this got started up in the woods:



It's the 3.4 ounce batt from Aunt Janet's fiber mill, and I'm doing an airy, low-twist lumpy bumpy singles that will probably get navajo-plied for some bulk. No project in mind yet, it will depend on how rough the finished and washed yarn is. It was lots of fun to spin this out on the deck in the warm sunshine, and compare the greeny-blue of the fiber to the green of the pines and the blue of the sky. We had a great time hanging out with friends surrounded by nature. Some highlights:









Today I have lots of chores and unpacking to take care of, and it's officially a rest day for the Tour. However, I'm hoping to get at least one bobbin of Pigeonroof singles done so I can stay on target. I may need to convert one of my spinning projects from wheel to spindle so that I have enough to keep me spinning every day of the tour even when I'm not at home.