Goal!

Early last spring, just before things got crazy with my job and the move, I achieved a milestone: I spun singles that were both fine enough and consistent enough for me to ply into a viable, fingerweight sock yarn! The fact that I'm only just now writing about it should be some indication of just how fantastically life intervened.

The story:

When my Aunt Mae died late last January, I flew back to Ohio, and my sister and mom (who still lives in Ohio but had been visiting my sister) drove up from New Orleans. They picked me up at the Cleveland airport on their way into town. No sooner had we finished our hugs than we started plotting which yarn stores we could hit on the way to Mom's house. Mind you, Beth had been driving for 20 solid hours, proving two things: our compulsion for fiber borders on the masochistic and, apparently, is also genetic.

We landed at KNOTS (Knitting on the Square) in Chardon, the quaint little town where my husband grew up which is, conveniently, just a 20-minute drive south of my mom's current home. At KNOTS we chatted with the wonderful owner, Kate Jackson, and found so many great things. We were surprised to find spinning fiber at all, let alone her healthy stock of indie-dyed beauties. Kate was flabbergasted that we went straight to her shop before even getting to our destination! We picked up several kinds of fibers and colorways. More on my purchase in the future -- the subject of today's post is this lovely:

Dancing Feet Roving by TomBoy Yarns.
4oz or superwash Blue Faced Leicester.
Colorway: Jewel Tones.

They may be common colors, but they spoke to me that day... and the BFL was just so luscious.

Jump forward to April. Joseph and I had just signed a contract to purchase our new home. With the pressure to pack and move within six weeks crushing down upon me, I made what seemed then to be a logical choice: I spun the entire 4 ounces on April 5 and Navajo/chain plied it the next day. The whole time, I was thinking, "This could be socks," and behold:

380 yards. Sock yarn!

I cast on and madly knit the toes, foot, and gusset before I had to get serious about moving.

Flash forward to November. With four glorious months of parental leave stretching out before me, sanity and space returned and I found my creative energy restored. Out came the socks!

Pattern: Mash-Up Magic Toe-Up Socks (MUMTUS) by Zhenya Lavy (workshop pictorial, Ravelry page, downloadable PDF of the condensed pattern)
Primary Stitch Count: 52
Started: April 28, 2010
Completed: November 28, 2010
Materials: My Navajo-plied handspun from Superwash BFL, Jewel Tones (Dancing Feet Roving by TomBoy Yarns)
Needles: US 2 / 3.00 mm

I used a mock cable stitch with alternating twists for the leg:

This Mock Cable has a simple, four-row repeat:

1: *MT, P2, K2, P2* repeat

2 & 4: K2, P2
3: K2, P2, *MT, P2, K2, P2* repeat

(MT = Make Twist. K2tog but don't slip off needle. Insert needle back into the 1st stitch and knit. Slip both off needle.)

Blocked 

My handspun was a joy to knit. I found myself stopping to admire my work much more frequently than usual!

I have 26 grams of the handspun left -- that's about 23% of my starting quantity. I only used 77% of my fiber... about 266 yards. This confuses me. The yarn looks and feels like fingerweight, but it knit up like a higher grist. Hmmm... Thoughts?

Doesn't the color flow beautifully through the fabric? I didn't do any special spinning techniques to manipulate the color. I just let things fall where they may in the spinning and Navajo plying processes.

Before blocking. Squishy and luxurious!

They're definitely a fraternal pair, which would drive my sister crazy, but I'm good with it!  It's most obvious here:

I know it's generally preferable to block before photographing, but sometimes I feel like the blocking renders a "sterile" picture. In their pre-blocked state, they shine with all the charisma of the kinesthetic experience they have to offer!

When all was said and done, they didn't take all that much touch time to spin and knit... but they ended up being a seven-month project. Yikes!

Sadly, last week Kate announced that she's selling KNOTS to spend more time with her two little ones and prepare for the arrival of a third. Congratulations, Kate! I've really appreciated your approach and your fun voice in the newsletters. 

I'm praying someone wonderful buys the shop. As my mother-in-law says, "It's such a nice addition to Chardon Square." As I see it, a yarn store is perfect for a serene, historical setting. I'd be all over it if we still lived in Ohio!

What Was I Thinking?! (What Do You Think?)

Last night I threw caution to the wind and cast on a pair of sleep socks for The Girlio without checking gauge first.

Here was my thinking:

1. The number of stitches cast on at the toe is somewhat irrelevant since I just need a handful, and to be off by one or two would not make or break the socks' fit.
2. The toe increase section itself would become my gauge swatch! The sock would be knit in stockinette, and because it's a sleep sock that won't be getting hard wear, I wouldn't reinforce the toes or heels. Conditions were right!
3. I knew I wouldn't overshoot the right stitch count for circumference before having knit plenty of fabric to test gauge.
4. I really wanted to knit up some handspun I'd made on my trip back to Ohio and Pennsylvania late last January for my Aunt Mae's funeral. It's been a year, and I've been thinking about her a lot.
5. The handspun had been languishing and needed just this kind of inspired moment to get it on the needles. Back when I made it, C was wearing an orange coat, so these 185 yards of yarn would have made a great little hat or skinny scarf. Now she wears a light purple coat. Not so good. But for sleep socks? Wonderful!
6. It's a heavier yarn -- mostly worsted -- so they'd knit up lickety split!
7. C would love them. This is a girl who uses three of those grain-filled foot-warmer things you heat in the microwave each night.

I cast on while watching old episodes of Nip/Tuck on Netflix before bed (my current guilty pleasure... I had turned my nose up at it when it was in syndication, but I'm loving it now). Semi-dark room... a wickedly delicious absinthe cocktail at-the-ready... an equally wickedly delicious episode to watch... and I was in heaven, zipping blissfully along on my US 4 needles without really looking at what was going on.

It all seemed so perfect!

But this morning, when I picked up the socks to admire my handiwork and (I thought) celebrate my great success with this seat-of-the-pants cast on, I saw it:

I'd spun the yarn thick-thin.

Fergus!

I guess I have two choices:

1. Frog them and come up with a different project for the handspun, or
2. Keep going and call it a worthy experiment. It's not a severe thick-thin and doesn't seem awful so far. And since they're sleep socks, she won't be putting them in shoes or putting her weight on them enough to be irritated by the irregularity of the fabric.

What do you think?

Happy Valentine's Day to Me!

Our home was burglarized January 12. Among the items lost were our computers and other tech equipment, nearly ever piece of jewelry I've ever owned (save the three pieces I was wearing that day, two sets that were in plain sight but somehow missed, and one necklace I had bought on vacation on Orcas Island the week before but not yet put away), and several beloved decorative boxes that I kept my everyday jewelry in. One of those boxes I had purchased while I lived in Kyiv, Ukraine -- a stunning hinged-lid box purchased at the little shop in the base of St. Sophia Cathedral that featured the highest quality delicate paint work of a courting scene. I adored that box.

When I saw this Golding spindle, I fell in love.

Its exquisite inset features a domestic handspinning scene. It combines my love of Russian decorative painting with my love of fiber arts -- and fiber tools. And it's not likely to be targeted should we be burglarized again (my spindles did survive the burglary this time!). It's not the same as my favorite, now-gone jewelry box, but it makes me very happy. The painting style is very similar to my box. I mentioned to Joseph that I would like something like this for Valentine's Day... and he presented it shortly after breakfast yesterday morning.

"Handspindling by Candlelight"
2-3/4" Walnut Whorl
Rare Vintage Handpainted Russian Inset
Brass Ring
1.4 oz
Golding Fiber Tools
from the Vintage and Decorative RingSpindle collection
Spindle of the Week posted 2-1-10

Love the brass ring!


Before I could justify starting a new spinning project, I had another WIP to finish. In fact, I was in the process of binding it off when Joseph gave me the spindle, so I just needed to do that and weave in the ends. You can imagine how long and grueling that project seemed with my gorgeous Golding sitting there, so politely, just waiting...

Little Cakes for Patty Cakes!

The Girlio has asked me to make her some fingerless mitts. It was inevitable. After all, she'd seen me make a pair for myself last fall. And earlier this summer, her father knit a pair of orange Knucks for himself to match his Honda Rebel for those crisp, early summer morning drives to work.

I decided that the bright, green singles I posted pictures of on my Greensleeve's Katherine's Cup spindle last June would be the perfect fiber choice for C's mitts. But first, I had to ply the 170 yards of singles. The result:

Nearly 85 yards of squishy, 2-ply worsted wool, drop-spun and plied on my Katherine's Cup spindle. I picked up the roving at A New Yarn earlier in the spring. Sorry I didn't take a picture of the spun hank before I divided and wound it down into these two sweet little cakes—I know this isn't the best way to display my work. I was just so excited to get the fiber ready to be turned into warmers for C's ever-growing patty-cakes!

I wouldn't normally have thought to make mitts for her in this color, but I found inspiration in this great fall jacket we found her for the first day of third grade.


The jacket looks perfect for all her puddle-jumping antics when Seattle's sunny summer turns to autumn rains later this month!

The color shifts from dark green, through a bright kelly, and into peeks of a cheerful yellow. I'm pleased with how the yarn turned out and look forward to posting pictures of the finished mitts, which I'm pretty certain I will design myself.

Now I need to find a nice pair of puddle jumpers to complement her ensemble!

A Little Behind

It's about time I posted the results of my first carding/color experiment, which I started back in May. When last we checked in, I had carded the four colors into batts that progressed from more peachy to more kakhi but had not yet decided how to spin them. In early June, I decided that I wanted to maintain the color progression, rather than mixing it up. Here is the result:


That's 4 oz of solid Merino top. I worked it up into 4 skeins of 2-ply totaling 226 yards. Don't see a hint of the blue in there, do you? I know—I was a little bummed, too. It worked to produce an overall lightening and "frosting" of the colors rather than holding its own even in small bits. Might not have turned out the way I expected, but I learned a lot—and that was the point of this experiment.

Given the low yardage, I had toyed with the idea of making C a tank top with this yarn, but what kid wants a wool tank top in 80-degree heat?! So we switched gears and now plan to make this into a skirt. The handspun will provide the accent striping for a modification of Hip In Hemp.

Even with C's tiny hiney, I'll need more than 226 yards for the skirt. A New Yarn provided the perfect to-go-with: a khaki wool with peach accents that looks as though it were made to accompany my handspun! Here it is:


I got three beefy skeins of this mystery wool, which I've wound into lovely cakes.


Next I will 2-ply the mystery wool to make the weight consistent with the handspun. Once I've done that, I expect to have about 700 yards total for the skirt. Then we'll knit. What with Summer of Socks and the Tour de Fleece... and the dissertation... I don't expect to knit up this project until September or October—but that's about the right timing for working on a wool skirt, don't you think?!