More spinning and then some

I opened I can has cheezburger just as I took a sip of something, and nearly ruined my keyboard.

more cat pictures

In spinning news, I bought 4 oz of a wool-silk blend from the LYS. Here are some singles; this stuff is going to keep me occupied for a long time.




I try to comfort myself with the thought that, if we ever have an apocalypse, then as long as I have that drop spindle and the roving I can make my own dental floss.

Here's how it looks plied (yeah, I refused to ply it on the drop spindle...I just wish there were a way to do S-twist with the Lendrum regular flyer). Sorry about the poor focus--our camera doesn't like close-ups.

Catching up

The Christmas knitting continues.

Did I ever mention the Linen Bath Set I was making? Well, I finished it. I even wove in the ends right after casting off the final cloth. There's one for the history books! The only problem is, it may not qualify as Christmas knitting because I still don't know who the recipient might be.



Pattern: Linen Bath Set.
Yarn: Louet Euroflax, 2 skeins in Ginger.
Cat: Large, nosy, perpetually hungry, highly determined, and unfortunately clever neutered male tabby.

I also made a couple of Christmas stockings. The first one was Christmas in Tallinn from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road. I had made this last year but used bigger yarn (red and white Dale Heilo, with doubled strands of leftover green Dale Baby Ull) for the 2007 version so that the stocking matched the size in the pattern.

The second one was supposed to be the Giant Jester Stocking from Interweave Knits' 2006 holiday issue, but it got a bit out of control.

I tried to follow the pattern, I really did. For attempt #1 I decided to stashbust and use some leftover yarn that technically belonged to the same colour families as the yarn in the photo, but the yarn was so dark that the result, quite frankly, could have inspired permanent fear of both Christmas and jesters in the recipient. So I frogged that and tried again with (new) yarn in shades like those in the magazine photo, but then decided I just didn't like the colours themselves. For attempt #3 I went traditional and used green for the cuff and red and white for the stocking, but the stripes looked too much like something from an antique bathing suit. Finally I said to heck with this and (at M's suggestion) changed the stripes to a candy-cane pattern.

Yarn: Cascade 220

In hindsight, I probably should have included some narrow stripes...this seems slightly on the loud side. Oh well.

Things have been going better with the baby sweater. I just need to weave in the ends, block, and add buttons and ribbon.

Pattern: Swing Thing by Theresa Belville
Yarn: Plymouth Encore worsted

Last week I went to the Urban Craft Uprising show and picked up some sock yarn (not shown) and some roving from Actual Size Creations. The one with lime green is merino, while the other is Blue-Faced Leicester.



And in non-fiber related activities, I made a pie! Actually, I made two because we didn't have any bakeware big enough to hold all of the fruit. It turned out pretty well for a first pie attempt. I used the deep-dish pie recipe from Joy of Cooking so I only had to worry about a top crust.

Foulness of cat

Our cats can be really gross. Granted, they haven't done this yet (though Chester's litterbox adventures come close), but still.

Take, for example, Claude's dining habits. Despite having a perfectly decent food dish heaped with kibble, he insists on dropping food on the floor before eating.

He then leaves portions behind.

Chester, being the sort of cat who never lets (a chance to eat Claude's) food go to waste, sails in as soon as Claude walks away, hoovers up the remnants...

...and leaves a glaze of cat spit on the floor. I'd better go get the soap again.

In tidier news, I spun up some more Blue-Faced Leicester. It's squooshy! There should be enough for a hat once it's combined with the white BLF from earlier.


I also started a narrow Hydrangea Lace Scarf using yarn I spun from a merino-silk blend.

That stripe really is there. I hope there are more light patches in the yarn or else that one band is going to look pretty silly.

I spun up the other superwash merino roving I had bought from etsy. I made a 3-ply yarn using the fractal method described in Spin-Off Summer 2007, but in hindsight I think I should have Navajo plied, because that really lovely teal in the singles was overpowered by all of the pink.



Cindy sent some info on yardage for the Baby Surprise Jacket (thanks!). The 200-ish yards I have of chocolate and cherries yarn is nowhere near enough, but luckily I already have some white sportweight sock yarn at home. Hooray!

Hee hee hee

I have made something that looks like sock yarn!



I finished spinning and plying the chocolate and cherries roving (on the right). It seems to be close to the specs I mentioned earlier from Spin-Off Fall 2007 (around 14 wpi and 5 twists per inch), and although I haven't run it through any official measuring tool I think I have about 230 yards. Most of it looks decent but I did run into some trouble with singles falling apart, especially where I had joined new roving or where the colour had been solid (instead of having, e.g., some red fiber and some white) and the twist thus harder to see.

I had thought about making socks with this yarn but now I'm more in the mood for knitting a Baby Surprise Jacket just so I can say I did it. Does anyone know how much sportweight yarn one needs for this?

Since I was in the mood, I also finished spinning and plying some Bluefaced Leicester roving (left in the photo) that I had acquired a few weeks ago in a spinning class. I'll have to pick up some more of this--the sheen is really pretty! Maybe I'll even put enough twist into the singles next time...

We went to Carkeek Park yesterday and got some photos of the sunset.

Food

I ordered about 4 oz of hand-dyed superwash merino roving from sprouty25's Etsy shop back in September and it arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I started spinning it last night, following or at least trying to follow Kristi Schueler's specs for her Green Lake Socks in the latest issue of Spin-off. The results have been mixed so far; I think I might be getting the correct wpi but too low a twist.

I wasn't sure what to expect with the colours since the dye was applied (I think) in patches and not as solid blocks of colour, but I like the look so far, even if it inspires a frighteningly strong craving for either huge slabs of Black Forest cake or a sundae with chocolate fudge and strawberry sauce.


About one-third of the roving.


First bobbin of singles.

It's raining raining raining but do the cats care? I think not.

WIP

Why yes, I do still knit and spin when I'm not babbling about elk.

I wanted to do the Socktoberfest thing again this year, but seeing Theresa's finished Pacific Northwest Shawl inspired me to resume the one I hid away several months ago, so the socks aren't really a top priority right now. I've reached the fish near the border and hope that taking this photo of my shawl on a beach in the Pacific Northwest (Dungeness Spit to be exact) will, I don't know, infuse the shawl with speedy-and-easy-knitting mojo or something. Look, the photo is even colour-coordinated.



A project like this makes me think I'm more of a process than product (or whatever the term is) knitter. I don't even wear this shade of blue; I just liked the pattern and the yarn seemed to suit it.

Socks aren't being completely ignored, though. Most of the leg is done on the first Conwy sock.

Yarn: ShibuiKnits Sock.
Pattern: Conwy from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road.

I also finished spinning and plying the blue-ish merino roving. It's drying in the bathroom right now. Most of it looks decent, but some parts seem underplied. There are about 500 yards of 2-ply, and I'm guessing it varies between sport and fingering weight. It doesn't seem to be as blue as the earlier samples I spun, but I think that's because I kept changing my predrafting method.


The cats tried to get involved. The cow-cat took over my lap while I was plying and then got upset at the yarn running over his back, while the tabby messed with the lazy kate.

Stashing

The mailbox was productive yesterday.



This is 4.1 oz of hand-dyed superwash merino roving that I bought last week from copperpot's store on Etsy. I'm hoping I can squeeze out enough yarn for two socks (??) before the cow-cat tries to eat it.

Knitting knitting knitting

The (knitting part of the) Mystery Stole is done! Now I need to find a blocking surface.

Rainy morning

Happy September! Instead of starting Christmas ornaments as I did last year, I spent the weekend beating the crap out of yarn.

That doesn't sound very nice, does it? Let me backtrack.

I popped into Weaving Works about a week ago and picked up some merino roving in the colourway Denim. It's really pretty stuff! It reminds me of a gas giant when it's all balled up like this.



And as you can see, I spun some of it too. I wasn't sure if I should go for 2-ply or 3-ply so I tried a bit of both. It really kinked up the first time I plied it so I went back and untwisted it a bit. Here it is in its kinked form. I forgot to take photos of it afterwards.



The thing I'm not sure about though is whether the yarn is supposed to kink up like that before one sets the twist.

Anyway, I followed the directions in Shannon Okey's book Spin to Knit to set the twist, hence the yarn-beating. The yarn is still drying in the bathroom with some buddies (in the photo it's second from the right).



Here's a close-up.


The drop spindle is still seeing action. I tried switching to a top-whorl for a while but still find the bottom-whorl much easier to use and less wobbly. Here are some singles; I kind of cheated and spun the spindle on a table so I could keep the singles thin.


World o' knitting
I'm on Clue 5 of the Mystery Stole! Hah! Take that, Clue 4!




And I passed the heel on the first Monkey sock.