Saturday, October 10, 2009

Progress

The handspun hoodie jacket is finished. I don't think I would ever be able to reproduce it but it's finished and...



...it fits perfectly.


It was such a beautiful day out that I thought it would be a great time to start carding my Navajo-Churro fiber. After I washed it the other week, I thought carding would help get more of the vegetable matter out of it but, unfortunately it didn't do much good. I carded and combed and hand processed and it's still as dirty as it was.

So surely it would fall out in the spinning, right? It's not like it it's stickers or stuff like that. It's just hay sort of stuff. So I got my beautiful Navajo spindle and started spinning. I learned 2 things in that short bit of time. (1) the vm didn't fall out, it got spun into the singles; and (2) I'm not very good at the long draw with the Navajo spindle.


As soon as I finish with the grey wool/alpaca I've got going on the spinning wheel, I'm going to have a go with the Navajo-Churro on the wheel and see if that works any better.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Handspun Weekend

Not for spinning, actually, but for finally knitting up some of the stuff I've already spun. One of the first projects I took on was to spin some light brown and some chocolate brown roving. These were spun on my Louet so they were both quite chunky. I was never able to do much better than chunky on the Louet. So last year I found a green/black mixture at a fiber event up in Wisconsin - the colorway was called Black Watch and I fell in in love. It was also spun mostly on the Louet but, while the other 2 were 2 plies and were fairly lofty, this was 3 ply and was much denser than I really meant it be. So it is not only chunky but it's pretty hefty, too. I decided that it was really too heavy to make a whole garment out of it so I started looking through my other stuff to see what I could mix it with. I wasn't sure what I would be able to make with it but I finally got a vision for on Friday night.

As sometimes happens, when you listen to the yarn, you can't go wrong. Knitting chunky yarn on 10 1/2 US needles is a recipe for a quick knit. The back is just 63 stiches and 52 rows to the underarm. Like I said, quick. As I knitted, I realized I wanted some blocks of colors and then as I got into the front sections, I realized it needed to be a hoodie. These pictures are totally unblocked. It's form fitting - I know this looks like it's not going to fit but it really does. It's just rolled under. I have 1 sleeve completely finished and the second sleeve is almost finished but I ran out of yarn while I was out and about today. Once I get those attached, I'll just need to pick up for the front placket, which I think I'm going to do in the chocolate brown. I also think I'm going to put in a zipper so that will make a difference in how I do the front placket.
I'm so thrilled how it's worked out and that it's gone so fast. I don't think I've ever made anything with needles this large so this is a new adventure!