About finishing (or trying to finish)

It's been quite a wild week since I got back from vacation.  I mentioned before about the Sebu mittens.  Here's the finished pair.  Can you tell which one was the goof?

I haven't blocked them yet but I'm happy to have them finished.  They were ready just in time for 80 degree temps!

The other thing I was eager to finish was another version of the Berroco Cosima.  I do love my Berroco yarns.  But this time I wanted to spin a yarn comparable to the Berroco Cuzco the pattern calls for.  I have to admit my early efforts weren't completely sucessful.  Spinners always say it's harder to spin a chunkier yarn.  For some reason, the inclination is to spin an ever-thinner yarn.

Cuzco is 50/50 wool/alpaca so I had this big plan to get 8 oz of silver gray wool and 8 oz of silver gray alpaca, pull them into strips and spin them together.  Probably not the "right" way to do it but I did it that way on purpose.  I wanted to see what would happen.  I spun about 2/3 of the yarn and put it away because it wasn't being much fun to spin.  There it sat until I went on this vacation.  Since I didn't have anything else to be knitting on (mittens, notwithstanding), I decided to take this along and see how far my 2 skeins would take me.  The yarn wasn't perfect but it worked up fine and I was able to get the back, 1 front and part of the second front done.  And I still had at least 1 skein left to spin.

I came home and got spinning.  There's something to the thing about practice, because when I came back to this project I found that I was much better able to control the diameter and make the yarn look like what I wanted.  Here's what I mean:

The dark gray is the Berroco and the silver gray is mine.  Pretty darn close, don't you think?

I got this washed up and ready to go and started knitting.  The next challenge is a very small issue - having enough fiber to spin to make the yarn to knit the sweater.  Sigh... 

Almost but just not quite. 

Now I just have to wait for more Colonial wool to come in.  Guess I learned one lesson out of this:  it takes more than 1 lb of fiber to make a sweater!  Everyone's always asking me how much fiber it takes to make a sweater.  Now I know what to say - more than 1 lb!

Finally, some pics

I've finally been able to get some decent pics of the spinning I've been doing of late and also of the Berroco Cosima sweater/jacket. Usually I don't think about the photos until it's too dark to get something decent.

Here's the yarn I've been spinning. It's from the Lincoln/Coopworth mix roving I got while in Wisconsin. Once I started plying (which was done with a Navaho ply - 3 ply) I could tell how much more comfortable I got with the spinning as I went on. Getting close to the end of the plying (which was the beginning of the spinning) I could tell the ply was much thicker and less confident. I'm really proud at how this came out and am looking forward to finishing it. I ended up with just over 172 yards so I won't have enough to do what I originally intended but I think I can figure out something to do with it! It looks more grey here but it's actually a green/black mix.

And then here's the Berroco Cosima sweater. This is from the Berroco book #281 and made from Cuzco yarn which is 50% alpaca/50% wool - beautiful hand.

Here's the detail for the neck - the buttons are antique shell buttons I picked up a while back and I love what they add to the sweater.

I have been wearing it but can only stand it for about 15 mintues! Don't want to wish cold weather too soon but I can't wait to wear this!