Make Your Own

Several people the other night at knit night said they wanted to try the slippers so I've written up the pattern and posted it on my web site. Click here for the pattern page and have a go. It's also available via my designer page on Ravelry. You can get to it from my Ravelry page, my ID is wandagrayson.

Enjoy!

Slippers. Felted Slippers.

Just a quick post to show you my new felted slippers. As mentioned previously, these were done on the same premise as toe-up socks. I really like the way the heel section came out with the ridge that comes a little bit up the heel. The foot part is a little bit big but I put the laces on to adjust the size so if it's really cold, I can wear cozy socks with them. They're much lighter than the other felted slippers but they're going to be just as warm. I have one more thing I want to try then I'll post a "down and dirty" pattern in case you want to try them.

Overload

Every year, the Bishop Hill Spin-In happens and every year I've got other commitments and don't go. Anywhere you go in Central Illinois, eastern Missouri and eastern Iowa people will ask you, "Do you go to Bishop Hill?" "You going to Bishop Hill?" I've always had to say, no and no. Until this year. Finally Saturday, I got to say, "Yes, I'm at Bishop Hill Spin-In." Here are some photos of some of the vendors.

The stuff said it was the 29th annual. 29th. That's a long time and they've obviously learned all there is to know. We didn't take any classes but we went to see the lovely vendors and to shop in a very relaxed atmosphere. Everyone was so nice and we had some lovely chats with vendors and other spinners/knitters/weavers.

We had a ball but I came away a little overwhelmed. By the time I got home and unloaded, I was totally overwhelmed. It's not even like I got that much. Let's see...a baggie of red silk hankies and blue silk hankies came home. 4 oz of mohair roving (seen in photo below) jumped into my hands. I've never spun mohair so I got it mostly to have the experience but the colors are pretty, too. I got some red wool roving - beautiful bluish red - and I got a ball of mill end roving. It's mostly white with bits of red and other shades streaked through it and it's a variety of different fibers.

I found a very pretty handpainted wool roving, only about 4 ounces, but it's a variety of shades of green, predominantly lime green that I want to spin for gloves or mittens for a colleague. She loves this color and wears it summer and winter. That was bought with a purpose.

The other thing I bought with a purpose is some lovely Navajo-Churro/Mohair (85/15) that I think I will be able to do on my Navajo spindle. I also had a great chat with the vendor who raises the Churros. I told her about our fleece and she made the point that the lamb was probably being fed from an overhead bin where the flakes of hay floated down into the fleece. Since it's a lamb fleece, soft and fluffy, the chaff got caught up. She also gave me some interesting insight into the tradition of Navajo spinning and weaving that I never knew about. Of course, I don't know much so that's not hard but it was fascinating.

My sweetest score was an ounce of hand-plucked angora. You may not think an ounce is very much (and this was only $6) but it's like a whole stack of feathers. Gorgeous. I'll post some photos when I get to the spinning of it. I have some camel in my stash and I'm thinking that's going to a good mixture - camel/angora - and it will give me more yardage. I got about 90 yards or so from 1 ounce of camel spinning it to lace/fingering weight. I've got 2 ounces of camel and 1 of angora so I might be able to get about 350 yards if I spin it to true lace weight. That will be enough for something really special.

Here's a photo of a pair of mittletts and the first of a houseshoe that are going to be felted. Nothing fancy, Cascade 220 in turqoise but it's my own homemade pattern for the houseshoe and it looks like it might work. I'll have to see how the felting comes along but I really think it might work. I started it like a toe-up sock, same cast on and increases for a few rows. Then I started increasing at each side for the top part and increasing in the middle of the sole. Once I got the top increased to what I thought would work to fit my foot after felting and until I thought it would be long enough. I'll get the second one made and we'll see how it works once it's felted.

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.

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!

Blending in

I've been doing a little experiment, inspired by a post by the Yarn Harlot who was trying to spin to match a commercial yarn for a Berroco project. I made the same project she was spinning to make and had some of the yarn left over. I'd made it in a charcoal Berroco Cuzco yarn which is a lovely 50/50 mix of alpaca and wool.

That got me thinking. I spun a gorgeous silver alpaca roving for my Mom a few months ago. It was stuff I'd gotten from Karen, my friend here in Springfield who carries all these wonderful fibers. I wondered if I got a pack of the silver alpaca and a pack of grey wool, maybe I could spin them together and get something like the Cuzco from it, I would be able to mix it and the charcoal for a project. I got a strand of the Cuzco, pulled it a apart and studied how it was spun and followed her lead. Of course, I was actually looking at Cuzco, unlike the Harlot who was actually looking at a different Berroco yarn. I don't judge, it's something I might have done (and probably have done).

I was too impatient to blend it properly so I decided to put a strip of each together and blending as I went. Here's what I've got so far.

I'm still not so sure how it will ply up because I haven't been able to get it as even as I would like. But I think it will work all right. It's been a little tricky blending as I go because the alpaca, being much slipperier than the wool likes to draft faster than the wool. I am going to go ahead and spin all the singles before I start plying so I can blend them together better.

She got a beautiful yarn that she's decided to do something else with so I'll see if I can get the Cuzco she was shooting for.

Going Southwest and Progress

I had these the other day but the post was already too long so I decided to wait to share it. A few weeks ago a friend asked if I wanted to go in on a Navajo-Churro lamb fleece. She'd made herself a Navajo spindle which fascinated me and I'd asked her to make me one. The fleece seemed to be the next logical step.

The fleece came and we've both been playing with it in preparation to the spin along with a spinning group on Ravelry. She kept saying there was an aweful lot of vegetable matter in it but I didn't realize how much until I started working on it. Here's a shot of the locks before and after some preparation. To the left is a skeinlette of generic wool I spun on my beautiful handmade Navajo spindle. Here it is:

Ain't it purty!

On another note, I've finished the first section of the 1923 pattern. It's going to be HUGE but it's going to be gorgeous.