tychoish, now without a net

I spent a lot of my recent Saturday spinning. It’s nice to finally have such a long period of time where I don’t have to do anything. Here’s what I did:

I finished spinning the shetland roving that I’ve been working on for a couple of months. This was the first big batch of wool that I bought after my return to spinning this spring. I got 2 pounds (which is my standard order size) of a lovely grey and I spun a DK-ish weight 3-ply yarn.

Since I’ve gotten back to spinning I’ve been spinning a lot of 3 ply. Since I intended to knit from my handspun stash in the coming months, and I like the way that 3-ply comes out, I feel like it’s worth the extra effort. I’m also trying to spin more of the kinds of yarn that I’m likely to knit with, that is yarn in the neighborhood of worsted-weight yarn. While I knit a lot at finer gauges, I often have pretty good reason to use machined yarns for those tasks, but I think having a stash of heavier handspun yarns is sort of the way to go.

I also started and spun the first skein of my next spinning project. I bought some Corriedale-Cross (2 lbs) at the Yarn Barn in April, and I’m spinning that into a more worsted 3ply. It’s a harder wearing wool, but there isn’t a lot of crimp and it’s not particularly rough. It has the other advantage of being incredibly inexpensive, considering how nice it is and given my intentions for this project (keep reading) it’s perfect.

I want to knit a guernsey-style sweater (thought it might have more cable work, if I get intense about it,) and I want to have a sort of firmly spun, rugged wool for this sweater, and I’m afraid that merino would be too soft. I also have two pounds of merino for the next project. More on that as it develops. But yes, spinning continues apace!

Also, I think that it’s going to work out that I’m going to be spending the fall knitting sleeves to sweaters again. These things happen. But the next sweater that I cast on will probably be something from my handspun. Incidentally, I’m predict a cable phase soon.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: spinning

My past several posts about knitting and fiber arts have all been along the lines of “I haven’t been knitting much and I’d like to more,” but this post reports some success.

I’ve been working on things. I don’t yet really have a niche in my life for knitting, still–before, there were things that I always knit during, and now I either don’t do those things, or have gotten out of the habit of knitting during them–but I spun and knit a lot this past weekend: and I got other things done as well. Successes all around!

For starters I spun an entire skein of yarn, and it came out pretty well, or at least better than my last skein came out. I think on the last one I had forgotten that I had been plying using the “scotch tension” of my wheel. While I absolutely adore the double drive for spinning singles, but I apparently like to ply at really high tension. Having remembered this fact, spinning is going well. I have about 250 more grams of this current project to spin, though I did give my mother 100 grams of the project because I think it unlikely that a sweater to fit me would weight all of 2 pounds.¹

After I get done with this project, my mother and I are going to try a tandem spinning project. I have 2 pounds of Corriedale-cross (the cheap but sturdy wool undyed from the Yarn Barn), and we’re going to set our wheels to the closest ratio we can, and we’re going to both go for a sort of semi-worsted sport/dk 3 ply. It’ll be interesting, and I’ll keep you all posted as it develops. We won’t start until I get done with the current project (which I estimate will be in a couple of weeks.)

In terms of the knitting, I’ve made progress on the sweater. I finished the second skein’s worth of the body, and it’s about 8 inches long by now. And I started the first sleeve, which after a false start (too many stitches, I was just guessing,) it’s coming out fine.

As I had hoped, working on the plain sweater has revived my interest in two-color knitting. I knit a couple of rounds on it. The yarn is– I think I’ve mentioned, heh–very fine, and the kittens have on several occasions managed to attack the yarn between the ball and the sweater and sever one or both strands. Thankfully this yarn splices really well. so it’s not an issue, but it is sort of annoying. I also got full look at it laid out on my desk and I’ve realized that I have more done than I thought. Still not “enough,” but a fair piece. It’s worth something.

Anyway, it’s good to be knitting again. Really good. Knitting is something that I really do enjoy (obviously) even though I’ve been off of it lately, and it’s something that I think I do really well, or at least, I don’t ever find myself questioning my ability to knit, in the way that I find myself constantly questioning my ability to write, or tell stories, or do research, or write code/use technology. That’s a nice feeling. I’ll have to write about that as I ponder this more.

It’s good to be back, at any rate.

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tagged: knitting • spinning

So this is supposed to be, at least in part, a knitting blog. My apologies for not writing about my knitting much of late. I’ve been thinking about knitting a bit and finally starting to do some knitting again. But I have a confession to make: I’ve started on a new project.

I’m knitting a new sweater out of some stash yarn. It’s just going to be a teal (big surprise) pullover with plain knitting. I want to do an EPS-style raglan pullover when I’m at knitting camp this year, and I thought it would be good to get started on that. I have about 5 inches done, and it’s my intention to get the body and the sleeves to the underarm, and maybe do a little bit of the yoke before my camp at the end of July. I’m going slowly, but I seem to be able to make time to regularly work on this project. That’s a good thing.

There’s not much more to talk about there. I think, at least in part, my issue was that the knitting I was trying to concentrate on was the kind of knitting that needed a lot of sustained attention, in a global sense. I could pick it up for a few moments here and there, but if I wasn’t picking it up pretty regularly, the rhythm and energy behind the project faded away. And since I was trying to not divide my knitting energy between multiple projects, I pretty much stopped knitting. While the more complicated project, the Latvian Dreaming project is something that I want to continue to do in the future, it’s not working for me at this instant.

Speaking of getting back into the swing of things, I also did some spinning. Egad, I’m out of practice. I enjoyed it, but wow, I totally over-plyed the skein of yarn in question. It’s been long enough that I can’t quite remember how it was that I was plying the yarn. I might have done it with scotch tension (the plying not the spinning) rather than double drive, or it might have been a lazy-kate issue. Though I’m not discouraged enough to stop spinning, because I think I can find my mojo again, it did give me a little pause.

I think I need to do something to get a little more control over spinning and knitting time, which probably means figuring out some way to balance other projects more effectively. How do you all–who aren’t students–manage to get knitting time, particularly if you work a lot, and/or have a number of freelance-ish projects, that can suck time in a major way?

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So I have a confession to make.

I haven’t really been knitting very much.

The writing, the work, and the weekend of morris dancing has left me with not a lot of time for knitting.

Also, after a very cool spring, summer has invaded my world with a vengeance.

These are all excuses I know.

But you have to admit that it is a lot to cope with in a week.

I’m going to charge the batteries and take some pictures of the Latvian dreaming sweater, and hopefully get back into it. I know I’ve made promises about not knitting more than one project at the same time (particularly to avoid sleeves), but I’ve started to get pretty annoyed at the yarn, and you know how the knitting malaise goes. And it might be nice to knit something plain. How wierd does this sound.

At the same time, writing (not even posting it yet!) has caused me enough guilt to get my knitting out again. So that’s good. I’ll keep you posted.

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tagged: knitting • latvian dreaming • spinning

Eek, this post is a few days old as it managed to escape posting for a while. but I hope still relevant to most of you. Just don’t be surprised in a few days when it seems like I’ve made a huge amount of progress. I’m not that quick.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about spinning for some time now, and although I wasn’t able to take spinning with me this weekend, I’ve still been spinning. This is a good thing.

I still have to spend some time with a niddy nody and my BFL, but I’ve been avoiding it. In part because winding 7 skeins doesn’t sound like fun, but also, this is undyed white fiber and I’d kind of like to have a sense of what I’m going to do with it before I skein it up. I guess the most likely thing is to run a big dye pot for an afternoon and see if I can get all of the yarn to be variations on a single color. I don’t really want hand painted yarn or anything, but kettle dyed something might be fun.

My current spinning project is this blue hand-dyed roving that I’m making 3-ply from. I’m spinning up the singles for the last ply. and I think it’s going to be pretty cool. I hope to be done with this yarn by tomorrow afternoon. I’m really close. There’s about 8 ounces of fiber here, and it’s merino, but I think there’s something “off” with the fiber quality. It’s really soft, and the dye job is pretty good, but it’s like the fiber is too dry. I think I’m going to put some baby oil or hair conditioner in the rinse bath of the yarn and see if that helps make the yarn a bit more sturdy and less dry seeming.

Since my return to spinning, I’ve tried to think very carefully about what I’m spinning and what that yarn is going to end up being. Even if it’s stuff I’m not going to keep, I think one of the things that makes spinning more effective is spinning yarn for a project rather than just spinning a pretty roving because it’s pretty. Having said that, I’m pretty clueless as to what this yarn is going to become. Socks and a hat? For Sale on Etsy or some such? I might keep it around as stash. We shall see.

My next spinning project is sitting on the other side of my office: 2 lbs. of grey shetland, that I want to spin 3ply DK weight yarn from, I think with the intention of making a pretty traditional cabled gansey. I’d probably knit it tightly, but not tightly. In any case, I’m getting ahead of myself¹ the fiber is really nice. I got it from Copper Moose and the service (and price!) were really great, and I’m looking forward to getting into this spinning. Natural grey fibers are so much fun.

I think after that, I’m going to try for some darkly colored BFL, which is a bit harder to find, but I think might be akin to nirvana.

I haven’t gotten around to making the hybrid double drive, or the extra drive bands. These things happen, of course.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: spinning

I’ve been a bit off the fiber arts these past few days. For starters, I discovered a stain on my Latvian Mitten sweater which is all but finished. (I just have to sew down the hem.)

It’s a tea stain, which are particularly brutal to get off. My last sweater that I made with this yarn currently suffers from a few more honestly derived tea stains. There’s also something about this yarn, I’m convinced, No other seems to stain so easily. Is there something about superwash? In any case, though I think the stain has mostly come up (salt, who’d thought?) and it’s on the back of the sweater sort of under the arm, so again, not a big deal, that whole mess has put me off knitting just a bit. I’ll get back to it in time. I want to get the hem sewn down by the weekend, which shouldn’t be a problem.

There’ll be more latvian dreaming stuff soon. I promise. How are people doing on this one?

I also finished this little spinning project I’d been working on for a great while. It’s 3ply merino DKish weight yarn. Light blue marl. I’m loving it, though I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with it. This of course means that I’ve already started spinning up my shetland roving which I’m hoping to turn into three-ply of a similar weight as well. It’s nice fiber, unlike anything else I’ve ever spun, but it’s going well. One thought is that I could use the blue merino at least in part for hems. Which seems like a foolish waist of hand spun. I’ve made a rule that handspun (once it’s spun) doesn’t count as stash, so it could sit around for a while.

I’ve decided that I’m going to try and spin 100 gram skeins of yarn, by measuring off 3 33ish gram lengths of roving and spinning one on to each bobbin and then plying. I think this will give me reasonably sized skeins, it’ll break up the spinning in an interesting way, and I’m less likely to have leftovers of any quantity (I know this isn’t a huge issue, but I’m a bit neurotic.) This decision made me really rather happy. I also decided that I’d not use the lazy kate that came with my wheel except for holding bobbins when plying. All other bobbin holding will be done by the basket that I use to hold my fiber as I’m spinning. Somehow these decisions were incredibly liberating, and I think that realization is kind of worrying. Anyway, I think I should end this before it degenerates any further.

Onward and Upward.

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tagged: knitting • spinning