Now is the time when knitbloggers look back and reflect on the finished objects of last year. Here’s a mosaic of it all:

Twenty four things: half of them socks, 10 accessories, the Squares for Sharron blanket, and poor Phyllo Yoked Pullover, which turned out very unflattering, sigh. You can click on the photo for details on all of the projects.

A bit more interesting is the yarns of 2008. Specifically, handspun. I bought a used, somewhat rickety (well-loved, right?) Ashford Traveller at the end of 2007 and gave it quite the workout in ‘08:

clicky for linky!

That’s a lot of yarn! Looking at the mosaic, I can clearly see how I improved as the year progressed, from the overspun messes in spring to the relatively good quality yarns that I spun in the winter. In mid fall I decided that my fiber stash had gotten out of control, so I spun the last ten skeins in a relatively short span of time.

While I was getting good at spinning yarn, I wasn’t very good at using it. No, not at all. Had I actually knit with the early yarns I would have realized how icky and overspun they were and I probably could have spun better stuff sooner. Ah, well, hindsight and all. Regardless, I have a shelf of handspun sitting around, becoming yet another stash. I finally decided to do something about it, all at once!

If you read Lolly’s blog, then you’ve seen her posts about the Komb blanket she’s knitting. I have an unnatural love of hexagons and how they tessellate oh-so-perfectly, so Komb is perfect! I decided that all of the handspun, from crap to gold, was going to become a gigantic blanket. Knit it until it’s gone!

First came color selection:

Since my color preferences are pretty consistent (cool colors!), this was pretty easy! I omitted anything with brown so that the blanket could hang out on our grey couch. I also chose yarns that were relatively the same weight – dk to worsted. One bulky yarn made it in to the blanket, and my next post will talk about the issues with handling the gauge difference.

I knit a few swatches:

Which became a little flower:

Which then multiplied!

The cream border yarn is Knitpicks Bare Superwash in the worsted weight. I went back and forth (and back. and forth.) of whether to use the superwash or non-superwash versions. There’s quite a bit of a price difference between them, but I finally splurged for the superwash (after buying all that fiber, what’s a few more dollars a skein?) so that I could easily spot clean the border without accidentally felting the yarn.

In the past, I never considered myself much of a blanket knitter. I’ve knit one baby blanket, the Oat Couture Prairie Blanket, and at the time I thought that was the longest, most painful project ever. I’m really enjoying this blanket, though – I think the handspun makes everything much more fun! I have a huge bag that I keep all the yarns in and it’s entertaining to close my eyes, put my hand in, and pull out the next color. I’ve also been searching the internets looking for more! colors! and spinning additional skeins to add to the blanket.

Since I’ll be working on this blanket for the foreseeable future, I’m going to spread out the details until the blanket is done. Next up: construction and gauge, where I spill the beans on the fact that I’m not actually knitting Komb at all, just a very close replica.

Knitting? no. Spinning? Yes! In fact, I brought fiber to predraft at my Stitch and Bitch last week, rather than knitting on one of the many projects that I’m bored to tears with. Someone asked me if I joined the Tour de Fleece spinalong. Um, kind of? I clicked “join this group” on Ravelry. Does that count?

Pigeonroof Studios superwash merino in Harlequin. 99 grams, 13wpi, 170 yards. I’d take that WPI number with a large grain of salt – I very, very sloppily measured it before the skein was washed. Original fiber.

6oz of Crown Mountain Farms corriedale pencil roving in Stonehenge. 163g, 14wpi, 313 yards. Original Fiber. I was thinking about using this as the yoke of a sweater, but who am I kidding? 313 yards isn’t that much more than a standard handspun skein.

Julie Spins Rambouillet in Polar, original fiber. I haven’t weighed or measured it, so let’s just call it beyond categorization for now. This one’s for my Hush Hush Handspun Hootenanny pal.

My Ravelry handspun page is starting to look like a yearbook page of skeins, which pleases me! To tell you the truth, I don’t care for spinning that much. However, I love the end result and really, really like buying more fiber than I have room to store, so spinning must occur!

I think that part of my knitting issues lie in that I’m officially sick of socks. Whatever happened to the sock a month thing, you ask? And isn’t that my unpronounceable name in the Knotions preview, you wonder? Yes! May’s socks will be fully revealed in August when Knotions launches, very exciting! For now, here’s a little preview:

And I just finished June’s socks. See, I’m not that far behind!

Hi! We’re back from Europe and still trying to adjust to the time zone here. I’ve realized that it’s much easier to sleep through the night when you don’t have cats laying on your pillow and kneading your legs at wee hours of the morning. Yeah. But Switzerland was great, and I’ll have lots of photos to share once I go through the 600+ shots we took on the trip.

Thanks for all of the comments on the baby blanket and skirt! It was great to read them on our trip when I was waiting around for Rob to finish his conferencing. Thankfully all of that waiting happened where there was free wireless!

I have a little yarn to share with you that I completely forgot to blog about this before we left. It’s not much, just your standard two-ply handspun.

The fiber was Laughing Rat finnsheep in the color Flourite. This skein is 118g, 180 yards. I think that this is my best handspun to date! It looks extra pretty because it’s the first yarn I’ve wound on a niddy noddy. I was previously using my swift to wind yarn, but the niddy noddy is so much easier and neater looking.

Speeeeaking of handspun, I joined the Hush-Hush Handspun Hootenanny swap. I’m perhaps a bit late filling out the questionnaire, so after the bump are all of my answers…

Read more

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

Pigeonroof Studios superwash merino in Vintage Blue, 102g, 185 yards.

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.

Pigeonroof Studios superwash merino in Nightshade, 100g, 180 yards.

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.

Hello Yarn BFL in Insect Wings, 140g, 156 yards.

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!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas/Festivus/long weekend! Our holiday was wonderful, despite being away from our families. Thanks for everyone’s well wishes for Rob – his surgery went wonderfully, and he’s recovering like a champ. We spent the long weekend relaxing, Rob healing and me lazing about. There was napping. Cookies were baked. A turkey was conquered. Ahhh, vacation.

Unfortunately, my crafty spirit has been broken after all those scarves – I’ve just started to get back into knitting, working on FO Fury item #4. I had intended the FO Fury series to be more, well, furious, but I dropped everything the second we decided that we weren’t traveling for the holiday. I’ve also been taking a bit of a blog break these days. I think I need to go ahead and Mark All Read and start anew – I’m incredibly behind in my blog reading, and you guys post entirely too frequently!

I did create something over the past week:

This is 52g of Skeintily Clad merino in an unknown colorway – the original fiber is here. It’s buttery soft, yum!

I’m borrowing Amy’s wheel again, so expect more spinning this coming month. I’m relaxing my goals of finishing all UFO’s by the end of the year in favor of spinning through all the stash I’ve purchased in the past week. Rob and I didn’t really do the gift exchange thing this year, so I bought some fibery gifts for myself. My goal is to spin through everything before the wheel gets returned, we’ll see if that happens…

I’m still mesmerized that this:

Turns into this:

Whee! I crammed the whole plied skein onto one bobbin this time – maybe Amy doesn’t really need bigger bobbins after all. I was hoping for something more tightly plied, but what you see is the balanced result.

The fiber is Spunky Eclectic merino/silk in the Nova Scotia colorway. I split it into four strips and kept everything in the same direction when I spun and plied it, so there are some distinct color shifts in the skein (moreso at one end than the other).

My skills have improved a bit from the first skein to last:

The newest skein isn’t too shabby! Predrafting is key.

And last, a little handspun yarn party:

Well, the spinning has been fun, but I’m ready to get back to some knitting. Big thanks go to Amy for letting me borrow her wheel and not complaining at all when I wound up keeping it for two weeks. There has been some knitting happening around these parts – I’m on the last chart of the Spring Things shawl, which you can see perched on our new chair:

Ta da! After 8 years of sitting on some seriously ugly, falling-apart grad student furniture, Rob and I finally went out and bought a quality sofa and chair. I feel like such an adult!

Caterpillar:

Butterfly:

Or something like that. Heritage Arts TX merino/tussah silk fiber, about 100g. I’ve informed Amy about her need for bigger bobbins, and she’s accepting donations.

This is so much more evenly spun than the Spunky Eclectic, yay! My secret was to predraft the fiber, then to go back and predraft it again for reals. I still had some difficulty drafting it, especially when I hit a the occasional clump of silk that wouldn’t draft out, but overall I’m very happy with the result!

I’ve realized that 4oz of fiber isn’t very much – I’m basically spinning up a bunch of skeins to add to the oddball collection. What to do with 100g of yarn? Time to bust out the One Skein book, I suppose.

I have one more bunch of fiber that I plan on spinning up before I give back the wheel – 4oz of Spunky Eclectic merino/silk. Yum. After that’s gone, my fiber stash will be pretty much zero – there’s a couple of small amounts of stuff, and some horrid roving that I dyed the ugliest shade of purple one’s ever seen. I’m happy that I’ve spun up the stash, but now I’ve got other fibers on my wishlist, like the Knitterly Things roving that Lori spun up, and pretty much anything from pigeonroofstudio’s etsy shop.

This whole spinning thing has definitely cut into my knitting time – I’ve barely knit anything since I borrowed the wheel. I have bought a wee bit of yarn (for baby-in-law, which is totally allowed!). The Rowan Cashsoft is going to become this Garnstudio baby sweater, and the leftovers are going to make Saartje’s booties (pdf). Cute!

Ok, we’re off to do some grilling and drink lots of margaritas, if the rain around here ever stops!

Back in the day, I amassed a bit of a fiber stash after I learned how to spin on the drop spindle. Unfortunately, it really didn’t take long for me to realize how freaking tedious drop-spindling is, so I’ve somewhat abandoned it. So much work for so little yarn! I definitely have lots of respect for those who generate beauty from a drop spindle.

Lucky me when Amy agreed to let me borrow her wheel last weekend. I’ve been busy like a bee turning this:

Into this:

100g of Spunky Eclectic merino in Nova Scotia. I find it odd that yarn weights are usually in grams, but fiber is sold in ounces. These skeins are 100g on the dot, so there you go.

I’m not entirely clear on what I was drinking when I bought this, that browny yellow is so not my color. It’s slightly overplied, although that seems to have worked itself out after a bath.

A few observations:

• The wheel is faster than a drop spindle, but slower than I thought it would be. This is probably best for my wallet. I spent all weekend spinning this stuff up.
• Everything I know from spinning I learned from the internets. Sparse blog discussions do not a good spinner make. Anyone know any good spinning books to buy? I sort of understand the intro stuff, so I’m more looking for a book that breaks down drafting techniques, fancy plying, etc.
• I was seriously considering buying a wheel, but I think that borrowing the wheel has convinced me to hold off on that purchase. It’s definitely an investment, even more so considering that I would need a folding, storeable wheel that I can hide from the cats. Silver especially would like to eat every little string hanging off the thing. Also, I can see how people start buying lots of accessories – I already want a larger bobbin for Amy’s wheel, and a woolie winder would be very convenient indeed.

I’ve now working on some Heritage Arts TX merino/tussah silk fiber. This is stuff that’s basically a bunch of colors carded together – purple, blue, red, with bits of pink and yellow and the undyed silk. It’s pretty and shiny and happens to be a much more kelly color:

And it’s so much more evenly drafted than the Spunky Eclectic was. I can’t wait to see how this turns out!

I am totally and absolutely sick of knitting these days, so I’m expanding my crafty horizons!

Plying is FUN! The spinning itself: not as fun. But plying is WHEEEE all the way!

I helped Amy move her blog posts to a new url, and somehow convinced her to bring her new-to-her wheel over to my house. The fiber is Spunky Eclectic merino in the Nova Scotia colorway. The best part? The yarn is perfectly balanced after plying. After this, I felt inspired and plied up some of my spindle-spun roving, and the end result is twisty as hell.

Next up: sewing. I had a sewing phase a few years ago, but haven’t really done much besides clothing alterations recently. This was partly because of my old setup – my table and chair were both very short, so I would bend over the sewing machine as I worked. My back hurts just thinking about it. Ouch. I bought a new desk to use as a sewing table last weekend, so I’m ready to rock. I was planning on making this whale from this book, which has a sum total of two distinct pattern pieces. However, the pattern sheet looks like this:

It is also double-sided. My pattern pieces are in red, which really recedes behind all that black. I found one piece before my eyes crossed and I gave up.

Instead, we have this (which gets bonus points for having instructions in English):

That bunny? Has big feet! Well, he will have big feet once I assemble him. If you squint, you can see that my bunny-pants fabric is the same as in the pattern photo – total coincidence. I also managed to way overbuy fabric (in anticipation of kelpy mistakes), so I have enough to make three bunnies.

The bunny is for my sister-in-law, who is due in August. Baby stuff! I’m in the midst of compiling baby sweater patterns to make. She’s expecting a boy, so I’m open to suggestions!

Crochet! I now kinda-sorta know how to single crochet. Here’s a tip: don’t teach yourself to crochet with lightly-plied, super-hairy yarn. I kept piercing the yarn between the plies with the hook, which was a total pita.

There is still knitting going on behind the scenes. I’m working on the most looks-simple-but-is-epic project ever:

Knitting the ties are the equivalent of knitting a scarf and a half. Gah! You can see why I’m cheating on the knitting.

One last thing: Blackie hearts dotty! I swear, this is the last word on the cat bed. Except for posting the pattern. I need to knit a new pre-felted swatch to figure out my gauge, because my notes were wonderfully vague.

So, the whole spinning thing? I’m kind-of sort-of hooked. The yarn to the right there is the best that I’ve created yet.

Is it a consistent weight? no.

Balanced? no.

Does it actually look like yarn? Hell, yeah!

I heart! The roving is from Skeintily Clad. Well, I actually bought it from Plain Mabel, which is awesome and Northampton MA based. I’ve got more in a purple colorway (similar to what I dyed up last weekend, but much lighter and nicer looking) that I’m saving up for when I’m a champion spinner.

The stuff here is some superwash merino from Spunky Eclecic, in colorway Shark. It does look pretty sharky, at least to me. However, it’s a bit squeaky. Kind of like how some bamboo yarns are squeaky and feel kind of odd (Alchemy bamboo, I’m looking at you), yeah that. It’s stickier than the regular merino, too. I’ve tossed what’s on the spindle there and started over, and the next batch is looking much better and more even. I don’t like it terribly much, but I’ve got 8oz and it’s good practice. I may even have some more roving on the way from Ms. Eclectic, in a merino-silk blend.

Next up: Plying. Woo!