Better than expected

Just a short note to say that I've ended up with just about 800 yards from my 3 bobbin and mighty pleased I am at how it's come out.  It been washed and rinsed and is hanging to dry now.  I'll post pics of the finished stuff and the sample that comes from it once it's dry.  800 yards! I'll probably only need about 400 more.  No worries.

Nothing like a bloom

There's nothing like coming home after a hard day of work and seeing this greeting you on the way in the door:

I brought in several of my plants when it started getting colder.  This one hadn't bloomed for quite a while but now it's got several new little growths and blooms ready to pop.  It was so cheery to be greeted by this little guy.

While I've not been accomplishing too much, I've managed to get a good little way on the main yarn for my bohus sweater.

This is a red Ashland Bay Merino wool that I've been spinning at a fingering weight.  Once it gets washed it should be just right for the cardigan.  I'm hoping this lot will get me at least 5-600 yards along the way.  I started swatching this weekend with the first skein I spun a while ago.  Maybe I'll be able to get it started this weekend.

And So I Do

I predicted in the last post that, since I loved the singles and wasn't so crazy about the skeined yarn, that I would love the knitted product.  It's been really difficult to get a picture that really shows the color in the socks.  For some reason, the striping showed much more definitely in the picture than in real life but here goes:

The first two photos were outside and the third inside.  The last shows the colors a little better but makes the poor little sock look deformed because it's propped up against the skein.  Anyway, you get the idea.

This was an unusual yarn for me to use for socks, being a little bit thicker than I would normally use and being a littel more tightly spun than I've used in the past.  The colors remind me of the beautiful colors in the Lion Brand Homespun yarns, the one every beginner buys because the colors are so rich and beautiful and which every knitter who's ever worked with it curses because it's so splitty and hard to knit with.  It has those same rich colors that blend so wonderfully.

Fortunately it's much better to work with.  I was worried at first that I wouldn't have enough for a whole pair of socks.  Now, I know there are ways to split the yarn out so you work all you've got for one and have the same amount for the second.  Too fiddly.  And you can knit them from the toe up, two at a time, and know you're going to have enough.  I don't like knitting toe up socks. 

I began by making the cuff really short thinking that I could always add to the top, if needed.  But someone at knit night commented she thought they were too short (and I agreed, although I didn't admit it at the time).  But as soon as I got home, I ripped out what I'd done on the heel (fortunately just the heel flap) and made the cuff a little longer.  As someone else said that night, you can always make the toes a different color and who will know. 

Now I"m at the stage, having finished the heel in the second sock, that I think I'm going to have plenty of yarn.  But I know enough about life to know that by the time I get to the middle of the foot that I'm going to start monitoring my remaining yarn and be convinced that I'll never be able to finish.  So I choose to live in the denial of the moment and believe that I'll have plenty of yarn left over.

In fact, maybe I'll have enough for mittens!

Finished yarn

Just wanted to post this pic of the finished yarn.  As usual, really different from the singles.  I'm not terribly crazy about the barber poling but, based on past experience, I'll probably LOVE the socks.  Just don't know when I'll be able to start them.

Bluegrass Weekend

I hadn't planned to spend the weekend with bluegrass pickers but I did and boy did I have a ball.  The Friday night concert was fabulous.  I love bluegrass music but I don't really know any of the bands or many of the players.  There are some that I knew about from living in Nashville but I know a few of the names now.  The band that knocked my socks off was Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper.  I can still barely breathe thinking about them.  I also saw the mandolin of my dreams.  Natural wood, with rounded edges, beautiful tone.  Fortunately it was almost $300 so the temptation only went so far!

In fact the concerts were so exciting that I finished a pair of socks, one Friday night and one Saturday night.  Of course, the concerts went from about 7pm to after 11:30 and the pattern was plain Jane but I will still pretty amazed at how quickly they came off the needles.

This was wool yarn I'd bought at 365 Days on a Farm in IA over the summer.  I bought it particularly to make socks but I cast on about 4 times before I got something I liked.  (That was totally on me because the yarn is gorgeous and soft and wonderful.)  I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the yarn but I do know it's yarn made in the US because that's all 365 Days carries.  I knit them on size 2 needles and even though it really is a fingering/dk weight, it's so lightly spun that I could have used a size 1 needle and not worried.

I've even got a spinning project going.  This was 4 oz of blue-faced leicester fiber I bought at Bishophill particularly to spin for sock yarn but once I got the singles spun, I wasn't sure I wanted to lose my yardage.  The colors are so amazing that I really wished I had enough for a sweater.  Here's the bobbins of singles:

How beautiful is that?  But, as you can see, I decided to go for the 3-ply after all.  It will be very interesting to see how the various colors play together.  Of course, I could have kept the color bands but the changes would be too short and I didn't want to do a Navajo ply for the socks.  I wanted a true 3-ply and I think it's going to be very interesting.  The singles were spun with about an 8:1 ratio and I'm plying using the 12:1 ratio whorl to see if I can reproduce my recent experimentation results.  I'll let you know when I get this washed.

Samples away

Spurred on by my preparations for a program for our local spinning/weaving guild, Prairie Weavers, I have been doing a ton of experimentation regarding the effect of varying amounts of twist used for plying yarns (I'm not the best judge, but I think the program tonight went really well, thanks for asking).  I won't go too much into it yet because I'm planning on a whole post with pics of my samples, etc. a little later on as I have time to process it.  But I did want to show this:

(For those who are interested, this was spun on my Kromski Minstrel - singles on 12:1 ratio; ply on 16:1.  Fiber is KnitPicks Gloss roving.)

This is 38 grams of a silk/merino laceweight yarn before washing.  Before washing, it was 368 yards of yumminess.  After washing (for reasons that are plain to those who were at the guild meeting for the program), it was 332 yards of squishy yummi-numminess.  Why?  All will be made clear when the post about my little experimentation hits the stands.  I've found out why much of my laceweight yarn has been just yummy instead of squishy yummi-nummi.  It all makes so much sense now!

I've also been working with some of my recently (within the last year) acquired fleeces.

On the left is a sample skein of the bfl/suffolk cross. (By the way, I realized today that I'd misspelled Suffolk all through the last post.  I really do know how to spell it and every time I typed it I knew I was misspelling it but I just couldn't stop it.)  Next to it is a lock of the fleece.  Long staple - not unusual for a sheep with bfl in its heritage.  There's still a bit of lanolin in the fleece so I'm working on finding the best preparation for spinning.

On the right is a lock and a sample from the Polypay fleece I got earlier this year in Kentucky.  You can see the staple is only about half that of the bfl/suffolk and it has a finer crimp.  I really like the sample I spun when I combed the fleece.  It's a little more work but I got a much nicer end results. Actually, I only had to do one or two passes with the combs because it opened up so wonderfully.  I would love to have enough of this spun to make something to wear when I go to Kentucky next year.

Best Fleece

I told you about the BFL/Suffolk cross fleece I got a few weeks ago but haven't been able to post any photos yet.  This fleece is just beautiful.  Every person I've talked to about this cross (everyone who knows that there is more than one type of sheep, that is) has raised their eyebrows about the odd mix.  But it's a wonderful fleece and washed so beautifully.  And much of that is hats off to the shepherd.

 It started drying out on the porch but later had to move indoors because my poor fleece was getting cold.  But here's what I was left with.

How great is that?

I haven't gotten too much of it spun because I've been working on some things for the Prairie Weaver's program on Tuesday night (a lot of things) but I did do a little sample spinning straight from the lock.  No photos exist because the experiment didn't go all that well, to be honest.  So I changed and decided to try to comb a bit of it and see how that worked.

 I didn't need more than 1 pass, really, with the combs for it all to jump open so now that I've done my little experiment, I think I can get the rest of it prepared pretty quickly.  I spun it fairly thin, although not extremely so because I want to get a finished sock weight (fingering weight) 3 ply yarn from it.  Here is the singles waiting to be plied and washed. 

I'm very excited to get this working, although it's going to take a lot more attention that just spinning from prepared roving. There's just something so tactile and satisfying about starting from the beginning and getting something to be proud of out of it.  It's what I love so much about spinning cotton from the seed.  It's basic, elemental and so satisfying to complete the cycle.