I’ve been spinning like crazy lately! Knitting: meh. Spinning: whee! I’ve been practicing making a smooshy two ply yarn, with varied results.

I love Krista’s yarns and fiber. I have two more braids of her fiber in the stash, and they’re the prettiest things around!

I became very used to spinning really thin yarn when I made the Funky Carolina sock yarn, so this is practice in spinning something thicker. I did pretty well with this - it’s worsted weightish. And pretty. That paw is Silver, making her entrance. I can’t take photos of yarn without the kittehs getting involved.

So when I spin, I have a 50/50 chance of producing crap. This is crap. The fiber is great, more Pigeonroof Studios, but the spinning is awful. I tried to spin the singles tightly so that it would look extra smooshy when I plied it, and the singles had little corkscrews in them. I figured the coils would go away when I plied it (when some twist is removed from the singles), but they did not. Yuck.

This is the February shipment of the Hello Yarn fiber club. BFL is like buttah. I heart it greatly.

I think I’ve mastered the art of two plies, and I’m ready to move on to something else. Maybe adding a ply? Spinning a soft single? I bought a Spin Off magazine last week, and it’s full of cool techniques!

There’s also been some knitting - I picked up the Phyllo Yoked Pullover again. I’m going to MDSW in a couple of weeks (yay!), and I thought I could maybe finish this in time to wear in the cool MD weather. When Blackie isn’t sleeping on it, of course. I’m about halfway finished with the waist increases and then I’ve got both sleeves to knit. Can our brave knitter conquer miles of stockinette in fingering weight yarn? Stay tuned!

Blog, I’ve been neglecting you again. I blame freaking Lost - Rob and I are working our way through seasons 1-3, which always trumps internet time. I’m about four projects behind on updates (if you count handspun), so here’s a little two-for-one sock action.

Pattern: Leyburn Socks
Yarn: Lisa Souza Sock!, the wool/nylon blend one

I’m in a bit of a knitting funk these days, and the only thing I can manage to finish is socks. So socks it is! I’ve had this yarn in my stash forever, because I’ve been stumped as to what to make with it. I really believe that slip-stitch patterns are the perfect thing for variegated yarn. I’ve wanted to knit the Leyburn pattern for a while, too (I swatched it in some Koigu last year), and this is the perfect marriage of yarn and pattern!

I followed the pattern very loosely, as I paired the stitch pattern with a Widdershins-esque toe-up heel flap. My heel turn is a bit different from the Widdershins one, though - for some reason Widdershins heel turn is half the depth of a normal top-down heel flap. I also worked a Magic Cast On for the first time, and it was like magic! Much better than dealing with a short-row toe.

I changed around the Leyburn stitch counts, too - the foot is 34 instep stitches and 31 sole stitches, and leg was 64 stitches. I should have increased some stitches around the heel flap (or worked a longer flap), since the floats are a bit stretched out there.

This was the first time that I’ve used Lisa Souza yarns. I love the non-pooling dye job, but the yarn felt very nylony when I was knitting with it. She also sells a 100% merino sock yarn, which my pampered fingers demand, apparently. I also love the generous 4 ounce put up - I have a sizeable ball of yarn leftover.

I wrote this entire post without mentioning the obvious fraternal nature of the socks, which is really a testament to my diminishing anal retentiveness. It’s part of the beauty of handpainted yarns, right?

I’m in the minority here, but I really prefer knitting socks top-down! I hate, hate, hate working the sewn bindoff for toe-up socks, and I hate even more undoing the sewn bindoff because it’s too tight. Knitting socks toe-up also requires a bit more math before you start, since you need to know your heel depth and the number of stitches before the heel turn to figure out how many gusset increases that must be worked. I probably won’t be working any more toe-up socks, unless I’m really, really afraid of running out of yarn.

In keeping with the sock-a-month theme, the socks above were March’s pair, and these are April’s.

Pattern: None - just a 64 stitch top-down stockinette sock with an afterthought heel
Yarn: My handspun! 3 ply (navajo plied) from some Funky Carolina superwash merino in the Missed colorway

Handspun socks! There’s not much to say about these, except that I spun the yarn! I can’t believe that these turned out so well. The handspun was mostly fingering weight (I used a US 1.5 needle and got 8 stitches/inch), but was a bit thicker for the second sock’s cuff. I think that the thick portion was where I started out spinning, and the uber thin portion was toward the end. I can say that spinning worsted weight yarn goes much, much faster than a 3 ply sock yarn!

My first afterthought heel! I chose the afterthought heel so that the stripes wouldn’t be interrupted, and I heart it. Normal short-row heels don’t fit my massive instep very well, so I worked a few even rounds before decreases to give me some extra ease in that area. The instep stitches are still stretched out, so I’ll try more even rounds next time.

The right sock has very short stripes, so I ended up cutting the yarn in a couple of places on the left sock to keep the stripes from getting too out of control. I also knit the first sock on the short side, since I was afraid of running out of yarn, and I extended it an inch after the second sock was complete. I must have missed this lesson in Knitting 101, but if you pick out the cast on edge to frog the top ribbing, you’ll have to pick out every. single. stitch. No frogging from the cast on edge. I ended up snipping a stitch and cutting off the ribbing, knitting an extra inch, and then grafting the sock back together. I can’t even tell where the graft is, so yay!

Pattern: The charts are a modified version of the Intricate Stag Bag, the general size is sort of based on the We Call Them Pirates hat.
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Tangerine, Dale of Norway Baby Ull in a charcoal grey

Every Thanksgiving, we visit Rob’s parents in a rural area of Pennsylvania. That’s right before hunting season begins, so we usually don hunter’s orange if we walk around outdoors. I’ve been wanting to make Rob’s dad a stranded hat with a deer motif for years, and when I saw the Intricate Stag Hat pattern, I was sold!

Rob’s parents were in town a couple of weeks ago, so the hat was quickly finished and gifted. It’s a bit large on Rob’s head, but it fits his dad’s 24" melon perfectly.

I modified the chart a bit by moving the trees away from the deer by a few stitches, creating some treetops, and adding a third tree. The pattern repeats on the back of the hat.

I used fingering weight yarns so that I could cram the whole scene onto the hat. I’ve used Dale of Norway Baby Ull before, and I’d use it again in a heartbeat, it’s soft like buttah. This was my first time using Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn - it’s quite tightly plied, but it blocked into a beautifully cohesive fabric.

The biggest challenge with this hat was tensioning the very long floats in the chart. The floats were extremely long at the very top of the hat, so I stopped the stranded knitting and duplicate stitched the top of the trees. I’ve never been much of a duplicate stitch fan, but it’s fairly invisible. It’s difficult for me to tell visually where the stranded knitting ends and the duplicate stitch begins, although the texture of the fabric changes at the duplicate stitch area.

A lining knit with the Baby Ull finished off the hat. Knitting the lining was the same amount of knitting as a sock, what a slog. I’ve offered Rob’s dad a liner replacement if the hat isn’t warm enough - it seemed fine when I was knitting it, but the hat is pretty thin. Overall, I’m happy with the hat, but I’m not yearning to struggle with any super long floats in the near future!

It pleases me. I’ve been following around the poor kittehs all weekend, and they are clearly tired of the camera already.

I realized that I’ve got a number of photos uploaded to flickr that I never blogged about. I’ve got a big finished project that I’m too tired to coherently post about right now, so here’s some sewing miscellany to tide you over.

I finally stitched the diamonds together, and boy, that was No Fun. The paper mockup was helpful, but I still had difficulties lining up the rows of diamonds. There’s a couple of corners where you can see a jog but hopefully it won’t be too noticeable! I’m thinking that a 1/8" shift isn’t terribly glaring. If I were to sew these again, I’d mark some darts along the diamond edges to help with lining them up. Small cutting errors really throw the alignment off in this project.

The diamond strip is destined for a pillow. The front will just be this panel and some linen, and the back will be patterned with a hidden zipper down the center. I’m also planning on sewing piping around the edge in a contrast fabric.

I’m still trying to decide what pillow #2 will be. I was originally going to simplify the diamond idea by cutting longer parallelograms (so a diagonal stripe of diamonds would be one piece), but then I saw this:

The small clipping is a pillow from a recentish Domino magazine. Rather than using striped fabric, I thought it would be a great idea to piece the stripes together myself with all the leftover linen and blue+orange fabrics. The jury’s still out on this one because it does look like a ton of work. Although it will undoubtedly be easier to figure out than the diamonds!

February’s socks are finished! I swear I finished them last month, but have put off posting until I retook the photo. They kind of blend in with the background, no? I suppose I can be stealth kelp in these, at least on my back porch.

Pattern: Child’s First Sock in Shell Pattern, from Knitting Vintage Socks
Yarn: Yarn Botanika Merino/Tencel in colorway Rum Runner

I heart the look of this pattern! Naturally, I made some modifications:

• I changed the top rib to 2×2. I prefer my rib to consistently match (or not match) with the sock patterning, and the 2×1 rib didn’t sync with the pattern repeat.
• I flipped the chart for the second sock.
• I’ve read that the gusset depth is pretty shallow for this pattern, so I extended it to 16 slipped stitches.

The only issue I have with these socks is the yarn dye job. I really wanted a semisolid yarn, but I opened up the skein to find this:

The yarn was tied too tightly before it was dyed and the dye barely penetrated in that spot. There were lots of white flecks in about 75% the skein. The left sock leg was knit with the semisolid portion, and the patterning in the rest of the socks is obscured by all that white. Boo, but I like them anyway!

Why hello! It’s been two weeks since we’ve hung out, mano-a-blogo. Mr. Roboto certainly enjoyed having the spotlight during that time, but I think it’s time to push him a little further down on the page, lest we inflate his ego even more. He would like you to know that he’s flying high these days, happy that he finally found his one true love.

In the meantime, I’ve been obsessing about things a bit.

This is the beginnings of the Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature. This is the fourth project that I’ve knit from the book, and it won’t be the last. I’m making this as a mini-knitalong with Lolly and Jody, and a couple of weeks ago Lolly went ahead and started hers. That spurred me to finally swatch, then I blinked and had a completed yoke. Whoa!

I’m very, very loosely following the pattern - I’m knitting the yoke according to the phyllo chart and the rest of the sweater is from my own numbers. I wanted to use a thinner yarn to shrink the yoke pattern vertically so that I could wear this sweater without having to layer a shirt underneath. I do live in Texas, after all, and layering season is quickly drawing to a close. The Rowan 4 ply Cotton is working perfectly so far. I extended the lace chart by one diamond, and the patterning is the perfect length. Perhaps the color isn’t the best color to show off the yoke pattern, but I want this sweater in black, so black it is.

I knit the fun part first (similar to my Tangled Yoke construction (you should click on that link if you like kittens. gah, they were so cute!)) and now I need to think and do math, which means that this sweater has already been cast aside for something else fun. Norah did some interesting shaping in the front of the sweater to make the front neckline fall lower than the back, which I’m going to try to mimic with short rows. Then it’s all stockinette till the cows come home.

Obsession number two comes in fabric form. I’ve been very good at my yarn diet. The only thing I’ve purchased so far this year was a wee bit of sock yarn. However! All that saved money has funded my brand new fiber stash. And my fabric stash. Not good.

I’ve been thinking, dreaming, pondering about blue and orange lately, hence the sudden expansion. We have a bluish-grey couch and a light greenish-blue chair, and I’ve been planning on making pillows for them forever. Have you noticed that all of the good fabrics contain brown? They do! This greenish-blue and orange combo will be perfect accents.

I’ve had diamonds on the mind lately, too, and I’m finally getting around to figuring out a patchworky pillowy pattern. You would not believe how difficult it is to line up diamonds until you cut them out for some coasters and then try to piece them together as you watch your machine devour all of the tiny little diamond shapes. Or maybe that’s just me. Drafting pattern pieces ahead of time is a much smarter way to go.

The scraps (ha! the pillows will only use wee amounts) might go to a baby quilt. Or maybe I’ll just line them up and take more photos of them.

That Mr. Roboto, he’s such a cornball.

Pattern: Robot (rav link) from Unusual Toys for You to Knit and Enjoy, Mochimochiland Heart
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted and scraps of Louet Gems for Mr. Roboto, Wool/Sarisilk blend scraps for the heart

This is another of those thrown-in-a-drawer, procrastinate-on-the-finishing projects. I had originally knit Mr. Roboto as a graduation gift for Rob (whose degree is in robotics). He graduated about a year and a half ago. Poor neglected Mr. Roboto!

The pattern instructs you to knit both sides of the robot flat, then seam him together. I had the bright idea of knitting him in the round and kitchenering his vertical seams together. I’m not sure that this saved me much work, and I think it produced more ends to weave in. Also, I knit him flat along the length of the intarsia panel, so I had to seam that side anyway.

Then I embroidered the most hideous face on the poor robot, prompting the delay in finishing. I finally bought a boatload of safety eyes, ripped my embroidery, and started over. I tried to embroider the heart to have the same expression as Mr. Roboto, but the heart just looks kind of sad - Rob even pointed it out. Awww!

Overall, Rob was very happy with his V-day gift, and Mr. Roboto is happy to be out of that drawer. Now, if Mr. Roboto could just find a little love…

Usually my participation in Project Spectrum is purely coincidental, but this year I’m putting the teeniest bit of forethought into it.

That’s my sock yarn stash, all 12 skeins of it. I did buy some since making the sock-a-month pledge - the green skeins in the middle that look like they were attacked by cats. Because they were. You can click on the photo to see details on everything.

I fear that my sock-knitting motivation is going to wane once summer hits Houston (um, next month), but I’m going strong for now. I’m planning to knit the next bunch of socks according to Project Spectrum colors. Air is already looking like it’s going to be a weak season, but the other months are well represented in the stash. The fiery looking yarn in the upper-right will be March’s pair.

I may have accidentally added a thirteenth skein to the sock yarn pile.

That wheel that I’ve been borrowing? Well, now it’s mine. This is the first yarn that I’ve spun on it since I bought it - it’s Funky Carolina superwash merino in the Missed colorway.

I wanted to give Navajo-plying a go, so I decided to spin some skinny singles so that the 3ply yarn wouldn’t be too thick. At no point in time did I realize that I would end up with sock yarn. Yup, this is 119g and 350 yards, and pretty darn close to fingering weight. It’s by no means perfect, but I love it anyway!

Oooh, and today is also my two-year blogiversary. Crazy, huh? I’ve got to say, I do have big arrow-pierced hearts for the knitters! It’s such a great, supportive community, and I’m happy to be a part of it. Yay for yarn!

One of my sort-of resolutions this year was to finish-or-frog my lingering projects (let’s not even discuss another resolution to blog more frequently, which I’m clearly failing at). How did I do? Well, the Socks for Veronik were project number 1 out of 6, and here’s number two:

Pattern: Counterpane Clutch from Handknit Holidays
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, less than one skein!

What seemed like a simple project at the time became a monster. I first knit this when I bought Handknit Holidays, out of some Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. I remember being pretty frustrated that it took a little over one skein to make the bag, and the hairiness of the bag was not the look I was going for. So the bag sat in a corner for the longest time. I would root around in my yarn stash and uncover one of the halves, then guiltily stuff it back into its deep, dark corner to hibernate.

Then, last April, I bought a couple of skeins of Pure Silk from Yarntopia’s anniversary sale. The clutch looks much better in a smoother yarn, so the Alpaca Silk got frogged (and subsequently became Center Square). Then I proceeded to stuff the reknit bag into a deep, dark corner to hibernate.

Why all the procrastination? Ugh, the finishing details! I had originally planned to buy a metal claspy purse frame for the bag, which would have cost more than the yarn used to knit it! The clasp ended up being backordered, then gone forever, and I finally just went with a boring old zipper.

I made one small modification to the knitting portion of the bag - I provisionally cast on both sides, then kitchenered the bottom together. No seams! I don’t remember why I didn’t just knit the bag in the round, maybe because of the clasp details? If you’re installing a zipper, you might as well just knit it in the round and make it seamless.

The knitting part of this bag was quick and easy. You can easily get one bag out of a skein of Pure Silk. I even had enough extra yarn that I knit a wrist strap with (but the strap looked crappy and was removed).

I chose the invisible zipper purely because it’s such a close color match, but I’m pleased with the choice now.

The next step was the lining. You should definitely block the bag before figuring out the lining. I drafted a pattern for the lining (scallops and all), which was too small. Then I drafted another one. I actually made two linings - an outer lining that you can see through the lace pattern, and an inner lining that’s a teeny bit smaller. I interfaced both linings, but did not sew them together. The inner lining also has a pocket on each side that’s credit card / money sized. I’m always worried that I’m going to lose money when taking things in and out of pocketless clutches.

Last step - zipper installation. This part is No Fun. I wedged the zipper between the two lining layers, which looks very tidy. There was lots of basting and swearing and rebasting involved with zipper installation. Then there were a few attempts to find a stitch that will look pretty on the inside. I think I succeeded, but seriously, between the Tangled Yoke ribbon facing and this zipper, I was handstitching for a solid week.

My final verdict? Meh. I probably won’t use it much. First off, the yarn is extremely fuzzy and the bag looks quite worn already.

It’s like little sunspots erupting from the surface of the bag. From what? The abuse of being ignored for all this time? The most wear that the bag endured was living in a desk drawer for a few months (as an attempt to get me to finish the damn thing). I now realize that this fuzziness and wear is common with single-ply silk yarns. Boo. The other issue is completely my fault - I didn’t interface the lining enough. I used a fusible interfacing, likely lightweight. The bag is pretty floppy and looks pretty silly. I haven’t tried loading it with my cellphone and lipgloss yet, but it doesn’t look good.

And what about the other four finish-in-January projects?

• Tangled Yoke - needs a single ribbon facing for the buttonhole side. I need to figure out buttonholes on my sewing machine - there’s no way that I’m hand stitching them.
• Petal - No longer looks hacked apart. I need to figure out the sleeve caps, which don’t fit the sleeves terribly well.
• Intricate Stag Hat - no progress.
• Mr. Roboto - Almost done! I think he’s going to become a valentine’s day gift for rob (rather than a graduation gift, an event which occurred almost two years ago).

Now we’re striving for finish-by-Spring. Hopefully!