Weather with an Attitude

While looking at The National Weather Service winter storm warning, I came across a weather comment I've never seen before.  The warning was detailing the 6-8 inches of snow expected from late Wednesday into Friday and to emphasize the strength of the winds states that:

"... GUTSY NORTHWESTERLY WINDS WILL CREATE CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW THURSDAY NIGHT"

Trying my hand at hats

I've never made many hats because I tend to look really stupid in hats.  But a friend of mine at work is going through chemo and I told her a couple of weeks ago that I'd make her a hat.  I know there are a gagillion cute hat patterns out there but the truth is, in case you didn't know it, I'm a bit lazy about looking for patterns.  The other reason I tend to not look at patterns too much is because I get overwhelmed by the choice and end up frustrated and unsatisfied.  But I did have to know how many stitches to cast on so I found one pattern for that purpose and started off.

Remember the carriage slippers?  I've been really interested in this honeycomb stitch which I've since found repeatedly in the vintage pattern books.  I thought that might make an interesting hat pattern so I went to Hobby Lobby and found a skein of naturallycaron.com's Spa yarn (an acrylic/bamboo mix) in the color she wanted and went to work.  Here what I came up with:

Cute, no?

In fact, it fit so well that I decided to make one for myself.  The Spa yarn was very soft but very, very splitty and I've got a whole roomful of handspun yarns now so I went shopping in the back room and came up with a skein of Merino/Yak that I spun early last year after I got my little Kromski wheel.  I estimated using about 200 yards of the Spa and a look at the tag on this skein showed I had 190 yards.  That's gotta be close enough.

Close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades - and hats, apparently!

The true color is somewhere between these two photos.  It's incredibly luscious and covers my really uneven spinning wonderfully!

You probably can't tell in these pictures but I put a little tie on hers but not on mine.  Since she has to wear it all the time, I wanted her to be able to adjust it if she needs to.  Either way, I'm very pleased with it.

The pattern is available for free download from my website but I'll give you a bonus.  If you choose to work this in two colors (like the carriage slippers) you should work the first 4 rows of the pattern in one color and the second four in the other color.  Your main color will be pulled up through the contrasting color on the slipped stitches.  That should make sense when you've seen the pattern but there's nothing at all difficult about it.

Cabled Yarn

I've been fascinated by cabled yarns since a post early last year from the Yarn Harlot.  I've sort of played with it a couple of times without really knowing what I was doing.  So Thursday I decided it was the day to make a serious effort.  I find myself with 3 colors of Merino - plum, chartreuse and teal.  I took 1/2 ounce of the plum and teal and 2 half ounce sections of the chartreuse and started spinning.  My current favorite spinning book, The Intentional Spinner by Judith MacKenzie McCuin, has quite a good description of cabled yarns and step by step instructions.

The idea at its simplest is to spin 4 singles with extra twist, make 2 2-plies with extra twist, then cable (ply) the 2 plied yarns together.  Here's what I started with:

I spun each color onto a bobbin.   From my little experimentations, I knew that the instructions to add extra twist were important.  Since it was only half an ounce, it spun up pretty quickly.

Next I plied the plum and chartreuse then the chartreuse and teal.  You can get an idea from the ends pictured here.  I really can't stress enough that you need lots of energy in the plies.  Judith MacKenzie McCuin stresses the need for this extra twist and recommends making 2 passes at the plying.  That is, ply it the way you normally would for a balanced yarn then pass it through again to add the extra twist.  I didn't do that but would next time.

Once you have the 2 two-plied yarns, you simply cable them together.  Instructions said to make sure your wheel is set to feed in quickly because you're not going to ply it really.  All the twist you need is already there, you just have to let the two pieces "snap" together and feed it in quickly.  It kind of seems like magic the way it goes together.  Sort of like knitting the Elizabeth Zimmerman baby surprise jacket once you sew those 2 seams together.  Then it looks like this:

You can see it better if you click on it for a larger image.  I was originally just going to use the 2 greens but found the plum and thought it would be good to have that deeper tone.  I wound up with about 92 yards of pretty sturdy worsted weight yarn that I have no idea what I'll do with.  I think it might be interesting in a woven item.  Might have to pull out the old Bekah rigid heddle loom.  Hummmm....  We'll see.

Lacy Garden

I've finally gotten some things accomplished around here.  Including this:

This is the second 4 ounces of the Blue Faced Leicester roving.  I loved the fiber spun into a 3-ply sock yarn but I thought I wanted to see what it would look like spun 2-ply in a lace weight.  With the 3-ply, it was plied in a way to keep the colors flowing.  With the 2-ply, as you can see, the colors are mixed, giving it more of a 'tweed' look.  I don't know if that's really the right term but it's what I'm calling it!  But when it's knitted, it will still have the flow of colors in the background. 

You can see the size of the finished yarn in this pic.  I got about 600 yards out of the 4 ounces.

It's now been set aside until it decides what it wants to be but I"m hoping it's going to be a lacy shawl.

Nary a stitch

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft aglay." (often go awry)
("To a Mouse" Robert Burns)

Despite all the plans I had and all the things I planned to complete over this long weekend, not a single one got done.  I spent the entire weekend on my back with a weird vertigo-type illness.  It was worse than the worst seasickness I've ever experienced...and, believe me, anyone who has taken the ferry from Portsmouth, England, to Santander, Spain, knows about seasickness.  It's hard to explain what it's like to feel like you're falling over when you're laying in your bed having just moved your head a fraction of an inch.  Today is the closest I've come to feeling more like myself, making 4 days of absolutely nothing accomplished. 

So we start again.  I find that the world didn't fall apart because I didn't get my lace yarn finished spinning or get my gray yarn plied or my socks finished.  In fact, far from falling apart, everything is still waiting for me just as it was before.  So we start again.  Maybe that's just the lesson to take on board for the new year.

Back to Socks

Like most knitters, I usually have a pair of socks on the needle.  Easy to carry around, you can work them whenever you find yourself waiting around.  For the most part, I knit to my basic sock pattern but after having knit the 1900 sock pattern I wanted to knit something patterned.

Somewhere in my travels I picked up a skein of Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in a pretty oatmeal color called "Steel Cut Oats."  This yarn is 50% wool, 30% alpaca & 20% nylon so I thought it might be a very nice sock yarn.  I've used the Ultra Alpaca yarn, which was very nice to knit with, but this is a bit splitty.

Here's the pattern I've used:

With size 1 needles, I cast on 64 stitches.  I knit about 2 inches of knit 2/purl 2 and then started the pattern.  The pattern is 4 stitches of a traveling yarn over, purl 1, cable 2, purl 1.  The traveling yarn over pattern is pretty basic: 
Row 1: Yarn over, knit 2 together, knit 2
Every other row is knit plain.
Row 3: Knit 1, yarn over, knit 2 together, knit 1
Row 5: Knit 2, yarn over, knit 2 together

The cuff is worked for about 7 inches before starting the heel.

I should be able to get a pair out of 1 skein (433 yards).

I like the texture of the 2-stitch cable and it's very easy to work without having to use a cable needle.

Center Diamond Afghan progress:
I don't have a new picture yet but I've finished the 2 short sides of the afghan and have finally picked up for the first long side - 254 stitches.

A Fabulous Fiber Year

Coming to the end of the year there are always a ton of wrap-ups, count downs and lists. Lots of lists. Since it’s the thing to do, I thought I would do one myself.

This has been a year of spinning for me. I’ve done more spinning this year than all the other years previous put together. Of course, the biggest reason for that was the acquisition of my beautiful Kromski Minstrel spinning wheel.

Not long after I got my wheel on the road, there was a cotton spinning workshop put on by the Prairie Weavers Guild. A whole weekend of spinning almost every possible variety of cotton. It was a fantastic weekend. Not long after that there was another spinning weekend, this time sponsored and hosted by the New Salem Fiber Guild out at Lincoln’s New Salem. Again, a fantastic weekend with a bunch of history thrown in.

So, with all of this spinning, I’ve experimented with more fibers than I even knew existed a few years ago. Here’s my list of fibers I’ve spun this year:

• Cotton
  * seed
  * acala
  * pima
  * naturally colored
  * SuPima
• Mohair
• Camel
• Yak/merino
• Merino
• Border Leicester
• Blue-faced Leicester
• Navajo-Churro
• Silk hankies
• Silk roving
• Lincoln/Corriedale
• Generic wool
• Alpaca
• Llama
• Shetland
• Coopworth
• Alpaca/wool
• Angora
• Angora/Camel
• Alpaca/silk/merino

Now, what for next year.  There are some fibers that I haven't yet tried, like linen, soy and raimie, but I think what I'm going to focus on is gaining proficiency in various drafting styles and experimenting more with twist and plying techniques.  There's a lot still to learn but I feel very satisfied with the progress made this year.  It's fulfilling a long-held dream to become a Spinner.  It doesn't get better than that.