Designing on a pound

I've been working on a project for a while that I haven't yet shared.  It started as a couple of bags of Llama fiber from K&T Llamas which I fell in love with at Knit in Public Day.  I'd never spun Llama before, one of the few fibers I hadn't at least had my hands on.  I did de-hair a llama fleece once and have it in my stash but I haven't spun any of it. 

I have to say that spinning this llama has been one of the most enjoyable projects I've had to date.  Every free moment, I just couldn't wait to sit down to spin and got it done fairly quickly.  I ended up with just under a pound of worsted weight 2-ply yarn.

Now, one of the challenges one faces when planning to knit with handspun is that, generally, you have what you have.  What you do with it has to fit with what you have.  Getting more fiber isn't always an option.  I read a quote the other day that basically said that new ways of doing things aren't usually created by smart people but by lazy people trying to find an easier way to do something.  Maybe the old bromide about necessity being the mother of invention is closer.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that it's about 1/2 pound of 2 different natural colors - blond and med. dark brown.  That's fine but it creates another design challenge.  Don't want it to be too easy, do we?  Where would the fun be in that?

I knew I didn't have enough for a full sweater but I've been wanting a shrug for quite a while so I reckoned I had enough for that.  Here's what I've done:

It does fit me better than it does the dress form and I think it's a grand effort.  Can't wait to get the sleeves finished and have it ready for the upcoming cooler weather.  Why isn't it finished?  I'm afraid it's because I've gotten distracted with this:

I'm at the point of working the 11 flowers.  I can't tell you what pleasure this project has given me.  I've wanted to learn to tat for the longest time and didn't think I would ever be able to do it.  Now I can't get enough of it.  In fact, I'm going to make some new tatters at the upcoming tatting class at Lincoln Land.  The class is full but we're hoping to offer the class again in the spring and I think we'll probably do a class through the Old State Capital Heritage Knitting project.  Fun.

One, Two, Three

I was going to share some projects with you yesterday, until the electricity went out for 2 hours. Of course, that may have just been a good excuse!  I'm good at that, excuses.

So, here we go.

First of all, like many other knitters, I almost always have a pair of socks in tow.  When we went to Santa Fe, I pulled out a bright, cheery sock yarn - a self-striping ball of sunshine to work on during the trip.  The first sock went very quickly, indeed, as I wandered through the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and knitting.  The second sock came more slowly but I've finally got them finished.  (edited for yarn brand) It's Red Heart Heart and Sole  sock yarn.  It's one of those that's imbued with aloe.  I can't tell a difference but I'm sure it's there.  It didn't necessasrily feel all that soft when I was knitting it but now that it's been washed it, really softened up and makes a very comfortable sock indeed.  See if this doesn't look Santa Fe to you.

While on our trip, we had a side trip up north.  We were headed through Espanola with Gladys, the Navigation lady telling us, 300 feet, turn right (I heard a lot of recalculating, recalculating while I was driving).  We were quietly driving through town when I looked to my right and saw a door marked with "Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center."  I think I surprised my mother when I yelled out, "Fiber!" and whipped into a parking lot next door.  She took it in her stride, though, knowing me as she does.  What a wonderful place!   Along with a beautiful Navajo spindle and a drop spindle, I found some Frabjous Fiber blue-faced leicester in the most intense greens and blues.  If you've followed this blog at all, you'll know how much I love this fiber and how much I love the colorways of this company.  Truly Frabjous.

Blue-faced leicester is one of those yarns that is soft, long-stapled, has a sheen and takes dyes amazingly.  It really almost spins itself and, I think it's the very best yarn to learn to spin finer yarns with.  It's definitely the first thing I would recommend using. This 4 ounces of scrumptiousness was spun "s" singles and "z" plied with 2 plies and it came out to probably fingering weight.  I split the roving into 2 sections, spinning one of each of two bobbins so that it could be easily plied.  The colors were so intense that I had just couldn't get enough of spinning it.  However, as often happens, the color characteristics were somewhat lost in the plying.  Instead of these nice strong colors, I felt it was muddied a little bit.  Now, if previous experience has taught me anything, it's taught me that when it's knitted up, all of those colors are likely to come to the fore again.

The final project to show you for you now is a tatted baby bonnet from a 1925 Needleworks magazine:

I can't tell you what a kick I'm getting out of this.  The pattern has been very easy to follow - so far, so good.  In fact, I keep thinking that I'm going to be breezing along, thinking there's nothing to this tatting lark, when the universe is going to knock me down a peg.  Careful does it.

While I'm thoroughly enjoying this, it also makes me really miss my Grannie.  She thought tatting was so pretty but never learned to do it.  She would be thrilled with this.  So, here's to Gran...

Knitting History

There have been so many exciting things going on that I've hardly had time to process it.  As the legendary Iñigo Montoya says, "Let me 'splain. No, there is too much.  Let me sum up." (Princess Bride)

Stitches in Time Heritage Knitting Program

The most exciting thing to come up is the next phase of the Heritage Knitting project.  A couple of weeks ago Jane and I met with some lovely folks at the Illinois Old State Capital here in Springfield.  None of us expected anything to come of it but we just sort of started to talking about what we did with the Heritage Knitting Retreat and they started talking about what they wanted to do and we suddenly discovered we were all talking about the same thing - bring together knitters wanting to learn about heritage knitting.  They took it a step further in wanting all of this to happen in the most fabulous historic setting.  Can you imagine knitting here:

How cool is this?!  I ask you - How cool is this?!

So here's what's going to happen.  We've got 2 classes scheduled (in this very room!) and in between and around those classes, we're going to have "knitting circles."  This will be a place for everyone to come and knit, share a love of history, get help with projects and just have fun.  Do you have to be a knitter to come to a Knitting Circle?  Well, I'm glad you asked because, in fact, no you don't.  Are you a spinner?  Are you a crocheter?  Are you a weaver? Why don't you join us?  You can't imagine how fabulous it's going to be to knit (or spin or weave or crochet) in this space.

Are you coming for a visit to Springfield?  Please join us - there are plenty of things for your family to do while you're hanging out with us!!

Classes
Saturday, October 9 - Mitt Class (9am - noon)
Saturday, November 13 - Small Wrist Purse (Pence Purse) Class (9am - noon)

Knitting Circle (9-11am)
Saturday, October 2
Saturday, October 30
Saturday, December 11

Registration Information
$40 per class; Two family members for $60
Fee includes 3 hours of instruction, registration and complete kit of materials
Register at the Tinsley Store at 209 South Sixth Street or by calling (217) 525-1825

The plan is to continue with a series of classes next year building up to the Heritage Knitting Retreat next June.  As soon as we get some more dates nailed down, I'll let you know.  You can download a flyer here and we'll be posting more info here.

Lincoln Land Classes
The last few semesters, the classes planned for Lincoln Land have not gone for lack of registrations so this semester we tried something a little different and scheduled the classes for Friday night.  I know how hard it it to give up a Saturday, even for a knitting class.  Friday night seems to be doing the trick because 2 of the classes (knitting socks and tatting) are already full enough to go and the other has some interest as well.  Guess I'm going to have to get busy! There are still spaces available in the sock knitting class and the knitting with jewelry wire and beads class.  So be sure to get your registration in.  More info can be got here.

Now my next post is (hopefully) going to be a report on the spindles and fiber obtained, used and spun over the past couple of weeks that I've been so negligent of the blog.  I will feed to the blog.

Get your kicks

My mother and I just got back from a wonderful trip to Santa Fe, NM.  We did just about everything you can do in Santa Fe.  We museumed and  galleried and shopped and oohed and ahhed and saw the sights.  One of the museums we enjoyed the most also allowed pictures - the International Folk Art Museum.
Here are some sights from the historic downtown.
As always, you can click on a photo to see a larger version.

The International Folk Art Museum...

Outside on Museum Hill:

A little further afield on the way to Espanola...

Beautiful, wonderful, amazing.

Never Ending Cotton

For those of you who have been following the Cotton Saga, here's the latest.

I met up with my mother in Oklahoma City on Saturday and we've worked our way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  When we met up, she whipped a zippy bag out of her luggage and said, "Here you go.  The first gleanings!" 

Here's what I saw:

This is from the first few bolls and there are a ton more, she says.  I would venture to say there are about 60 seeds in this bunch, at least.  Can you believe it?  In just 90 days.  In all that we've been able to read, they're not supposed to start giving out until about 180 days.  I'm sure it's her green fingers! 

My step-father has kindly offered to care for the 26 plants while we're gone so KUDOS to him!

We're off to explore more.  We stayed around the historic downtown district yesterday.  The Georgia O'Keefe Museum was fabulous.  I never knew much about her, nor was I particularly interested but now I'm sold.  So interesting and such use of color and shapes.  No words.  Here's a little of what we saw...

Interrupting

We interrupt our series of spinning updates to report on an experiment. 

One of the projects we included in our Heritage Knitting Workbook was for a cute little pence purse (or pence jug).  It is a really cute little purse knit with size 5 cotton.  We've been doing some testing so when I saw this Red Heart Eco-Cotton the other day at Hobby Lobby, I just had to take the experimentation a step further.  This is 75% recycled cotton yarn and there's 145 yards in the skein.  I don't enjoy knitting with cotton yarn so I didn't enjoy it from that perspective but 1 skein made this larger version of this purse and it made the "knitting with cotton" worth the effort.  Have a look:

Now back to our regularly scheduled updates.  I finished the Llama roving this weekend and am getting ready to start the item that it will become.

Spinner's Progress, vol 1

I've been spinning away lately and am making some progress on some projects.  First of all let me introduce you to my Llama:

This has been one of the funnest, most luscious things I've spun in a while (although I probably say that every other week) and it went very quickly indeed.  I found it really different to spin than alpaca and wool and I found that it had a more hair-like texture to it.  It's beautifully prepared from a local Llama farm, K&T Llamas.  They have llamas of a variety of colors of fleece and it's gorgeous.  I got this particular fiber from them during a Knit in Public Day visit to Sticks and Stones Innovations in Jacksonville, IL.  They had several of the yummy creatures there in the fleece.

I bought 8 and 8.5 ozs of the different colors but I haven't spun it all yet.  I did, however, get more than 200 yards of the medium brown and about 150 yards of the blond color.  I think what I'm going to do with it is make a sort of a shrug.  It's forming!  I also got some chocolate brown but it had lots of vm in it (she did tell me up front and sold it at half price) and I wasn't able to spin that very well.  I may have another go with it before I start knitting.  That's one thing about llama - it's quite heavy so I'm not sure I would want a whole sweater out of it but I think the shrug will be just right.

This was spun with z-spun singles, s-plied at a 2-ply dk weight.  I did a sample of it with 3 plies but I really didn't like the look at all so I went with the 2 plies.  I spun the whole bobbin with the singles, then I wrapped half of it back onto an old bobbin.  I'm getting pretty good at estimating half way although I do andean ply the last little bit so I can use all the singles.  Actually, what I need to do is get a few more bobbins for this wheel.

You probably noticed the other little sample hanging between these hanks and, if you thought that it doesn't look like llama, you're right!  Karen got some new fibers in last week and this is one of them - carbonized bamboo, spun fine on the smallest of the Ashford drop spindles.  Interesting.  It has a very different handle than other fibers, even from regular bamboo - it's more a matte finish. 

To be continued...